At least eight travel-related cases of COVID-19, the illness linked to the new coronavirus causing a global scare, have been confirmed in the Houston area, health officials said Friday.
Houston’s health department on Friday said the latest cases were three women in their 60s, the Houston Chronicle reported.
The women had been exposed to the virus in Egypt during the same February overseas trip made by all eight of the Houston-area patients, according to the Chronicle.
“Travel-related cases in Texas don’t indicate spread within the state,” the Texas Department of State Health Services said in a statement Friday.
Harris County Public Health and the Houston Health Department announced four cases on Thursday and the first Texas case was announced by Fort Bend County Health and Human Services a day earlier.
“Public health departments are working to identify any close contacts of the patients while they were sick so they can be isolated and monitored for symptoms and quickly tested, if needed,” the DSHS statement said.
Ten American COVID-19 patients repatriated from an overseas trip remain quarantined in San Antonio.
The new coronavirus, first detected in late December in Wuhan, China, causes a respiratory disease that has infected more than 100,000 people around the world and killed nearly 3,400, the Associated Press reported Friday.
As of Friday morning, health officials across the United States reported more than 200 cases of COVID-19 across 18 states and 14 deaths.
But “the immediate risk to most Texans remains low,” DSHS officials said in its statement.
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