A man 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 Evergreen Health Medical Center, Kayse Dahl, said the person died in the facility in the Seattle suburb of Kirkland, but gave no other details. State and King County health officials said new people (have been) identified with the infection, one of whom died.
Washington Gov. Jay Inslee said the person who died was a man from Washington state. "We will continue to work towards a day where no one dies from this virus."
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.
Most infections result in mild symptoms, including coughing and fever, though some can become more serious and lead to pneumonia.
Older people, especially those with chronic illnesses such as heart or lung disease, are especially vulnerable. Health officials think it spreads mainly from droplets when an infected person coughs or sneezes, similar to how the flu spreads.
Health officials in California, Oregon and Washington state worried about the novel coronavirus spreading through West Coast communities after confirming three patients were infected by unknown means.
The patients—an older Northern California woman with chronic health conditions, a high school student in Everett, Washington and an employee at a Portland, Oregon-area school—hadn't recently travelled overseas or had any known close contact with a traveller or an infected person, authorities said.
Earlier US cases include three people who were evacuated from the central China city of Wuhan, epicenter of the outbreak; 14 people who returned from China, or their spouses; and 42 American passengers on the Diamond Princess cruise ship, who were flown to US military bases in California and Texas for quarantining.
China infection cases surge
China on Sunday reported 35 more deaths from the new coronavirus, taking the toll in the country to 2,870. The National Health Commission also reported 573 new infections, bringing the total number of cases in mainland China to 79,824. While still in the hundreds, the figure for new infections is far lower than the huge, daily increase in cases China was recording in January and February.
All but one of the 35 deaths were in Hubei province, whose capital Wuhan is the epicentre of the outbreak. The new coronavirus, which has killed nearly 3,000 people and infected more than 86,000 in dozens of countries, is believed to have first emerged late last year in a Wuhan market that sold wild animals.
-Inputs from PTI
