The third ‘unknown origin’ case coronavirus to hit the US has been confirmed in Oregon, just hours after the second case was announced in California.
Oregon health officials on Friday confirmed the patient tested positive for the disease and that it is a case of ‘community spread’.
This is the first coronavirus case altogether in Oregon.
The individual is from Washington County and is employed at Forest Hills Elementary School in Lake Oswego.
Officials said at a press conference Friday that the individual may have exposed students and staff to the virus.
This shock announcement comes just hours after the second ‘unknown origin case’ was confirmed in California, indicating the disease is spreading at a more rapid rate.
A 65-year-old woman from Santa Clara County tested positive for the disease 24 hours after the first unknown origin case was confirmed on Wednesday, health officials said on Friday.
The unnamed woman had not recently returned from a foreign country, and had not been in contact with another confirmed case.
This latest instance of possible community spread of the deadly disease comes hot on the heels of the first case – about 90 miles away in Solano County – and suggests that the likelihood of the disease spreading locally in the US is ramping up.
In the first case, it has since emerged that the woman was not tested for the virus for four days and that 100 healthcare workers may be at risk after they were exposed to her before she was quarantined.
The second case appears to have been handled more quickly, with Santa Clara County stating that the patient was diagnosed around 24 hours after her doctor first raised concerns and called for her to be tested.
Dr. Sara Cody, Health Officer for Santa Clara County and Director of the County of Santa Clara Public Health Department confirmed in a statement that the older adult woman tested positive for coronavirus Thursday night
A person wearing a protective mask in Sacramento, California on Thursday. The second ‘unknown origin’ case of coronavirus to hit the US has been confirmed in Santa Clara County, California – 90 miles from the first case confirmed in Solano Counyt, near Sacramento on Wednesday
There are now two cases in the US of individuals infected by coronavirus where they had not recently returned from a foreign country, and had not been in contact with another confirmed case. The first case in Solano County was confirmed Wednesday, followed by the second in Santa Clara County confirmed Friday
News of the disease spreading across the US comes the same day that news broke that Mexico has its first two cases of coronavirus and that 700 people have been asked to self-isolate across New York state.
The World Health Organization also raised the risk of coronavirus on Friday to ‘very high’ and the Dow Jones continued to plummet as fears of a global recession in light of the crisis grew.
The County of Santa Clara Public Health Department confirmed in a statement that the older adult woman tested positive for coronavirus Thursday night.
The statement said the woman, who has chronic health conditions, had initially been taken to hospital with breathing difficulties.
‘The individual is an older adult woman with chronic health conditions who was hospitalized for a respiratory illness. Her infectious disease physician contacted the Public Health Department to discuss the case and request testing for the novel coronavirus,’ the statement said.
‘The County of Santa Clara Public Health Laboratory received the specimens yesterday and performed the testing. Since receiving the results last night, the department has been working to identify contacts and understand the extent of exposures.’
Dr. Sara Cody, Health Officer for Santa Clara County and Director of the County of Santa Clara Public Health Department warned that the case was ‘evidence of community transmission’ and said health officials now need to change their response to the outbreak.
The global death toll has reached 84,128, as the pace of spread is ramping up
The US now has 63 cases, including the two ‘unknown origin cases’ in California taking the number of individuals infected in the state up to 34
Cody gave a press conference Thursday night confirming the new case and said that, while Santa Clara County had two other confirmed cases, this one is more concerning as the origin of the infection cannot be traced.
The case is ‘different to our other two cases in an important way’, she said.
‘Like the California case reported two days ago, our third case did not recently travel overseas or have any known contact with a recent traveler or an infected person,’ she said.
Unlike the first unknown origin case, the patient was tested and diagnosed of the disease within around 24 hours of her doctor first raising concerns over her condition.
Cody said the adult woman had been hospitalized with respiratory issues and her physician called the public health department Wednesday night to discuss the case and to get the patient tested.
The specimen was received the next morning – Thursday – for testing and the results came back that night.
Cody said health officials are now working to identify the woman’s contacts and identify anyone she may have come into contact with who could have contracted the disease.
The first patient infected by suspected community transmission is reportedly in a serious condition and is currently intubated at UC Davis Medical Center (above)
The image above shows a Korean man being tested for coronavirus in Goyang, South Korea, on Thursday
The apparent speed and efficiency of the testing conducted in this case comes off the back of mounting criticism over the CDC’s handling of the first unknown origin case.
The CDC revealed the first case of community transmission in the US on Wednesday in a woman in Solano County, near Sacramento.
The unnamed woman had not recently traveled to China, and none of her immediate family or close contacts had the virus or were suspected of having it.
She is being treated at UC Davis Medical Center in Sacramento, where tests for the virus came back positive Wednesday.
However, questions have been asked over the CDC’s handling of the case and whether medical staff were put at undue risk while treating the individual.
Fears mounted Wednesday night that the infection was not contained quickly enough and that more lives could be at risk after doctors revealed in a leaked email to staff that the CDC had failed to test the patient for coronavirus for four days despite the requests of local medical staff.
The woman did not fit the CDC’s criteria for a potential coronavirus patient and so health officials failed to test her.
Now, her condition has deteriorated to ‘serious’ and she’s been intubated, California Representative John Garamendi said.
It then emerged Friday that as many as 100 healthcare workers may have been exposed to the California woman before she tested positive and was quarantined.
The doctors and nurses are from the University of California Davis Medical Center, where the woman is being treated, and from NorthBay VacaValley Hospital where it is believed she was originally being treated when she was undiagnosed.
Confirmation of the US’ second unknown origin case suggests the virus is now spreading among at least two separate populations.
It is not yet known if the two cases are connected in any way but they are located just 90 miles apart in Solano County and Santa Clara County, California.
If continued contact tracing doesn’t turn up a source of the virus in these two cases, it will indicate that the infection is spreading in US communities, independent of travel history.
In that case, health officials will need to shift tactics and start testing people with no recent history of travel to China or close contacts with such a history for coronavirus – but experts have warned that the US does not have nearly enough tests to do so.
More than 83,000 people have been infected in more than 50 countries and more than 2,800 people – mostly in China – have died so far from the outbreak.
There are at now at least 63 coronavirus cases in the US, most of which up to now have been evacuees from the Diamond Princess cruise ship.
The first unknown origin case is being treated at UC Davis Medical Center in Sacramento, where tests for the virus came back positive Wednesday
UP TO ONE HUNDRED HEALTH WORKERS WERE EXPOSED TO THE FIRST ‘UNKNOWN ORIGIN’ CASE
As many as 100 healthcare workers may have been exposed to the California woman who went four days untested for coronavirus, before being confirmed as the first unknown origin case in the US.
The doctors and nurses are from the University of California Davis Medical Center, where the woman is being treated, and from NorthBay VacaValley Hospital.
”There were multiple health care personnel who were exposed to the individual,’ Dr Bela Matyas, public health officer from Solano County, said at a news conference on Thursday.
‘At both hospitals we are at present aggressively evaluating everyone who may have had contact with this patient. They are being identified and their risk for exposure is being assessed.’
The doctors and nurses are from the University of California Davis Medical Center, where the woman is being treated, and from NorthBay VacaValley Hospital (above)
Some are under isolation, some are under quarantine and others have been sent home to continuously monitor their status.
As for the patient, she is reportedly in very serious condition and is currently intubated, Rep John Garamendi (D-CA) told CNN.
Doctors requested a test for the virus, but the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) ruled out the disease because the patient ‘did not fit the…criteria’ for testing.
However, after the woman’s medical team persisted, a test was finally performed on Sunday.
In addition to healthcare workers, there are fears the California patient may have come into contact with three students at three colleges in Northern California.
According to emails sent to students on both campuses, the students – who attend American River College and Cosumnes River College and Sacramento City College – were exposed last week, reported KTXL.
All three students have been told to self-quarantine for two weeks and to contact health officials if they experience symptoms such as a cough or fever.
The California woman appears to have the first case of coronavirus where she did not recently travel overseas or have any known contact with a recent traveler or infected person
Los Rios Community College District, where the schools are located, say that neither classes nor school operations will be canceled.
The Sacramento County Public Health Department does not believe that either campus is at risk for exposure, according to KTXL.
In addition, three students at UC Davis are being isolated and one is undergoing CDC testing for coronavirus.
University officials say the student undergoing testing has moved off campus while the other two, who are asymptomatic are isolated on campus.
‘In Yolo County, in the city of Davis, on the campus of UC Davis, there is no evidence of spread of coronavirus, there is no evidence of transmission of coronavirus,’ Yolo County health officer Ron Chapman said.
CORONAVIRUS TEST KIT SHORTAGES ABOUND AS CDC ADMITS ‘THIS HAS NOT GONE AS WELL AS WE HOPED’
Coronavirus test kits are in short supply, were flawed when they were first distributed to labs across the US and abroad, and the results can take days for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to verify.
Even the CDC’s coronavirus point person, Dr Nancy Messonnier, admitted on Friday that the diagnostic has been a disappointment.
‘This has not gone as well as we hoped,’ she said during Friday press briefing.
California, where more than half of the nation’s coronavirus patients either live or are quarantined, has enough test kits to test just 200 patients, Governor Gavin Newsom said on Thursday.
States were only sent a couple hundred of CDC’s coronavirus test kits. Now that a likely case of the infection due to community spread has been identified, public health experts are concerned that’s not nearly enough – and New York is making its own
If each of the six states with labs that can run the tests has the same number, only 1,200 people can be tested by technicians outside the CDC itself, although officials there have promised to have tests in every state’s health department by the end of next week.
That’s only 200 more than Hong Kong officials are testing each day. Meanwhile, only a total of 445 people in the US had been tested as of Friday.
Experts worry that there may be many more cases of coronavirus in the US than we are aware off, a concern that’s pushed New York to take matters into its own hands. The state’s health department is now making a test in an effort to speed screening.
However, news of two unknown origin cases means health officials will need to shift tactics and start testing people with no recent history of travel to China or close contacts with such a history for coronavirus – something that experts have warned there is not nearly enough tests to do so.
More test kits would mean faster diagnoses, earlier informed treatment and quicker contact tracing.
Officials in New York are trying to make that happen independent of the federal health organization.
Rather than wait for the CDC to send out more tests – and fix the faulty ones that New York has deemed unusable – the state and New York City are attempting to make their own, Buzzfeed News reported.
The Food and Drug Administration even gave the city and state its blessing to move forward with its own test development while the CDC is reformulating its diagnostic.
‘The only question is which will come on line first,’ New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene Deputy Commissioner Demetre Daskalakis told Buzzfeed News.
New York Governor Cuomo has allocated $40 million the state’s response to coronavirus. There are no cases confirmed there so far, although 83 people in Nassau County are being monitored for the infection and one person in New York City has been tested.
‘The Governor is also calling on the federal government to authorize the Wadsworth Center and NYC Public Health Lab to test for the virus, allowing for expanded testing capacity and expedited test results’ said a press release from the governor’s office.
‘New York State has independently worked to develop and validate a test using the CDC protocol.
‘Upon FDA approval, Wadsworth can immediately begin testing to support New York State and other states in the northeast region if necessary.’
As of Friday, Georgia also formed its own coronavirus task force, despite the fact that none of handful of people it has tested have been positive for the infection.
A shortage of tests is just one of several federal foibles stoking fears of a worsening outbreak. HHS Secretary Azar also said Wednesday that the US not only has an insufficient stockpile of protective gear and face masks for health professionals, but currently lacks the manufacturing capacity to make them.
WHO RAISES GLOBAL CORONAVIRUS THREAT LEVEL TO ‘VERY HIGH’
Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has elevated the risk level for coronavirus to ‘very high’ around the world
The risk of coronavirus is now ‘very high’ worldwide, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared on Friday.
Even ‘quite sophisticated countries…are having quite a bit of trouble’ containing its spread, said Dr Mike Ryan, who heads up the WHO’s emergency response efforts said during the press briefing.
Of the world’s 195 countries, at least 53 have reported cases of coronavirus, or COVID-19, which has now sickened more than 83,000 people worldwide and killed nearly 2,900 globally.
The international agency hasn’t quite given up on containing the virus, but is deeply concerned by the rapid spread of infections in places like Italy, in spite of its well-developed health system.
Officials warned global citizens who are over 65 or have underlying health conditions that they are at risk for COVID-19, and even suggested they might avoid crowded places.
Moody’s Analytics Friday estimated that the risk of a global coronavirus pandemic has now doubled, to 40 percent, yet the WHO has continued to decline to label the outbreak that, instead calling it a series of ‘linked epidemics.’
The WHO has up to now tried to quell panic and advise against personal measures that would disrupt daily life.
But it seems the world’s top doctors are starting to shift their tone.
The WHO is still refusing to call the outbreak a pandemic, but barely.
‘If this was influenza, we would probably have called it a pandemic by now,’ said Dr Ryan.
‘But with this virus…its course can be altered.’
700 PEOPLE HAVE BEEN ASKED TO SELF-ISOLATE ACROSS NY STATE
Pedestrians wearing protective masks while walking along a street in New York on Thursday
Hundreds of people across New York state have been told to self-isolate themselves over fears they could be infected with coronavirus.
As many as 700 people are reportedly under self-quarantine at home and one patient is being tested for the infection.
According to health officials, 112 people in Long Island, 83 people in Nassau County, 29 in Suffolk County and eight in Westchester are now in voluntarily isolation.
One person being tested for the disease is in New York City, according to CBS.
New York Mayor Bill de Blasio on Wednesday announced plans to provide up to 1,200 hospital beds if needed and called on the federal government to help the city obtain 300,000 extra protective masks.
The city currently has no confirmed cases and so far all previous patients tested for the disease have come back negative.
NYPD Chief of Department Terence Monahan said gloves and face masks were being distributed.
He told CBS: ‘We’ve given out thousands upon thousands of gloves, masks, and wipes to our command. Patrols, housing and transit has them.’
Oxiris Barbot, the NYC Health Commissioner, said there was no need for everyday New Yorkers to wear face masks.
However, many shops in New York sold out of face masks last Friday as fears over the spread of the virus, officially named COVID-19, grew.
Mayor de Blasio said the city needs access to 300,000 more masks as the the Center for Disease Control (CDC) announced it was only a matter of time before the virus becomes a bigger issues in the US.
He told a press conference Wednesday: ‘We’re in a state of high vigilance, high readiness – all elements of the City government to address this crisis.
‘We will need federal assistance, so I’m calling on the federal government to help us and all other localities to get the masks we need. Working with the private sector providers.’
Mayor Bill de Blasio with Dr Oxiris Barbot, commissioner of the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, reports on the city’s preparedness for the potential spread of the coronavirus in New York on Wednesday
MEXICO CONFIRMS FIRST TWO CASES OF CORONAVIRUS
Mexico‘s deputy health secretary announced Friday that the country now has two confirmed cases of the new coronavirus, making it the second Latin America country affected by the virus.
Deputy Secretary Hugo Lopez-Gatell Ramirez confirmed one of the patients is a 35-year-old man in Mexico City and the second is a 41-year-old man in the northern state of Sinaloa.
While a second test is still pending on that case, he said, ‘We are treating this as confirmed’.
Lopez-Gatell announced the cases during a Friday morning press conference alongside Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador.
He confirmed that the first patient has been placed in isolation in the National Institute of Respiratory Diseases in Mexico City.
Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador speaks during a press conference Thursday confirming the first case of coronavirus in the country – a 35-year-old man in Mexico City
The two cases are confirmed in Mexico City and the northern state of Sinaloa
At least five other family contacts have also been placed in isolation.
The second patient is also being held in isolation in a hotel.
Both cases are connected and they had recently traveled to Italy.
Both men were in Italy for about a week in mid-February, and likely became infected at a convention in the northern city of Bergamo, the government said in a visual presentation at the news conference.
For now there were no grounds for closing schools or having people stay away from their workplaces, Lopez-Gatell said.
‘There’s absolutely no reason at this point,’ he added. ‘There is no generalized transmission’.
Still, Lopez-Gatell recommended that people refrain from giving each other light hugs and kisses on the cheek that are commonplace greetings in Mexico.
López Obrador urged the population to remain calm and said officials would report daily on the progress of cases.
‘We have the capacity to handle this situation,’ he said.
López Obrador also appeared to downplay the seriousness of the COVID-19 virus, saying ‘it isn’t even equivalent to flu’.
‘I repeat, according to the available information, it is not something terrible, fatal,’ López Obrador said.
‘There shouldn’t be any yellow journalism, or exaggerations, to cause a mass psychosis of fear, of terror’.
Mexico is the second Latin American country to register the virus, after Brazil on Wednesday confirmed Latin America’s first confirmed case in a man who traveled to Italy this month.
Bill Gates says coronavirus is ‘more severe’ than 1957 influenza pandemic that killed 66,000 Americans
Philanthropist Bill Gates on Friday warned that the coronavirus is beginning to behave like a ‘once-in-a-century’ pathogen with the potential to kill more people than the 66,000 Americans who died in the 1957 influenza pandemic.
‘The data so far suggest that the virus has a case fatality risk around 1 per cent,’ Gates wrote.
‘This rate would make it many times more severe than typical seasonal influenza, putting it somewhere between the 1957 influenza pandemic (0.6 per cent) and the 1918 influenza pandemic (2 per cent).’
The virus that caused the 1957 Asian flu pandemic was quickly identified, and vaccines were available by August 1957.
The elderly had the highest rates of death.
The Asian flu killed 2 million people globally, according to the World Health Organization.
Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates (seen above in Shanghai in 2018) says that the coronavirus has started to behave like a ‘once-in-a-century’ pathogen
In a normal flu season, about 36,000 people die in the United States, and 250,000 to 500,000 globally.
So far, more than 83,000 people in at least 53 countries have been infected with coronavirus.
Of those who have been infected, a reported 2,800 have died – most of them in China.
The novel coronavirus that first emerged in China and has now spread to 46 countries is much harder to stop than similar viruses that caused the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) or Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), Gates wrote in an editorial in the New England Journal of Medicine.
‘First, it can kill healthy adults in addition to elderly people with existing health problems,’ he wrote.
‘Second, Covid-19 is transmitted quite efficiently.
‘The average infected person spreads the disease to two or three others – an exponential rate of increase.’
What makes the spread of the disease even more difficult to contain is the fact that carriers of the virus may not show any symptoms, according to Gates.
‘That means Covid-19 will be much harder to contain than the Middle East respiratory syndrome or severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), which were spread much less efficiently and only by symptomatic people.
‘In fact, Covid-19 has already caused 10 times as many cases as SARS in a quarter of the time.’
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has already pledged $100million to fight the outbreak.
SUPERMARKET SHELVES STRIPPED BARE AS AMERICANS STOCKPILE FOOD
Photos have emerged of bare supermarket and pharmacy shelves as American stockpile on medication and non-perishable items in fear of a coronavirus outbreak.
It comes three days after a top CDC official warned the it was not ‘a question of it…but when’ coronavirus will spread in the US.
One Twitter user shared photos of a Virginia supermarket with just a few remaining jumbo bags of pasta.
Another user in southern Calfornia, showed how shelves in one Walgreens had been depleted of cough medicines, cold and flu medications, vaporizers, masks and thermometers.
Supermarket shelves in Virginia are seen stripped bare of non-perishable items including jumbo bags of pasta
Photos in southern Calfornia showed how shelves in one Walgreens (left and right) had been depleted of cough medicines, cold and flu medications, vaporizers, masks and thermometers
A woman in Michigan shared pictures of her shelves piled with cans of soup, boxes of pasta, jars of peanut butter and more and referred to it as her ‘grocery store basement’
Others on social media opted to shared photos of their stockpiles of food, including one Texas man who bought a year’s supply.
‘I just bought an additional year’s worth of food last night. Everyone needs to have a stockpile of food,’ tweeted Jesse Colombo, is a financial analyst in Dallas.
‘Everyone needs to have a stockpile of food. I wouldn’t even touch stocks (or even gold/silver) before having food in these times.’
Meanwhile, a woman in Michigan shared pictures of her shelves piled with cans of soup, boxes of pasta, jars of peanut butter and more.
She referred to it on Twitter as her ‘grocery store basement.’
DOW JONES DROPS AGAIN AS CORONAVIRUS OUTBREAK RAISES ALARM FOR POSSIBLE RECESSION
As the market opened on Friday, US stock indexes fell sharply, raising the alarm of a possible global recession.
The Dow Jones Industrial average lost 463 points at the opening bell on Friday, one day after the index’s biggest one-day point drop in history.
If the Dow closes by more than 1,000 points at the end of the day, it would be the third time this week – and the second consecutive day – the index lost points in the four digit, an event that has only previously occurred twice in history.
Trader Peter Tuchman works on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange on Friday at the opening bell. The Dow quickly plunged more than 1,000 points after the open
In Asia and Europe, nearly $6 trillion, or about 10 percent, has been erased from stock values over the course of the week.
A recession would be different than a market crash. A crash occurs when the market declines in value, without any subsequent dip seen in the economy.
But a recession is typically defined as negative GDP growth for two consecutive quarters.
