How long has the coronavirus been in the Myrtle Beach area? Evidence suggests months
Robyn Greco of Conway has had the flu, pneumonia and bronchitis in the past.
What she had from late December until mid-March was something very different.
“This was altogether a different beast. I felt like it was trying to kill me. I thought I was going to die quite a few times,” Greco said. “I was afraid to go to sleep and I was afraid to wake up because when I went to sleep I was afraid I was going to die, and when I woke up, I couldn’t breathe and my heart rate was real high and I felt like I was going to die.”
Greco, 50, has believed she had the novel coronavirus COVID-19 based on her symptoms since learning of the virus, and took a test last Wednesday to determine if her body had produced antibodies in response to the virus, which would indicate she previously had it.
The result of the antibody test was negative.
So while there’s no proof Greco had it, there is medical evidence that suggests the coronavirus was on the Grand Strand long before the first positive case in the area was confirmed on March 14.
Coastal Lab in Murrells Inlet conducted the testing of Greco and her husband, Lou, and out of 230 test results over two weeks through the weekend it has received eight positive results from local residents — three for those with the active virus and five who previously had it based on the type of antibodies discovered.
Heather Pitts, owner of Coastal Lab, which is located inside Southern Urgent Care, said the earliest a patient with a positive test professed to be sick was late January, so it appears the virus has been in the area more than six weeks prior to the first positive COVID-19 test.
The first U.S. case was confirmed on Jan. 20 in the state of Washington, and the patient had traveled from Wuhan, China, which is the supposed birthplace of the virus dating back to late December, according to Chinese officials.
Several other Strand residents believe they may have had the coronavirus before it was even known to be in the U.S. Greco posted her ordeal on a Facebook local resident group page in January and numerous people immediately posted similar experiences that they believe could be attributed to COVID-19.
The first case of COVID-19 in South Carolina was identified on March 6, and the S.C. Department of Health and Environmental Control does not have evidence of it in the state prior to March, according to DHEC spokesperson Laura Renwick.
The possible earlier presence came in the midst of flu season, which made an influenza diagnosis a natural assumption for doctors who didn’t yet have coronavirus testing.
“Could there have been a COVID in there? Absolutely there could have been,” said Dr. Gerald Harmon, vice president of medical affairs at Tidelands Health, where the first positive case was March 16, within a week of the facility’s first test.
Harmon recalls a pair of patients he treated in early March who may have had the coronavirus based on their symptoms.
“It makes sense that we could have had some in the area because clearly we didn’t have the U.S. travel restrictions,” Harmon said. “People from New York, from California were flying regularly in airports throughout the country, and they weren’t necessarily coming to Myrtle Beach but they were going to hub airports and could have picked up [coronavirus] in their travels.”
Debilitating illness
Greco, 50, has several underlying health conditions. She said she has had Lyme disease for an estimated 25 years, rheumatoid arthritis, a chronic lung disease and chronic fatigue syndrome. Her breathing is already impaired and she has digestive issues.
She finds it difficult to trust her negative antibody test and was hoping for a positive result, which would have meant the couple may have had some amount of immunity to COVID-19 and her husband would have been able to donate plasma to help others stricken with the virus. She doesn’t donate blood because of her autoimmune issues.
“I checked off every symptom of COVID-19,” Greco said. “I have never been that scared that I was going to die in the 25 years that I’ve been chronically sick.”
Lou Greco, 62, was sick for about two months beginning on New Year’s Day but he never became as ill as his wife. He tested negative for the flu while she was never tested for it but was told she could have had the flu, bronchitis or pneumonia, or a combination of them, she said.
Robyn Greco began getting sick on Dec. 26 and at first assumed it was the flu. The illness started with a dry cough that became “horrific,” a fever followed and was at 103 degrees within two days, she lost taste and smell, the muscles in her calves seized up and she could barely walk for a week. She lost 14 pounds in two weeks because she lost her appetite and was constantly nauseous.
“Everything tasted like rotten garbage. It just didn’t taste right,” Greco said. “There was no smell, and if I could smell something, it smelled horrific.”
A revealing test
The antibody test the Grecos received determines a recent, past and possibly current exposure of the patient to the virus based on the development of an antibody response to it.
Coastal Lab is drawing a vial of blood from patients and utilizing two laboratories for the testing — Avanti Laboratories and LabTech Diagnostics — that are testing for two types of antibodies. IgM antibodies can be present when a person has the active virus, and IgG antibodies are generally present when a person has had the virus in the past.
Coastal Lab is not testing anyone with symptoms. The three IgM positives have come from people who were asymptomatic. “If you do have it and don’t have symptoms, you’re still contagious and will just spread it, and that’s the scary thing with this virus,” Pitts said.
The existence of antibodies gives people hope that they will be able to fend off the virus in the future, as has generally been the case with other viruses, and their plasma may be used to help others overcome it. But doctors warn the virus is so new it’s not yet proven that antibodies will help, and the accuracy percentage of the antibody test results aren’t yet proven over time.
“No test is 100 percent. You take the results at face value,” Harmon said. “… If they have an antibody response, that’s a good thing if they’re over the disease particularly, and it does imply there’s a relative immunity but it doesn’t guarantee that. Despite this pandemic, we don’t have a lot of cases to base our recommendations on and some of the data is still a bit confusing.”
Coastal Lab’s tests are covered by insurance but that requires a doctor’s referral, or they cost $125 without a referral. Appointments are best made through the info@coastallabsc.com email and can also be set up by calling 843-957-6740. Tests are currently being returned in 48 to 72 hours.
Pitts said most of the tests have been performed on older folks, and she is encouraging younger patients because she believes that will get more positive results and be more effective in controlling the virus’ spread. “The younger people want to be out and not staying inside,” she said.
A November case?
Tonya Steele, a CPA who lives in Barefoot Resort, became seriously ill immediately after returning from a weeklong business conference in New York City in early November, as did a coworker who accompanied her and subsequently missed two weeks of work and received a negative test for the flu.
“I was home about a day then started feeling very, very bad very quickly. I was on the couch for at least four or five days,” said Steele, who has had the flu in the past. “It was completely different [than the flu] because of the severity of it and the shortness of breath.”
The illness included body aches, a very sore throat that nearly took her ability to speak, a 101-degree fever, shortness of breath, tightness in her chest and fatigue. She nearly fainted from weakness on one occasion.
The illness lasted nearly two weeks.
“I almost called 911 a couple times when I felt that shortness of breath and had to catch my breath,” said Steele, who is a non-smoker with no history of lung or breathing problems. “I have never experienced anything like that before. It was a tightness in my chest and you couldn’t catch your breath. I had to really focus on trying to take a deep breath and calming down a little bit so I could try to breathe. It was very scary.”
Steele’s husband, Earle, did not get sick.
Steele plans to get an antibody test this week and hopes she’s already had the virus and has an immunity to it because she had open heart surgery when she was 10 necessitated by her right coronary artery being too large and her left being too small. She was recently diagnosed with a heart murmur.
“What if it wasn’t that and I got that sick, then I could really be in trouble by this thing,” Steele said. “I had all those symptoms and I couldn’t breathe, and if that wasn’t it that’s really scary.”
A moving date
There is more uncertainty regarding the introduction of COVID-19 in the United States with a pair of revelations last week in California and New York, and a new model study.
A woman who died in California on Feb. 6 had the virus, according to her autopsy. That predates by 20 days the date of the previous first confirmed coronavirus death in the U.S.
The death is believed to be the result of a community transmission because the victim had not recently traveled outside the country, according to multiple media reports.
So earlier COVID-19 cases in the country were surely misdiagnosed, if they were diagnosed at all, and the amount of those cases is a mystery.
In New York, heath officials conducted an antibody test of a sample of 3,000 people at various locations across the state, including at grocery stores and retail stores, and 13.9 percent had antibodies that suggested they had recovered from the coronavirus.
DHEC on Wednesday projected that there have likely been more than 42,000 cases of the virus across the state, though only about 5,900 had been confirmed, and also projected last week that about 76 percent of those diagnosed with COVID-19 have recovered.
Harmon said with barely more than 1 percent of the South Carolina population tested for coronavirus thus far, the likely amount of undiagnosed cases in which patients have already recovered could be good news.
“We just don’t know how many had it and really had minimal symptoms and have already recovered, so we hope there’s a ray of good hope and good news in there for all of us to be positive about,” Harmon said.
In addition, a model of the spread of the disease by researchers at Northeastern University published Thursday by the New York Times suggests there were 28,000 cases in early February in the five cities of New York, Boston, San Francisco, Chicago and Seattle. There were just 23 confirmed cases in the U.S. on March 1.
So there is growing evidence to suggest COVID-19 was in the U.S. well before the first test was even administered, possibly on the Strand.
This story was originally published May 1, 2020 at 9:00 AM.
