Coronavirus updates: Second unknown origin case found raising prospects of Bay Area spread
Santa Clara County health officials Friday announced their third case of the novel coronavirus and that, more troubling, it is unknown how the person became infected, sources told the San Jose Mercury News. It marks the second U.S. case in which the source of infection is unknown, suggesting the virus may be circulating in the Bay Area.
From Solano County to the South Bay, the findings hints that the coronavirus may already circulating locally in Bay Area, passing from person to person.
Santa Clara County health officials had no details about the case but said they would discuss it later Friday afternoon. The Washington Post reported that it involves a 65-year-old person who hadn’t traveled to China or other areas with outbreaks, or known contact with someone who has the virus.
The news comes after health officials Wednesday confirmed that a woman in Solano County also had become infected with no known exposure to the disease through travel to China where the outbreak was first reported or other overseas hotspots, the first such U.S. case.
This would be the 63rd confirmed case in the U.S. Of those, 44 were people who had been aboard the Diamond Princess cruise ship and repatriated to the U.S., three were repatriated from Wuhan, 12 were people who had recently traveled in China and two caught it from a close family member. This week’s two cases in Solano and Santa Clara counties involved people with no known exposure risk.
The woman who was infected in Solano County, where hundreds of Americans who were potentially exposed to the virus in Asia have been quarantined at Travis Air Force Base, is being treated at UC Davis Medical Center in Sacramento.
Testing kits being distributed, officials say
The California Department of Public Health announced late Friday that coronavirus testing kits from the CDC were being sent out to state laboratories. The kits will be available for diagnostic tests in the community, and the additional shipments will allow for tests on 1,200 people.
“The availability to test at California’s public health laboratories is a significant step forward in our ability to respond rapidly to this evolving situation,” California Public Health director Dr. Sonia Angell said in a prepared statement. “As we face the likelihood of community transmission here in California, having this resource where we need it, is essential to better inform public health response and protect our communities.”
Travis AFB patients won’t be moved
The federal government late Friday dropped plans to send coronavirus patients to Costa Mesa in Orange County, ending a nascent court battle with the city over the potential move.
A federal judge last week granted a temporary restraining order filed by Costa Mesa to block the transfer of patients on word of plans to send patients – many from the cruise ship Diamond Princess now housed at Travis Air Force Base in Fairfield – to a former residential and care facility in the Orange County city.
The judge on Monday extended the order one week on complaints from Costa Mesa officials that they still did not have the information they said they needed to ensure residents’ and first responders’ safety.
Officials with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention this week said talks of any move of Travis patients to Costa Mesa was merely “preparatory” in nature and that the cruise ship passengers would stay put at the air force base.
Costa Mesa had received backing from Orange County, which declared a state of emergency in response to the virus and was preparing to file a friend of the court brief in support of the restraining order when the federal government backed away from the relocation plans.
CDC says it acted quickly, challenging UC Davis claims
A top official with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control on Friday challenged UC Davis Medical Center officials who implied they were forced to wait several days before federal authorities tested a symptomatic patient for the coronavirus.
The patient, a woman who has been at the the Sacramento hospital since Feb. 19, was intubated and has been described as severely ill. She was tested on Sunday, Feb. 23. The medical center disclosed on Wednesday that test results were positive. The discovery forced the medical center to order several employees to stay home this week. Those employees as well have been tested.
Dr. Nancy Messonnier, director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, said her clinical team has not declined any request for testing, adding federal officials first heard about the patient on Sunday and approved the testing that day.
“CDC first heard about this case from public health colleagues in California last Sunday, Feb. 23,” she said. “California reported a severely ill person who had not traveled abroad or had contact with (infected people). CDC recommended testing for COVID-19 that day. We received samples on Feb. 25 and confirmed the results ... on Feb. 26.”
The woman, from Solano, has been considered to be the first known case in the U.S. of someone who contracted the virus here without having traveled recently overseas and without having had contact with anyone who recently returned from an international trip. Travis Air Force Base in Solano County was one of the landing spots for American tourists on a cruise ship that suffered an outbreak of coronavirus infections.
Messonnier also contradicted comments from officials in Sacramento that the case is the first known domestic instance of infection by the new virus. “It is possible the patient had exposure to contact with a returned traveler who was infected,” they noted. CDC officials nonetheless said they have broadened their protocols for tests, and are stepping up efforts and testing in California.
Doris Matsui, in letter, concerned by response
Prior to the CDC’s statements Friday, Congresswoman Doris Matsui protested the federal government’s delays in a letter to Vice President Mike Pence. The Democrat from Sacramento called on the administration to do better, starting immediately.
The discovery forced the medical center to send several dozen employees home to await testing to see if they contracted the virus from the patient. Trump assigned Pence this week to run the federal government’s effort to quell the spread of the virus.
“I am writing to express deep concern regarding the delay in testing a patient currently being treated at the University of California-Davis Medical Center for the (virus),” Matsui wrote to Pence. “I understand that UC Davis Medical Center’s only course of action was to request the test from federal public health officials, as local health departments are not allowed to issue tests at this time.
“The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) subsequently denied the provider’s immediate request to test for COVID-19 because the patient’s known exposure did not fit existing testing criteria, delaying the critical diagnosis for almost a week.”
Matsui said she appreciated the CDC’s subsequent decision to change test criteria to include a broader group of symptomatic people.
“We must remove remaining barriers to the testing process that do not empower local officials to understand the true prevalence of COVID-19 and hinder our ability to halt the virus’ spread,” she wrote. “I request that you immediately direct emergency resources to the Sacramento region to support urgent public health protection efforts.”
International virus concerns grow
Response and reaction to the coronavirus outbreak are elevating at the local, national and global levels, with the World Health Organization during a press conference Friday morning increasing its official risk assessment from “high” to “very high.”
That designation comes as the worldwide infection total creeps toward 84,000, with a number of significant developments occurring since Wednesday outside of mainland China, where the COVID-19 outbreak is believed to have originated. Though nearly 79,000 of the confirmed cases have been reported there, according to a map maintained by Johns Hopkins University, the infection total is nearing 2,500 in South Korea as of Friday morning and has surpassed 650 in Italy, where the total was closer to 500 the day before.
“Our greatest enemy right now is not the virus itself. It’s fear, rumors and stigma,” WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in a Friday morning press briefing. “Most cases can still be traced to known contacts or clusters of cases. We do not see evidence as yet that the virus is spreading freely in communities. As long as that’s the case, we still have a chance at containing this virus.”
On Wednesday, U.S. attention surrounding the outbreak focused on Sacramento after it was revealed that a resident of Solano County had been admitted to UC Davis Medical Center one week earlier.
That patient on Sunday tested positive for the coronavirus, becoming the first case in the United States for which public health officials could not trace the diagnosis to international travel or exposure to another person who tested positive for the virus -- in other words, the patient is believed to be the first U.S. case of “community” exposure.
What is happening near Sacramento, Solano County?
Developments near California’s capital continued by the hour on Friday, a day after UC Davis’s main campus disclosed that a student living at a freshman dorm on the main campus was being tested off-campus for the coronavirus, while two of that student’s roommates who had not shown symptoms were self-isolating.
The Los Rios Community College District also announced earlier Thursday that one student each from American River College and Cosumnes River College had been exposed to the Solano County patient being treated at UC Davis Medical Center.
The district then said in statements that two more students, studying at Sacramento City College, had been exposed to the patient. The statement said that one of the SCC students “did not return to campus after exposure.” All four are self-quarantining for 14 days, the junior college system says.
Solano County on Thursday afternoon declared a state of emergency over the coronavirus, joining San Francisco and Orange County, which declared emergencies Tuesday.
“We are taking this situation seriously and are taking steps necessary to protect the health and safety of Solano County residents,” Dr. Bela Matyas, Solano County Health Officer, said in a prepared statement. “It is important to recognize that we have moved from containment to mitigation. We are investigating potential exposures and ensuring that proper evaluation and care are provided if they become sick.”
The Washington Post reported Thursday that the Solano County resident being treated was a woman who had apparently brought herself to NorthBay VacaValley Hospital in Vacaville on Feb. 15.
The woman was not immediately tested for the virus under the CDC guidelines, but NorthBay staff inserted a tube in the woman’s lungs to assist with breathing, which could increase the risk of exposure to the virus, The Post reported. She was admitted to UC Davis Medical Center four days later on Feb. 19, tested for the coronavirus another four days later on Sunday, and the public learned of the positive diagnosis Wednesday, with a memo sent from UC Davis Health leaders to hospital staffers.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom and state health leaders would not disclose or confirm where the patient had been treated or with whom she made contact prior to admission to the teaching hospital in Sacramento, but Mark Ghaly, the state’s health and human services secretary, said officials are “working very closely with the health care systems” to determine “what community exposure existed,” as The Sacramento Bee reported Thursday.
Did coronavirus slip into U.S. before travel restrictions?
Two epidemiologists told The Sacramento Bee this week that it is possible that the coronavirus arrived in the United States days or weeks before screenings or travel restrictions related to the illness began in January.
Researchers running evolutionary models for the virus say it is likely the virus emerged in China around mid-November, according to Catherine Troisi, a professor at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston.
Troisi said this would make it likely that a COVID-19 pathogen could have caught an international flight to the United States well ahead of the first confirmed U.S. case, which was reported by the CDC on Jan. 21.
Will CDC expand testing?
Newsom, who in a Thursday morning press conference said he is not currently considering a statewide emergency declaration in response to the coronavirus, said the state had at that time had access to only about 200 test kits, which he said was “simply inadequate.”
Troisi said that as of earlier this week, only 426 tests had been performed nationwide. By Thursday, the CDC website showed just 445 tests had been performed.
CDC Director Robert Redfield told congressional leaders that his agency had changed criteria for testing. Under the new guidelines, people hospitalized with unexplained pneumonia diagnoses will be tested for the COVID-19, he said.
“The CDC is assuring us that testing protocols will be enhanced with urgency,” Newsom said Thursday morning. “The CDC is moving expeditiously on this.”
Five of those people have since left the state, and 24 of the 33 were evacuated Americans who were repatriated from Wuhan, China, the apparent epicenter of the virus, and the Diamond Princess cruise ship that was docked off of Japan. The nine remaining cases include the patient treated at UC Davis Medical Center, seven individuals who recently traveled internationally, and a spouse of one of those infected individuals, according to the state Department of Public Health.
Market concerns as economic impact continues
Markets continued their rapid decline Friday morning.
The Dow Jones industrial average reportedly dropped between 700 and 800 points early Friday, with The New York Times reporting that this has been the worst week for the stock market since 2008 based on the S&P 500 index, which dipped another 3 percent in early trading.
CNBC on Thursday reported that companies including Apple and Nike have warned they will not meet their revenue guidance for 2020 to due the coronavirus’s impact on international supply chains.
Trump blames media, Mulvaney downplays concern
President Donald Trump during a press conference Wednesday and in tweets this week said media were to blame for stoking coronavirus fear and panic, as well as negative impacts on financial markets.
Trump tweeted Wednesday that MSNBC and CNN “are doing everything possible to make the Caronavirus (sic) look as bad as possible, including panicking markets, if possible.”
“So, the Coronavirus, which started in China and spread to various countries throughout the world, but very slowly in the U.S. because President Trump closed our border, and ended flights, VERY EARLY, is now being blamed, by the Do Nothing Democrats, to be the fault of ‘Trump,’ “ the president wrote in another tweet late Thursday.
Trump on Wednesday placed Vice President Mike Pence in charge of the federal government’s response to the coronavirus outbreak.
Acting white House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney, who spoke at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Maryland on Thursday, also blamed media for what he claimed was exaggerating the severity of the coronavirus crisis in an effort to “bring down the president,” as reported by The New York Times.
“Why didn’t you hear about it?” Mr. Mulvaney said of travel restrictions, the Times reported. “What was still going on four or five weeks ago? Impeachment, that’s all the press wanted to talk about.”
This story was originally published February 28, 2020 at 10:21 AM.
