ABOVE: © ISTOCK.COM, MARCO SILVA
As of today (January 23), 18 people have died from a newly identified coronavirus, and more than 630 have been infected. Airports are screening passengers coming from at-risk regions. Public celebrations of the Lunar New Year have been cancelled in several Chinese cities. China has stopped trains and other transportation leaving Wuhan, where the infections originated, and restricted travel within the city and neighboring areas. The World Health Organization (WHO) held a conference today to discuss the travel bans and other precautions related to the new disease, currently being called 2019-nCoV, a respiratory virus with characteristics similar to severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) from 2003.
As public health officials respond in real-time to the unfolding of the outbreak, so too are scientists. Just one month after the first case of the pneumonia-causing virus was reported on December 8, Chinese scientists sequenced the viral genome and ...
