A second U.S. death from the novel coronavirus was announced Sunday, both in Washington state.
The virus continues to spread throughout the U.S. New York state confirmed its first case Sunday. Governor Andrew Cuomo said the patient is a woman in her 30s who contracted the disease while traveling in Iran. She’s not in serious condition, he said. Rhode Island reported its first two cases, and Florida announced two presumptive positive cases Sunday, prompting Governor Ron DeSantis to declare a public health emergency.
There are at least 89 confirmed cases in the U.S. so far, according to reports from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and state health departments. Worldwide, more than 87,000 people have been diagnosed with the novel coronavirus, resulting in at least 3,037 deaths.
Trevor Bedford, a computational biologist at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, tweeted Saturday that an analysis of a specimen from a new case in Snohomish County closely matched the specimen of the first known coronavirus case in the U.S., a person who had traveled recently from Wuhan, China. He said that indicates the virus has been spreading undetected in Washington for six weeks.
Meanwhile, the number of cases in Italy climbed to 1,377, and Delta and American Airlines temporarily suspended service from New York City to Milan.
