The Coronavirus Has Claimed Its First Casualty In The United States

A patient in Washington State who had caught the novel coronavirus running rampant over the globe has died, CNN reported on Saturday. This marks the first death of someone in the United States from the disease. Details about the latest death are currently being kept to a minimum.

The victim is the first person to die of the virus on American soil but the second U.S. citizen to perish overall: Previously, a 60-year-old person passed away while in Wuhan, China.

Hours after the news was revealed, President Donald J. Trump — who the night before told his rally crowd that reporting on the severity of the virus is a “hoax” — held a press conference alongside Vice President Mike Pence, saying the victim was a “medically high-risk patient in her late 50s.” Earlier reports from Washington State Department of Health reported the patient as a man. Trump admitted that there would likely be additional cases, though he claimed “healthy individuals should be able to fully recover.”

As of this writing, 67 cases of the disease have been reported in the United States. Four of those involve patients with no travel history related to the virus — one in Oregon, another in Washington, and two in California. It’s worth noting that there is quite a lot of space between those patients. CDC officials are hoping by next week to have every state and local health department testing for the coronavirus.

Worldwide, the number of people infected stands at 85,000 globally, with more than 2,900 casualties, most of them in China.

(Via CNN)