SEATTLE – A Washington state resident who recently returned from a trip to central China has been diagnosed with the new virus that has sparked an outbreak and stringent monitoring around the world, U.S. health officials said Tuesday.

The man, who lives in Snohomish County, returned to the Seattle area in the middle of last week after traveling to the Wuhan area, where the outbreak began. The man is in his 30s and is in good condition at Providence Medical Center in Everett. He’s not considered a threat to medical staff or the public, although he is still hospitalized “out of an abundance of caution,” county health officials said.

“At this point the individual has reported that he didn’t visit any of those implicated markets or know anyone who was ill, he was just traveling in that area,” Dr. Chris Spitters, health officer in Snohomish County Health District, said.

Officials said he had no symptoms when he arrived at the Seattle-Tacoma airport, but he contacted doctors on Sunday when he started feeling ill. Spitters said that health and hospital officials are using very strict isolation protocols since this is the first identified case in the U.S.

“We’re very comfortable that this patient is isolated and poses very little risk to the staff and the general public,” Spitters said.

Local and federal health officials are beginning the contact investigation today to see exactly who could have been affected or exposed to the virus by the Snohomish County man.

“That’s our priority to determine who is at risk and what it means to be at risk,” Scott Lindquist, Washington state epidemiologist, said.

The U.S. is the fifth country to report seeing the illness, following China, Thailand, Japan, and South Korea.

Late last week, U.S. health officials began screening passengers from central China at U.S. airports. Officials around the world have implemented similar airport screenings in hopes of containing the virus during the busy Lunar New Year travel season.

Federal agencies are re-routing travelers with flights that originated in Wuhan to five U.S. airports, CDC officials said Tuesday, in New York City, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago and Atlanta. These airports will be actively screening passengers for the virus.

Last month, doctors began seeing a new type of viral pneumonia – fever, cough, difficulty breathing – in people who spent time at a food market in Wuhan. More than 275 cases of the newly identified coronavirus have been confirmed in China, most of them in Wuhan, according to the World Health Organization.

The count includes six deaths – all in China, most of them age 60 or older, including at least some who had a previous medical condition.

Officials have said it probably spread from animals to people, but this week Chinese officials said they’ve concluded it also can spread from person to person.

In announcing the airport screenings last week, CDC officials said then risk to the American public was low but that it was likely the illness would appear in the U.S. at some point.

S-R reporter Arielle Dreher contributed to this report