The coronavirus has been confirmed in all 50 states after West Virginia’s governor announced its first positive case.
“Our health officials came to me and said, ‘Now, we do have our first positive confirmed in the Eastern Panhandle,” Gov. Jim Justice said Tuesday night.
“We knew it was coming. We prepared for this. We shouldn’t panic. We should be cautious,” he said.
Justice declared an emergency in the state earlier this week despite not yet having any confirmed cases. The absence of cases in the state could have been from a lack of testing.
West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin said the state had only done 84 tests as of Monday.
Earlier Tuesday, President Trump praised West Virginia for being the only state without a confirmed coronavirus case.
“We are looking at different sites and a few different locations,” Trump said when asked whether the federal government is considering building more medical facilities in response to the outbreak. “We’re not going to need them in West Virginia, where, so far, I guess, they have none. Still none? Still none. All right, West Virginia. Big Jim, the governor, he must be doing a good job.”
There are nearly 6,000 confirmed cases in the United States as of Tuesday evening, according to Johns Hopkins University.
