Trump says first US virus death was ‘high-risk patient’

Bloomberg

The first person in the US to die from the novel coronavirus was a man in Washington state, authorities confirmed, after President Donald Trump briefed the nation on his administration’s response and urged people not to panic.
Trump, at a press conference at the White House, described the victim was “a medically high-risk patient in her late 50s,” adding that she was “a wonderful woman.”
The state’s governor, Jay Inslee, had earlier identified the person as a man. The officer of public health for Seattle and King County said the fatality was a male patient at Evergreen Hospital in Kirkland. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention “erroneously identified the
patient as female,” its director, Robert Redfield, said.
The US is expanding travel restrictions to include any foreign national who has visited Iran in the past two weeks, said Vice President Mike Pence, who heads Trump’s coronavirus task force. Americans will also be advised not to travel to the areas of Italy and South Korea that are most affected by the virus.
Trump and Pence spoke after a lengthy meeting of the White House coronavirus task force. Trump has talked down the risk of the virus amid a market selloff and rapidly rising global cases.