As the coronavirus continued its march across the globe on Sunday, there were troubling new signs that it was spreading undetected in some American communities for weeks while the government resisted calls for more widespread testing.
With testing now ramping up, the Seattle suburb of Kirkland has become an epicentre of both illness and fear, much of it focused on a nursing facility where six coronavirus cases have been confirmed and many more residents and employees have complained of illness.
Health authorities in King County, Washington, announced on Sunday evening that one of the six, a resident of the nursing home, had died of the virus at the EvergreenHealth hospital in Kirkland, and that three more were in critical condition. The death was the second on US soil from the virus; the first also occurred at that hospital.
One-quarter of Kirkland’s firefighters were in quarantine on Sunday because they had been to the nursing facility. A nearby college spent the day cleansing its campus because students had visited the nursing home. The hospital has asked visitors to stay away.
Beyond Kirkland, the King County authorities announced two additional coronavirus cases earlier in the day that were unrelated to the nursing home; those patients were in critical condition at hospitals in Seattle and Renton. Officials were scrambling to assess the risks emerging in schools, medical centres and the major employers that call the region home.
The fear and confusion at the nursing facility and throughout the county presented a vivid and disturbing picture of how much uncertainty surrounds the virus and how many people have the potential to be affected.
Elsewhere in the country, the states of New York, Florida and Rhode Island each reported their first cases, all linked to recent foreign travel.
Other states also reported new cases, bringing the national total announced through 10pm (US Eastern time) on Sunday to 87.
Globally, the number of confirmed cases climbed above 89,000, including the first cases reported in Scotland and the Dominican Republic and a new spike in Iran. More than 3,000 people have died, most in China. The nursing facility in Kirkland, run by Life Care Centres of America, is full of elderly residents who can be especially vulnerable to respiratory illnesses.
Records show that the centre has a recent history of illness outbreaks and of difficulty following infection control precautions.
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