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.
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.
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.
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 and 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.
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.
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.
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?
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