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The World Health Organization announced that the novel coronavirus disease, now known as COVID-19, was a public health emergency of international concern on January 30. By then, 9,826 cases and 213 deaths had been confirmed. Yesterday, February 12, those numbers rose to 45,171 cases and 1,115 deaths.
Scientists and medical professionals around the globe have been relying on freely available studies, resources, and datasets to quickly inform treatment strategies, public health initiatives, and drug development.
Even before the outbreak was declared an international public health emergency, researchers in the US and elsewhere commended the speed with which scientists in China shared the first genome of the 2019-nCoV virus, recently dubbed SARS-CoV-2. The first reports of the disease came from Wuhan at the end of December, and by January 8, scientists in China sequenced the viral genome and made it public. “Progress with research on this virus ...
