Is Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak patient zero for the coronavirus in the United States?
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The millionaire tech entrepreneur tweeted that he and his wife were both sick after returning from Hong Kong in early January.
“Checking out [my wife] Janet’s bad cough. Started Jan. 4. We had just returned from China and may have both been patient zero in U.S.,” he tweeted Monday.
Wozniak told Inside Edition their symptoms first presented like the flu, including vomiting and diarrhea, but his wife’s illness eventually progressed into coughing up blood.
“I literally thought I was going to die,” his wife Janet Hill explained.
During the trip, Wozniak said he came into contact with a tourist from Wuhan – the epicenter of the worldwide crisis. The pair stood arm-in-arm to take a selfie, he said.
The Wozniaks returned to their home in California before the coronavirus outbreak became front page news, but since their symptoms have now subsided, they may never find out whether they were patient zero.
"I'm feeling fully recovered," Wozniak said. "I know that if we returned today from Hong Kong with these symptoms we had, we’d be candidates for testing and quarantine immediately."
He and others like him said they were getting “a run-around with the CDC” when it came to getting tested, Wozniak said.
He retweeted a Seattle woman, who spoke out about how difficult it was to get tested. She said she tried to get in touch with the coronavirus hotline, was told by primary care doctors they couldn’t help her, discovered hospitals she contacted do not have tests and eventually learned she did not qualify for testing since she wasn’t out of the country in the last 14 days.
“This is all incredibly frustrating because I am trying to do everything right,” @into_the_brush concluded.
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