'This is stunning': CNN's Sanjay Gupta unpacks startling revelations about COVID-19's earlier arrival in US

Recently conducted autopsies suggest that COVID-19 entered the United States far earlier than had been previously known, and CNN chief medical analyst Sanjay Gupta on Wednesday broke down the ramifications from this startling revelation.

"I think this is pretty stunning," Gupta told CNN's John Berman, although he hastened to add that news about COVID-19's early arrival were also "not surprising."

"The idea that this was a virus... that was already spreading within the community was suspected for a while, we just didn't know for sure," he said.

Gupta went on to explain that it was significant that the first COVID-19 cases in the U.S. may have come in mid-January, as one month later the Centers for Disease Control revealed that it had botched its own coronavirus tests and had to start again from scratch.

"This was a combination of things: Inadequate testing, not testing the right people, and now, as a result, recognizing this was spreading a lot earlier in the community," he said.

Gupta also noted that the first COVID-19 case in the U.S. came before President Donald Trump announced his much-touted China travel ban, which meant that the ban literally did nothing to stop the disease from coming into the country.

Watch the video below.