The U.S. has confirmed its second death from the coronavirus, in the same Washington state area and the same facility as the first one. Now, all the fire fighters, and police officers who were possibly exposed to the person infected. All in all, there's a total of 10 positive infections in King County, Washington state.
An elderly man in his 70's died from the viral infection at EvergreenHealth Medical Center in Kirkland, where the first fatality got infected as well. The first was 50 years old who has a negative health condition, which is the same case as the second victim.
Three more cases of the coronavirus are two women, and an eldery man, but all of them have health issues and are in critical condition.
Earlier, the first patient to die from the coronavirus passed away from aggravated health problems The victim did not get the virus from travel according to health officers. Officials fear that it might be the "community spread" of the virus, that started in the West Coast.
Health officials reported that one recent death, is just one of the three suspected deaths from COVID-19 in Washington. All patients are positive but the CDC needs to confirm it. All over the state, there are six confirmed or suspected cases for coronavirus.
About the new cases that have been added, the victims are residents of Life Care, a place where elderly folks are kept (nursing home), and taken care of. According to health officials who said that two more individuals are sick and under quarantine, both are men and in their 60s. The 2nd death because of coronavirus infection in the US, came from this group of older people.
The Guardian reveals that 25 Kirkland firefighters, two police officers, and seven firefighters are currently in quaratine after they visited the nursing home. This way, it can help contain the spread of the virus.
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According to sources, Trevor Bedford who does computational biology at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer, located in Seattle," Genetic sequencing suggests the virus may have been circulating for six weeks. Two samples of the virus - one from a person who traveled to Snohomish County in January from China, and another was a recently-diagnosed high school student with no history of travel to an affected area or contacts with known cases were compared, and the sequence was nearly identical.
Bedford said the work is just the beginning and there might be another reason than community spread. Though in his opinion, he said that another alternative solution is not possible especially that a variant of the genes could be unusual.
He also commented that the Washington state outbreak is significant, pointing out that the late detection worsened it since they were confident it won't spread in the country and that the virus is only possible in China.
People with COVID-19 symptoms were not tested last week. Testing is done only in coronavirus hotspots or those contact with known positive infection. Now, virus testing in all instances has revealed more hidden cases revealed.
Improved testing procedures and protocol is making up for earlier errors, especiall with the death toll going up to more than 89,000 cases, with 3,000 deaths. This includes the two deaths from the coronavirus in the US. Most of the positive cases have fever, cough, and have hard breathing as the virus attacks the body.
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