Coronavirus news

Health authorities managing the outbreak are trying to understand what that critical fact portends. Are the 60,000 sick people tallied so far just a portion of a vast reservoir of uncounted victims, some of whom may be spreading the disease? And do the mild illnesses reveal characteristics of the virus itself — something that could […]

New research suggests the coronavirus could be capable of beating a 14-day quarantine, but health officials in the U.S. say they are comfortable with two-week quarantines at this time.  China’s National Health Commission released a new study, which has yet to be peer-reviewed, that suggests the virus, known as COVID-19, could have an incubation period […]

One of the most prestigious venture capital firms in Silicon Valley, Andreessen Horowitz, recently put up a sign on its door, cautioning eager startup founders and business partners who walk into its offices: “Due to the Coronavirus, no Handshakes please. Thank you.” It’s unclear how long Andreessen Horowitz — an investor in the likes of […]

Click here if you’re having trouble viewing this map on a mobile device. Researchers at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine have developed a new mapping tool that compares the coronavirus, or COVID-19, to other recent epidemics. These include severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), H1N1 or swine flu, and the Ebola virus. While […]

What would be a sign that the disease is becoming more dangerous in the United States? The first thing for Americans to worry about is sustained human-to-human transmission. We know of 13 cases, and only one of them has been transmitted from person to person. But if that changed to hundreds of cases, we might […]

*Update, 13 February, 12:15 p.m.: The story below, published on 12 February, has been updated with information from a WHO spokesperson.  “COVID-19. I’ll spell it: C-O-V-I-D hyphen one nine. COVID-19.” That’s how Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, head of the World Health Organization (WHO), introduced the agency’s official name for the new disease that’s paralyzing China and threatening the rest […]

On Thursday (Feb. 13), the Rocky Mountain Laboratories (RML) at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases revealed some of the first images of SARS-CoV-2, the new coronavirus that has sickened over 60,000 people and killed another 1,370 in the outbreak that began in Wuhan, China.  Viruses are teeny-tiny infectious blobs that are made […]

The number of cases and deaths in the coronavirus epidemic in China jumped sharply on Thursday as the authorities there changed how they keep track of the disease, and not, primarily, because of any change in the shape of the outbreak. There is still a lot of uncertainty about the true numbers — as with […]

On this website you can find information and guidance from WHO regarding the current outbreak of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) that was first reported from Wuhan, China, on 31 December 2019. Please visit this page for daily updates. WHO is working closely with global experts, governments and partners to rapidly expand scientific knowledge on this new […]

The novel coronavirus outbreak presents an immense challenge for global health. But it’s also part of a larger pattern: Viruses that circulate in animals keep jumping over to infect humans. The story of the novel coronavirus is the story of HIV, of SARS, of Ebola, and even the measles. These are all diseases that have […]