Swedish health authority says woman is confirmed to have coronavirus

STOCKHOLM (Reuters) - Sweden’s Public Health Agency said on Friday that a woman had tested positive for coronavirus and was being kept isolated at a hospital in southern Sweden.

The woman had visited the Wuhan area in China and experienced cough symptoms after she arrived in Sweden. She contacted a hospital in southern Sweden where she is being treated. She is not gravely ill, the agency said.

“One or a few cases is not unexpected given that we travel a lot and we anticipated that this could happen,” said Karin Tegmark Wisell, head of the microbiology department at the health agency. “We currently assess the risk of it spreading as very low based on experiences from other countries,” she said.

It’s the first confirmed case in Sweden.

The death toll from the virus reached 213 on Friday, a day after the World Health Organization declared a global health emergency.