The new coronavirus, which first emerged in Wuhan, China in December 2019, has found its way to the United States through a patient who returned to the United States from Wuhan on January 15, 2020 and was diagnosed of the virus.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), confirmed this development in a statement on its website on Tuesday which reads;
The patient recently returned from Wuhan, China, where an outbreak of pneumonia caused by this novel coronavirus has been ongoing since December 2019. While originally thought to be spreading from animal-to-person, there are growing indications that limited person-to-person spread is happening. It’s unclear how easily this virus is spreading between people.
The statement on the website further stated that the patient from Washington, United States was diagnosed with the infection, known by its technical name 2019 Novel Coronavirus (2019-nCoV) after returning to the United States from Wuhan in China on January 15, 2020.
It added that;
The patient sought care at a medical facility in the state of Washington, where the patient was treated for the illness. Based on the patient’s travel history and symptoms, healthcare professionals suspected this new coronavirus. A clinical specimen was collected and sent to CDC overnight, where laboratory testing yesterday confirmed the diagnosis via CDC’s Real time Reverse Transcription-Polymerase Chain Reaction (rRT-PCR) test.
According to the CDC, the virus was originally thought to be spreading from animals to humans, but there are growing indications that limited person-to-person spread is happening, saying “how easily the virus spreads between humans is unclear at the moment.”
Meanwhile, China’s National Health Commission has said on Wednesday announced that nine people had died from the new coronavirus and 440 people across 13 Chinese provinces had been confirmed to be infected.
The number of cases of the infection is now higher than the total of more than 300 earlier reported on Tuesday.
The National Health Commission vice minister in China, Li Bin at a news conference in Beijing, China said; “The illness is transmitted via the respiratory tract and there is the possibility of viral mutation and further spread of the disease.”
The World Health Organization (WHO) is scheduled to hold an emergency meeting later today to determine whether to declare a rare global public health emergency over the disease, which has also been confirmed in the United States, Taiwan, Thailand, Japan and South Korea.
The authorities in the meantime has announced enhanced measures to contain the virus, including disinfection, wearing of face masks and ventilation at airports, train stations and shopping centres.
