According to World News & US Report, Health Officials are urging the world to prepare for the arrival of the coronavirus, as the outbreak spreads to other countries amid signs of new cases curbing where it began in China.You've got to think, 'It's going to be here tomorrow,'" Bruce Aylward, the team lead for the World Health Organization-China joint mission said at a press conference Tuesday. "We're not as ready as we could be."
Aylward recently returned from a trip to Wuhan, the city where the outbreak was first reported in December. He praised China's effort to contain the virus, saying the country "changed the course of the outbreak.""What was a rapidly escalating outbreak has plateaued and then come down faster than one would have expected," he said.
He noted that during the team's visit, there was no evidence of mass undetected mild cases. It was previously thought that the death rate, which stands at 2-4% in Wuhan, could be skewed if many mild cases were going unreported.
The virus has killed more than 2,700 people and infected over 80,000 more worldwide.South Korea has reported the most infections outside of China with nearly 1,000 cases and 10 deaths.
In Italy, officials reported 322 cases and 10 deaths. A tourist hotel in Spain's Canary Islands announced a quarantine after a doctor from Italy tested positive for the virus.
Iran's head of the country's task force to combat the coronavirus tested positive for the virus just a day after holding a press conference to deny that the country was covering up the scale of the outbreak. Iranian health officials on Tuesday reported 15 deaths and 95 confirmed cases.
WHO officials recently said that one drug is showing signs of treating the virus. Clinical trials for the drug, remdesivir, are ongoing.