The US has its first case of the new Wuhan coronavirus
A case of the new virus spreading rapidly in China has been reported in a patient in Seattle, Washington, Reuters reports. The patient, initially diagnosed with pneumonia, had recently returned from China. This is the first US case of the virus, which was first detected in Wuhan, a city in central China. It has already sickened around 300 people and killed six.
Despite the case report, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said during a press conference that they believe the threat to the US remains low.
The virus, temporarily called 2019-nCoV, is a coronavirus, the family of viruses that also caused the SARS outbreak in 2003 that killed nearly 800 people. An expert panel at the World Health Organization is meeting tomorrow to determine if it should declare a global public health emergency.
“It’s bringing back SARS flashbacks for me,” says Timothy Sheahan, a coronavirus expert and assistant professor at the University of North Carolina Gillings School of Global Public Health.
On Friday, the Centers for Disease Control started enhanced health screenings at San Francisco International Airport, John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York, and Los Angeles International Airport for passengers who flew from or connected through Wuhan.
Health officials’ experience with SARS makes them more prepared to respond to threats from coronaviruses, Sheahan says. “People are aware. Before SARS, people had no idea this could happen. I think everyone is much more prepared now in 2020 than we were in 2002.”
Coronaviruses are common in animals, and can evolve into forms that can be passed to and infect humans. The virus that caused SARS, for example, originated in bats. The World Health Organization has identified a wholesale seafood market in Wuhan as a possible source of the virus, but it also noted that “some laboratory-confirmed patients did not report visiting this market.”
One of the most pressing questions about the new virus is how easily it can be spread from person to person. Chinese health authorities said this week that there has been at least one confirmed case where the virus passed directly from one person to another without passing through an animal reservoir. It’s not clear, though, how efficiently it can do so.
Developing…
A case of the new virus spreading rapidly in China has been reported in a patient in Seattle, Washington, Reuters reports. The patient, initially diagnosed with pneumonia, had recently returned from China. This is the first US case of the virus, which was first detected in Wuhan, a city in…
