China coronavirus: 110 patients under observation in US, while other countries assess plans as more ill people identified globally
- Centres for Disease Control and Prevention does not believe virus has mutated, and says the risk to the US public remains low
- ‘At this time in the US, this virus is not spreading in the community,’ an official says
Officials from the top US public health agency said on Monday that 110 people around the country with a fever and respiratory illness have been placed under observation to determine if they have been infected with the China coronavirus.
Officials from the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said the “persons under investigation” (PUIs) came from 26 states and had all either travelled to the epicentre of the outbreak, Wuhan, or had come into contact with confirmed infected patients.
The number “will only increase”, Nancy Messonnier, director of the CDC’s National Centre for Immunisation and Respiratory Diseases, said in an agency briefing.
But the immediate health risk of the pneumonia-like illness – known as 2019-nCoV – to the US public remained low, she said: “At this time in the US, this virus is not spreading in the community.”
Meanwhile, other countries are assessing their own plans for the virus, with Germany joining other European countries with plans to extract their citizens from Wuhan, which is currently locked down.
According to Messonnier, The CDC has extracted and analysed the genomes from the first and second confirmed cases in the US and found that the virus did not appear to have mutated.