First ‘presumptive positive’ coronavirus case in Tarrant County is reported
A person who lives in Tarrant County was presumed on Tuesday to have coronavirus, the county’s public health department said.
The case is the first presumptive positive instance of COVID-19 in a Tarrant County resident.
The person is isolated at a Fort Worth hospital, the Fort Worth Office of Emergency Management said. He or she traveled to a conference in Kentucky in late February, the public health agency said.
Richard Hill, a Tarrant County Public Health spokesman, declined to release other information about the person, including his or her condition.
“Because of the sensitive nature of this information, we are not allowed to provide specific information about the patient,” Tarrant County Public Health Director Vinny Taneja wrote in a statement. “We are interviewing household contacts and have identified places where this person has been and are reaching out to people possibly exposed.”
The TCPH operations center is monitoring the situation, Taneja wrote.
The agency’s lab identified the case as part of recently expanded testing. Tarrant County’s lab serves Tarrant and 33 other counties in the region. It has about 1,800 testing kits.
COVID-19 causes respiratory illness with fever and cough and may lead to bronchitis and severe pneumonia.
This story was originally published March 10, 2020 at 6:37 PM with the headline "First ‘presumptive positive’ coronavirus case in Tarrant County is reported."
