Big developments re: #Wuhan #nCoV2019 #coronavirus outbreak in China since Friday. It looks like the virus has been spreading since November, maybe even October, and may not have started at the Wuhan market. thelancet.com/journals/lance…
This means that the virus may have already spread more widely in the region than we'd realized... just under the radar. Now that our radar is up, and we're looking and testing for #coronavirus cases, we may be picking them up.
So the dramatic increase in cases over the last couple days not actually be as sudden as it seems... but something that's been building up over months.
It's hard to find a needle in a haystack when the haystack is big. It's cough/cold/flu season. The symptoms of the #coronavirus are the same. So it's tough to pick up a #NovelCoronavirus outbreak in the middle of that.
Lesson 3 from the #Ebola epidemic for the #Wuhan #nCoV2019 #coronavirus outbreak: Signal-to-noise. It was hard to differentiate #Ebola patients from those with fever from run-of-the-mill malaria, typhoid, and other fever-causing diseases in the region.
When you're looking for a needle (in this case, the #Wuhan #nCoV2019 #coronavirus) in a haystack, anything you can do to reduce the size of the haystack helps! Please get your #influenza #flu #flushot. Wash your hands. Cover your mouth with your elbow when you cough/sneeze. 
The other big news: the Chinese health minister says the #Wuhan #nCoV2019 #coronavirus might be spread by infected persons without symptoms. This would be a gamechanger. businessinsider.com/coronavirus-ca…
Note that whether #Wuhan #nCoV2019 #coronavirus might be transmitted by asymptomatic persons has yet to be confirmed by @CDCgov scientists. But *if* true, this is scary.
@CDCgov When we don't have drugs/vaccines for a disease, we rely on the basics: identify cases by screening for symptoms & testing for disease and conduct contact-tracing. But case-finding and contact-tracing rely on looking for symptoms.
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