Administration officials have given contradictory statements about how COVID-19 will affect the US, and it is not clear who is leading the infectious disease response effort, critics say.
An increase in confirmed infections, particularly in Italy, Iran, and South Korea, has led to heightened measures to prevent the spread of the virus SARS-CoV-2.
Emerging data as well as knowledge from the SARS and MERS coronavirus outbreaks yield some clues as to why SARS-CoV-2 affects some people worse than others.