An increase in testing for the coronavirus began shedding light
Monday on how the illness has spread in the United States, including
among nursing home residents in one Washington state facility.
U.S. health officials updated the number of COVID-19 cases to 91 in
10 states after Oregon and Illinois announced new diagnoses. Seattle
officials announced four more deaths, bringing the total in the U.S. to
six.
King County Executive Dow Constantine declared an emergency and said
the county was buying a hotel to be used as a hospital for patients who
need to be isolated. He said the facility should be available by the end
of the week.
“We have moved to a new stage in the fight,” he said.
Vice President Mike Pence met with the nation’s governors and pledged
to continue updating them by teleconference on a weekly basis.
The nursing home cases especially troubled health care experts because of the vulnerability of sick and
elderly people to the illness and existing problems in nursing facilities.
“It’s going to be a disaster,” said Charlene Harrington, who studies
nursing homes at the University of California at San Francisco.
Infection is already a huge problem in U.S. nursing homes because of a
lack of nurses and training.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said the case count
includes 45 infections among people who were on the Diamond Princess
cruise ship, which is one more than previously reported. It also
includes people who tested positive after returning from travel to
outbreak areas in other parts of the world, their close contacts, and
what appear to be infections from community spread—people who did not
travel and did not have known contact with other infected people.
The CDC recently broadened its guidelines for who should be tested for the
new virus to include people with symptoms but without a travel history to virus hot zones.
More testing will bring more confirmed cases, experts said, but they
cautioned that does not mean the virus is gaining speed. Instead, the
testing is likely to reveal a picture of the virus’ spread that was
previously invisible.
In Seattle, schools and one skyscraper closed, but health experts cautioned that closures can have downsides.
On Monday, the F5 technology company said it was closing its 44-story
tower in downtown Seattle after learning an employee had been in
contact with someone who tested positive for coronavirus. The employee
tested negative, but company spokesman Rob Gruening said the tower was
closed as a precaution.
More than 10 schools in the Seattle area were closed for deep
cleaning over virus concerns, although the city-county public health
department said it was not yet recommending school closures or
cancellation of activities.
Closing schools or large gatherings are what’s called social distancing, the idea that distancing people will reduce spread.
“The evidence for these measures are not as strong as we would like
it to be,” Jennifer Nuzzo of the Johns Hopkins Center for Health
Security cautioned Monday during a webinar.
Measures such as school closures have been used during flu outbreaks,
and the new coronavirus isn’t acting exactly like flu. Moreover, they
have downsides.
“Maybe it makes people more likely to stay at home. Maybe it doesn’t if people re-congregate elsewhere,” Nuzzo said.
Closing schools also leaves
health care workers, first responders and others without child care, making it difficult for them to come to work.
On Capitol Hill, negotiations on a bipartisan, emergency $7 billion
to $8 billion measure to battle the virus are almost complete, according
to both Democratic and GOP aides. The measure appears on track to be
unveiled as early as Tuesday, and the hope is to speed it quickly
through both House and Senate by the end of the week.
The measure would finance both federal and state response efforts, fund the
federal government‘s
drive to develop and produce a vaccine, and offer Small Business
Administration disaster loans to help businesses directly affected by
the virus crisis.
At the Pentagon, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Mark
Milley, told reporters that the COVID-19 outbreak has had little impact
on the U.S. military. “Right now the overall broad impact to the U.S.
uniformed military is very, very minimal. That’s not to say it’s zero,”
he said.
U.S. Surgeon General Jerome Adams discussed the virus Monday during a
stop in Connecticut, where he was touring the state public health
laboratory.
“Caution, preparedness, but not panic,” Adams said. “That’s how we’re
going to successfully navigate this coronavirus situation.”
Adams and state Public Health Commissioner Renee Coleman-Mitchell
urged the public to take precautions such as washing hands, elbow
“bumping” instead of hand shaking and getting flu shots. They said flu
shots would decrease the number of people hospitalized because of flu
and free up space, if needed, to treat patients sickened by the
coronavirus.
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