"Late this afternoon, testing at the Public Health Lab at the DC Department of Forensic Sciences yielded its first presumptive positive coronavirus (COVID-19) case. At 7:30 pm [00:30 GMT on Sunday], Mayor Muriel Bowser will hold a briefing at the John A. Wilson Building", a Saturday statement on the mayoral website says.
Late this afternoon, testing at the Public Health Lab at the DC Department of Forensic Sciences yielded its first presumptive positive coronavirus (COVID-19) case. Join me live at 7:30 p.m. for a briefing at the John A. Wilson Building.
— Mayor Muriel Bowser (@MayorBowser) March 7, 2020
During the press briefing, Bowser said that the presumptive case cannot be announced as confirmed, until a response from the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
"Today the DC public health lab has monitored 11 patients, 9 of those came back negative, one is pending and late this afternoon testing yielded a presumptive positive result", Bowser told reporters.
According to the mayor, the presumptive positive case is a man in his 50s who is a DC resident. He started exhibiting symptoms in late February and was admitted to a DC hospital on 5 March. The patient has no history of international travel and appears to have had no contacts with confirmed COVID-19 cases.
COVID-19 has claimed the lives of 11 people in the United States, most of them from the state of Washington.
On a global scale, as of Saturday, the number of coronavirus cases has exceeded 105,000, with more than 90 countries reporting infections. In addition, over 3,550 people have already died from the disease, while more than 58,000 have fully recovered.
COVID-19 was first detected in China's Wuhan in late December and has since spread across the world. In late January, the World Health Organisation declared a global health emergency in light of the epidemic.
