Coronavirus has come to Tennessee.
Gov. Bill Lee announced Thursday morning that the first case of coronavirus has been detected in Tennessee. Lee said coronavirus was “very serious,” but urged residents to keep the virus “in perspective” and not "overreact" since most cases are mild.
“As we’ve seen this week in Tennessee, preparedness is critical, and I have full confidence in the preparedness plan we have put in place,” Lee said.
The infected patient is a 44-year-old adult man and resident of Williamson County who recently traveled to an unidentified U.S. state. He is quarantined at home with mild symptoms while the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention confirm his infection with more tests, state officials said.
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Officials said the man's infection was discovered within days of him returning to Tennessee, and they are currently compiling a list of people whom he had contact with in the state. The patient's timeline actions to his own illness may have limited the spread of the virus, said Dr. Mary Margaret-Fill, an epidemiologist for the state.
"Fortunately, this person returned from their out-of-state travel and became ill and, as we often encourage people with any type of respiratory illness, they began to self-isolate at that time,” Margaret-Fill said. “So the duration from when they became ill until we knew the results was short, within a matter of days. But their activity outside of their home was very limited."
Officials said they had not yet pinpointed the source of the patient's infection. State Sen. Jack Johnson, R-Franklin, said he was told by state officials the man had attended an out of state conference, but provided no other details.
Coronavirus, or COVID-19, is a fast-spreading virus that originated in Wuhan, China, but has since become a worldwide epidemic. As of Thursday, the virus had infected about 93,000 people and killed 3,200, according to the World Health Organization. In the United States, the virus had spread to at least a dozen states and deaths have occurred in California and Washington state.
The first case in Tennessee comes less than a week after medical experts said the spread was all be inevitable, and only one day after the governor formed a new coronavirus task force, which was immediately followed by a state lawmaker downplaying the severity of coronavirus, equating it with the flu.
The presence of the virus throws an additional hurdle at state officials who are still grappling with the aftermath of a tornadoes that ripped across Middle Tennessee on Tuesday, killing at least 25 people and hospitalizing another 150.
"People are suffering, just beginning to recover," Lee said. "Tens of thousands of people dealing with the effects of the tornadoes. And now this news about the coronavirus. But I think the thing we need to remind is that preparedness is how we deal with situations like this."
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As the first coronavirus case was announced at a news conference on Thursday morning, State Health Commissioner Lisa Piercey stressed that Tennessee was one of the first states to begin coronavirus testing.
Piercey said the state had tested multiple other resident for coronavirus, but none had tested positive until the Williamson County man did so on Wednesday.
Piercey and other state health officials would not say how many test kits the government had on hand. She said the state had a limited capacity of test materials, but they should be “plenty for now.”
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Medical experts, including the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention, have urged the public to take commonplace precautions similar to how they would prevent the spread of flu: Wash your hands, avoid touching your face as much as possible and stay home if you feel sick. Officials have advised that members of the public do not need to wear face masks or protective gear during everyday life.
At least some of infections in the U.S. have been detected in people with no known connection to international travel, so it remains unclear how the virus was contracted.
Schaffner, a professor of preventive medicine at Vanderbilt, said Monday described these cases, with no clear origin, as a turning point in the spread of the virus.
“Before, this was something interesting and threatening and novel and exotic, but it was out there, it wasn’t here,” Schaffner said. “But with the advent of community associated cases, that has changed things. All the sudden it might be right here, and we don’t’ know about it yet.”
Brett Kelman is the health care reporter for The Tennessean. He can be reached at 615-259-8287 or at brett.kelman@tennessean.com. Follow him on Twitter at @brettkelman.
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Coronavirus case detected in Tennessee: First patient is quarantined in Williamson County - Tennessean
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