A third possible case of coronavirus in Colorado has come back negative, the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment announced Tuesday.
State health officials received confirmation on the negative status of the third case from the Center for Disease Control Monday night, according to a CDPHE email. Details of this case are not known.
Tuesday’s announcement comes a day after test results came back negative for a possible Lakewood case . A patient with a history of travel to Wuhan, the Chinese city that is the center of the outbreak, was admitted into St. Anthony Hospital on Friday suffering from a respiratory illness. The hospital received results of the negative novel coronavirus test from the CDC on Sunday.
State health officials had previously been concerned with a patient in northern Colorado who had recently traveled to the same Chinese city. However, tests came back negative for the viral illness as well.
The CDPHE said they continue to believe the current health risk is low in Colorado for novel coronavirus, whose strain is called 2019-novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV).
“Though Colorado has no cases of the 2019-novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV), we’re taking it very seriously, closely monitoring the outbreak and developing Colorado’s response,” said Deanna Herbert, a spokesperson for CDPHE’s Division of Disease Control and Public Health Response.
Herbert said CDPHE was putting together teams to start working on infection control, case investigation, contact and communications plans in the event a case is confirmed in Colorado. And she said the department was “working closely with health care providers and local public health agencies across the state, sharing reporting, testing and infection control guidance.”
There are at least five confirmed cases of the 2019 novel coronavirus in the United States. The viral illness has caused more than 80 deaths in China.
