WHEELING, W.Va. — Health officials in Ohio County say the risk to the public in regard to two residents being monitored for the 2019 Novel Coronavirus (2019-nCoV) is “extremely low.”
The Wheeling Ohio-County Health Department, in conjunction with Ohio County Schools, notified the public of the monitoring after two residents recently returned from China and one of those two had spent several hours at a local elementary school.
“A child, after spending three hours at school, needed to be removed from school because of the travel history and other conditions. As a result, we put the press release out there to notify what was going on,” Howard Gamble, the Administrator of Wheeling-Ohio County Health Department told MetroNews.
Gamble said that if the child had not attended school that morning, no one other than first responders would know the individual and their mother would even be self-quarantined at home.
The student was not sick and had no signs of symptoms but the action was taken out of an abundance of caution in relation to the recently released federal guidance concerning monitoring U.S. citizens who have recently returned from China.
Gamble ensured the mother did pick the child up from school (the school could not be identified) but did not go inside. The student leaving the building was in coordination with local and state health officials.
“It is about trying to protect the public from a possibility of a case because a case can come into our state very quickly. There is a transit population where we can go worldwide quickly,” Gamble said.
The pair are now both being monitored for the next 13 days by the Wheeling-Ohio County Health Department. At this time neither resident is considered a case of 2019-nCoV and no testing has been done.
“We check on them at least once a day, if not twice like we did Monday,” Gamble said. “You go through signs and symptoms, any other issues, a quick hit medical history so that we can check on them each day to make sure.
“The last thing you want is individuals who have a travel history as it has been adjusted by the feds and begin to show signs and symptoms and go out into the public. That’s why a child needed to go home.”
Gamble said the reason self-quarantines are never heard of by the public is that individuals in most cases from traveling are told as they arrive at the airport. He said with how fluid the 2019-nCoV situation is, the two individuals being monitored were thought to be clear when they arrived home last week.
The two, who were in Hong Kong, then were notified of the need to self-quarantine once concerns in China changed from certain cities and provinces to the entire country being in danger.
“The quarantines help with the possibility, since we have a very unique virus, that if we don’t provide some sort of buffer until we can figure or have a more rapid process, that this may eliminate a possible case if more cases develop,” Gamble said.
“Something important to remember is there is not a simple testing mechanism for this.”
Gamble said the risk was low enough that the public should have more concern with the spread of the seasonal flu, norovirus, with the common cold.
The latest numbers from the Center for Disease Control (CDC) state that there have been 11 positive cases of the disease in the United States including Washington state, California, Arizona, Illinois, and Massachusetts.
There have been 167 negative cases of the disease in the United States with 82 pending, according to the CDC.
Gamble said the two individuals in Ohio County are not part of the statistics for the virus because they have not gone to a health center and been tested.
He said there could be hundreds of other cases such as the one in the county all over the country.