About 100 additional CDC workers will be deployed to join existing public health staff at the three airports. In at least two of those three cases, the patients had recently traveled to Wuhan, the epicenter of the outbreak. However, public health officials are concerned that the virus could spread more widely as travel picks up in advance of the Chinese New Year. AdvertisementChina’s 2003 outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome, a coronavirus known as SARS, was believed to have originated through animal-to-human transmission in a marketplace, much like the scenario in the Wuhan outbreak. Health experts say that open communication between Chinese officials and foreign health leaders will be vital to squelching the Wuhan outbreak.

Source: Los Angeles Times January 17, 2020 19:41 UTC