The US reported at least six deaths from the coronavirus on Monday as officials warned of a “substantial outbreak” in the state of Washington and states of emergency were declared in various parts of the country.
Both patients were being treated at the same health centre in Kirkland, east of Seattle, where six of the state’s 12 cases have now been confirmed and 50 others are being tested for the virus. As the number of nationwide cases approaches 100, sales of face masks have surged among the general population.
Meanwhile, at least one patient was mistakenly released by the CDC and later tested positive for the deadly Wuhan coronavirus, with the mayor of San Antonio describing the development as “unacceptable” in a statement.
Health officials in Washington state meanwhile said on Sunday night that a second person had died from the coronavirus — a man in his 70s from a nursing facility near Seattle where dozens of people were sick and had been tested for the virus.
Researchers said earlier the virus may have been circulating for weeks undetected in Washington state.
In a statement, Public Health—Seattle & King County said the man died Saturday. On Friday, health officials said a man in his 50s died of coronavirus, the first death from the virus in the US.
Both had underlying health conditions, and both were being treated at a hospital in Kirkland, Washington, east of Seattle.
Washington state now has at least 13 confirmed cases.
State and local authorities stepped up testing for the illness as the number of new cases grew nationwide, with new infections announced in California, Florida, Illinois, Rhode Island, New York and Washington state.
Additional reporting by the Associated Press
Follow the latest updates below:
The state of Washington is scrambling to respond after it was revealed six people had now died amid a coronavirus outbreak, triggering anxiety and fear that reverberated across the nation.
As groceries and other stores reported exceptional demand over the weekend as people raced to stock up on essentials, officials declared the Pacific Northwest was now at the centre of the country’s biggest health crisis for a generation.
The latest deaths follow recent reports of two other people in the area who have died as doctors in the state believe the virus travelled undetected for several weeks.
Three more people have died following a coronavirus outbreak in Washington state, raising the state's death toll to five, health officials have confirmed.
The latest deaths follow recent reports of two other people in the area who have died as doctors in the state believe the virus travelled undetected for several weeks.
A patient who was released from quarantine and later tested “weakly positive” after being evacuated from China spent time at a mall in San Antonio, Texas before returning to isolation, according to officials.
The patient reportedly visited North Star Mall during the weekend and spent several hours visiting the retail outlets, Anita Kurian, assistant director of the Metropolitan Health District, said in a statement on Saturday.
Ms Kurian said: "We are making every effort to identify any exposures at the mall and based on what we have at this time, those exposures are pretty low risk."
The governor of New York is warning that coronavirus spreading across the state is “inevitable” as the US confirms over 80 cases nationwide of the mysterious illness.
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo told reporters on Monday: “We will have community spread … that is inevitable.”
Now 25 Kirkland firefighters, two police officers, and seven firefighters from the nearby town of Redmond are in quarantine after responding to aid calls over the last several days, KOMO News reports.
Some of the emergency workers have self-quarantined themselves in their own homes after responding to the calls from the nursing home. Others are in in quarantine at the Station 13 firehouse.
Kirkland Fire said the quarantined firefighters has not prevented the group to maintain full staffing levels at the stations, KOMO News reports.
The coronavirus has been spreading in Washington state undetected, according to a new analysis, as health officials nationwide increasingly fear there are far more cases of the deadly virus that have not yet been confirmed.
Trevor Bedford, a computational biologist at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Centre in Seattle, spearheaded a genetic analysis of virus samples discovered in Washington after multiple cases were confirmed throughout the state in recent weeks. His findings suggested the state was already facing a “substantial outbreak” that had not been previously detected because initial tests for coronavirus were limited to people who had recently visited China.
The virus samplings came from two patients living in the state, according to Washignton Post: one, who was the first person identified to have coronavirus in the US, had recently travelled to China before returning to Snohomish County. The second patient had not recently travelled and was not known to have any exposure to the coronavirus.
Such findings indicated that “cryptic transmission” had been occurring in Washington over the last six weeks, Mr Bedford wrote.
Story to come...
A patient who was released from a facility in San Antonio, Texas operated by the US Centre for Disease Control (CDC) later tested positive for the Wuhan coronavirus, according to a statement from the mayor.
Ron Nirenberg, the mayor of San Antonio, suggested the development may have caused the public to be exposed to the mysterious virus in a tweet on Sunday.
“Today we learned that the CDC mistakenly released a patient from the Texas Center for Infectious Disease who later returned a positive COVID-19 reading”, the mayor wrote.
He added: “The fact that the CDC allowed the public to be exposed to a patient with a positive COVID-19 reading is unacceptable.”
The new coronavirus was reportedly responsible for at least two deaths in the US and more than 3,000 worldwide — the majority of those occurring in China, where the virus was believed to have originated at a market in Wuhan.
Story to come....
A second person has died from the coronavirus in King County, near Seattle, Washington, authorities have confirmed.
The victim was a man in his 70s with an underlying health condition who was being treated at Evergreen Health hospital in Kirkland, the same facility at which a man in his 50s died late on Friday.
Meanwhile, authorities have said three more people in Washington have tested positive for Covid-19, a man in his 70s, a woman in her 80s and another woman in her 90s.
A statement from Governor Andrew Cuomo's office confirmed the case on Sunday night but did not reveal the exact location of the woman.
However, The New York Times reported the woman is being quarantined in her home in Manhattan raising fears the epidemic will take hold of the city.
First coronavirus case confirmed in New York
The IndependentFemale patient in her thirties is in quarantine in her Manhattan home, according to reportsGood morning and welcome to another day of live coverage on the deadly coronavirus. I’m Chris Riotta, a US reporter for The Independent based in New York, and I’ll be guiding you through the day’s developments.
The Wuhan coronavirus has reached at least 12 states, CBS News reported on Monday, after multiple cases were confirmed across the country and at least two Americans died as a result of the virus, according to the CDC.
At least one patient was mistakenly released by the CDC, the mayor of San Antonio tweeted, calling the news “unacceptable” -
Meanwhile, fears continue to grow of a potential pandemic as health officials in Florida say at least two patients have "presumptive positive" results from tests for the coronavirus.
The Covid-19 outbreak in northern Italy has so overwhelmed the public health system there that officials are taking extraordinary measures to care for the sick, seeking to bring doctors out of retirement and accelerate graduation dates for nursing students.
The region of Lombardy has been the epicentre of Italy's outbreak, registering the first positive test and now counting 984 of Italy's 1,694 cases.
Most alarmingly, 10 per cent of Lombardy's doctors and nurses are out of commission, because they tested positive for the virus and are in quarantine, said the region's top health official, Giulio Gallera.
With officials saying they expect Italy's numbers to continue rising for at least another week, until containment measures begin to take effect, the health care emergency in Lombardy has reached a crisis point.
Already, hospitals in hard-hit Lodi and Cremona were overwhelmed at times last week, with more patients arriving than could be accepted.
"Effectively some of the hospitals in Lombardy are under a stress that is much heavier than what this area can support and has trained for for years, to face this type of emergency," Dr Massimo Galli, head of infectious disease at Milan's Sacco Hospital, told Sky TG24.
"This epidemic is on a scale that is larger than anyone could have thought, imagined or prevented."
