Coronavirus live updates: Fifth Houston-area case related to Egypt trip, officials say

Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo, left, and Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner, right, speak about the first two cases of coronavirus in Harris County during media conference at Houston Transtar Thursday, March 5, 2020 in Houston. One man and one woman in the unincorporated area of northwest Harris County tested positive for COVID-19, according to county officials. Both patients, and the man in Fort Bend county that tested positive for COVID-19, had traveled together to Egypt. less Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo, left, and Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner, right, speak about the first two cases of coronavirus in Harris County during media conference at Houston Transtar Thursday, March 5, ... more Photo: Melissa Phillip, Staff Photographer Photo: Melissa Phillip, Staff Photographer Image 1 of / 21 Caption Close Coronavirus live updates: Fifth Houston-area case related to Egypt trip, officials say 1 / 21 Back to Gallery

10 p.m. The City of Houston announced its first presumptive positive case of COVID-19, marking five total cases identified in the Houston area.

All five cases are part of the same group that traveled to Egypt and returned in late February. The cases now include four in Harris County, and one in Fort Bend County.

In the city's case, a man between 60 to 70 years old is experiencing "mild symptoms." He is currently self-quarantined at home. In a news release, the city said there is still no evidence of community spread.

The health department is working to identify other people potentially exposed to the virus.

"The patient knew to monitor for symptoms and quickly sought medical care when he started feeling ill," said Dr. David Persse, local health authority for the Houston Health Department. "His quick action and the response of the public health system signifies that the potential for public exposure in Houston is minimal."

9:40 p.m. Harris County health officials late Thursday announced an additional presumptive positive case of COVID-19 in the county.

There are now three confirmed cases in Harris County, along with one case in Fort Bend County. The new case involves a man between 60 and 70 years old. The man is from an unincorporated area in northwest Harris County. He is hospitalized in stable condition.

Officials said the case is related to three cases previously uncovered in Harris and Fort Bend counties. Those patients had all traveled together to Egypt before they tested positive for COVID-19 upon their return, officials said.

9:20 p.m. The Ion, the entity renovating the former Midtown Sears building into a hub for Houston's new Innovation District, has canceled plans to attend the South By Southwest technology conference in Austin over concerns about the spread of the coronavirus, its chief executive said Thursday.

Sharing a Houston Chronicle column calling for the cancellation of SXSW on Facebook, Ion CEO Gabriella Rowe cited the safety of her staff and startups who might visit the Ion at the conference. Rowe also said in the post that the Capital Factory, the Austin-based accelerator that recently acquired Station Houston, had also decided to pull out of SXSW.

In a statement on the Austin Startups website, CEO Josh Baer said that his company was canceling a "Capital Factory House" at the event "out of an abundance of caution."

8:50 p.m. The Houston Independent School District is suspending perfect attendance guidelines for all students this year amid the new coronavirus outbreak, according to a statement from the district.

Perfect attendance for the 2019-20 school year will be recognized through March 6, 2020, the district announced. For high school students, attendance criteria for final exam exemptions will be suspended for Spring 2020, the district said.

The district has not detected any positive cases of COVID-19 among students and staff.

"Staff and students returning from countries identified in the CDC’s travel warnings should notify their campus and self-quarantine at home for a period of 14 days, returning only when symptom-free," the district said. "Absences for these students will be marked excused. Staff members who self-quarantine will need to follow normal absence-reporting procedures."

7:30 p.m. University of Houston students are being reminded about contingency plans should the campus close in an emergency.

Blackboard, the website used by UH students for their homework and grades, on Wednesday sent out an alert, "Academic Continuity in the Event of an Extended Emergency." It contained instructions on how classes would move to an online format if the campus should close.

The alert did not mention the new coronavirus.

“It’s the university’s responsibility to have continuity plans in place for all aspects of operations,” said Mike Rosen, Associate Vice Chancellor/Associate Vice President for Strategic Communications at UH. “This type of planning becomes deployable in any number of situations. No way to tell right now whether we would have to activate for COVID-19 but we’re in the business of preparedness.”

“With that, regarding COVID-19, we are closely monitoring, proactively planning, providing updates to our community and working closely with state and local agencies,” he added.

6:30 p.m. Rice University officials say 14 doctoral students, faculty and staff are in self-quarantine away from the university campus because of direct contact with the employee who tested positive for COVID-19.

The employee is one of two confirmed cases of COVID-19 in Harris County. A third case has been reported in Fort Bend County. All three patients traveled together to Egypt and returned in late February, Harris County health officials said. The trip was not related to the university, according to a spokesman.

The university said all of its self-quarantined students, faculty and staff have been notified of the positive test. None have reported symptoms.

Rice officials said university police learned of the case on Feb. 29 and took immediate action. The staff member has had no direct contact with undergraduate students, classrooms or residential colleges since the employee’s return to Houston on Feb. 20, according to a university investigation.

University officials said it has no plans to suspend campus operations or classes.

Rice University is, however, suspending all university-sponsored student travel and spring break trips to foreign countries until the CDC lifts travel restrictions related to new coronavirus. They also canceled sponsored travel for faculty to countries listed on the CDC’s restricted travel list and created a travel registry that requires all students, faculty and staff who have gone outside the United States to document their international travel.

5:40 p.m. During a news conference Thursday, Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo said the three patients diagnosed with the new coronavirus in both Harris and Fort Bend counties had traveled together to Egypt.

She said one of the two Harris County residents diagnosed with the new coronavirus is an employee at Rice University. The Harris County patients, between 60 and 70 years old, are currently in local hospitals in stable condition, she said.

Dr. Umair Shah, Harris County Public Health Executive Director, said his team is thoroughly investigating who all three patients may have contacted upon their return in late February. He emphasized that the patients were exposed overseas and not Harris County.

"We are in the process of doing all the contract tracing..identifying any point in time where these three individuals went from non-symptomatic to actually having symptoms and determining who those individuals came into contact with," Shah said.

Hidalgo said it's still unclear how many people were on the trip to Egypt. Investigators have received different answers during interviews, she said.

2:50 p.m.: Local officials have confirmed two cases of the new coronavirus in Harris County.

Officials said the two cases, confirmed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, are travel-related and there is not evidence of community spread. The patients are a man and woman living in unincorporated northwest Harris County.

Harris County officials emphasized that more than 80 percent of people who have contracted COVID-19 worldwide have experienced mild to moderate symptoms and will fully recover.

“People at higher risk for serious complications are the elderly and those with underlying health conditions,” the county statement said.

Dr. Umair Shah, Harris County Public Health Executive Director, added that the local health authority has been preparing for a positive case in Harris County since January.

2:30 p.m.: Six sites in Texas — Houston, Austin, Dallas, El Paso, Lubbock and Fort Worth — are now able to test for the new coronavirus, Gov. Greg Abbott said at an afternoon press conference.

The state’s lab response network will be fully online by the end of the month.

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Abbott says Texas’ laboratory network is online today and ready to perform tests at the DSHS site in Austin and labs in Houston, Dallas, El Paso, Lubbock and Ft. Worth. Remaining will be online by end of this month. — Taylor Goldenstein (@taygoldenstein) March 5, 2020

New students hoping to enroll in Fort Bend or Pearland ISDs will go through a screening process, in which a school nurse will ask a series of questions. New students will not be allowed to attend classes until they are cleared by the nurse and public health officials, district officials wrote.

Multiple school districts have created websites dedicated to their evolving responses to the new coronavirus.

1:20 p.m.: Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo said that public health officials are testing “other cases” and urged residents to continue taking precautions after a 70-year-old Fort Bend County man tested positive for coronavirus.

“Right now, we know the origins of this one case,” Hidalgo said. “We have other cases we are testing. Eventually, the reality of it is one of them is going to come back positive at some point.”

There have been no confirmed cases yet in Harris County, Hidalgo said.

Local authorities have a limited ability to process tests for coronavirus, said Dr. David Persse of the Houston Health Department. He asked health professionals to refrain from testing residents without a legitimate reason to believe they could have contracted the disease.

At Ocean Palace in Asiatown, city leaders gathered for a lunch meeting with Mayor Sylvester Turner and Fire Chief Sam Peña.

Peña said the man diagnosed in Fort Bend was traveling with two others when he was exposed to the virus. He said it was his understanding that the companions are self-quarantining.

City Councilwoman Tiffany Thomas, state Rep. Gene Wu, Public Safety Director George Buenik and several department heads also attended the lunch.

At the restaurant, Turner took his personal bottle of sanitizer and said he does not go anywhere without it. He shared some with Peña and Buenik before they dug into their dim sum.

1 p.m.: Pearland ISD will adjust its attendance policy after a Fort Bend County resident was diagnosed with the coronavirus.

The district will “suspend perfect attendance rules” for the rest of the school year and “exam exemption criteria related to attendance” for spring tests, Superintendent John P. Kelly said. That means if students need to be exempt from a spring exam, they can be.

Most of Pearland is in Brazoria County, with parts in Harris and Fort Bend counties. No school districts in Fort Bend or Pearland ISD have canceled classes or suspended operations.

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The Lunar and Planetary Science Conference, a major aerospace industry conference expected to draw 1,600 attendees to The Woodlands, has been canceled, organizers announced Thursday.

Staff will reimburse 90 percent of registration costs, minus a 10 percent processing fee, due to concerns over the spread of the virus.

Petitioners are calling on South by Southwest organizers to cancel next week’s festival in Austin. So far, major tech companies including Apple, Facebook, Intel and Twitter have pulled out with days to go.

Earlier this week, CERAWeek, one of the nation’s largest oil and gas conferences, scrapped its 2020 conference in Houston. CERAWeek was set to draw more than 5,000 attendees from more than 80 countries.

10:15 a.m.: Fort Bend County officials are setting up a phone bank in the Rosenberg Annex to answer residents’ questions. County residents can call 281-633-7795 for more information.

At least one meeting was underway in the morning to discuss the new case. Staff were waiting to see if reinforcements were coming from state government offices in Austin, and epidemiologists had began contacting the patient’s close contacts — family and friends — to advise a 14-day self-quarantine.

“The investigation is underway,” said Yaneth Calderon, spokeswoman for the county’s health and human services department. “There’s a science to this. There’s a method to the madness.”

Fort Bend residents aren’t panicking yet.

Morris Towns left an LA Fitness in Sugar Land, where the gym has offered hand sanitizer, wipes and cloths to stay clean.

“I don’t think it’s anytime to be fearful,” Towns told the Houston Chronicle. “That doesn’t mean you have to be lax. You should still wash your hands. If you’re sick, stay at home.”

9:55 a.m.: In a show of support for Asiatown businesses that have reported declining sales and fewer patrons as coronavirus concerns spread, Mayor Sylvester Turner will take his staff to lunch Thursday afternoon.

Turner said the outing was planned before Fort Bend county officials announced the positive test.

Among the folks joining Turner here at Ocean Palace: Fire Chief Sam Peña, public safety director George Buenik, state Rep. Gene Wu, council member Tiffany Thomas.



One person not here: Dr. David Persse, city’s top medical officer, who I’m told is in meetings at Transtar. pic.twitter.com/7VteDvSwB1 — Dylan McGuinness (@dylmcguinness) March 5, 2020

“Let’s not be paralyzed by fear,” the mayor said. “We have to continue to move forward.”

The Houston Health Department is working with regional and federal health authorities, but Houston residents should not panic, he said.

“I think every day we’re working to be more prepared,” Turner said.

8:30 a.m.: The Houston Health Department can now test up to 350 suspected coronavirus cases with a kit from the Centers for Disease Control.

The public health lab at the department will conduct testing for 17 counties in Southeast Texas. The test comes with the capability for 700 specimens, but healthcare providers may send two samples per possible case, said Porfirio Villarreal, a Houston Health Department spokesman.

“We were practicing when the tests came out, and a real sample came in so we tested it,” Villarreal said.

The kit evaluates nasal swabs, mouth swabs and secretions from the patient’s throat.

Harris County officials will hold a press conference Thursday to discuss the case and the county’s testing capabilities.

Context: Our lab, the regional public health lab, gets more kits, expedited from CDC, as needed. Until now, our lab has prepared, packaged and shipped local #COVID19 specimens to CDC in Atlanta, which took ~72 hours for results. Our lab generally gets results in >24 hours -SP — Houston Health Dept (@HoustonHealth) March 5, 2020

8 a.m.: A 70-year-old Fort Bend County man has been diagnosed ‘presumptive positive’ for COVID-19, the new coronavirus, Fort Bend County Health and Human Services confirmed Wednesday evening.

County officials said the man had recently traveled abroad, is currently hospitalized and in stable condition. They declined to say where he traveled and is being treated.

Fort Bend HHS was notified of the case at 4 p.m. Wednesday and is investigating who he may have been in “close contact” with since returning.

The Houston Health Department diagnosed the case and sent samples onto the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta for further testing.

Okay some key takeaways



-A man in his 70s has a presumptive positive case of COVID-19



-Officials learned of the case today at 4 p.m. after the man went to the doctor



-They're not identifying him or where he traveled from or the hospital he is at. — Brooke Lewis (@brookelewisa) March 5, 2020

Federal authorities are still testing nasal swabs and other specimens from a researcher at Rice University who returned to Houston on Feb. 20 and may have been exposed to a possible coronavirus case while traveling abroad.

Six University of Houston students and faculty members are self-quarantined after returning from trips to South Korea and Italy.

Read here for more coverage of the coronavirus from the Houston Chronicle.

Staff writers Todd Ackermann, Zach Despart, Taylor Goldenstein, Emily Foxhall, Julian Gill, Rebecca Hennes, Brooke Lewis, Dylan McGuinness and Shelby Webb contributed to this report.

gwendolyn.wu@chron.com

Twitter: @gwendolynawu