Research into the genome of the novel coronavirus making New York the new epicenter of the global pandemic shows that the virus was brought to the New York City area in mid-February by travelers coming from Europe, not Asia. The research was conducted by Harm van Bakel, a geneticist at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, who said: “The majority is clearly European.” Another team with the New York University Grossman School of Medicine agreed, noting that the previously hidden spread of the virus could have been detected had aggressive testing been put in place, The New York Times reports. The Trump administration barred foreign nationals who had been in China from entering the country, but allowed them to travel from Europe. “People were just oblivious,” said Adriana Heguy, a member of the NYU team.“It was a disaster that we didn’t do testing.” The genome testing has also found that the earlier cases in the U.S. noted in January were not linked to the cluster that is now crippling the country.
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