One victim in Santa Clara County was Patricia Dowd, a fifty-seven-year-old auditor, who died in her San Jose kitchen on February 6 and was found by her daughter slumped at the breakfast bar. Dowd had been suffering flulike symptoms. Her infection was not linked to COVID-19 at the time, because of the absence of local testing capacity and the advisory declaration about who could be tested. Her death seemed mystifying, possibly caused by a heart attack, and only clarified months later when tissue samples tested positive for SARS-CoV-2. Patricia Dowd was probably the first American to die of
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