Medical staff members with a patient in Wuhan, China.
THE CENTRAL HOSPITAL OF WUHAN VIA WEIBO /via REUTERS
The US has confirmed 15 cases of a coronavirus that originated in Wuhan, China: eight in California, two in Illinois, and one each in Arizona, Massachusetts, Texas, Washington, and Wisconsin.The 15th case was confirmed near San Antonio, Texas, on Thursday. The virus has spread to 25 other countries as well.Two cases of human-to-human transmission have been confirmed in the US.Visit Business Insider’s homepage for more stories.
The US has confirmed 15 cases of a new coronavirus that originated in Wuhan, China.The latest case was confirmed on Thursday at the Lackland Air Force Base near San Antonio, Texas. A group of American evacuees from Wuhan are being quarantined there for 14 days. The infected patient is the first person under quarantine at the base to test positive for the virus. The other US cases have been reported in seven states: Arizona, California, Illinois, Massachusetts, Texas, Washington, and Wisconsin. Officials have recorded two cases of human-to-human transmission among family members.The coronavirus has killed at least 1,370 people and infected more than 60,000 others since December. For the latest case total, death toll, and travel information, see Business Insider’s live updates here.Beyond China, the outbreak has spread to 25 other countries: Australia, Belgium, Cambodia, Canada, Finland, France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, Malaysia, Nepal, the Philippines, Russia, Singapore, South Korea, Spain, Sri Lanka, Sweden, Taiwan, Thailand, the United Arab Emirates, the UK, the US, and Vietnam.The coronavirus family is a large group of viruses that typically affect the respiratory tract. Coronaviruses can lead to illnesses such as the common cold, pneumonia, and SARS, which resulted in 8,000 cases and 774 deaths in China from November 2002 to July 2003.
Patients with COVID-19, as the new coronavirus is now known, have reported symptoms like fevers, coughing, and difficulty breathing. Most of the people who have died were elderly or otherwise unwell, Chinese officials have said.Here’s everything we know about the cases in the US.
The 15th US coronavirus case was confirmed in Texas on Thursday.
The Lackland Air Force Base.
Lackland Air Force Base
The unidentified patient is under a mandatory 14-day federal quarantine at the Lackland Air Force Base near San Antonio, Texas, which started February 7. Evacuees at the base returned from Wuhan on a flight charted by the US state department.The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) did not disclose the age or gender of the patient, but said the person was isolated and receiving treatment at a nearby hospital. The patient is the first quarantined evacuee at Lackland to show symptoms and test positive for the virus, the CDC said.
On Wednesday, CDC officials confirmed the 14th US coronavirus case — another evacuee under quarantine in San Diego.
The US Department of Health and Human Services shows evacuees from China arriving at Marine Corps Air Station in Miramar, California.
Associated Press
In a statement, the CDC said the patient had been quarantined at the Miramar Marine Corps Air Station in San Diego, California, since February 7. Officials did not specify where the patient is being treated, but NBC San Diego reported the person is at a San Diego County hospital.
Another person under federal quarantine in San Diego also tested positive for the virus.
Shutterstock.com
The two San Diego patients arrived on different planes and were housed in different quarantine facilities, according to the CDC. The agency told Business Insider on Monday that the unidentified patient had been evacuated from Wuhan to the Marine Corps Air Station in Miramar, then was taken to University of California San Diego Medical Center for treatment. “CDC is conducting a thorough contact investigation of the person who has tested positive to determine contacts and to assess if those contacts had high risk exposures,” the agency said in a statement.
A case in Wisconsin was confirmed on February 5.
Flickr/Richard Hurd
The Wisconsin patient had “a history of travel to Beijing, China, prior to becoming ill,” according to the state’s health department. The individual is being self-quarantined at home and doing well, officials added, but they declined to provide further details. Prior to the announcement, Wisconsin had been investigating 10 cases of the virus; seven tests had come back negative.”The risk of getting sick from 2019 novel coronavirus in Wisconsin is very low,” state health officer Jeanne Ayers said in a statement. “We are responding aggressively to the situation and monitoring all developments. We are committed to keeping the public fully informed and will continue to provide updates as this situation unfolds.”
Two cases were confirmed in San Benito County, California, on February 2.
US evacuees who were in China leaving an aircraft that was chartered by the State Department to evacuate government employees and other Americans from Wuhan.
Mike Blake/Reuters
The San Benito County Health and Human Services Agency announced that the coronavirus patients there are a husband and a wife, both 57 years old. The man recently traveled to Wuhan, China — the city where the outbreak began — then passed the virus to his wife after returning to California. On Monday, the couple was transferred by a specialty ambulance to a hospital at the University of California, San Francisco. Both patients “showed worsening symptoms” the night before, the San Benito health agency said in a statement.But it added: “Even with news of this case, the risk to the general public remains low.”
Before that, health officials announced another case in California: a woman in the San Francisco Bay Area.
A warning sign in San Francisco.
Smith Collection/Gado/Getty Images
The Santa Clara County Public Health Department said the woman contracted the virus while visiting Wuhan.”She has stayed home since she arrived except for two times to seek outpatient medical care,” Sara Cody, the county’s health officer, told reporters. “She has been regularly monitored and was never sick enough to be hospitalized.”The woman’s family has also been isolated and is not leaving the home, Cody added.
The first coronavirus case in Santa Clara County was confirmed on January 31.
Face masks at a store in East Palo Alto, California.
Yichuan Cao/NurPhoto via Getty Images
Officials said the two cases in Santa Clara County were not related. The other patient is a man who also recently visited China: He returned from a trip to Wuhan and Shanghai on January 24.Cody said the patient did not leave his home except to seek medical care, so he came into contact with “very few individuals” after his return from China. However, he did go to the Good Samaritan Hospital in San Jose, where five healthcare workers were exposed to the coronavirus. They have been told to stay home until February 11.The man did not need to be hospitalized and is being treated at home, Cody said.”We’ve been preparing for this possibility for weeks, knowing that we were likely to eventually confirm a case,” Cody said last week.
On February 1, officials from the Massachusetts Department of Public Health confirmed that a man there who recently returned from Wuhan had contracted the illness.
BSIP/UIG Via Getty Images
Department officials said in a statement that the man is in his 20s and lives in Boston.Since returning from Wuhan, he has been isolated, they added. He sought medical care shortly after arriving in the US, and authorities are monitoring his close contacts for symptoms.”The risk to the public from the 2019 novel coronavirus remains low in Massachusetts,” the statement said.
Three other US cases were confirmed on January 26: two in California, and one in Arizona.
People at Hong Kong International Airport on January 23.
VIVEK PRAKASH/AFP via Getty Images)
On January 22, a Wuhan resident who was traveling through Los Angeles International Airport on his way to China told airport staff that he wasn’t feeling well and was immediately taken to a local hospital.Another case was identified in Orange County. The patient there is being kept in isolation in a hospital and was said to be doing well.In Arizona, meanwhile, a person who lives in Maricopa County, which includes Phoenix, is in isolation. Health officials described the person as “a member of the Arizona State University community” who did not live in university housing.All three people recently traveled to the US from Wuhan.
A woman in her 60s in Chicago was the second confirmed case in the US.
The Providence Regional Medical Center in Everett, Washington.
Reuters
The woman traveled to Wuhan in December to care for her elderly father, then returned to Chicago on January 13.She did not exhibit any symptoms while traveling but told her doctor a few days after returning to the US that she was feeling unwell. She was sent to a local hospital, where she was isolated and given fluids. Doctors are treating her symptoms much like they would treat pneumonia.As of January 24, the woman was in stable condition, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said, according to Chicago’s ABC7 News. Local health officials said she did not take public transportation or attend any public gatherings.”I want to start by stating clearly: This is a single travel-associated case, not a local emergency,” said Allison Arwady, the commissioner of the Chicago Department of Public Health, according to ABC7.Arwady added: “I can reassure you that even with this Chicago case, the health risk to the general public from novel coronavirus remains low at this time.”
The spouse of the woman in Chicago also contracted the virus.
A charter plane landing at March Air Reserve Base in Riverside, California, with passengers evacuated from Wuhan.
Matt Hartman/AFP/Getty Images
The woman’s spouse had not traveled to China. His case was the first instance in which the coronavirus spread from person to person in the US.
The first US case was confirmed on January 21: a man in his 30s in Snohomish County, Washington.
A traveler at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport on January 23.
Reuters
The CDC has required 20 US airports — including those in New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Atlanta, and Chicago — to screen passengers for the virus. Flights in and out of Wuhan have been canceled.The man who contracted the virus landed at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport before those protocols were instated. He did not exhibit any symptoms while traveling. Health officials said that they were able to detect this case early and that the man had been under strict isolation.Chris Spitters, a health officer for the Snohomish Health District, said on January 21 that the man was “hospitalized out of an abundance of precaution and for short-term monitoring, not because there was severe illness.”A spokesman at Providence Regional Medical Center Everett told The Daily Herald on January 24 that the man was in good health.
As of Thursday, at least 427 people across 41 states had been tested or were awaiting tests for the virus.
The Zhongnan hospital in Wuhan, China.
STR/AFP via Getty Images
At least 347 people had tested negative for the virus, the CDC said on Thursday.
The US has barred foreign nationals who have been in China within the past 14 days from entering the country.
China Southern Airlines flight crew members wearing masks at Jomo Kenyatta International Airport in Nairobi, Kenya.
Patrick Ngugi/AP
As of February 2, US citizens returning home who have been in China’s Hubei province within the past 14 days are being quarantined for up to two weeks.
The US government has evacuated hundreds of Americans from Wuhan.
A largely empty train travels to Wuhan from Shanghai on January 23.
HECTOR RETAMAL/AFP via Getty Images
As of Thursday, more than 600 people who returned to the US on chartered flights from Wuhan remained under federal quarantine. Evacuees are being quarantined at the Travis Air Force Base in Fairfield, California; the Miramar Marine Corps Air Station in San Diego, California; the Lackland Air Force Base near San Antonio, Texas; and Camp Ashland in Omaha, Nebraska. Nearly 200 Americans were released from a mandatory 14-day quarantine at the March Air Reserve Base in Riverside, California, on Tuesday, marking the first successful US quarantine in nearly 60 years. None of the passengers tested positive for the virus.In a statement on Thursday, the CDC said “there will likely be additional cases in the coming days and weeks, including among other people recently returned from Wuhan.”
More:
wuhan coronavirus
Wuhan China
Viruses
Health
