Some 16,000 of those coronavirus deaths have occurred in New York, which has emerged as the hardest hit states with more than 260,000 cases.

Meanwhile, a preliminary study in New York State released on Thursday suggested that far more state residents have contracted coronavirus than previously believed. The study, in which 3,000 people from across the state were tested for the presence of coronavirus antibodies, suggested that 13 percent of state residents have had the illness, including a staggering 20 percent of New York City residents. Should that 13 percent infection rate prove to be consistent across the state’s population, the mortality rate would be roughly 0.5 percent, a significant drop from the 6 percent that current case and death numbers indicate.

Epidemiologists suspect that the highly contagious disease was silently spreading through major American cities weeks before the first sets of cases were confirmed. The first death from coronavirus in California was found to have been on February 6, three weeks earlier than initially reported.

“We had coronavirus circulating in the community much earlier than we had documented and much earlier than we had thought,” Santa Clara County public health officer Dr. Sara Cody announced. “There had to be chains of transmission that go back much earlier.”

Among the victims was Senator Elizabeth Warren’s (D., Mass.) eldest brother Donald Herring, 86, a former lieutenant colonel in the Air Force. Representative Maxine Waters (D., Calif.) said on the House floor on Thursday that her sister was dying of coronavirus in a hospital in St. Louis, Mo.

Waters made the remarks while voting to approve a $484 billion relief package for small businesses and hospitals affected by the pandemic. Both the House and Senate passed the measure, and President Trump is expected to sign the legislation on Friday.