Las Vegas Review-Journal (Sunday)
Wash. coronavirus patient dies
Man in 50s is first fatal case in U.S.
The governor of Washington declared a state of emergency Saturday after a man died there of COVID-19, the first such reported death in the United States.
More than 50 people in a nursing facility are sick and being tested for the virus.
Gov. Jay Inslee directed state agencies to use “all resources necessary” to prepare for and respond to the coronavirus outbreak. The declaration also allows the use of the Washington National Guard, if necessary.
“We will continue to work toward a day where no one dies from this virus,” the governor vowed.
Meanwhile in California, the Santa Clara County Public Health Department announced Saturday the case of a fourth person in the county infected with coronavirus. The case is of a woman who is a “household
contact” of a person who is hospitalized with the virus, the health department said in a news release.
The woman has not been hospitalized and is not ill, the department said.
Moments after the death in Washington state was announced, President Donald Trump said at a news conference Saturday at the White House that there was “no reason to panic.”
He encouraged Americans not to alter their daily routines, saying the country is “super-prepared” for a wider outbreak.
“Additional cases in the United States are likely, but healthy individuals should be able to fully recover,” Trump said.
‘Evolving situation’
Health officials in California, Oregon and Washington are worried about the novel coronavirus spreading through West Coast communities because a growing number of people are being infected despite the fact that they had not visited an area where there was an outbreak or apparently been in contact with anyone who had.
The man who died was in his 50s and had underlying health conditions and no history of travel or contact with a known COVID-19 case, health officials in Washington state said at a news conference. A spokeswoman for EvergreenHealth Medical Center in Kirkland, Kayse Dahl, said the man had died there.
Dr. Frank Riedo, medical director of Infection Control at Evergreen, said local hospitals are seeing people with severe coronavirus symptoms but it’s probable that there are more cases in the community.
“This is the tip of the iceberg,” he said.
Health officials reported two cases of COVID-19 connected to a longterm care facility, Life Care Center of Kirkland. One is a Life Care worker, a woman in her 40s who is in satisfactory condition at a hospital, and the other is a woman in her 70s and a resident at Life Care who is hospitalized in serious condition. Neither had traveled abroad.
“In addition, over 50 individuals associated with Life Care are reportedly ill with respiratory symptoms or hospitalized with pneumonia or other respiratory conditions of unknown cause and are being tested for COVID-19,” Seattle and King County officials said. “Additional positive cases are expected.”
Amy Reynolds of the Washington state health department said in a brief telephone interview: “We are dealing with an emergency evolving situation.”
No one answered the phone at Life Care, but Ellie Basham, its executive director, said in a statement that residents and employees are being monitored and those who have symptoms or may have been exposed are quarantined. The facility has banned families, volunteers and vendors as a precaution, Basham said.
Accelerated policy
The U.S. has about 60 confirmed cases. Worldwide, the number of people sickened by the virus hovered Friday around 83,000, and there had been more than 2,800 deaths, most of them in China. A 60-yearold U.S. citizen died in Wuhan in early February.
Most infections result in mild symptoms, including coughing and fever, though some can become more serious and lead to pneumonia. Older people, especially those with chronic illnesses such as heart or lung disease, are especially vulnerable. Health officials think it spreads mainly from droplets when an infected person coughs or sneezes, similarly to how the flu spreads.
The number of coronavirus cases in the United States is considered small. But convinced that it will grow, health agencies are ramping up efforts to identify those who might be sick.
To achieve more rapid testing capacity, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration issued an accelerated policy Saturday enabling laboratories to use tests they develop. FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn said his agency is “rapidly responding and adapting to this dynamic and evolving situation.”
The California Department of Public Health said Friday that the state will receive enough kits from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to test up to 1,200 people a day for the COVID-19 virus. The announcement was made a day after Gov. Gavin Newsom complained to federal health officials that the state had already exhausted its initial 200 test kits.
Oregon more quickly identified a case, an employee of an elementary school in Lake Oswego near Portland, because it was able to test a sample locally. School district officials said Saturday that the employee had been visited in the hospital by several people before he was diagnosed. Those individuals have been asked to observe a two-week quarantine and are being closely monitored.
Worried shoppers thronged a Costco box store near Lake Oswego, emptying shelves of items including toilet paper, paper towels, bottled water, frozen berries and black beans.
“Toilet paper is golden in an apocalypse,” one Costco employee said.
Employees said that the store ran out of toilet paper for the first time in its history and that it was the busiest they had ever seen, including during Christmas Eve.
The district is deep-cleaning all its schools and all school buses with the goal of having students back in class Monday, said Superintendent Lora de la Cruz. But Forest Hills Elementary, where the man worked, is closed until Wednesday, marking two weeks since he was last at the school.
Earlier U.S. cases include three people who were evacuated from Wuhan, epicenter of the outbreak; 14 people who returned from China, or their spouses; and 42 American passengers on the Diamond Princess cruise ship, who were flown to U.S. military bases in California and Texas for quarantining.
The U.S. government looked at sending dozens of Californians, several of whom tested positive for the virus, who had been aboard the cruise ship to a state-owned facility in Costa Mesa, California. Local officials objected, saying they weren’t included in the planning and wanted to know what safeguards would be in place to prevent spread of the virus. The U.S. government said it didn’t need to use the facility after all.
At UC Davis Medical Center in California, at least 124 registered nurses and other health care workers were sent home for “self-quarantine” after a Solano County woman with the virus was admitted, National Nurses United, a nationwide union representing registered nurses, said Friday.
The case “highlights the vulnerability of the nation’s hospitals to this virus,” the union said.