At a hastily arranged White House news conference on Saturday, President Trump and other officials sought to project confidence in how the U.S. is handling the coronavirus situation.
Photo: Alex Wong/Getty ImagesRhode Island health officials confirmed the state’s first case of coronavirus on Sunday, signaling a widening spread of the virus a day after the first death in the U.S. was reported in Washington state and the White House imposed additional international travel restrictions.
The Rhode Island patient, the 25th confirmed local case in the U.S., is a person in their 40s who had traveled to Italy in mid-February, the state health department said in a press release. Officials said they are working closely with the hospital where this person is being treated.
The family of the Rhode Island patient has been in self-quarantine since the person’s symptoms and travel history made the person a candidate for monitoring for Covid-19, the state agency said. The person hadn’t returned to work and extensive efforts are underway to reach anyone who the person did have contact with since returning to the U.S., it said. Any of those contacts will be monitored and directed to self-quarantine for 14 days as well.
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Vice President Mike Pence, head of the government’s task force on the virus, said at a briefing Saturday that the U.S. will bar foreign nationals who have traveled to Iran in the past 14 days. The government is also strongly advising people against travel to areas in Italy and South Korea that are affected by the virus and has asked those countries to ensure adequate screening of travelers to the U.S.
At the hastily arranged White House news conference, President Trump and other officials sought to project confidence in how the U.S. is handling the situation, which has sent markets tumbling. “This too will end,” the president said.
Robert Redfield, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said, “The risk is low. We need to get on with our normal lives.”
In response to a reporter’s question, Mr. Trump said the U.S. is also considering restrictions at the Mexican border. On Sunday, Mr. Trump said on Twitter that travelers from high-risk countries or areas wouldn’t only be screened for the virus prior to boarding but also when they arrive in the U.S.
The patient in Washington, a man in his 50s with underlying health conditions, died Friday night after test results confirmed he had novel coronavirus, according to a letter from the EvergreenHealth health-care system. He didn’t have any travel history to areas where the virus was circulating.
The CDC on Saturday also announced the first case of novel coronavirus in a U.S. health-care provider. The woman, who is in her 40s and is currently in good condition, is connected to yet another case in Washington state—a woman in her 70s in serious condition.
Both are associated with a long-term care facility called Life Care Center of Kirkland in Kirkland, Wash. Health officials warned of a potential outbreak in the facility and said that an additional 27 residents and 25 staff are experiencing symptoms.
So far, roughly 80% of the cases are mild, with the most common symptoms being a fever and a dry cough. Many patients recover within a few weeks. But the rapidly spreading virus can also be deadly, especially among older adults and those with underlying health conditions, such as chronic cardiac disease, lung disease and diabetes.
Federal health officials said that the overall risk to the general public in the U.S. is still low, though the risk is rising in some areas and is higher for certain groups. People can protect themselves and their communities by taking steps such as frequent handwashing, avoiding contact with people who are sick and staying home if they develop symptoms, health authorities say.
“We are facing a historic public health challenge,” Nancy Messonnier, director of the CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, said on a press call. “While we still hope for the best, we continue to prepare for this virus to become more widespread in the United States.”
A total of 25 people have been diagnosed with the novel infection within the U.S., not including repatriated Americans.
Late Saturday, health officials in Illinois said a third person there had tested positive for coronavirus. They didn’t say how the person had contracted it. The patient, who wasn’t identified, remains in the hospital and is in isolation. Two people in the state previously confirmed to have the virus have made full recoveries, officials said in a statement.
New cases in patients who currently have no clear path of exposure signal a wider spread of the novel coronavirus in some American communities. On Saturday, officials in Santa Clara County, Calif., announced a fourth confirmed case, a woman they said had been a “household contact“ of another woman who contracted the disease through apparent community transmission.
They released few details about the case other than to say the unidentified woman isn’t hospitalized or ill. The other woman, who also hasn’t been identified, remains under hospital treatment.
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That woman was one of three new cases reported by health officials in California, Washington and Oregon on Friday in which the patients had no relevant travel history or known exposure to carriers.
The patients were tested following a change in the CDC guideline, which the agency expanded on Thursday to include people with recent travel history to Japan, Italy, Iran and South Korea as well as people with severe respiratory illnesses and a fever without a clear cause of infection.
The agency expanded the guideline after a patient in California wasn’t tested right away because the woman didn’t meet the stricter guidelines but ended up testing positive.
On Saturday, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration said it would allow some 300 to 400 academic-hospital labs to begin testing for the virus, allowing for checks of thousands of people rather than the few hundred already tested.
Until Saturday’s announcement, there were relatively few diagnostic tests conducted in the U.S., with most state and local health departments sending patient samples to the CDC and waiting days for results. Even those initially had some accuracy problems, though the CDC has said those problems have been remedied.
Washington state started testing patient samples locally on Friday, officials said, which contributed to the quick uptick of reported cases in the region.
Mr. Trump is scheduled to meet Monday with pharmaceutical companies as work continues on a vaccination.
Write to Brianna Abbott at brianna.abbott@wsj.com, Alex Leary at alex.leary@wsj.com and Joe Barrett at joseph.barrett@wsj.com
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2020-03-01 16:34:00Z
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