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The Florida Department of Health declined Tuesday to provide further details on the case of a woman with coronavirus in Hillsborough County who flew through Tampa International Airport.

"I can’t comment on ongoing epidemiological investigations,” said spokesman Alberto Moscoso.

Among the unknowns are: what flight the woman arrived on, when she flew and whether fellow passengers have been notified. The woman is in her 20s, state officials said. The lack of information has added to uncertainty about the disease’s impact locally.

Meanwhile, Gov. Ron DeSantis said Tuesday that the woman’s sister has tested positive for coronavirus. The state is awaiting confirmation of those results from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Later in the day, Fox13 aired a report of an interview with a woman who said she is the coronavirus patient in Hillsborough County. They described the second woman with a positive test as her friend, not sister, and said the Hillsborough woman recounted feeling ill on her way back from a trip to northern Italy, calling the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to report her symptoms, which included a fever. The woman told the news channel that federal officials cleared her to fly to Tampa despite her travel history. Northern Italy is the site of a coronavirus outbreak.

The discrepancies between the television report and official statements from Florida’s health leaders added another layer of confusion.

Emily Nipps, spokeswoman for Tampa International Airport, said officials there had not received any new information from the Florida Department of Health on the woman involved in the new positive test by mid-afternoon Tuesday. It remains unclear if that woman also flew through the airport. Tampa International does not have direct flights from Italy.

Nipps said workers are sanitizing hot spots like elevator buttons and handrails at the airport every shift.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention referred questions about the first woman’s travel to the state health department.

Three people in Florida have tested positive for coronavirus to date, officials said. Most information is coming from the Department of Health or governor’s office, with community partners and doctors often saying they have been told to direct inquiries up the chain.

Public communication during an outbreak is a critical responsibility of the government, said Josh Michaud, associate director of global health policy for Kaiser Family Foundation.

“If you have multiple different messages going on … then you have a situation that makes things more confusing for the public and could hinder the response to the outbreak,” he said.

“The charitable interpretation is they are figuring it out and want to get the story right, and that when they make a public statement about the incident, they know what they are talking about.”

Initially, Florida Surgeon General Scott Rivkees said last week the state would not even disclose numbers of how many people were tested for coronavirus in Florida. That determination was apparently based on a rule in the state administrative code, which said the Surgeon General could determine how much information to release on epidemiological investigations based on a number of criteria, including whether there was a chance of a future outbreak.

Since then, the state has begun to release more detailed information on its response to coronavirus. As of Tuesday afternoon, 16 test results were pending and 24 tests had been returned negative.

Once a possible exposure has been reported to a health department, it’s up to those health officials to decide who they tell about it, said Erin Smith Aebel, an attorney with the Shumaker, Loop & Kendrick law firm in Tampa who specializes in health care law.

“A health investigation is considered confidential,” she said. “So the health department can share information to other passengers or they can choose not to, depending on what they feel they must do to protect the public. You don’t have a right to know what or who you were exposed to just because you were a passenger on a plane. There is no legal requirement to tell you."

At the very least, health officials should be contacting passengers on the woman’s flight, said Ken Qualls, a Boca Raton-based aviation consultant.

“To say which airline and which route to protect the other passengers, I think it would be a humanitarian obligation to do that,” he said.

The CDC and airline companies have recently argued over how to keep detailed information about passengers who may have been exposed to someone with coronavirus, according to a Washington Post report on Monday.

Planes use recycled air, Qualls said, meaning that everyone in the cabin could have been exposed to germs if the woman was sick while she flew. Further, he said, many planes receive only a cursory cleaning before passengers board for the next trip, given the tight time schedule of airports.

Michael Boyd, another airline consultant, said it might be nearly impossible to track all the people the woman could have come into contact with at an airport.

“How do you notify people? She went to Chili’s for lunch. How do you know who else was there? Then she went shopping at a newsstand. ... There’s no way of tracking that,” he said.

But Boyd said people should not be overly concerned about flying.

"Remember, just being next to someone doesn’t mean you’re going to get it. Somebody’s got to sneeze, somebody’s got to put something on the surface,” he said. “You’ve got a clean, professionally run airport. You can’t get any better than that.”

He recommended airline passengers bring wipes to sanitize surfaces like seat trays and belt buckles after they board.

Times political editor Steve Contorno and staff writer Kavitha Surana contributed to this report.

Tampa Bay Times coronavirus guide

Q&A: What you need to know after Florida’s first positive coronavirus cases.

PROTECT YOURSELF: Household cleaners can kill the virus on most surfaces, including your phone screen.

BE PREPARED: Guidelines for essentials to keep in your home should you have to stay inside.

FACE MASKS: They offer some protection, but studies debate their effectiveness.

WORKPLACE RISK: A list of five things employers could be doing to help curb the spread of the disease.

READER BEWARE: Look out for bad information as false claims are spreading online.

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