Wake County confirms 15th patient with coronavirus
A 15th Wake County patient has been confirmed to have the coronavirus.
Wake has the most cases in North Carolina, where 39 people have been diagnosed with COVID-19.
Wake County Public Health has submitted 65 tests for the virus, and has received 44 back, according to a news release Monday.
Of those, 15 were positive and 29 were negative for COVID-19. The county is still waiting on the results of 21 tests. Wake County Manager David Ellis told county leaders that more than 350 people are being monitored for coronavirus symptoms.
Wake County is in the process of confirming who may have come in close contact with the affected person and what their risk of exposure might be. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention defines “close contact” as being within six feet of the patient for 10 minutes or more.
“Our public health team is working to create a timeline for this resident, so we know where they went and when,” said Wake County Medical Director Dr. Kim McDonald in a news release. “Once we have that information, we can evaluate the level of risk of those who came in close contact with them.”
The state’s first reported case of COVID-19 was on March 3. A Wake County man had traveled to Kirkland, Washington, and visited a senior care facility that was later the center of an outbreak of the illness.
Several of Wake County’s cases are related to a Biogen conference in Boston.
People can email Wake County with questions about the virus at covid19.questions@wakegov.com, or call Wake County’s COVID-19 information line at 919-856-7044. Wake County had fielded more than 1,400 calls to the hotline, Ellis said.
This is a developing story and will be updated.
This story was originally published March 16, 2020 at 4:35 PM.
