Update: A woman hospitalized in northwest Indiana after developing symptoms associated with the Wuhan coronavirus has tested negative, local health officials said.

Earlier: A woman visiting northwest Indiana from China has been hospitalized and is being tested for the Wuhan coronavirus, local health officials say.

The person was in Porter County for a short time before she developed symptoms and went to the hospital, Letty Zepeda, administrator of the Porter County Health Department, told the IndyStar.

“It hasn’t been confirmed,” Zepeda said. “It could be just flu. ... Everyone seems to be afraid of coronavirus when it’s the influenza that has been a bigger issue in our country.”

The patient, who lives in the Chinese city of Wuhan, where the virus is thought to have originated, was placed in isolation at the hospital out of an abundance of caution.

For now, only the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention conduct the tests that can confirm or rule out a coronavirus diagnosis. Within the next two weeks the CDC plans to make the test available to local health officials. Until that time local health officials will ship samples to a federal lab.

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First identified late last year, the virus has now sickened 6,065 people globally in 16 countries, including China, according to the World Health Organization.

All but 68 of the confirmed cases have been in China, where 132 people have died from the virus.

The novel virus, thought to have made the leap to humans from an animal, causes fever, cough and shortness of breath.

Five people in four U.S. states have tested positive for the virus. As of Wednesday, the CDC was testing 165 people in 36 states. Of those, 68 tests had come back negative and 92 were pending.

On Monday, Dr. Nancy Messonnier, director of CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Disease, said at a press briefing that test results should come back relatively rapidly once a patient is tested.

“The time lag between ... the decision that a patient needs further laboratory testing and a result is somewhere around a day, depending on where that patient is being seen and how we can most efficiently ship it,” she said, according to a transcript of the briefing.

Zepeda said federal health officials have said it will take between 24 to 48 hours to receive the results of the test of the Porter County patient. The patient was feeling better on Wednesday, she said.

The health department will wait to get the test results from the CDC before doing a complete investigation into where the patient went while in Porter County.

Contact IndyStar reporter Shari Rudavsky at 317-444-6354 or shari.rudavsky@indystar.com. Follow her on Facebook and on Twitter: @srudavsky.