U.S. Reports First Coronavirus Death, Imposes New International Travel Restrictions
The patient who died Saturday night didn’t have any travel history to areas where virus was circulating
Health officials in the state of Washington reported the first coronavirus death in the U.S. on Saturday, as the White House imposed additional international travel restrictions on people who traveled to Iran.
Vice President Mike Pence, head of a government’s task force on the virus, said Saturday that the U.S. will bar foreign nationals who have traveled to Iran in the past 14 days.
Speaking at a White House news conference alongside Mr. Trump, Mr. Pence said that the U.S. is raising its travel advisory to urge Americans not to travel to virus-hit parts of Italy and South Korea.
In response to a reporter’s question, Mr. Trump said the U.S. is considering restrictions at the Mexican border as well.
The patient in Washington died after test results confirmed the infection Saturday night, according to a letter from the EvergreenHealth health-care system. The patient didn’t have any travel history to areas where the virus was circulating. A second patient at the hospital also tested positive and remains in isolation.
Last night, health officials in Washington, Oregon and California reported three new infections of the novel virus in patients who currently have no clear path of exposure, signaling the possibility of wider spread of the virus within those communities.
The patients were tested following a change in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guideline, which the agency expanded on Thursday to include people with recent travel history to Japan, Italy, Iran and South Korea as well as people with severe respiratory illnesses and a fever without a clear cause of infection.
The agency expanded the guideline after a patient in California wasn’t tested right away because the woman didn’t meet the stricter guidelines but ended up testing positive.
The novel coronavirus has quickly spread to disparate places around the world, increasingly with no clear links to China, where the outbreak began. Public-health officials say the illness is likely to spread in the U.S. as well, in part because many mild cases appear to be contributing to the spread without officials being aware of them.
So far, roughly 80% of the cases are mild, with the most common symptoms being a fever and a dry cough. Many patients recover within a few weeks. But the rapidly spreading virus can also be deadly, especially among older adults and those with underlying health conditions.
On Saturday, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration said it would allow some 300 to 400 academic-hospital labs to begin testing for the virus, allowing for checks of thousands of people rather than the few hundred already tested.
“We believe this policy strikes the right balance during this public health emergency,” FDA Commissioner Stephen M. Hahn said in a statement. “We will continue to help to ensure sound science prior to clinical testing and follow-up with the critical independent review from the FDA, while quickly expanding testing capabilities in the U.S. We are not changing our standards for issuing Emergency Use Authorizations. “
Until Saturday’s announcement, there were relatively few diagnostic tests conducted in the U.S., with most state and local health departments sending patient samples to the CDC and waiting days for results. Even those initially had some accuracy problems, though the CDC has said those problems have been remedied.
The president said he would meet with drugmakers on Monday as work continues on a vaccine.
Mr. Trump also continued his criticism of the Federal Reserve, saying interest rates remain too high and should go lower as in other countries. “We need a Fed that is going to be a leader,” he said.