In fact, New York probably imported most of its first COVID-19 cases from Europe, as researchers at Mount Sinai suggested in one pre-print April study."[The coronavirus] came to the New York City area predominately via Europe, through untracked transmissions," Dr Viviana Simon, a Professor of Microbiology and Infectious Diseases at Mount Sinai, said in a press release at the time."The virus was likely circulating as early as late-January 2020 in the New York City area. This underscores the urgent need for early and continued broad testing to identify untracked transmission clusters in the community."