New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said the first patient to test positive for the novel coronavirus in the state is a female 39-year-old health care worker who had been working in Iran before traveling back to the U.S. last Tuesday. Cuomo said the woman did not take any public transportation and is not believed to have been contagious while on the flight to New York.
The woman’s husband, who is also a health care worker, is being tested for COVID-19 as well, and Cuomo said officials expect his results to be positive "given the circumstances." Both underwent testing at Mt. Sinai, Cuomo said, adding that they are currently in their own home.
ADVISER TO IRAN'S SUPREME LEADER DIES FROM CORONAVIRUS
"The health care worker has manifested some respiratory illnesses, her condition is mild," he said. "She's at home, she's not even hospitalized, even though she has tested positive for the virus. Her spouse is with her."
He said officials are currently working to contact anyone the woman may have had contact with since returning to the U.S.
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“Out of an abundance of caution, we will be contacting the people who were on the flight with her from Iran to New York, and the driver of that car service, we will be contacting them and following up with them,” he said in a press conference on Monday.
He added that the woman "did textbook, everything right," in preventing potential exposure to others.
Mayor Bill De Blasio, who appeared in the press conference alongside Cuomo and several of the state's health officials, urged New Yorkers to call 311 for medical help if they were unsure of where to go. He also urged residents to cover coughs and sneezes and seek medical attention immediately for potential symptoms.
De Blasio said 1,200 beds across city hospitals are reserved for potential patients, although "we are nowhere near" that kind of need.
"We have the capacity to keep this contained in god forbid it spread, spread, spread," he said.
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Cuomo sought to quell fears over the coronavirus and said that New York has been preparing for it to arrive in the state. At this time, officials called for New Yorkers to continue "going about their daily lives."
"There is no mystery to how contagious this is, or how it transfers," he said. "This transfers like the common flu, so for health care workers you take the right precautions, but it's not like we're dealing with something we haven't dealt with before. Actually, we've dealt with worse before. The Ebola situation was a lot more difficult and frightening than this."
The virus has sickened 89,000 people across 66 countries, resulting in at least 3,061 deaths including two in the U.S.
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