U.S. Coronavirus Cases Surpass 1,000: Full Map

As America scrambled to understand the scope of an escalating public health crisis, the number of known coronavirus cases surpassed 1,000 on Tuesday, signaling that the virus was spreading widely in communities on both coasts and in the center of the country.

As of Tuesday evening, at least 1,004 people in 37 states and Washington, D.C., have tested positive for coronavirus, according to a New York Times database, and at least 31 patients with the virus have died.

The first known U.S. coronavirus case was announced on Jan. 21 in Washington State, but the pace of diagnosis has quickened significantly in recent weeks.

At the start of this month, 70 cases had been reported in this country, most of them tied to overseas travel. Since then, new cases have poured in, first by the dozens, then the hundreds.

See our live coverage of the coronavirus outbreak for the latest.

A majority of the cases were in Washington State, California and New York, where everyday life swiftly began to change. Businesses closed. Colleges canceled class. Governors urged people to avoid crowds.

In Massachusetts, dozens of new cases were announced on Tuesday, and in South Dakota, the governor announced the state’s five first cases, including one man who died. The number of states with no reported cases stands at about a dozen, declining by the day.

The New York Times is engaged in a comprehensive effort to track details about every confirmed case in the United States, collecting information from federal, state and local officials around the clock. The numbers in this article are being updated several times a day based on the latest information our journalists are gathering from around the country.

The number of patients treated in the United States remains a small fraction of those with the virus overseas, where thousands of people have died and tens of thousands have been infected.

See our maps tracking the coronavirus outbreak around the world.

The West Coast has been hit hard.

Health officials in California, Oregon and Washington State have seen the virus turning up in people who have not traveled overseas and have warned that the virus was spreading within the local community. Officials in some places have urged residents, especially older people, to avoid large gatherings.

Officials in Santa Clara County, Calif., where dozens have become ill with the virus and one person has died, announced a ban on large gatherings. And leaders in the nursing home industry on Tuesday called on nursing homes and assisted living centers to curtail most social visits and even take steps to keep some employees away.

“This is a critical moment in the growing outbreak,” Dr. Sara Cody, Santa Clara County’s health officer, said in announcing the ban. “The strong measures we are taking today are designed to slow the spread of disease.”

Combined, California and Washington account for more than a third of the nation’s coronavirus cases. Those patients include a mix of people who contracted the illness locally, traveled in China or were passengers on two cruise ships where outbreaks emerged.

But many U.S. patients — and more every day — have been diagnosed without any history of overseas travel, signaling that the illness was circulating within the United States and that people were being exposed in schools, offices and medical facilities.

New York: 173 cases have been identified.

Since announcing their first case of coronavirus on March 1, health officials in New York State have raced to contain the virus’s spread as the number of confirmed diagnoses has surged past 100.

A large percentage of those cases have been traced to a man from Westchester County who attended public gatherings before knowing he had the coronavirus.

In addition to Westchester County, patients were being treated in several New York City boroughs, on Long Island and in Rockland, Saratoga and Ulster Counties.

Patients have been treated in 37 states.

Cases of coronavirus have now been confirmed in every region of the country. In the ever-smaller number of states without a known case, officials said it was only a matter of time before the virus was detected inside their borders.

In Maine, the state’s Department of Education published a webpage to help administrators “get your school ready for a pandemic event.” And in North Dakota, Gov. Doug Burgum spoke Monday with leaders of hospitals and nursing homes in his state.

Many overseas travelers continue to be diagnosed.

Though more and more unexplained cases have been identified, dozens of people with coronavirus in the United States recently spent time in a country with a larger outbreak.

Several Texans who traveled together to Egypt tested positive for coronavirus this week after returning to the Houston area. The first case in Oklahoma, announced Friday, was linked to a trip to Italy. And in Colorado, a patient who had spent time in Italy apparently contracted the virus after being exposed to a person with the virus on his flight back to the United States.

In Washington State, 24 people have died.

Since the first coronavirus deaths in the United States were reported on Feb. 29 in King County, Wash., which includes Seattle, officials there have continued to announce fatal cases of the illness.

By Monday, 19 deaths had been tied to the Life Care Center nursing facility in Kirkland, Wash., where dozens of residents, staff members and visitors were sickened. Many of those cases involved older people with other health problems that made them especially vulnerable to coronavirus.

Among the people in the United States who have died from coronavirus, almost all have been in their 70s, 80s or 90s. The youngest known fatality was a man in his 40s.

Cruise ships: Dozens of Americans were infected.

Forty-three Americans who spent time aboard the Diamond Princess cruise ship, where the virus spread among passengers and crew members as it was docked in Japan, were later treated in the United States, receiving care at hospitals in California, Texas, Utah and Washington State, and in a specialized unit at Nebraska Medicine in Omaha. Many have returned home, but some continue to test positive for the virus and remain hospitalized.

“One of the things, when we talked about what we don’t know yet, is how long does this hang on,” said Shelly Schwedhelm, Nebraska Medicine’s executive director of emergency management and biopreparedness.

Several residents of Maryland, Iowa, Texas and Virginia who tested positive for the virus contracted it on an Egyptian cruise of the Nile River, state and local officials said. And at least 18 people who traveled on a leg of a Grand Princess cruise from San Francisco in February have tested positive in the United States.

At least 21 more coronavirus patients who sailed on a subsequent Grand Princess cruise arrived in California on Monday when the ship docked in Oakland. Others on that ship who had not tested positive were being sent to quarantine on military bases.

The State Department on Sunday advised Americans, especially those with underlying health conditions, against traveling on cruise ships.