2nd Southern Nevada coronavirus patient is a woman

The second Clark County resident to test positive for the new coronavirus is a woman in her 70s who is in isolation at an undisclosed hospital, the Southern Nevada Health District said Monday.

“The patient is reporting in-state travel prior to developing symptoms,” according to a news release from the district. A district spokeswoman said she could provide no further information on the patient, including how she might have contracted the disease.

Meanwhile, some of the VA Medical Center staffers who treated the first Clark County resident to test positive for the virus have been placed under home quarantine.

The hospital has “used infectious disease protocols to keep the patient in isolation since his arrival at the North Las Vegas VA Medical Center and throughout his stay,” spokesman Chuck Ramey said about the unidentified military veteran in his 50s, who, according to the health district, remains hospitalized in serious condition

However, out of an “abundance of caution” and in consultation with the health district, “some staff members who attended to the patient and may have been potentially exposed to COVID-19 prior to testing” have been placed under self-quarantine by VA health system leadership, Ramey said in a statement.

Although Ramey did not disclose the length of the quarantine, public health authorities typically are requiring a period of 14 days, the outside limit on the incubation period for the virus.

Ramey declined to say how many staff members were under home quarantine. A source familiar with the situation knew of at least four.

Health district notified

A list of the quarantined individuals was provided to Southern Nevada Health District authorities “so they could contact each individual, assess their risk of exposure and provide follow-on instructions,” Ramey said.

In connection with the case involving the female patient, “two individuals have been identified as close contacts of this individual and are being asked to self-quarantine for 14 days,” the health district said.

Two cases of COVID-19 also have been reported in Washoe County, Northern Nevada’s largest county, bringing the state total to four. All the cases are presumed to be positive pending confirmation by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Health district spokeswoman Jennifer Sizemore said that because of the volume of testing, confirmation by the CDC might be further delayed, but she added that the test is highly accurate. The health district initially said that confirmation was expected within 48 hours after the first case in Nevada was announced.

Washoe County had no new COVID-19 infections to report Monday after the testing of people connected to the two cases there came back negative, officials said.

In a briefing, Washoe County Health District Officer Kevin Dick also said the county had requested $4.4 million from the federal government to help with its response to the coronavirus outbreak, a figure he called “aspirational.”

“I don’t expect that we’ll get that much funding, but that was for looking at what potentially could unfold from this and not what we’re seeing now in our community,” he said.

The funds would come from the $8.3 billion in federal aid approved in Washington, D.C., last week, $950 million of which is earmarked for local and state governments.

No ‘local transmission’

Dick said the county had tested several individuals, some of whom showed symptoms of illness, but all results came back negative for COVID-19. Those tested will remain in self-isolation for the required full 14-day period from time of last contact with one of the two known Reno-area cases, he said.

“But it’s a relief to know that the symptoms that we did see in those cases are not COVID-19, so we don’t have any local transmission that we’ve identified,” he added.

The two unidentified men who tested positive, one in his 50s and the other in his 30s, remain at home in self-isolation. The older man was a passenger on a cruise ship where 21 cases of the virus have been identified; the younger was diagnosed Saturday after visiting an area hospital following a trip to Santa Clara, California.

Huffaker Elementary School in Reno, which closed on Friday as a precaution, was open again Monday. Relatives of the older COVID-19 patient attend the school, the health department has said.

Contact Mary Hynes at mhynes@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0336. Follow @MaryHynes1 on Twitter. Review-Journal staff writers Bill Dentzer and Blake Apgar contributed to this report.