The basics: What we know — and don’t know — about the virus spreading in China and beyond
It’s been only three weeks since Chinese authorities alerted the World Health Organization that it had an outbreak of unusual pneumonia cases. An astonishing amount of information has been learned in the days since about the outbreak, caused by a new virus that jumped from animals into people. But a frustrating amount of information remains still beyond our grasp.
Scientists and public health officials in China and beyond are scrambling to try to learn more about the virus, which has already spread out from the Chinese city of Wuhan, where the outbreak appears to have started, to other parts of China and several other countries, including the United States.
We all have more questions than answers. But here’s some of what we’ve learned about this new disease threat.
Where did the virus come from?
Health officials in China tracked many of the initial cases to a large seafood market in Wuhan, a city in central China, that also sold wild animals as meat. The leader of an expert committee working on the outbreak has said some type of game is the most
