We’re learning a lot about the coronavirus. It will help us assess risk

It has been two months since China announced a previously unknown virus had been identified as the cause of a new outbreak in the city of Wuhan. In the weeks since then, the coronavirus — now called SARS-CoV2 — has raced around the globe, igniting major outbreaks in Iran, South Korea, Italy, Japan and now, it seems, Seattle.

There are still many, many questions about this virus and the disease it causes, Covid-19. But in a matter of mere weeks, a number of features of the disease have come into focus, through extraordinarily rapid sharing of research.

“Eight weeks into Covid-19, there’s quite a lot that we are learning,” Maria Van Kerkhove, who heads the World Health Organization’s emerging diseases and zoonoses unit, said in a recent interview. (Zoonoses are diseases that jump to people from animals.)

Kerkhove spoke to STAT after returning to the agency’s headquarters in Geneva after two weeks in China, where she was part of an international mission to learn about China’s response to its outbreak.