Misinformation spreads fast when people are afraid and a contagious and potentially fatal disease is frightening. This provides the ideal emotionally charged context for rumours to thrive.
A women wearing a protective face mask delivers a leaflet on coronavirus, in Hong Kong, Friday, Jan 24, 2020.
AP Photo.Achmad Ibrahim
The coronavirus is still spreading in China, and the doctor who warned Chinese officials early on about a possible outbreak is now dead. But in the US, some think the outbreak is exaggerated. Is it?
New Zealand has become more economically dependent on China than many nations in the past generation, with a 12-fold jump in trade in commercial services.
Places where lots of animals come into contact can help pathogens move from species to species.
Baloncici/iStock via Getty Images Plus
In the real world, new diseases emerge from complex environments. To learn more about how, scientists set up whole artificial ecosystems in the lab, instead of focusing on just one factor at a time.
To how many others will one infected person spread the infection?
Bim/E+ via Getty Images
Epidemiologists want to quickly identify any emerging disease’s potential to spread far and wide. Dependent on a number of factors, this R0 number helps them figure that out and plan accordingly.
Yun Jiang, Australian National University e Adam Ni, Macquarie University
The Chinese government is accused of reacting too slowly to the health crisis and silencing its critics. Now, the public is angry and wants party leaders to be held accountable.
Coronavirus can cause lung damage, pneumonia and multi-organ failure, or sepsis, among other things.
Camp beds set up for travelers returning to Germany from China, who will be isolated for two weeks to make sure they don’t have coronavirus.
YANN SCHREIBER/AFP via Getty Images
Even before people understood how germs spread disease, they tried to isolate the sick to keep them from infecting others.
Employees disinfect ticket gates to prevent the spread of the coronavirus at a subway station in Seoul, South Korea, Jan. 28, 2020.
AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon
Australian scientists have grown the Wuhan virus in a lab, and that will speed up the search for a vaccine. It also will help scientists understand how the virus is transmitted from person to person.
Woman walks past the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market.
STR/EPA
The World Health Organization decided that the coronavirus outbreak in China is not a public health emergency of international concern. At least, not at the moment.
A worker in Wuhan, China removes biomedical waste from the Wuhan Medical Treatment Center, where many patients of the coronavirus have been treated, on Jan. 22, 2020.
AP Photo/Dake Kang
The coronavirus that has sickened hundreds in Wuhan, China, has worried health officials and other humans across the globe. Should people in the US worry?
Researchers examine materials collected from a Chinese woman to find the cause of her mysterious pneumonia symptoms, at Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, South Korea, 09 January 2020.
YONHAP/EPA
Ririn Ramadhany, National Institute of Health Research and Development (NIHRD), Ministry of Health Indonesia
Genetic analysis indicates novel coronavirus from Wuhan has a 89% similarity to the SARS virus, a relative of the SARS bat virus. However this does not mean nCoV comes from bats.
Director of the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Health Protection Research Unit in Emerging and Zoonotic Infections, and Professor of Neurology, University of Liverpool