-The headlines are worrying.
-Experts are warning it's likely
to become a pandemic.
-The number of people infected
with coronavirus
surged by more
than 3,000 overnight.
-As of early February,
more than 20,000 people
worldwide were infected with
a new strain of coronavirus.
-From the government who told us
that if you stayed inside,
the chance of your survival is
much bigger than if you go out.
We are in history right now.
-One month after it was first
discovered in Wuhan, China,
the World Health Organization
officially declared the outbreak
a public health emergency.
-We don't know what sort of
damage this virus could do
if it were to spread
in a country
with a weaker health system.
We must act now
to help countries
prepare for that possibility.
-A few days later, the US also
declared it
a public health emergency
and announced
that foreign nationals
who had traveled to China
would be denied entry
into the United States.
-The president has signed
a presidential proclamation
using his authority pursuant
to Section 212(f)
of the Immigration
and Nationality Act
temporarily suspending the entry
into the United States
of foreign nationals
who pose a risk of transmitting
the 2019 novel coronavirus.
-Major airlines had already
canceled flights to China.
The global reaction to this
novel coronavirus strain
has been swift,
as the world tries
to contain the spread
of an entirely new virus.
-It was a lot of
unknowns in this.
We saw this acceleration
which is now
so obvious to everyone.
You know, we started off
with 25, 50, 100,
several hundred, 1,000,
5,000, 10,000, and now 17,000.
So we had no idea
where it was going.
The situation was such that
we already saw
that the introduction
into our country
was through
travel-related cases.
The other issue that was
important is that the volume
of people that were coming
in daily from China,
either directly or indirectly,
where they would go from China
to another country
to the United States,
was so high that it became
logistically very difficult
for the CDC to effectively
and confidently screen people.
-The coronavirus isn't the first
global infectious disease
to cause this type of panic.
It most closely resembles
the SARS epidemic
that occurred in 2002 and 2003,
which caused about 800 deaths
in 17 countries,
according to the World
Health Organization.
The difficulty of containing
these outbreaks
starts with how the disease
is tracked and reported.
-After SARS, the International
Health Regulations
were revised to say that
if there's any unusual event
related to health,
it should be reported.
So, because of the IHR, China,
when it discovered
this new virus,
reported it to the World
Health Organization,
and then they distributed
that information
to the rest of the world,
and now each individual country
is putting into place
the measures for
how they will be looking for it.
We're seeing things
like isolating patients
in particular ways,
putting travel restrictions into
place, imposing quarantines.
All of those sorts of actions
are things that
we learned from SARS.
-But Chinese officials were slow
to accurately report
the new strain of coronavirus
to its own people
and to authorities,
which could've aided
in spreading the disease.
-Really afraid that I will just
get that disease
because it's quite strong,
and I feel that the government
didn't, like, help us enough,
like, getting masks, like,
stopping the patients
from coming here.
-The coronavirus is also
unpredictable
because it is
an entirely new strain.
Even though the flu has been
a greater threat in the US,
it is not easy to compare.
-People say, appropriately,
that, "Wait a minute,
why are you taking such measures
to address this new coronavirus
when right here
in the United States,
we're in the middle
of a flu season
where there's 10,000 people
who have already died of flu
and a lot more likely will?"
The thing about flu is much
suffering and death
that occurs every year
on a seasonal basis,
we have a very good experience
and know exactly
what flu is gonna do.
You can be guaranteed that
as we get into March and April,
flu will diminish
and essentially
get off the radar screen.
Coronavirus is the unknown.
We have no idea
what its potential is,
the direction it's going,
or where it's gonna end.
And because of that,
because of that unknown,
it was felt that we needed
to do something that,
in many respects,
was unprecedented.
-The outbreak of this strain
likely originated
at a live-animal market
in Wuhan.
-Lots of infectious diseases
come from animals.
It used to be that
we blamed rats
for just about
every new infection.
At the moment, we seem to be
blaming bats
for everything because bats
are what we think
probably started the Ebola
outbreak in West Africa,
and we think that bats
are likely first host
for this new coronavirus.
So, that's really typical.
And we talk about new infections
emerging at the human
environment interface,
where humans are interacting
with wildlife
in perhaps a new way.
But this doesn't just happen
at animal markets in China.
We can have new outbreaks
happen on a farm in Iowa.
-Even those who study and work
on infectious diseases
are unsure
what will happen next.
-This could mutate in a way
that changes the way it behaves.
If it mutates in some other way,
it might become more contagious,
it might become less contagious.
It might cause
less severe disease,
it might change
in the opposite direction,
and as we get more data
that come in,
some of these initial
characterizations of the disease
may change a little bit.
-Right now, the risk
to the American public is low,
but -- big "but" --
that could change,
because this is
an evolving situation,
and if it evolves
into a true global pandemic,
then we would have
a very serious problem here
in the United States.
