Oregon health officials dispelled a rumor Wednesday that a child had coronavirus and visited a Kaiser Permanente emergency room.
“There are currently NO cases in Oregon and the risk of getting it here is currently low,” the Oregon Health Authority said on Twitter.
According to at least one rumor the state has received, a child checked into the Hillsboro hospital not long after returning from a family vacation in Italy. By the afternoon, according to the rumor, the child tested positive for coronavirus.
But that’s not possible, a state health official said, because it takes at least a few days to get back the results of a test for coronavirus. The only entity that does tests in the United States right now is the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
“There’s no way a person would come into the ER with symptoms today and know that day that they have COVID-19,” health authority spokesman Jonathan Modie said in a statement.
But COVID-19, as the disease is officially called, is still very much a threat to the American public. The CDC said this week that the new virus will spread to communities and that regular people, local governments and health care systems should start preparing now for that inevitability.
As if to punctuate that point, federal officials confirmed Wednesday what could be the first community spread of the virus in the United States.
A person in California has coronavirus but didn’t travel to China and apparently didn’t have contact with someone known to have the coronavirus. The case brings the total number of U.S. infections to 15, besides for the sick Americans brought home from the cruise ship Diamond Princess.
-- Fedor Zarkhin
desk: 503-294-7674|cell: 971-373-2905|@fedorzarkhin
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