-Experts are warning it's likely to become a pandemic.

-The number of people infected with coronavirus

surged by more than 3,000 overnight.

-As of early February, more than 20,000 people

worldwide were infected with a new strain of coronavirus.

-From the government who told us that if you stayed inside,

the chance of your survival is much bigger than if you go out.

We are in history right now.

-One month after it was first discovered in Wuhan, China,

the World Health Organization

officially declared the outbreak a public health emergency.

-We don't know what sort of damage this virus could do

if it were to spread in a country

with a weaker health system.

We must act now

to help countries prepare for that possibility.

-A few days later, the US also declared it

a public health emergency

and announced that foreign nationals

who had traveled to China

would be denied entry into the United States.

-The president has signed a presidential proclamation

using his authority pursuant to Section 212(f)

of the Immigration and Nationality Act

temporarily suspending the entry

into the United States of foreign nationals

who pose a risk of transmitting the 2019 novel coronavirus.

-Major airlines had already canceled flights to China.

The global reaction to this novel coronavirus strain

has been swift, as the world tries

to contain the spread of an entirely new virus.

-It was a lot of unknowns in this.

We saw this acceleration

which is now so obvious to everyone.

You know, we started off with 25, 50, 100,

several hundred, 1,000, 5,000, 10,000, and now 17,000.

So we had no idea where it was going.

The situation was such that we already saw

that the introduction into our country

was through travel-related cases.

The other issue that was important is that the volume

of people that were coming in daily from China,

either directly or indirectly, where they would go from China

to another country to the United States,

was so high that it became logistically very difficult

for the CDC to effectively and confidently screen people.

-The coronavirus isn't the first global infectious disease

to cause this type of panic.

It most closely resembles the SARS epidemic

that occurred in 2002 and 2003,

which caused about 800 deaths in 17 countries,

according to the World Health Organization.

The difficulty of containing these outbreaks

starts with how the disease is tracked and reported.

-After SARS, the International Health Regulations

were revised to say that if there's any unusual event

related to health, it should be reported.

So, because of the IHR, China,

when it discovered this new virus,

reported it to the World Health Organization,

and then they distributed that information

to the rest of the world,

and now each individual country is putting into place

the measures for how they will be looking for it.

We're seeing things like isolating patients

in particular ways,

putting travel restrictions into place, imposing quarantines.

All of those sorts of actions

are things that we learned from SARS.

-But Chinese officials were slow to accurately report

the new strain of coronavirus to its own people

and to authorities,

which could've aided in spreading the disease.

-Really afraid that I will just get that disease

because it's quite strong,

and I feel that the government didn't, like, help us enough,

like, getting masks, like,

stopping the patients from coming here.

-The coronavirus is also unpredictable

because it is an entirely new strain.

Even though the flu has been a greater threat in the US,

it is not easy to compare.

-People say, appropriately, that, "Wait a minute,

why are you taking such measures to address this new coronavirus

when right here in the United States,

we're in the middle of a flu season

where there's 10,000 people who have already died of flu

and a lot more likely will?"

The thing about flu is much suffering and death

that occurs every year on a seasonal basis,

we have a very good experience

and know exactly what flu is gonna do.

You can be guaranteed that as we get into March and April,

flu will diminish

and essentially get off the radar screen.

Coronavirus is the unknown.

We have no idea what its potential is,

the direction it's going, or where it's gonna end.

And because of that, because of that unknown,

it was felt that we needed to do something that,

in many respects, was unprecedented.

-The outbreak of this strain likely originated

at a live-animal market in Wuhan.

-Lots of infectious diseases come from animals.

It used to be that we blamed rats

for just about every new infection.

At the moment, we seem to be blaming bats

for everything because bats are what we think

probably started the Ebola outbreak in West Africa,

and we think that bats are likely first host

for this new coronavirus.

So, that's really typical.

And we talk about new infections

emerging at the human environment interface,

where humans are interacting with wildlife

in perhaps a new way.

But this doesn't just happen at animal markets in China.

We can have new outbreaks happen on a farm in Iowa.

-Even those who study and work on infectious diseases

are unsure what will happen next.

-This could mutate in a way that changes the way it behaves.

If it mutates in some other way, it might become more contagious,

it might become less contagious.

It might cause less severe disease,

it might change in the opposite direction,

and as we get more data that come in,

some of these initial characterizations of the disease

may change a little bit.

-Right now, the risk to the American public is low,

but -- big "but" -- that could change,

because this is an evolving situation,

and if it evolves into a true global pandemic,

then we would have a very serious problem here

in the United States.