New confirmed cases of coronavirus were reported on Wednesday in areas around the two most populous cities in the United States - four near New York and six in Los Angeles - and Congress was poised to provide billions in emergency funds to fight the fast-spreading illness.
Three family members and a neighbour of an infected New York man have tested positive, bringing the total in New York state to six, officials said. About 1,000 people in suburban Westchester County north of the city where the family lives were under self-quarantine orders because of possible exposure to the virus, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said.
“We are, if anything, being overcautious. Mr. Cuomo said.
On the West Coast, Los Angeles officials announced six new confirmed travel-related cases in Los Angeles County, including three people who had been to northern Italy, one of the places hardest hit in the global outbreak of the virus that causes the respiratory disease called COVID-19.
Of the six, only one has been hospitalized. The other five are recovering in home isolation.
Los Angeles County declared a local emergency and a public health emergency intended to expand and hasten preparedness efforts.
In Washington, U.S. lawmakers reached bipartisan agreement on an $8.3 billion emergency bill to help fund efforts to contain the virus, a congressional aide said. The bill would be introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives later on Wednesday.
Once the full House approves the bill, the Senate is expected to act quickly so that President Donald Trump can sign the measure into law, putting funds into the pipeline to fight the virus.
More than $3 billion would be devoted to research and development of coronavirus vaccines, test kits and therapeutics. And in a bid to also help control the spread of the virus outside the United States, $1.25 billion would be set for international efforts, the aide said.
The administration is working to allow laboratories to develop their own coronavirus tests without seeking regulatory approval first, U.S. Health Secretary Alex Azar said.
The latest data https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-in-us.html from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) listed 129 confirmed and presumed cases in the United States, up from the previous 108.
They were 80 reported by public health authorities in 13 states plus 49 among people repatriated from abroad, according to the CDC website.
Classes cancelled
On Tuesday, officials said a man in his 50s who lives in a New York City suburb and works at a Manhattan law firm tested positive for the virus, the second identified case in the state.
The four new cases include three family members of the man, who is hospitalized, and a neighbour. Health authorities said one of his children was a student at Yeshiva University, which cancelled classes as a precautionary measure.
The hospitalized patient had not travelled to countries with large numbers of cases. The outbreak began in China in December and is now present in nearly 80 countries and territories, killing more than 3,000 people. The first New York case, reported last week, was in a woman who had returned from Iran, where at least 77 people have died.
Mr. Cuomo said about 300 students from New York’s college systems, SUNY and CUNY, were being recalled from five countries — China, Italy, Japan, Iran and South Korea — and would be flown on a chartered plane and then be quarantined for 14 days.
North Carolina became the 13th state to report a case on Tuesday. The person had visited a nursing home in the Seattle area of Washington state, where nine out of 27 cases reported as of Tuesday were connected to the long-term facility for the elderly. Nine people have died in the Pacific Northwest state.
The Seattle area has the largest concentration of coronavirus cases detected to date in the United States.
