Person in Washington state first in US to die from coronavirus
Published:Saturday | February 29, 2020 | 3:39 PM
A person has died in Washington state of COVID-19, state health officials said Saturday, marking the first such reported death in the United States.
State officials issued a terse news release announcing the death, gave no details and scheduled a news conference.
A spokesperson for EvergreenHealth Medical Center, Kayse Dahl, said the person died in the facility in the Seattle suburb of Kirkland, but gave no other details.
President Donald Trump described the person as being a woman in her late 50s and having a high medical risk. He said healthy Americans should be able to recover if they contract the new virus.
Washington Governor Jay Inslee said in a statement the person who died was a man from Washington state, but then issued another one removing the gender and describing the individual as “a Washingtonian.”
“We will continue to work toward a day where no one dies from this virus,” the governor said.
Washington state and King County health officials said “new people (have been) identified with the infection, one of whom died.” They did not say how many new cases there are.
Amy Reynolds of the Washington state health department said in a brief telephone interview: “We are dealing with an emergency evolving situation.”
Health officials in California, Oregon and Washington state worried about the novel coronavirus spreading through West Coast communities after confirming at least three patients were infected by unknown means.
They had not visited an area where there was an outbreak, nor apparently been in contact with anyone who had.
The number of coronavirus cases in the United States is considered small.
Worldwide, the number of people sickened by the virus hovered Friday around 83,000, and there were more than 2,800 deaths, most of them in China.
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