The Wuhan coronavirus outbreak has continued to worsen in recent days and Chinese officials have warned that the spread of the virus has accelerated.
Cases have reached beyond China, on to Thailand, Taiwan, Japan, Singapore, South Korea, Vietnam, France, Australia, Malaysia, Nepal, Canada, and the U.S., NBC News reported. The number of cases worldwide has risen to 2,500.
China, the epicenter of the viral outbreak, has claimed the large majority of the coronavirus cases. China has also seen all of the fatal cases of the virus, now reported at 80 deaths.
Thailand has seen the second-highest number of cases, eight total as of Sunday.
The U.S. has tied for the third-highest rate of coronavirus infection. On Saturday night the CDC reported the third confirmed U.S. case of coronavirus. By Sunday, that number had risen to five in total.
Australia has also confirmed five cases of coronavirus infection.
Japan, South Korea, and Singapore have all confirmed four cases of coronavirus within their own countries.
France and Malaysia have reported three cases of coronavirus. Vietnam confirmed two cases and Canada and Nepal each had one confirmed case of the virus.
In the U.S. the cases of coronavirus have quickly been isolated and airports have been carrying out screening efforts to identify possible carriers of the virus. Thus far, the U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has assessed the risk within the U.S. to be at low levels.
Thus far, the CDC has determined that within the U.S., no person-to-person contamination has occurred, but that it is likely to occur to some extent. As part of efforts to track the potential person-to-person spread within the U.S., as of Friday, as many as 63 people who had contact with the existing U.S. coronavirus patients have been receiving regular health check-ups as a precaution and to prevent the spread of additional cases.
China, the CDC had assessed, has had many cases of person-to-person virus transmission.
In China, people have raised concerns that the government has become overwhelmed by the number of cases and has struggled to prevent the spread. So far, China has placed travel restrictions on 17 cities around the Hubei province where the virus began. In total, some 56 million people were under lockdown, due to those travel restrictions.
They’re not hanging around in Wuhan!
Chinese authorities have ordered the construction of a 1,000-bed hospital in the city in just FIVE DAYS.
It’s in response to the deadly #coronavirus which broke out in China and has since spread to other parts of the globe. pic.twitter.com/fyjaSnunIj
— On Demand News (@ODN) January 24, 2020
China has reportedly begun working to expand its hospital capacity by quickly constructing a new 1,000-bed hospital.
The Chinese government has also warned local officials not to cover up the spread of the virus, so as to avoid a virus spread like the one seen in the 2003 MERS outbreak.
