First US coronavirus death confirmed in Washington. State health officials declare emergency
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Washington public health officials declared a state of emergency Saturday after announcing that a person has died from the coronavirus in the state, the first reported death in the United States from the disease. Officials said the victim was a man in his 50s.
A spokesperson for EvergreenHealth Medical Center, Kayse Dahl, told The Associated Press the person died in the facility in the Seattle suburb of Kirkland, but gave no other details.
“We are dealing with an emergency evolving situation,” Amy Reynolds of the Washington state health department told the AP.
The state Department of Health and Public Health - Seattle & King County reported later the victim was a man in his 50s “who had no history of travel or contact with a known COVID-19 case.”
“Public health is also reporting two cases of COVID-19 virus connected to a long-term care facility in King County,” the agencies reported. More cases are expected to arise.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was sending a team to Washington state to help “identify, isolate and test” at-risk patients, the agencies said.
Gov. Jay Inslee declared a state of emergency in Washington on Saturday, saying it’s “time to take common-sense, proactive measures to ensure the health and safety of those who live in Washington state.”
“This will allow us to get the resources we need,” Inslee said. “Washingtonians can be assured we’ve taken this threat seriously and have been working in collaboration with our health care partners to develop plans and procedures to prepare for what could likely be a world-wide pandemic.”
The COVID-19 disease, which started in China, has been slowly spreading across the globe. Saturday’s announcement comes less than 24 hours after state health officials announced two new cases of COVID-19 in the state, including an Everett High School student who contracted the disease.
The individual who died had underlying health conditions and had not traveled abroad, Dr. Jeff Duchin, King County’s health officer, said at a news conference in Seattle on Saturday.
King County officials said there was no wider outbreak but that it is clear the disease is in the area and spreading. They might consider canceling events that attract large numbers of people, like sporting events or concerts, if more cases are reported.
“What we have now is a focused event in one care facility in one part of the county,” Duchin said.
In the meantime, they recommended standard health procedures, like washing hands, covering coughs and staying home when sick.
“It’s more important than ever for people to practice good health habits,” said Kathy Lofy, Washington state health officer.
At his own news conference Saturday, President Donald Trump noted the death in Washington state and said the patient was a woman in her late 50s from a medically high-risk population. Addressing the confusion later in the day, the CDC issued a statement: “CDC erroneously identified the patient as female in a briefing earlier today with the President and Vice President..”
“I want to assure this family that they are in the hearts of every American,” Vice President Mike Pence, who was tapped to lead the federal government’s coronavirus task force, said at the White House briefing.
Health officials across the United States have been gearing up for weeks for a possible outbreak, including in Pierce County, Washington. Quarantines have stranded Washington state residents and others in China, other Asian countries and on cruise ships.
Inslee issued a statement earlier Saturday morning saying the state is “strengthening our preparedness and response efforts.”
“It is a sad day in our state as we learn that a Washingtonian has died from COVID-19. Our hearts go out to their family and friends. We will continue to work toward a day where no one dies from this virus,” Inslee said.
Two new cases in King and Snohomish counties
The first death of an American from the disease happened earlier this month when a 60-year-old U.S. citizen died in Wuhan, China. The disease was first reported there in late December.
So far, 69 cases have been reported in the U.S., out of more than 85,000 worldwide. About 2,900 people have died from the disease, the vast majority in China. At least four cases of people with an unknown origin have been reported in Oregon, Washington and California.
In a written statement handed out ahead of the 1 p.m. news conference, Washington state health officials reported “four presumptive positive cases of novel coronavirus (COVID-19) ...” A presumptive positive is a test that comes back positive at the Public Health Laboratory and is pending confirmation at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Two of the confirmed cases are associated with the LifeCare nursing facility in Kirkland, including a health care worker. The woman, who is in her 40s, is hospitalized. She has no known travel outside the United States, the agencies said.
The second patient is a woman in her 70s who is a resident of the LifeCare facility. She’s hospitalized in serious condition, the health agencies said.
“In addition, over 50 individuals associated with LifeCare are reportedly ill with respiratory symptoms or hospitalized with pneumonia or other respiratory conditions of unknown cause and are being tested for COVID-19,” the agencies said. “Additional positive cases are expected.”
Late Friday, the Snohomish Health District and state health officials announced two cases, classified as “presumptive positives.”
The individuals live in both King and Snohomish Counties. In King County, a woman in her 50s with confirmed travel to Daegu, South Korea is a “presumptive positive.” She is currently in home isolation. That patient visited Seattle Children’s North Clinic on Monday, Feb. 24.
Health officials said they are “working alongside the Everett Public Schools to ensure the safety of students and staff at Jackson High School, where this student attends. Everett Public Schools is taking this very seriously and in an abundance of caution, the superintendent has decided to close Jackson High School on Monday to allow three days for deep cleaning.”
They added: “While the King County case is believed to be travel-related, we don’t know how or where the new Snohomish County case was infected. We are working hard to find and identify how the patients were exposed as well as tracing people who might have been exposed to this patient.”
“Now that we are able to expedite test results here at the Public Health Lab in Shoreline, we’re getting results on suspected local cases a lot faster,” said State Health Officer Dr. Kathy Lofy. “Given the extent of global spread, we expect to identify more individuals with COVID-19 in Washington. We want to emphasize the importance of practicing good health habits.”
The Washington Department of Health said two coronavirus patients who’d been hospitalized in Spokane had been released. “Two people from Washington state treated for COVID-19 at Providence Sacred Heart Medical Center in Spokane have been discharged and are now resting at home,” the department said.
“The Washington State Department of Health would like to express its appreciation for the good work done by the staff at Sacred Heart Medical Center who cared for these individuals.”
Trump says ‘our country is prepared’
At the news conference in the nation’s capital, Trump said: “Tremendous amounts of supplies are already on hand. We have 43 million masks, which is far more than anyone would have assumed we could have had so quickly, and a lot more are coming.”
Later, he added: “Our country is prepared for any circumstance. We hope it’s not going to be a major circumstance, (that) it will be a smaller circumstance, but whatever the circumstance is, we’re prepared,” Trump said Saturday at a news conference.
Also at the news conference, Dr. Anthony Fauci of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease emphasized that the country as a whole remains at low risk but added that this is a situation that “is going to evolve by the day and by the week.” He said federal health officials would keep Americans appraised on a real-time basis.
The NIAID director said public health officials must address this challenging, highly transmissible diseases by taking action in both the domestic and global arena. He said it was important to keep U.S. citizens from going to places where the infection is actively spreading and prevent people from places where there are active infections from coming to the United States.
“When you have cases throughout the world where we’re seeing now, South Korea, Italy, Iran and places like that, the United States cannot be completely immune to that,” Fauci said.”The challenge is how we deal with it, and I can assure that all the resources that are necessary are going to be put into dealing with what we see evolving right now.”
Domestically, Fauci and other health officials said, local public health agencies will be aggressively identifying, isolating and tracing contacts of people who test positive for the new coronavirus. Public health investigators use contact tracing daily to contain the spread of debilitating and potentially deadly communicable diseases throughout communities.
Fauci said that, going forward, Americans should not be surprised to hear about additional cases because this is something that is anticipated when you get community spread.
Epidemiologists have told McClatchy News that it’s entirely possible that coronavirus already was being spread in the United States prior to travel restrictions imposed by President Trump on Jan. 31.
Catherine Troisi of the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston said epidemiologists who have studied COVID-19 have found that it likely infected people in and near the city of Wuhan, China, in early to mid-November. Because thousands of people travel to foreign destinations from that airport daily, it’s “absolutely possible” that the virus got here before airport screenings and travel restrictions.
Fauci and other leaders said that, if travel had not been prevented to and from China, “we would have had many, many more cases right here that we would have to be dealing with.”
This story was originally published February 29, 2020 at 9:58 AM with the headline "First US coronavirus death confirmed in Washington. State health officials declare emergency."
