There are major public health concerns over the new animal coronavirus can be spread from person to person, not just caught from animals. It is important to note that most pandemics (worldwide spread of a dangerous virus) are first found in animals and it then spreads to humans and mutates to airborne infection.
Coronavirus such as this new one, 2019-nCoV, often have a high mortality rate (they are very deadly) and with only 200 known cases so far there are already 3-5 deaths and it has spread from China to Korea.
Coronaviruses are often deadly (the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) and Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) are examples) and people have little or no natural immunity to them, raising the potential for developing into a very dangerous pandemic. But the common cold is also a coronavirus and it isn't particularly dangerous, although the fact that there has never been a vaccine developed and there is no pill you can take for it, shows how difficult it will be to protect people from this new coronavirus.
The initial incidence of this virus is thought to have occurred on December 31 presenting as a case of pneumonia - hence the 2019 designation even though it wasn't pinned down as the cause until Chinese authorities reported the cause of the new infection on January 7.
The WHO Emergency Committee will meet Wednesday to decide whether to issue an international health crisis.
As of Monday night, U.S. the WHO has not called for any restriction on travel.
International Health Regulations
Q&A on the International Health Regulations
Information about the outbreak
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