NEW YORK _ New York has a second confirmed coronavirus case, Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced Tuesday.
The patient, a man who lives in New Rochelle, but works at a Manhattan law firm, was diagnosed with the disease spreading across the globe on Monday night.
So far, the coronavirus has killed six people in the U.S., all on the West Coast.
The 50-year-old man took himself to New York Presbyterian-Lawrence Hospital in Bronxville, Westchester County, after complaining of respiratory problems, but was transferred to a hospital in Manhattan, officials said.
"He is hospitalized and he is ill," Cuomo said. "But he has an underlying respiratory illness."
"The patient remains hospitalized in serious condition," Mayor Bill de Blasio said. "City and State disease detectives are working closely to identify close contacts and the appropriate next steps."
Cuomo said that the patient has children, one of whom attends the Salanter Akiba Riverdale Academy. Administrators closed the school Tuesday out of an abundance of caution.
Labs in both New York City and Albany confirmed the case, officials said.
The new patient had no contact with anyone who recently traveled to stricken countries, Cuomo said.
This is an example of "community spread" where the patient had no links to anyone who had contracted the disease, the governor said.
"The initial review of his travels doesn't suggest any direct connection to China or any of the countries that are on the watch list," Cuomo said on LI News Radio. "He did go to Miami, but we don't see any direct connection on the initial review."
While they are checking on his flight to Miami, the trip was before he could have contracted the disease, officials said. Authorities are also trying to determine if the man took public transportation to work.
Two families in Buffalo are also being tested for coronavirus after returning home from Italy, the governor said.
New York's first confirmed coronavirus patient was a woman in her late 30s who lives in Manhattan and may have contracted the disease during a recent trip to Iran. She has respiratory symptoms but is not in serious condition, authorities said.
Cuomo said it was "inevitable" that the virus would spread to New York.
"I said two weeks ago that it is just a matter of time," he said, trying to tamp down panic. "But the basic fact that the 80% of the people who get it and self resolve. At the end of the day, most people who get it will never know they had it."
"We have said from the beginning that it is likely we will see more positive cases of the coronavirus," de Blasio said.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has cautioned that a person can contract the virus _ formally called COVID-19 _ by "touching a surface or object that has the virus on it and then touching their own mouth, nose or possibly their eyes, but this is not thought to be the main way the virus spreads."
The CDC says the disease is most easily contracted through close contact with an infected person.
