WHO: Virus a public emergency
Man infected by wife in Chicago
WASHINGTON — Health officials reported the first U.S. case of person-to-person transmission of the new coronavirus Thursday as the World Health Organization set in motion a global effort to fight the outbreak by declaring it a public health emergency.
State and federal officials said the sixth infected person in the U.S. is married to the Chicago-area woman who contracted the virus when she traveled to Wuhan, China, the epicenter of the outbreak. The unidentified man, who is in his 60s, has been isolated in the same suburban hospital as his wife since Tuesday, when he began exhibiting symptoms consistent with the early stages of the virus, including fever, coughing and shortness of breath, officials said.
Officials suspect he picked up the virus in the couple’s home while his wife was symptomatic, according to Jennifer Layden, state epidemiologist for the Illinois Department of Public Health. The woman, who was identified last week as the second U.S. case, has been hospitalized since and is doing well, Dr. Layden said.
Her husband has not attended mass gatherings, Ngozi Ezike, director of the state health department, said in a news briefing. “The virus is not spreading widely across the community,” she added.
Officials are tracing the people who came in contact with the new patient but are not recommending any new precautions by others, Dr. Ezike said.
Around the globe, however, and particularly in China, the respiratory illness caused by the newly identified virus continued on a widening, destructive path that increased public anxiety. The virus had killed 213 people— all of them in China — and infected more than 9,700 as of Friday.
About 90 cases have been recorded outside China — including the first two in Italy, both Chinese tourists, according to news reports.
Airlines are reducing or completely canceling flights to China, a nation of 1.4 billion people, and some businesses have begun preparing for a possibly extended slowdown in operations and sales there. The union representing 15,000 American Airlines pilots sued the company to halt the carrier’s U.S.-China service, citing “serious, and in many ways still unknown, health threats posed by the coronavirus.”
The WHO criticized such actions, urging countries against imposition of trade or travel barriers. It also called for the world to combat misinformation about the outbreak and accelerate vaccine development.
The global health agency urged Chinese health authorities to take a range of measures, in addition to the travel restrictions already imposed on 50 million people in central China’s Hubei province.
It asked China to collaborate with the WHO and others to conduct investigations; share full data on all of its cases; keep people informed about the evolution of the outbreak and protection measures the government has taken; boost efforts to identify the animal source of the outbreak; and conduct exit screening at international airports and ports so travelers with symptoms can be identified and treated.
The WHO cannot enforce its recommendations, but countries are under political pressure to follow them.
Public health officials and experts have criticized China for not sharing crucial data about patients, including when they became ill. That information is needed to learn more about the evolution of the outbreak, which would help officials control its spread.
WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus nevertheless praised China’s efforts to contain the outbreak.
“Let me be clear: This declaration is not a vote of no confidence in China,” he said. “On the contrary, WHO continues to have confidence in China’s capacity to control the outbreak.”
The White House also announced the formation of a task force, led by Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar, to coordinate the U.S. response, while the State Department issued a “do not travel” advisory for China due to the outbreak.
Nonetheless, the overall risk to people in the U.S. is still considered quite low, officials said. They advised U.S. residents to take the kinds of precautions they would to guard against seasonal flu — which already has killed at least 8,200 people in late 2019 and early 2020 — including frequent hand-washing and staying home when they are sick.