Residents of a Washington county where 44 people have tested positive for coronavirus and nine people have died are being advised to work from home and schools are shutting down to avoid possible exposure to the killer strain, according to Daily Mail.
Eleven people in the U.S. have died from coronavirus, and 165 people have tested positive nationwide. Washington state has been at the epicenter of the outbreak, with 44 cases and 10 deaths.
In the state, King County has recorded nine deaths, and Snohomish County has recorded one death, reports the Daily Mail.
The widespread outbreak has now left public health officials in King County, which includes Seattle and is home to over 2.2 million people, urging local businesses to allow employees to telecommute for the next three weeks in an effort to curb the COVID-19 outbreak.
Meanwhile, Federal authorities announced an investigation of the Seattle-area nursing home at the center of an outbreak of the new coronavirus as the US death toll climbed to 11, including the first fatality outside Washington state.
Officials in California's Placer County, near Sacramento, said Wednesday an elderly person who tested positive after returning from a San Francisco-to-Mexico cruise had died. The victim had underlying health problems, authorities said.
Washington announced another death, bringing its total to 10.
Most of those who died were residents of Life Care Center, a nursing home in Kirkland, a suburb east of Seattle.
At least 39 cases have been reported in the Seattle area, where researchers say the virus may have been circulating undetected for weeks.
Vice President Mike Pence was expected to meet with Washington Gov. Jay Inslee near Olympia on Thursday.
Seema Verma, head of the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, said the agency is sending inspectors to Life Care along with experts from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to figure out what happened and determine whether the nursing home followed guidelines for preventing infections.
Last April, the state fined Life Care USD 67,000 over infection-control deficiencies following two flu outbreaks that affected 17 patients and staff.
An unannounced follow-up inspection in June determined that Life Care had corrected the problems, Verma said.
Meanwhile, public officials in Washington came under pressure to take more aggressive steps against the outbreak, including closing schools and canceling large events.
While the state and Seattle have declared emergencies, giving leaders broad powers to suspend activities, they have not issued any orders to do so.
"We have encouraged people who are responsible for large gatherings to give consideration whether it really makes sense to carry those on right now," Governor Jay Inslee said.
