The first person to test positive for coronavirus in New York City arrived there following a visit to Iran last week, the New York Post reported on Monday.
Gov. Andrew Cuomo said the patient is a 39-year-old healthcare worker who attempted to avoid contaminating others by acting in a "textbook way."
The woman was aware that she was a potential risk as she flew home from Iran, which has a high rate of coronavirus cases. Due to this concern, she did not take public transportation from the airport to her home to Manhattan, instead using a car service with her husband, who joined her on the trip to the Middle Eastern country.
During a press conference with New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio Monday, Cuomo said the woman is self-quarantined at home.
"We don't believe she was contagious on the plane or in the private car that took them from the airport to her residence," he said. As a precaution, authorities are in touch with other people from the couple's flight and the driver of the car service.
The woman's husband is also under self-isolation and is being tested for the illness.
Cuomo acknowledged that New York "will have more cases, we will have community spread. That is inevitable." He cautioned that there's no need to panic, CNN reported.
"You can't let the fear outpace reality," he said. "Put this in perspective. This is not the first time we've dealt with this situation. We had H1N1, we had the swine flu, we had the avian flu, we went through Ebola, we went through MERS, we went through SARS."
Brian Freeman ✉
Brian Freeman, a Newsmax writer based in Israel, has more than three decades writing and editing about culture and politics for newspapers, online and television.
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