Containing a Crisis
THE YEAR OF THE RAT IS OFF TO AN OMINOUS START. “We just stay home and don’t go out,” says Mr. Dong. The 33-year-old researcher, who provided only one name, has no other options. He, his wife and their 3-month-old daughter live in Wuhan, the epicenter of an unfolding global health crisis. They’re treating the forced time at home as a holiday, though he says, “this is different than any of them before.” Families like his huddle in their homes, fearful that if they venture out, they will get sick. Since the first cases of a previously unknown pneumonia-like illness emerged in December, Wuhan, the capital of Hubei province, has frozen in place. Ten-lane thoroughfares lie empty after a ban on personal cars, and buses and subways sit silent. Lunar New Year 2020 was stripped of its traditional fireworks, boisterous gatherings around overflowing tables of food and drink, and happy reunions with family and friends.
As researchers and public-health officials scramble to learn as much as they can about the new virus—how easily it transmits among people, and how deadly it is—fears swamp this city of 11 million. The disease responsible is caused by a coronavirus that’s never infected people before. Conflicting advice about how infectious the virus might be are swirling through the Internet, along with misinformation about exactly where the virus, dubbed 2019-nCoV, came from. Hospitals in Wuhan are besieged by the sick, and only a handful of clinics are able to test for the disease.
Coronaviruses make up a family of viruses that live mainly in animals (bats are a
