OMAHA, Neb. (AP) - A 36-year-old Omaha woman who recently traveled to the United Kingdom tested positive for COVID-19 after showing up to an emergency room 10 days after her symptoms first appeared, doctors said Friday.

During a hastily called news conference that included Nebraska Gov. Pete Ricketts, health officials said the woman was in respiratory distress when she was taken by another person to a Nebraska Methodist Hospital emergency room in Omaha on Thursday.

“She is very seriously ill,” said Dr. Robert G. Penn, an infectious disease specialist with Nebraska Methodist.

The woman was being held Friday afternoon at the hospital’s main campus and was being prepared to be transported to the Nebraska Biocontainment Unit on the University of Nebraska Medical Center campus.

Officials said she had traveled with her father to the U.K. on Feb. 18 and began to show mild symptoms Feb. 24 while she was still there. She returned to Nebraska on Feb. 27.

Penn said a chest CT scan showed tell-tale lung patterns associated with the disease, and testing for the novel coronavirus taken Thursday came back positive Friday afternoon. Doctors also believe she is suffering from a secondary bacterial infection, Penn said.

Outside of her father, doctors could not answer how many other people the woman had possibly exposed to the illness or whether she had left her home since returning from abroad. They also couldn’t say whether other people lived in her home who would have been exposed.

An epidemiology team will investigate how many people had been in contact with the woman, said Dr. Gary Anthone, chief medical officer for Nebraska.

Asked how many testing kits are currently available to the state, Ricketts did not give a number. He said instead that there is “sufficient capacity” to test people who show up at hospitals and clinics with symptoms, but not enough to test the general public.

“We’re working to expand the number of testing kits we have,” he said.

While Friday’s announcement marked the first case of a state resident contracting the new coronavirus, Omaha has been at the center of much of the outbreak coverage because the biocontainment unit and an adjacent quarantine facility have been housing people evacuated from a cruise ship in Japan. Eight of the original 15 Americans from the Diamond Princess cruise ship remain on the Nebraska Medical Center campus.

The virus has sickened more than 100,000 people worldwide with over 3,400 deaths and has spread across 90 countries. In the U.S., the number of cases surpassed 230, scattered across 18 states and more than a dozen deaths.

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The Associated Press receives support for health and science coverage from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

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