By : fedor zarkhin
https://muckrack.com/fedor-zarkhin
Oregon still has no cases of the new coronavirus, but local officials are monitoring 76 people who don’t have symptoms of an infection but may have been exposed.
The people are being watched to see if they develop symptoms, the Oregon Health Authority said Monday. So far, the state and local agencies have finished monitoring 178 people who may have been exposed to the disease through contact with a person who was infected or through travel to China. None of them developed symptoms, according to the agency.
“We recognize people are very worried about COVID-19,” Lillian Shirley, director of the OHA Public Health Division, said in a statement referring to the name given the virus. “People need to understand their real risks and feel confident the state and their local health departments are working hard to protect their health.”
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention tells Oregon about people returning from China and Oregon then relays that information to the health departments in the counties where those people live, said health authority spokesman Jonathan Modie. The local agencies then contact the individuals and ask them to report if they have any COVID-19 symptoms, which include a fever and cough.
If a person has symptoms within two weeks of the last possible exposure to the virus, they tell the county and then get tested. Two people developed symptoms while under monitoring, Modie said, and both tested negative for coronavirus.
A total of 254 people in Oregon are either currently being monitored or have already gone through two-week monitoring. All but two of them were put on the monitoring list just because they had been to China. The other two had been to China and flew on a plane with a person infected with the coronavirus.
The agency has previously declined to release information about the number of people being monitored, citing laws on patient confidentiality and health investigations that are ongoing. The agency will update the information every Tuesday, at healthoregon.org/coronavirus.
https://www.oregonlive.com/news/2020/02/oregon-monitoring-76-people-for-coronavirus.html