Potential Case of Coronavirus Being Investigated in SW Virginia, Dept. of Health Confirms

RICHMOND – The Virginia Department of Health announced Wednesday that it’s investigating a potential case of COVID-19, or what’s become known to the world as Coronavirus.

So far across the entire state of Virginia, eight total cases have been investigated, but none have come back positive for the virus as of this writing.

There is another potential case of Coronavirus being investigated in northern Virginia, the Dept. says.

The SW region of Virginia spans a large area, from the Bristol area east through the entire Mountain Empire and New River Valley through the Roanoke Valley north to Alleghany County and as far east as Lynchburg and Appomattox, south to the North Carolina state line.

There have been 14 confirmed cases of the illness in the United States. Of those, 12 were travel-related cases and two were spread from person-to-person contact, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a respiratory illness that can spread from person to person. The virus that causes COVID-19 is a novel coronavirus that was first identified during an investigation into an outbreak in Wuhan, China.

“The virus that causes COVID-19 probably emerged from an animal source, but now it seems to be spreading from person to person. It’s important to note that person-to-person spread can happen on a continuum. Some diseases are highly contagious (like measles), while other diseases are less so. At this time, it’s unclear how easily or sustainably the virus that causes COVID-19 is spreading between people,” the CDC says on their website.

There is currently no vaccine to prevent infection and no specific treatment.

Symptoms of COVID-19 include fever, cough, shortness of breath. Many patients can also have pneumonia in both lungs, the CDC says on their online fact sheet.