BOISE — The Idaho Department of Health and Welfare announced late Friday afternoon the state had its first confirmed case of COVID-19.

The woman is in her 50s, and lives in Ada County, Brandon Atkins, of Central District Health said at a 5 p.m. press conference in the governor's ceremonial office at the state Capitol. Atkins is the manager of the district's Family and Clinic Services Division.

Elke Shaw-Tulloch, the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare's public health administrator, said the cause of the case was not community spread in Idaho. The woman had attended a conference in New York City in late February and early March, traveling through the Boise Airport; she was not symptomatic when traveling, Atkins said.

"That likelihood is very, very low and that risk of transmission is not our number one priority, the number one priority is those that are in the closest proximity to her while she has actively been displaying signs and symptoms," Atkins said.

She is self-isolating at her home, he said.

Officials declined to give more details about her, how many people may leave in her home, or the conference she attended, out of concern for her privacy. Gov. Brad Little said it is important to preserve some measure of patient privacy so people feel comfortable coming forward to report to healthcare providers if they have symptoms of COVID-19, which is the disease coronavirus causes.

The woman has mild symptoms and no other underlying health concerns, Atkins said. She acted appropriately by contacting her primary care provider, he said, who then ruled out influenza, then collected a sample and sent it to a lab for testing.

"The patient's treating physician acted appropriately after ruling out influenza, and then they gathered the patient's travel history, exposure risk, and symptoms that were consistent with novel coronavirus that causes COVID-19," Shaw-Tulloch said. "Clinical specimens were collected and were sent to our Idaho Bureau of Public Health laboratories where testing confirmed the infection."

Epidemiologists will be doing a "very thorough investigation" to trace the patient's close contacts and others who might have been in her orbit, Atkins said.

"We knew at some point that this would happen," he said.

LOOKING AHEAD

Earlier in the day, Little had declared a state of emergency due to concerns about the virus, just hours before U.S. President Donald Trump did the same for the nation.

Little said during the Friday evening address that the state was trying to "smooth the graph," referencing a now-famous image from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention popularized by The Economist, depicting how the coronavirus could spread in the United States. Instead of having a massive spike in cases that will overwhelm the healthcare system, as is happening in Italy, the goal for public health officials is to make sure that the spread of COVID-19 takes place over a longer period of time and infects fewer people at any point in that period.

"We have the capacity at this time to do anywhere between 700 and 900 tests tests and reagents are arriving frequently," Atkins said; a reagent is a chemical needed to run the test for COVID-19.

Officials don't believe the woman has visited local schools. Gov. Brad Little at the press conference said nothing has changed with regards to school closures. Officials Friday morning said individual districts make the call on whether to close schools.

Across the country, there have been 1,629 confirmed cases of COVID-19 and a total of 41 deaths as a result of the disease, Atkins said Friday evening.

Watch a live stream of Little's address below from our partners at KTVB:

This is a breaking story and will be updated.