Published Feb. 11
Around this time last year, a group of researchers at the University of Florida began their annual search for flu samples.
For 19 days, professor John Lednicky and his laboratory took swab samples from a door handle at a busy campus building, and on four of those days they found a strain of influenza. But one day’s samples — from Feb. 21, 2020 — yielded something more notable: The researchers found the same strain of COVID-19 that had been circulating in Washington state at that time.
Read the rest of the story from the Tampa Bay Times here.
Department:
Department of Environmental and Global Health
John Lednicky
Research Professor