A coronavirus case has been confirmed in the San Francisco Bay Area near Silicon Valley - a man who recently returned from Wuhan and Shanghai

Morgan McFall-Johnsen

Feb 1, 2020, 04:47 IST

A coronavirus case has been confirmed in the San Francisco Bay Area near Silicon Valley - a man who recently returned from Wuhan and Shanghai

wuhan coronavirus evacuees california plane

Passengers board buses past personnel in protective clothing after arriving on an aircraft chartered by the US State Department to evacuate government employees and other Americans from Wuhan, China, due to the coronavirus outbreak, at March Air Reserve Base in California, January 29, 2020.

A case of the novel Wuhan coronavirus was confirmed in Santa Clara County, California, on Friday - an area of the San Francisco Bay Area that's home to Silicon Valley.
Officials said the man who tested positive for the virus had recently returned from Wuhan and Shanghai, China.
But they added that he came into contact with "very few individuals," only leaving home to seek medical care.
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A case of Wuhan coronavirus has been confirmed in the San Francisco Bay Area. It is the seventh reported case in the US.

Health officials confirmed on Friday that an adult man who lives in Santa Clara County, where Silicon Valley is located, has tested positive for the virus. They said the man became ill after he returned from a trip to Shanghai and Wuhan - the central Chinese city where the coronavirus outbreak began. He landed at the San Jose International Airport on January 24; after that, the patient did not leave his home except to seek medical care twice, officials said. He was not hospitalized on either occasion.

"We've been preparing for this possibility for weeks knowing that we were likely to eventually confirm a case," Dr. Sara Cody, Santa Clara County's health officer, said in a Friday press conference.

Cody said the man had come into contact with "very few individuals" since his return, including household members, but that officials were monitoring those people.

"We do not have evidence to suggest that the novel coronavirus is circulating in the Bay Area, in Santa Clara County, or really in Northern California," Cody said. "Our assessment is that the public at large is still at low risk, because this case was careful to self-isolate at home for the entire time since he returned from China."

The man did not need to be hospitalized and was being treated at home, she added.

White House officials announced on Friday that it will temporarily bar foreigners from entering the US if they have been to China within the past 14 days.

US citizens who have been to the Hubei province of China - where Wuhan is located - within the prior 14 days could be quarantined for up to two weeks upon their return.