BUFFALO, N.Y. (WBEN) - While there are no confirmed cases of coronavirus yet in Erie County, health officials remain alert for its inevitable appearance in Western New York.
Coronavirus may cause mild to severe respiratory symptoms like a cough, fever, trouble breathing, and pneumonia. The CDC believes that symptoms may appear in as few as two days or as long as 14 days after exposure to the virus. Thousands of people across the globe have a confirmed case of the virus and roughly 3.4 percent have died and a majority have reported a total recovery.
JOHNS HOPKINS MAP OF CONFIRMED CASES
Erie County Health Commissioner Dr. Gale Burstein said that anyone who contracts coronavirus will immediately be put in isolation in order to prevent the spread.
"If it's somebody who is very ill and requires hospitalization, they will be hospitalized in a negative pressure room in a hospital," Burstein said. "If they are not very ill and have mild (upper respiratory infection) symptoms or no symptoms at all, they can stay isolated at home. Then we would initiate our investigation."
That isolation will last 14 days. The investigation will require those ill to answer questions such as places they've visited over the last two weeks and with whom they were in contact.
"We would do what we say is contact-tracing and notifications. All those individuals that were exposed, we'd want them to remain in quarantine because they're probably not ill...for 14 days after their last exposure. If they were in a mass gathering like a school, then we'd start to have a discussion about closing the school. If they were in a place of worship, we would have a conversation with that place and they would help us figure out who was at those particular services...and hopefully notify them to take the precautions to be quarantined for 14 days."
In Westchester, which has the most cases of coronavirus in New York, individuals who attended services at Temple Young Israel of New Rochelle on February 22 and a funeral and bat mitzvah at the temple the next day must self-quarantine until at least Sunday, according to the New York Post. Westchester County will issue legal orders to enforce the quarantine if necessary.
"We, theoretically, could be in a similar situation if we did have a case here," Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz said. "We'd have to look at every situation and follow the standard by the CDC and the New York State Department of Health. If it required notifying others of the possibility they were exposed to someone with coronavirus then we would notify them. We would not hide that information from the public, just as they have been doing in Westchester County."
Multiple people in Western New York are under quarantine related to the virus, though county officials declined to specify an exact number due to legal reasons. Still, Governor Cuomo on Wednesday confirmed that at least two people who were under investigation did not contract the virus.
The CDC has developed a test kit for use in testing people with coronavirus. Currently, the only testing in New York State is done in Albany. Erie County's Public Health Lab is expected to receive the ability to test for the virus in the coming days, according to Burstein. Clinicians are advised to test anybody who has had close contact with a laboratory-confirmed COVID-19 patient with 14 days of their symptoms occurring or if they have a history of travel from China, Iran, Italy, Japan, or South Korea.
FULL RESOURCES FROM THE CENTERS FOR DISEASE CONTROL AND PREVENTION