OHSU Hospital alerted employees over the weekend that a patient has tested as a presumptive positive for the novel coronavirus COVID-19.

Update: Gov. Kate Brown declares coronavirus state of emergency, announces 7 new Oregon cases

Erik Robinson, an OHSU spokesman, confirmed the email was sent to its 16,500 employees but could not provide any additional details about the new case.

This would make Oregon’s eighth case after news on Saturday of four more presumptive positive cases in Washington, Jackson and Klamath counties. Three earlier cases were reported in Washington and Umatilla counties.

“We are grateful to the team that has cared for this patient using appropriate precautions from the moment the patient arrived,” OHSU President Danny Jacobs said in a statement Sunday morning. He added that to protect the patient’s privacy, OHSU will not disclose where in the hospital the patient is being treated.

Gov. Kate Brown and Oregon Health Authority held a press conference Sunday morning to announce seven new cases of the novel coronavirus COVID-19. Brown also declared a state of emergency to bring additional resources to the state’s response.

The OHSU email informed employees that staff are reviewing all room logs and digital records to identify anyone who had close contact with the patient. The email said anyone who might have been exposed should expect an email from a county health department and the state.

The email also said that OHSU has been screening patients with respiratory symptoms before admission and requiring them to wear masks so “the risk of employee exposure is low.”

Robinson said OHSU officials and staff have been preparing for a potential COVID-19 case since January.

In his statement, Jacobs also added that since the outbreak, many instances of profiling and targeting among Asian members of the community have been reported.

“This discrimination, rooted in fear and misinformation, is unacceptable, contrary to our values and will not be tolerated,” Jacobs said.

Tens of thousands of people around the world have been infected with the coronavirus and the death toll has topped 3,000. In the U.S., there have been 19 deaths so far, 16 of which are in the Seattle area.

The Doernbecher Children’s Hospital emergency room was quiet Sunday morning, an SUV taking up a 20-minute parking spot while a man in a red valet jacket stood and looked out from inside the entrance.

Nadja Smith was walking down the Southwest Sam Jackson Road sidewalk in front of the hospital when she paused to let her long-haired chihuahua, Shia, smell a bush. Smith, 57, seemed unperturbed at news of the OHSU coronavirus case.

“That’s interesting,” said Smith, who lives a few blocks up the hill from OHSU. “I guess this is the place they would come. I would come here if I had it.”

Smith, who works at a grocery store, said some customers at her store have been “freaking out.” But she isn’t, she said, because she believes there’s little to nothing that can prevent the virus’s spread now.

“It might be in my apartment building,” she said.

Dr. Matthias Johannes Merkel, OHSU’s medical director of adult critical care, told The Oregonian/OregonLive in a March 2 interview that though COVID-19 is a new disease, the hospital is used to treating the types of complications that could come with it.

Merkel said the types of breathing support doctors give patients with a serious case of pneumonia range from minimally invasive, such as oxygen support through nasal tubes, to extremely invasive, such as pumping a patient’s blood through a machine that saturates the blood with oxygen and sends it back into their body.

It’s all standard treatments, Merkel said before the case was announced.

“It is not different than how we would take care of a patient who has influenza and gets critically ill,” he said.

To prevent a COVID-19 patient from spreading the disease, Merkel said that staff must wear gloves, gowns, masks and respirators, and they must keep the patient’s doors closed.

Several rooms at the hospital are set up to have negative air pressure, which means that air can only go into the room, not out to the halls where an airborne virus could spread to others.

“This is something we do every day,” Merkel said. “We are well-prepared to do this.”

-- Laura Gunderson; lgunderson@oregonian.com

503-221-8378; Twitter @lgunderson

Fedor Zarkhin contributed to this report.

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