After weeks of negative test results, novel coronavirus made a sudden appearance in San Diego County Monday evening, with public health officials announcing the region’s first positive COVID-19 test at 7 p.m.

Dr. Wilma Wooten, the county’s public health officer, announced that a woman in her 50s, who traveled abroad about two weeks ago, tested positive after a local hospital admitted her with serious symptoms including fever and respiratory difficulties. Her infection, for the moment, is considered “probable” because it has not yet been confirmed by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“This San Diego County resident is hospitalized and doing well,” Wooten said, declining to say which hospital is caring for the patient or where in the county she resides.

Officials also declined to say Monday night exactly which country the woman traveled from, though they did confirm that she had not been under two-week home quarantine after coming home.


That narrowed the possibilities down a bit, as only those returning from China have so far been required by recommendation of the CDC to stay home for 14 days. Travelers returning from Italy, South Korea and Iran had not been required to undergo the same process, though the CDC indicated over the weekend that quarantines for repatriates from those additional countries where COVID outbreaks are underway will soon be recommended.

Monday night, Wooten said that, so far, local health officials have begun to be notified of the names of repatriates from only one nation.

“In addition to travelers from China, we are now receiving names of individuals that are traveling from Iran,” Wooten said. “We have not yet begun to get names of people that are traveling from South Korea or Italy or Japan.”

There is an important distinction to make between cases such as those in Washington state and San Diego County’s first case.


As yet, officials stressed over and over again Monday night, there have been no cases detected in which novel coronavirus has moved from person to person in the community. So far, only those who have traveled to places where outbreaks are ongoing have gotten sick.

Public health investigators with the county Health and Human Services Agency are working to map out all of the people that the infected patient came in contact with after returning home, said Dr. Eric McDonald, medical director of the county’s epidemiology and immunization services branch. So far, McDonald said, the list has been small, with a person living with the patient now under home quarantine and several other health care workers also popping up in the contact-tracing investigation.

“We are in the process of investigating that further,” McDonald said. “It appears that there is no general public contact at this time.”

McDonald said that the patient tested positive only after being admitted to a local hospital with severe respiratory symptoms. He also said that the woman had been back in the country for more than two weeks.


On first blush, that might seem to indicate that the woman got sick outside of the two-week period that the CDC recommends for quarantine. But McDonald indicated that though the region’s first COVID-19 case was not tested until after she was hospitalized, and that hospitalization came more than two weeks after she returned from abroad, her symptoms started before she checked into the hospital and got tested.

Dr. Nick Yphantides, the county’s chief medical officer, added that there have been positive developments around getting more people in the community tested more quickly after they develop possible symptoms. Soon, he said, labs run by local health care providers, and some commercial labs capable of handling large volumes of collected samples, will be able to chip in.

“We are on the precipice now of going beyond just the county laboratory testing capacity,” Yphantides said.

