The team at the Seattle Flu Study have sequenced the genome of the COVID19 community case reported yesterday from Snohomish County, WA, and have posted the sequence publicly.
This case, which is referred to as "WA2," is on a branch in the evolutionary tree that descends directly from the case referred to as "WA1" the first reported case in the USA sampled on Jan 19, also from Snohomish County, WA.
With an R0 of 15 and generation of two weeks:
This person should have spawned four generations or roughly 3500 people, the fourth generation should just be starting to show symptoms, so the person that died is likely from the second generation if dying now (death is four to five weeks after catching), meaning they didn't catch it from the original person but from someone the original person infected.
In another month, that one original spreader can be responsible for the infection of three quarters of a million cases. (R0, generations two weeks).
