By Aaron Miller-
Health officials have confirmed three new cases of the Coronavirus in the U.S causing deep concern within the community there. They include an older northern California woman with chronic health conditions; a high school student in Everett, Washington; and an employee at a Portland, Oregon-area school – had not recently travelled overseas or had any known close contact with a traveler or an infected person, authorities said.
The California department of public health said on Friday the state will receive kits from the U.S Centres For Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to test up to 1,200 people a day for the Covid 19 virus – a day after the governor, Gavin Newsom, complained to federal officials that the state had exhausted its initial 200 test kits.
Santa Clara county in the San Francisco Bay Area reported two cases where the source of infection was not known. The older woman was hospitalized for a respiratory illness and rapid local testing confirmed she had the virus, officials said.
“This case represents some degree of community spread, some degree of circulation,” Dr Sara Cody, health officer for Santa Clara county and director of the county public health department said. “But we don’t know to what extent. It could be a little, it could be a lot. We need to begin taking important additional measures to at least slow it down as much as possible.”
Cody said the new case in Santa Clara county was not linked to two previous cases in that county, or to others in California. The Santa Clara resident was treated at a local hospital and is not known to have traveled to Solano county, where another woman was identified on Wednesday as having contracted the virus from an unknown source.