California coronavirus spread continues with new Santa Clara County patient

SACRAMENTO —  Public health officials in California on Saturday announced another coronavirus patient, a woman described as “a household contact” of a Santa Clara County woman whose diagnosis was made public Friday.

The two women are among the three California patients so far who did not recently travel outside the U.S. or come in contact with someone who did. That raised concerns that the virus was spreading in communities and prompted health officials to find and quarantine anyone who came in contact with them.

The new patient, who officials said is not ill and is isolated at home, had contact with a Santa Clara County woman with chronic health conditions whose physicians requested coronavirus testing after she was hospitalized for a respiratory illness.

The disclosure comes as health officials throughout Northern California are trying to find people who might have come in contact with the three patients.

The efforts had already led to the voluntary quarantining of dozens of people, including students at UC Davis and other college campuses, and workers at the two hospitals where the country’s first patient without any known links to foreign travel was treated.

UC Davis said Saturday night that one of those students tested negative for the virus.

The first patient without links to foreign travel, a Solano County woman, was hospitalized for three days at NorthBay VacaValley Hospital in Vacaville before being moved to UC Davis Medical Center in Sacramento. She was not tested for several days because she did not fit screening criteria set by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention at the time.

This time gap concerns officials because it could have allowed her to infect others she came in contact with.

There are at least 30 coronavirus patients in California, many of them from repatriation flights, with the number changing often.