COVID-19 Update: Washington announces first U.S. death from novel coronavirus

Last night, we began a spe­cial series here on the Cas­ca­dia Advo­cate offer­ing the lat­est accu­rate, sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly vet­ted infor­ma­tion about the nov­el coro­n­avirus. Since we pub­lished that first install­ment, there have been sev­er­al new devel­op­ments, includ­ing the first death attrib­uted to COVID-19 in the Unit­ed States, so it’s a good time to pub­lish our sec­ond install­ment of COVID-19 Update.

We begin with a joint press release from our pub­lic health authorities.

Pub­lic Health – Seat­tle & King Coun­ty, Wash­ing­ton State Depart­ment of Health and the Cen­ters for Dis­ease Con­trol and Pre­ven­tion (CDC) are report­ing three pre­sump­tive pos­i­tive cas­es of nov­el coro­n­avirus (COVID-19), includ­ing one per­son who died. This brings the total of pre­sump­tive pos­i­tive cas­es in King Coun­ty to four.

• Two of the con­firmed cas­es are asso­ci­at­ed with Life­Care nurs­ing facil­i­ty in Kirk­land, King Coun­ty, Washington: 
  • One is a health care work­er from Life­Care. She is a woman in her 40s, is cur­rent­ly in sat­is­fac­to­ry con­di­tion at Over­lake Hos­pi­tal, and she has no known trav­el out­side the Unit­ed States.
  • The sec­ond case, a woman in her 70’s, is a res­i­dent at Life­Care and is in seri­ous con­di­tion at Ever­green­Health Hospital.
• In addi­tion, over 50 indi­vid­u­als asso­ci­at­ed with Life­Care are report­ed­ly ill with res­pi­ra­to­ry symp­toms or hos­pi­tal­ized with pneu­mo­nia or oth­er res­pi­ra­to­ry con­di­tions of unknown cause and are being test­ed for COVID-19. Addi­tion­al pos­i­tive cas­es are expected.
• The death occurred in a patient at Ever­green­Health Hos­pi­tal but was not a res­i­dent of the long-term care facility.

Pub­lic Health – Seat­tle & King Coun­ty is cur­rent work­ing with Life­Care to pro­vide care for ill patients while pro­tect­ing unin­fect­ed patients. The CDC is send­ing a team of epi­demi­ol­o­gists to King Coun­ty to sup­port our efforts to iden­ti­fy, iso­late and test all of those who may be at risk because of these new cas­es. Pub­lic Health is at the very begin­ning stages of this inves­ti­ga­tion and new details and infor­ma­tion will emerge over the next days and weeks.

“This is a trag­ic loss of life and we share our heart­felt con­do­lences with the fam­i­ly,” said Dr. Jeff Duchin, Health Offi­cer for Pub­lic Health – Seat­tle & King Coun­ty. “While the vast major­i­ty of cas­es of COVID-19 are believed to be mild, the virus can be a very seri­ous infec­tion that can lead to death. Pro­tect­ing the health of our com­mu­ni­ty and sup­port­ing the care of health care work­ers is our top priority.”

A press con­fer­ence was held at 1 PM today to announce this news.

Want to watch it and hear the Q&A your­self? Video is avail­able here.

You might have heard from ear­li­er news reports that this first fatal­i­ty was a woman in her fifties. How­ev­er, it was actu­al­ly a man — Don­ald Trump once again gave out bad infor­ma­tion while address­ing reporters.

The Wash­ing­ton Post has pub­lished a sto­ry dis­cussing Trump’s error.

Gov­er­nor Jay Inslee issued a state­ment after the first death was announced.

“It is a sad day in our state as we learn that a Wash­ing­ton­ian has died from COVID-19. Our hearts go out to his fam­i­ly and friends. We will con­tin­ue to work toward a day where no one dies from this virus,” Inslee said.

“In part­ner­ship with the Wash­ing­ton State Depart­ment of Health, the Wash­ing­ton State Depart­ment of Emer­gency Man­age­ment and local and com­mu­ni­ty health part­ners, we are strength­en­ing our pre­pared­ness and response efforts. I am com­mit­ted to keep­ing Wash­ing­to­ni­ans healthy, safe and informed.”

The gov­er­nor fol­lowed up by declar­ing a state of emer­gency. State agen­cies have been ordered to uti­lize all resources nec­es­sary to com­bat COVID-19.

“This will allow us to get the resources we need,” Inslee said. “This is a time to take com­mon-sense, proac­tive mea­sures to ensure the health and safe­ty of those who live in Wash­ing­ton state. Our state agency direc­tors have been active­ly prepar­ing since the nation’s first case appeared in Sno­homish Coun­ty. Wash­ing­to­ni­ans can be assured we’ve tak­en this threat seri­ous­ly and have been work­ing in col­lab­o­ra­tion with our health care part­ners to devel­op plans and pro­ce­dures to pre­pare for what could like­ly be a world-wide pandemic.”

Inslee’s procla­ma­tion autho­rizes the use of the Wash­ing­ton Nation­al Guard, if nec­es­sary. You can read the emer­gency order in full below:

Final­ly, we hearti­ly rec­om­mend this fine piece by Zeynep Tufekci, pub­lished in the Sci­en­tif­ic Amer­i­can, which explains why you should calm­ly pre­pare for COVID-19.

Prepar­ing for the almost inevitable glob­al spread of this virus, now dubbed COVID-19, is one of the most pro-social, altru­is­tic things you can do in response to poten­tial dis­rup­tions of this kind.

We should pre­pare, not because we may feel per­son­al­ly at risk, but so that we can help lessen the risk for everyone.

We should pre­pare not because we are fac­ing a dooms­day sce­nario out of our con­trol, but because we can alter every aspect of this risk we face as a society.

Read the whole thing.