 With the spread to Australia, Europe, and the US, the coronavirus that first started in China's Wuhan province has now spread across the globe, as health officials struggle to contain it. With more than 1,300 confirmed cases, tens of thousands may be at immediate risk. Let's talk about that. Just a note before we jump in. This is a rapidly developing story. In each day, we're learning a lot of new information. All information was accurate and true at time of recording at 10 p.m. Pacific Standard Time on January 25th. As the news updates, I'll be sure to include more or any corrected information in the description and in the comment section down below. The coronavirus is part of a group of viruses that cause a range of upper respiratory diseases in both humans and animals. In humans, the virus causes respiratory infections, which are often mild, but can be lethal. Symptoms of infection include a high fever, difficulty breathing, and lung lesions. Milder cases may resemble the flu or a bad cold, which can make early detection difficult. The genomic size of the coronavirus is about 30 kilobases or 30,000 base pairs, the largest of any known RNA virus, although how it works doesn't appear to be unique. Once inside the body, it takes over a cell's ribosomes, the part of a cell that makes new proteins, and pumps out millions of copies of itself to spread, usually through close contact with an infected individual, particularly through coughing and sneezing. Currently, there are no vaccines or antiviral drugs approved for prevention or treatment of the disease. The first coronavirus was discovered back in the 1960s, and five new strands have been found since 2003 alone, most of which involve serious respiratory tract infections. But this new one appears to be spreading faster than all before it. On New Year's Eve a few weeks ago, the World Health Organization officially designated the appearance of a new strain, the 2019 NCOV in Wuhan, China, a sprawling city of more than 11 million in mainland China. At the time of recording on January 25th, the death toll sits at 54, with more than 1600 confirmed cases. At this time, it isn't fully clear where this new strand originated, but many suspect this is the virus's first appearance in humans after making the jump from an animal species. Many of the cases in Wuhan were connected to a market that sold live poultry and exotic animal meats, and scientists are hoping this could potentially point to a source of the disease. But the virus wasn't contained to China. It quickly spread to neighboring Taiwan, Vietnam, Japan, Thailand, Singapore, and South Korea. Then, on January 21st, the first reported case was announced in the US. The next day, the Chinese government enacted a quarantine of Wuhan, but that didn't manage to stop the first case of the virus in France the next day, or the first in Australia two days after that. Within the country, the Chinese government has limited or suspended travel for an estimated 50 million people. In Wuhan, at ground zero, all public transportation has been shut down, and four higher vehicles and taxis have been limited. In the city, an army of excavators scrambled to construct not one, but two hospitals to help treat the thousands of cases predicted to come. And the Chinese government has taken drastic steps to curtail the spread. The country's 70,000 movie theaters have been closed, and tourist attractions like the Forbidden City and parts of the Great Wall of China have been shut down. Along major roadways and at airports across the country, checkpoints have been set up to screen people for the potential virus by checking for the tell-tale fevers. This is made difficult by the virus's incubation time, or the time between catching the virus and first showing symptoms. Although initially believed to be about two weeks, health officials now believe the incubation time to be about three days. While much shorter, this still allows likely thousands of people to slip through checkpoints before ever showing symptoms, and before they even know they're infected. And as the virus has managed to secure a foothold on four continents, it's also spread far past the government's quarantine in China, and has now been confirmed in 33 of China's 34 provinces, with Tibet being the only region without a confirmed case. Containment is made especially difficult, with the Chinese New Year taking place on January 25th, the biggest holiday of the year for more than 1.4 billion Chinese, of which hundreds of millions are expected to travel for the holiday. On January 25th, even after the virus had appeared on its fourth continent, the World Health Organization decided not to declare a global health emergency, but planned to meet again within 10 days to reassess the situation. This does raise some eyebrows in the wake of controversy that the international community's initial response to the Ebola outbreak in 2014 was too slow, leading to thousands more deaths, as the early stages of an outbreak are some of the most important to keeping the disease contained. Although, perhaps the WHO deciding not to act can be seen as a positive. As they explained, although the disease has reached far beyond China, the number of cases in other countries is still relatively small, and the disease does not seem to be spreading within those countries. The WHO confirmed that the coronavirus is an emergency in China, but has not yet become a global health emergency to fall under the WHO's field of supervision. And as people in infected cities flood drugstores, some health professionals are warning against the rising panic. Dr. William Schaffner, a specialist in infectious disease at Vanderbilt University, says the illness should be viewed in perspective. While a new virus spreading internationally gets a lot of attention, the much more common influenza virus is likely to kill far more people. On January 23rd, China's Health Commission released its most detailed list of people who have died from the disease. The report revealed that the virus is definitely not killing indiscriminately. The majority of victims were older and had underlying conditions like cirrhosis of the liver, hypertension, diabetes, or Parkinson's disease. The youngest of the 34 victims at the time of the report was a 48-year-old woman. Most of the people had gone to the hospital with a fever and a cough, although at least three had no fever when they were admitted. With a more complete picture of the virus, medical experts found positive signs in the fact that the disease did not appear to be killing young and otherwise healthy people and hope this could help to limit the virus's spread. In less than a month since the virus was first discovered, it's managed to spread across the globe. For better or worse, over the last few hundred years, society has become increasingly ever-connected. And while in many aspects this has led to great advancements, times like these remind us that in an ever-connected world, it's hard to have localized problems. If this virus appeared a thousand years ago, it would likely have stayed in Wuhan, just like the people of the day. Today, a problem in some faraway province of China isn't really a Chinese problem, but a global one. And as time goes on, and the world's billions of people continue to become more connected, both online and in person, we'll likely continue to have to grapple with new ways to address problems like these. I wish all of those in the path of the virus and those working to contain it, good luck. I'll be sure to update the description as any new details unfold. Stay safe, and remember, there's always more to learn.