2019 coronavirus update: Health officials in the United States confirmed its first case of person to person transmission of the 2019 novel coronavirus in their country, Friday (Manila time).
Reports said the patient was the husband of a woman who was the first confirmed case in Chicago. The woman who was in her 60’s recently traveled to Wuhan, China, where the virus emerged. Dr. Jennifer Layden, an epidemiologist at the Illinois Department of Public Health, said she was hospitalized but appeared to be doing well.
However, her husband began to show symptoms of the virus infection. He had not traveled to China recently. He was immediately put to isolation in the hospital and was later tested positive of the new coronavirus, Dr. Layden said.
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2019 coronavirus update: person to person transmission confirmed
US health officials are now tracing the places the couple visited and the people they had contacts with for monitoring. Officials said the public is at low risk.
Health officials are tracking the places visited by both patients and identifying all close contacts to monitor them. The public is at low risk, officials said.
“We understand that this may be concerning,” Dr. Robert Redfield, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “But our assessment remains that the immediate risk to the American public is low.”
Person-to-person transmission occurs when an infected person touches or exchanges body fluids with someone else. This can happen before an infected person is aware of the illness Respiratory droplets carrying the virus may then travel from the sick person to other people or surfaces.
US State Department on Thursday night issued a “Do not travel” advisory to all Americans because of the 2019 n-CoV public threat.
President Rodrigo Duterte on Friday ordered a travel ban from Hubei, China, where Wuhan City is located. Wuhan is where the new coronavirus strain originated. The order was issued a day after the Department of Health confirmed the first case of 2019-nCoV in the Philippines.