CHICAGO _ A fifth person in Illinois has tested positive for the new coronavirus, state health officials announced Thursday.
The person is a Cook County resident in his 20s who flew into O'Hare International Airport earlier this month after traveling from Italy where he caught the illness, health officials said. He's being hospitalized at Rush University Medical Center in isolation. The state is awaiting confirmation of the positive result from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The first two cases of the illness, COVID-19, were a husband and wife from Chicago. The wife transmitted the virus to her husband after returning from Wuhan, China. They have since fully recovered. The third and fourth cases are also a husband and wife, who are in home isolation and doing well, state health officials said. The CDC has confirmed one of those two cases, and the state is waiting on confirmation of the other. Illinois and other states are doing their own testing and sending positive results to the CDC for confirmation.
The state health department said they have been unable to link the third and fourth cases to any other known case, meaning "it is possible these cases may be due to community transmission in Illinois," according to a news release.
"Community spread here in Illinois is expected," said Dr. Ngozi Ezike, director of the Illinois Department of Public Health.
Still, Gov. J.B. Pritzker said the risk to the general public in Illinois remains low. Public health officials are monitoring people throughout the state who've traveled to areas affected by the illness or who've had close contact with people with confirmed cases of the coronavirus.
In Illinois, doctors are determining who should be tested based on symptoms, recent travel history and contact with those with confirmed cases. Illinois also recently started additional, voluntary testing at select hospitals for patients with respiratory symptoms who test negative for the flu. Federal officials are working to distribute commercially available tests, and when that happens, "the capacity for more people to be tested will increase significantly," according to an Illinois Department of Public Health news release.
