As the US death toll from the coronavirus climbed to nine, the CDC said it has “heightened” concerns and urged local communities to begin thinking about ways to stop the virus from spreading.

“As more areas see community spread, local communities may start employing tools that encourage social distancing,” Dr. Nancy Messonnier, the director of CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, said in a Tuesday news conference. “The goal of social distancing is to limit exposure by reducing face-to-face contact and preventing spread among people in community settings.”

There are now 126 coronavirus cases across 13 states. Nine people have died — all in Washington state and eight from the same county. Five had ties toLife Care Center, a long-term nursing home in a Seattle suburb. At least 50 residents and staff members of the center were experiencing symptoms and were tested for the virus, King County health officer Jeffrey Duchin said Monday.

The center’s outbreak and a series of new cases over the past few days in states includingFlorida, Georgia and Rhode Island “have heightened our concern for certain communities in the US,” Messonnier said.

“What is happening now in the United States may be the beginning of what is happening abroad,” she said. “We will continue to maintain for as long as practical an aggressive national posture of containment.”

“That said, you might see some local communities taking specific actions to mitigate the disease,” she added.

Communities begin working to curb spread of virus

Governments, businesses and religious organizations in the states with the largest outbreaks have already taken steps to do so, canceling large events and encouraging people to avoid touching one another.

Earlier this week, Washington state Gov. Jay Inslee said the state was looking at ways “we can prevent the spread through large groups.”

“We have numerous groups, non-profits and others that are starting to think about whether it makes sense to carry on with some of the larger get-togethers,” he said Monday.

In Seattle, the Catholic Archdiocese urged anyone feeling sick to “stay home from Mass” and told church-goers to “avoid hand-to-hand contact during Our Father.”

“Our response to this spreading virus must reflect how we, as disciples of Jesus, express our love of God and neighbor,” Seattle’s Catholic Archbishop Paul Etienne wrote in a March 2 letter to parish leaders.

Etienne also urged that “holy water should be removed from fonts.”

There have been 27 cases of coronavirus reported in Washington state.

The same number of cases have been reported in California, where Santa Clara County officials urged higher-risk residents Tuesday to avoid “mass gatherings such as parades, sporting events and concerts where large numbers of people are within arm’s length of one another.”

Last week, Google announced it was canceling its upcoming Google News Initiative Global Summit — its biggest event of the year — “due to concerns around the coronavirus.”

The two-day event, held in Google’s Sunnyvale, California, office, would have brought together hundreds of people in the media industry.

Any American with a doctor’s order can now be tested

The 126 coronavirus cases across the US include both confirmed cases and presumptive positives: cases that tested positive in public health labs but are still awaiting confirmation from the CDC.

The number also includes 45 repatriated citizens from the Diamond Princess cruise ship — which docked in Japan last month after an outbreak and quarantine — as well as three people repatriated from Wuhan, China.

The number of US cases has continued to rise since health officials allowed more labs to conduct tests for the virus.

The CDC said Tuesday, public health labs across the country using CDC test kits were expected to test up to 75,000 people by the end of the week. That’s on top of the nearly 1 million people expected to be tested through commercial labs that were approved for testing by the US Food and Drug Administration over the weekend.

Last week, health officials also loosened the guidelines on who should be tested for the virus. The change came after the first confirmed coronavirus case of unknown origin, a patient who wasn’t initially tested because they didn’t meet existing CDC testing guidelines.

On Tuesday, Vice President Mike Pence announced that any American, with a doctor’s order, can now be tested.

The new CDC criteria calls for “Americans (to) be tested (for coronavirus), no restrictions, subject to doctors’ orders,” Pence said Tuesday describing the new policy.