The wife of a man who is being treated for coronavirus at Northwest Community Hospital in Arlington Heights also has tested positive for the virus, marking the fourth case of the virus in the state, health officials announced Monday morning.
The announcement came soon after other new developments on coronavirus in Illinois. Earlier, hospital officials confirmed the male patient, whose diagnosis marked the state’s third case of coronavirus, was being treated at the northwest suburban hospital. And a nearby school district told parents two staffers and their two children were staying home because of the family’s babysitter’s exposure to a person who treated someone with coronavirus. The fourth patient, a woman in her 70s, is the spouse of the third patient, a man in his 70s who has tested positive, Illinois and Cook County health officials said in a news release.
The woman “is quarantined at home and is complying with health officials. Both cases are reported to be in good condition,” according to the news release.
In a Monday afternoon news conference at Northwest Community Hospital, Dr. Daniel Reaven, director of the emergency department, said the patient who was admitted to the hospital had a preliminary positive test for the coronavirus COVID-19, and officials expected to receive the results of an official CDC confirmation test later Monday.
The patient was in isolation and all staff who have had contact with him are being tested and monitored. An emergency command center has been set up at the hospital as a base for U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and state health officials.
“The patient is doing very well,” he said. Citing health privacy, he refused to disclose additional information.
The hospital earlier issued a statement saying it is following all associated protocol, including examining who the patient may have had contact with and treating the patient in isolation.
The hospital statement said the state is requesting assistance from a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention team.
“The positive test results will have to be confirmed by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention,” state and county officials said in the news release.
The hospital “is closely following recommended guidelines outlined by these officials. At the moment we are implementing all associated protocols, including an exposure investigation, to identify those who might have had contact with this patient in order to treat them accordingly. Along with this patient, our top priority will remain to keep our staff and community safe at all times,” the statement said in part.
An Illinois Department of Health spokeswoman said Sunday the agency does not reveal identifying characteristics of patients, such as gender or age.
“The tests conducted in Illinois resulted in presumptive positives for COVID-19. The positive test results will have to be confirmed by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention … lab,” the hospital said. “The patient is hospitalized in isolation and CDC protocols have been implemented.”
In-state testing allows doctors to receive results within 24 hours. In a news briefing Friday, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced plans to have every state and local health department able to test for coronavirus by the end of this week.
The superintendent of Arlington Heights School District 25 sent parents and staff a “proactive” notice Sunday saying four people, two adults who work at district schools and their two children who are students, will be staying home because of possible exposure to someone related to a person who works at a hospital who might have worked with a coronavirus patient. She said she was sharing the news, “out of an abundance of caution.”
District 25 Superintendent Lori Bein said the family members work at or attend Dryden, Ivy Hill, Greenbrier, and Olive Mary Stitt elementary schools. She said the family was contacted this weekend by a babysitter they had employed. The letter doesn’t specify if the exposure involved the patient at Northwest Community Hospital or one of the two other cases of coronavirus in Illinois, a couple who were hospitalized at St. Alexius Medical Center in Hoffman Estates.
“A member of the babysitter’s family, a hospital employee, was exposed to a patient diagnosed with coronavirus. None of these people have any symptoms currently. Our employees/students will stay home and self-monitor their symptoms, and they have been in contact with their physicians,” Bein wrote.
She said the Cook County Department of Public Health advised her the district need not make any changes as a result of the possible exposure. She encouraged people to use common-sense measures, such as regular hand-washing, taking care to cover a cough, and not sharing food, drinks, or utensils.
She said anyone who is sick should be sure to wait, “until at least 24 hours after there is no longer a fever or signs of a fever (without the use of fever-reducing medications).”
As of Monday morning, 16 people in the U.S. had confirmed cases of coronavirus, and another 27 people, such as the one at Northwest Community Hospital, had tested positive for the virus by their local health departments and were waiting on testing by the CDC to confirm those results. Another 45 people who had been repatriated to the U.S. had also tested positive for the illness. Two people have died from it in Washington.
As of Sunday, more than 87,000 people worldwide had contracted the virus, and nearly 3,000 people had died, according to the World Health Organization.
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