The first U.S. case of the new coronavirus spreading from one person to another, the husband of a woman who caught the disease while in China, was reported in Chicago on Thursday.
It’s the second case that’s been confirmed in Illinois, and the sixth case in the U.S., since the new respiratory virus started to spread in Wuhan, China.
The announcement of the case by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention came shortly before the World Health Organization declared the coronavirus outbreak an international public health emergency. Local health officials said Illinois residents are still at low-risk from the virus, but they are taking steps to contain its spread.
A Chicago woman who returned from caring for her sick father in China earlier this month was the first local person diagnosed with the illness, health officials reported Jan. 24. The woman, who is in her 60s, traveled to Wuhan in late December and returned to Chicago on Jan. 13. Her spouse did not make the trip to China.
The man is also in his 60s and has underlying medical conditions, health officials said. He’s in stable condition at Amita Health St. Alexius Medical Center Hoffman Estates and was placed in isolation two days ago.
His wife also remains hospitalized at St. Alexius. But she is “doing quite well,” said Dr. Jennifer Layden, chief medical officer and state epidemiologist at the health department. Layden said the woman remains hospitalized “primarily for isolation.”
It’s believed that her husband was exposed to the virus while she was having symptoms.
Health officials said the man has not attended any large gatherings, taken the “L” or a train recently, and is sharing details of his activities from the last several weeks. He mostly uses his car to get around, said Dr. Allison Arwady, commissioner of the Chicago Department of Public Health, at a news conference Thursday.
Arwady did not answer a question about whether the man had been going to work.
Officials also declined to say how many people they’re monitoring who’ve been in contact with the couple, other than to say they are “actively monitoring all close contacts,” including health care workers who interacted with the woman. The CDC considers close contact to consist of 10 minutes or more of face-to-face time with a person.
In all, health officials are investigating 21 possible cases of the coronavirus in Illinois. People under investigation who are showing symptoms are in isolation, Arwady said.
Health officials are following up daily with those who’ve come into close contact with the couple to see if they’re showing symptoms, she said. Only those showing symptoms are being isolated, Arwady said.
“Certainly, at this point, the belief from CDC is that there is not a significant risk of spread before people develop symptoms,” Arwady said. “That is not a setting in which we would want to be thinking about overusing resources where that’s not necessary.”
In outbreaks of other types of coronaviruses, such as MERS and SARS, people didn’t spread the illnesses before they developed symptoms, she said. Other types of coronaviruses often cause mild to moderate upper-respiratory tract illnesses, such as the common cold.
There was a worldwide outbreak of SARS in 2002-03, with 8,098 probable cases, including 774 deaths, according to the CDC.
Despite the news Thursday, the director of the Illinois Department of Public Health, Dr. Ngozi Ezike, said, “We believe people in Illinois are at low risk.”
“This person-to-person spread was between two very close contacts, a husband and wife,” Ezike said in a call with reporters. “The virus is not spreading across the community at this time.”
It’s not unexpected that the woman’s husband caught the virus from her, Arwady said.
Local health officials say it’s not necessary for Chicagoans to stay home or cancel activities.
“There is no local emergency,” Arwady said.
DuPage County public health officials said Tuesday they are tracking multiple county residents who may have come in contact with the woman, but none had reported symptoms. The couple lives in Chicago but may have come into contact with people in DuPage County, said Don Bolger, a spokesman for the DuPage County Health Department.
There have been 7,818 cases reported worldwide, mostly in China, and 170 deaths from the illness in China, according to the World Health Organization.
On Wednesday, the U.S. government evacuated 195 Americans from Wuhan. The CDC has advised Americans to avoid all nonessential travel to China, and U.S. airlines have canceled many flights to China.
Symptoms of the virus can include fever, cough and shortness of breath. It’s believed symptoms appear anywhere from two to 14 days after exposure. The CDC has said it’s still unclear how easily the virus spreads from person to person.
The spread of the virus from wife to husband “doesn’t give us really any insight into whether or not we’re going to see widespread transmission across the U.S.,” said Dr. Emily Landon, medical director for infection control at the University of Chicago Medical Center.
If people in the community who are not being monitored by public health officials start to catch the virus, that’s when it might no longer be considered contained, said Dr. Michael Ison, a professor of infectious disease at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine.
The best ways to contain the virus, at this point, include screening passengers at airports, tracking people who’ve come into contact with the couple, isolating those with possible cases of the illness, and asking patients who visit hospitals whether they’ve been to Wuhan recently or came into close contact with someone who may have had the virus, she said.
“Those are the things we need to do to prevent spread here,” Landon said. “Whether or not they’re going to be successful is dependent on a lot of factors.”
Though she acknowledged that the virus is worrying many people, Landon said it’s important to keep it in perspective.
“In the end, this is a respiratory virus, and we know a lot about them,” she said. “Influenza has already killed way more people than this virus has.”
