A woman infected with coronavirus walked into a Westchester County hospital’s emergency room over the weekend, triggering a series of measures intended to limit the spread of COVID-19, a doctor said.

The woman showed up at Phelps Hospital’s ER in Sleepy Hollow on Saturday afternoon, despite health officials urging people with COVID-19 symptoms to call ahead to allow for heightened infectious-disease precautions.

She was greeted at the emergency room’s front door by a nurse assigned to screen people entering the facility, according to Dr. Barry Geller, the emergency department director.

The screening involves placing a surgical mask on each patient, and then asking them about symptoms and travel history to identify those at risk for the deadly respiratory disease, COVID-19, spreading across the U.S. and globe.

The woman was immediately identified as a potential COVID-19 case and moved into one of the ER’s negative-pressure isolation rooms, which restrict air flow to prevent contamination of other areas of the hospital, Geller said.

After conducting tests to rule out other diseases, Phelps sent a sample from the woman to its parent organization Northwell Health’s lab on Long Island, for COVID-19 testing that later returned positive.

She was in stable condition at Phelps Hospital as of Monday evening. She is in her 50s and lives in Westchester, according to Geller.

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The woman had not traveled to any countries with surges in COVID-19 cases, such as China, South Korea, Italy, Iran and Japan, suggesting she contracted the virus locally.

She also didn’t have any known connection to a cluster of dozens of cases linked to a lawyer in New Rochelle, mostly in an Orthodox Jewish community.

The Phelps Hospital case underscored the risks faced by health care workers on the front lines of the COVID-19 battle, including a Westmed Medical Group worker in White Plains who tested positive for coronavirus Sunday.

Further, a doctor at Maple Medical in White Plains last week joined the growing list of confirmed coronavirus cases, as well as one worker from Lawrence Hospital in Bronxville, where the New Rochelle attorney was initially treated late last month.

Geller described the Westchester woman’s case as the first real-life test of Phelps’ coronavirus preparedness training in recent weeks, including the heightened awareness as the number of cases mounted in Westchester, hitting 98 on Monday.

“Everyone has been apprehensive about the public-health implications of COVID-19, and we’ve been preparing the staff for a long period of time for the eventuality of taking care of patients with COVID-19,” Geller said.

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“There is a certain sense of relief that we did have our first case and that we were able to handle it well, and that we protected our staff,” he added.

None of the Phelps workers have been placed on quarantine in connection to the case, Geller said, adding he wasn’t aware of any other patients who were potentially exposed during the brief time when the woman first entered the ER.

“We try very hard to bring the patient in immediately,” he said, referring to moving them from the front door to the isolation room.

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During the woman’s treatment at Phelps, Geller said other protocols included placing signage outside her isolation room “to make sure that everybody was aware that if they were to enter that they were to wear the correct protective equipment.”

The protective gear for COVID-19 included gloves, medical grade masks, a gown and covering for the eyes, Geller said, citing Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines.

Geller declined to discuss specifics of the woman’s movements before she arrived at Phelps Hospital on Saturday, citing privacy concerns.

He noted the symptoms were acute and not “something that had been going on for a long time.”

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David Robinson is the state health care reporter for the USA TODAY Network New York. He can be reached atdrobinson@gannett.com and followed on Twitter:@DrobinsonLoHud