Infectious Disease > COVID-19
Looks Like Coronavirus Community Spread Is Here
— Three new COVID-19 cases with unknown origin, CDC reports
by John Gever, Managing Editor, MedPage Today February 29, 2020
Four, possibly five, new COVID-19 coronavirus cases were reported on the West Coast late Friday, including three among individuals with no known exposure or risk factors.
In a CDC announcement sent out just before midnight EST, the agency said those cases represented "possible community spread."
CDC's release described four cases in total: one in Santa Clara County, California; one in Oregon; and two in Washington state. One of the latter cases was in a person recently returned from South Korea, while the others all had no known travel-related risk or exposure to individuals known to be infected.
In addition, local media in Utah reported that a man evacuated from the Diamond Princess cruise ship was being treated for COVID-19. It was unclear whether he was among those passengers previously listed as having been diagnosed.
The CDC's announcement came just hours after federal officials had sought to reassure the nation that only one American had been diagnosed with COVID-19 in the past 2 weeks, other than those aboard the Diamond Princess or evacuated from Wuhan.
Not all the new cases have been confirmed however. The two from Washington state were described as "presumptive" because confirmatory testing in the agency's Atlanta lab hadn't been completed.
If confirmed, however, it would bring the total number of U.S. cases representing potential community spread to four. The first was identified on February 26 in a woman in Solano County, California. Although individuals from the Diamond Princess were being housed at an Air Force base in the county, the woman is believed to have had no contact with anyone associated with the evacuation and quarantine.
None of the new cases were related to the others, either.