LEBANON — The state health department says a Dartmouth-Hitchcock employee has tested positive for COVID-19, but that the “presumptive” results still need to be confirmed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Dr. Benjamin Chan, the state epidemiologist, announced the results at a news conference this morning in Concord with state officials.
Chan said the patient is a Grafton County resident and is quarantined at home with mild symptoms.
“They are not hospitalized. They are currently on home isolation and are not sick enough to be hospitalized,” said Chan, who indicated that the patient had probably contracted the virus during a visit to Italy, one of the hotspots of the worldwide outbreak of the strain of coronavirus that was first identified in Wuhan city, China.
“This is an individual who had recently traveled to Italy. This is not an instance we believe that represents wider community transmission,” he said.
Dartmouth-Hitchcock CEO Joanne Conroy confirmed that the patient is a Dartmouth-Hitchcock employee and that the Lebanon-based medical center on Monday morning set up an incident command center.
Chan said state officials will work with Dartmouth-Hitchcock to determine “whether other patients or other health care workers or other people in the community may have been exposed,” so that officials could then reach out to them about taking precautions, including possible self-quarantining.
In an email to staff late Sunday night, Conroy alerted employees that the state was testing and observing a D-H employee as a possible COVID-19 case.
Earlier Sunday, the Department of Health and Human Services announced that it was testing a fourth person in New Hampshire for the coronavirus but did not connect the patient to the Upper Valley. The three previous cases were determined not to be COVID-19.
The email from Conroy late Sunday night did not indicate when the employee presented with symptoms at DHMC but said the patient’s samples were collected late Saturday night.
“Laboratory testing … ruled out more common respiratory illnesses such as influenza or the common cold,” Conroy wrote in the message.
Chan said a test at a state lab Monday morning indicated it is COVID-19.
In the Sunday night message to staff, Conroy said D-H’s Threat Infection team and its Section of Infectious Diseases are working with New Hampshire officials to understand the employee’s travel pattern and “to follow up with any others with whom they may have had contact since the patient’s possible exposure.”
She said the hospital would provide staff with further updates as they become available.
Scientists have said the virus has a roughly 2% mortality rate. The global death toll as of Monday morning had passed 3,000 people, with the United States reporting two deaths in Washington state over the weekend and a new case in New York.
This story was updated at 1:20 p.m. with information about the “presumptive positive” test result.
