WASHINGTON: Coronavirus outbreak took the death toll in the United States (US) to nine on Wednesday as health officials reported the newest case from King County in Seattle, media reports.
According to a statement by health officials, the patient, who is in her 80s, died at her family home on February 26. Three more deaths from the coronavirus were reported by Washington state on Tuesday as the nation’s largest and only fatal outbreak of the respiratory disease reached beyond the Seattle area in what appeared to be the first known instance of coast-to-coast transmission.
A North Carolina resident tested positive after returning from a trip to Washington state, where the individual was exposed, and apparently infected, during a visit to a nursing facility at the center of a recent surge in cases in suburban Seattle.
The total number of people diagnosed with the coronavirus in the greater Seattle area rose to 27 on Tuesday, including nine deaths, up from 18 cases and six deaths tallied on Monday, the state Department of Health reported.
President Donald Trump told reporters his administration may cut off overseas travel from the United States to areas abroad with high rates of coronavirus, but said officials were not weighing any restrictions on domestic travel.
A multibillion-dollar funding bill was moving slowly through Congress after Democrats raised questions about the availability of testing for the new virus.
The US Federal Reserve cut interest rates in an emergency move designed to shield the world’s largest economy from the impact of the coronavirus as Group of Seven finance officials pledged all appropriate policy moves.
The North Carolina diagnosis, the first presumptive positive case announced in that state, was not part of the Seattle-area case cluster, which ranks as the largest concentration detected to date in the United States, and the only one yet to prove deadly.
Eight of those who died in Washington state were in King County and one was in neighboring Snohomish County, officials said.
“This is a very fluid, fast-moving situation as we aggressively respond to this outbreak,” said Dr Jeff Duchin, a public health officer for Seattle and King County.
Of the 27 cases documented as of Tuesday, nine of them were connected to a long-term nursing-care facility called LifeCare in the Seattle suburb of Kirkland, according to the Seattle & King County Public Health agency. Five of those who died had been LifeCare residents.
The latest data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) listed 108 confirmed and presumed cases in the United States. That tally consists of 60 reported by public health authorities in 12 states plus 48 among people repatriated from abroad, most of them from an outbreak aboard the Diamond Princess cruise liner in Japan.
The number of US cases beyond the repatriated patients has mushroomed from just 15 reported by the CDC on Friday, as the first handful of infections believed to have emerged from community transmission were detected in the Pacific Northwest. Before that, all US cases were deemed travel-related, essentially imported from abroad.
In New York, a man in his 50s who lives in a New York City suburb and works at a Manhattan law firm tested positive for the virus, bringing the number of confirmed cases in that state to two, New York officials said.
He has severe pneumonia and is hospitalized, officials said. The patient had not traveled to countries hardest hit in the coronavirus outbreak, which began in China in December and is now present in nearly 80 countries and territories, killing more than 3,000 people.
New York Mayor Bill de Blasio said confirmation of the case was made by the city’s public health laboratory on its first day of testing.
Read more: United States coronavirus death toll rises to six
