Officials seek to calm public as new US coronavirus cases reported
Published:Sunday | March 1, 2020 | 4:42 PM
PORTLAND, Oregon (AP) — The coronavirus may have been circulating for weeks undetected in Washington state, a preliminary finding that could mean hundreds of undiagnosed cases in the state that’s also home to the nation’s first confirmed infection and now the first death, researchers said Sunday after analysing genetic samples of the pathogens.
State and local authorities stepped up testing for the illness Sunday as the number of new cases grew nationwide, with new infections announced in Illinois, Rhode Island and Washington state.
Authorities in the Seattle area said two more people had been diagnosed with the coronavirus, both men in their 60s who were in critical condition.
Those cases brought the numbers in the Seattle area to six.
Fifty more people in a nursing facility in Kirkland, Washington, are sick and being tested for the virus.
Elsewhere, authorities announced on Sunday a third case in Illinois and Rhode Island’s first case as worried Americans swarmed stores to stock up on basic goods such as bottled water, canned foods and toilet paper.
The hospitalised patient in Rhode Island is a man in his 40s who had travelled to Italy in February.
As Americans prepared, researchers at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and the University of Washington on Sunday said they had evidence that the coronavirus may have been circulating in the state for up to six weeks undetected — a finding that, if true, could mean hundreds of undiagnosed cases in the area.
The research was not published in a scientific journal or reviewed by other scientists.
Trevor Bedford, an associate professor at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and the University of Washington, said on Twitter late Saturday that genetic similarities between the state’s first case on January 20 and a case announced Friday indicated the newer case may have descended from the earlier one.
The January 20 case was the first known case in the US.
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