"We could have people in the United States dying for what appears to be influenza, when in fact it could be the coronavirus or COVID-19?"
"Some cases have been actually diagnosed that way in the United States to date."
WASHINGTON, March 13 (Xinhua) -- Some COVID-19 deaths have been diagnosed as flu-related in the United States, Robert Redfield, director of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), has said.
Director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Robert Redfield attends a press conference on the COVID-19 at the White House in Washington D.C. March 9, 2020. (Xinhua/Liu Jie)
Redfield was responding to a question by U.S. Congressman Harley Rouda of California at a hearing on Capitol Hill on Wednesday.
"We could have people in the United States dying for what appears to be influenza, when in fact it could be the coronavirus or COVID-19?" Rouda asked.
"Some cases have been actually diagnosed that way in the United States to date," Redfield answered.
The director of U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention(CDC) Robert Redfield testifies before the House Foreign Affairs Committee during a hearing on Coronavirus Disease 2019: The U.S. and International Response, on Capitol Hill in Washington D.C., the United States, on Feb. 27, 2020. (Photo by Ting Shen/Xinhua)
As of Wednesday night, there were over 1,300 confirmed cases and 38 deaths in the United States, according to real-time data maintained by the Center for Systems Science and Engineering at Johns Hopkins University.
(Article and Video by Xinhua Reporters Sun Ding and Tan Yixiao) ■
