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A confirmed case of a new virus that has already killed six people in Asia and has sickened hundreds more has landed in the United States.
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention made the announcement on Tuesday. They say that the coronavirus first appeared last month in Wuhan, China.
The unnamed patient, who is in his 30s, is currently in isolation at Providence Regional Medical Center in Everett, Washington. He recently arrived at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport on January 15 after a visit to Wuhan, which is before US airports began screening for the coronavirus.
He sought out medical assistance on January 19, as he became ill four days after arriving. Washington State and the CDC are now trying to figure out who he may have been in contact with during that time in case the disease had a chance to spread.
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The doctors suspect that he contracted the Wuhan coronavirus based on his travel history and symptoms. They sent a test to the CDC in Atlanta where they confirmed that he did, in fact, contract the disease.
Health officials say that the patient is doing well, but they are still keeping him in isolation as a precaution.
The virus in question is in the same family as severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), which caused the death of more than 700 people between 2002 and 2003. So far the outbreak has struck China, South Korea, Thailand, Japan and now the United States.
It first started in late December in Wuhan, China, at an animal market. The virus can jump from animals to people. So far, we don’t know how many cases have been transmitted human-to-human or animal-to-human. Health officials say that the disease doesn’t spread too easily.
“This isn’t anywhere near in the same category as measles or the flu,” said Dr. Martin Cetron, in an interview with CNN. He is the director of CDC’s division of global migration and quarantine.
“We believe the risk to the public is low,” said the secretary of health for the state of Washington, John Wiesman.
