CORRECTED-UPDATE 1-CDC confirms 14th U.S. case of coronavirus with patient in San Diego – Reuters.com

(In pentultimate paragraph, corrects California case tally to eight, not seven) By Steve Gorman LOS ANGELES, Feb 12 (Reuters) – A second person evacuated from Wuhan, China, to a U.S. Marine base near San Diego has been diagnosed with the new coronavirus, raising the tally of confirmed cases in the United States to 14, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported on Wednesday. The patient was among 232 individuals who had been placed under quarantine at the Marine Corps Air Station Miramar after being airlifted from the epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak in Wuhan earlier this month, CDC spokeswoman Ana Toro said. A previous case of coronavirus was documented a few days earlier among the same group of evacuees, the CDC said. CDC officials said it appeared that the two San Diego patients were separately exposed to the virus in China before arriving in the United States. The two arrived on different planes and were housed in separate facilities. “At this time there is no indication of person-to-person spread of this virus at the quarantine facility, but CDC will carry out a thorough contact investigation as part of its current response strategy to detect and contain any cases of infection with this virus,” Dr. Christopher Braden, deputy director of the CDC’s National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases, said in a statement. To date, a total of eight coronavirus cases have been documented in California, accounting for more than half of the infections confirmed across the United States, none of them fatal. Two of those cases are believed to have been transmitted person-to-person within the United States – both between married couples after one of the spouses returned home from a recent visit to China. (Reporting and writing by Steve Gorman in Culver City, Calif.; Additional reporting by Andrew Hay; Editing by Bill Tarrant)