China coronavirus: US reports first case of person-to-person transmission, while France announces its sixth confirmed infection
- US patient had not been to China, but is married to Chicago woman who got sick after returning from trip to Wuhan. Case is sixth reported in the country.
The United States identified its first confirmed case of person-to-person transmission of the China coronavirus on Thursday, but health officials stressed that the immediate risk to Americans from the outbreak remained low.
Also on Thursday, officials in France announced the country’s sixth confirmed case of the disease, which also known as the “novel coronavirus”.
The two announcements came just ahead of a news conference by the World Health Organisation (WHO) following a meeting of its emergency committee that declared the outbreak of the China coronavirus to be a public health emergency of international concern (PHEIC).
A week ago, the WHO committee met but declined to make that declaration. On Thursday, though, it reversed that position, citing the potential of the virus to spread to countries not prepared to deal with the contagion.
Concerning the person-to-person transmission case in America, the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said that the US’ latest case involved the husband of a woman in Chicago, Illinois, who was found to have the illness on January 21, following a trip to the Chinese city of Wuhan, the epicentre of the outbreak.
In the press conference, WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said there had been a total of eight cases of human-to-human transmission outside of China, with instances recorded in Japan, the US, Vietnam and Germany. Outside of China, a total of 98 people across 18 countries have been infected by the coronavirus.