Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo on Sunday confirmed New York State’s first case of the coronavirus, saying that a woman contracted the virus while traveling in Iran and is now in New York City isolated in her home.
“The patient has respiratory symptoms, but is not in serious condition and has been in a controlled situation since arriving to New York,” Governor Cuomo said in a statement.
The woman, who is in her late 30s, is in Manhattan, according to state officials. She returned from Iran last week, and was tested after going to a hospital in the city; she has since been staying at home, officials said.
The sample submitted for testing was analyzed on Sunday in the Wadsworth Lab in Albany, N.Y. Those results will now be reviewed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta.
New York City’s Health Commissioner, Oxiris Barbot, said the agency had already identified “close contacts of the patient” who may have been exposed to the virus, officially known as Covid-19.
“Our disease detectives have already identified close contacts of the patient, who may have been exposed, and will take appropriate measures to prevent the spread of Covid-19,” Dr. Barbot said. “Despite this development, New Yorkers remain at low risk for contracting Covid-19.”
Still the news that the coronavirus had landed in Manhattan was sure to raise the level of anxiety across this dense city, where people spend their days in close quarters. For weeks, the city has been bracing for the virus’s arrival, as it spread across much of the world.
By this weekend, many stores in the city had run out of sanitary supplies such as hand sanitizer, masks and antibacterial wipes.
“We are trying to get some products from Amazon but so far they are back ordered as well, or prices are ridiculously expensive,” Aleksandr Abdurakhmanov, the supervising pharmacist and owner of Chelsea Royal Care Pharmacy in Manhattan, said on Sunday afternoon.
More than 70 people in the United States have been confirmed through laboratory testing to have the new coronavirus. Many had been passengers on a cruise ship ravaged by the virus or had been infected in China and then returned to the United States.
But there have also been several confirmed cases of person-to-person spread in the United States. And researchers say that in Washington State the virus may have been spreading for weeks, largely undetected, and that hundreds of people may have possibly been infected. Two people in Washington have died after falling ill with the new coronavirus.
The new virus is believed to have originated in the Chinese city of Wuhan late last year before spreading tomore than 50 other countries. More than 86,000 people have been infected, and more than 2,800 have died. New hubs of transmission have emerged in Italy, South Korea and Iran.
Iran, the epicenter of the outbreak in the Middle East, has officially confirmed 987 cases, state news media reported.
New York officials have said for weeks that it was inevitable that the virus would show up in the city.
In a statement issued late on Sunday, Mayor Bill de Blasio said the city’s health officials had “been in a state of high alert for weeks, and are fully prepared to respond.”
Little is known about the woman other than the fact she was one of two people who the city’s Health Department said on Sunday afternoon was being tested for the virus.
Earlier on Sunday The New York Post reported that Mayor de Blasio had said that the two people who had been tested were a couple who had recently been to Iran, and that the city was awaiting results. The other person’s results have not yet been announced.
Over the last month, there have been obstacles to widespread testing that may have delayed the ability to detect cases. Until this weekend, New York State health authorities could not test patients locally and had to send samples to the C.D.C. Because of the C.D.C.’s narrow parameters on who was eligible for testing, the number of people tested was quite limited.
Over the previous month, only nine people in New York City had samples sent to the C.D.C. for testing — all were found not to have the virus. But testing procedures changed over the weekend, when the Wadsworth Lab in Albany began administering coronavirus tests after receiving permission from the federal government.
In addition to faster turnaround, health authorities now have the ability to test more broadly should they choose.
“We’re closely watching as the situation evolves, and as we brace for the possibility for community transmission here in New York City,” a spokesman for New York City’s Health Department, Patrick Gallahue, said. “And if a change is criteria is needed, we’ll seek it.”
The authorities in New York have said they are prepared for the arrival of the virus. In New York City, some 1,200 hospital beds could be made available to coronavirus patients without interfering with anyone else’s medical care, Mayor de Blasio has said.
Coronaviruses have been behind other dangerous outbreaks in recent decades: SARS in 2002-03 and Middle East Respiratory Syndrome, or MERS, which was first reported in 2012.
New York had a close call with SARS. A doctor in Singapore who had been infected with SARS while treating patients flew to New York City in 2003 for a conference. He grew increasingly ill while in New York, eventually cutting short his trip and boarding a flight for home.
The new coronavirus appears to be less lethal than SARS or MERS, but it is spreading more quickly.
The symptoms of the new coronavirus can include fever, cough and shortness of breath, according to the C.D.C. While the illness is mild in some patients, others have pneumonia and respiratory failure.
Katie Van Syckle contributed reporting.
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