By Pepper Fisher

WASHINGTON – Today marks two years since a man from Washington state became the first known case of COVID-19 in the United States.

On January 19, 2020, a Snohomish County man in his 30s went to a clinic with what appeared to be symptoms of pneumonia. Two days later, the Centers for Disease Control confirmed it was the first case of coronavirus in the U.S., and deployed a team to help with contact tracing efforts.

We later learned the man had returned from a trip to Wuhan, China after visiting family and arrived at Sea-Tac with no symptoms.

About a month later in February, King County officials announced the first death in the U.S. from COVID-19, a man in his 50s who had underlying health conditions but had no contact with any known COVID-19 case.

After that first reported death, King County health officials reported a COVID-19 outbreak at a Life Care Center in Kirkland, and that became the epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak in the whole country.

It wasn’t until March 18 that Clallam County got its first case of COVID-19, and our first death from the virus was in August of 2020.