Before a vaccine is available to teach your immune system to ward off the coronavirus, maybe you can directly use molecules that have already fought it in other people.
U.S. officials risk public health by equating COVID-19 with places far from home.
AP Photo/Patrick Semansky
Emphasizing foreign origins of a disease can have racist connotations and implications for how people understand their own risk of disease.
A vendor distributes newspapers wearing a face mask as a preventive measure against the spread of the COVID-19 coronavirus in Nairobi, Kenya.
Simon Maina/AFP via Getty Images
While identifying a new disease by its place of origin seems intuitive, history shows that doing so can have serious consequences for the people that live there.
Medical staff strike over coronavirus concerns in Hong Kong. Hospital workers are demanding the border with mainland China be shut completely to ward off the virus.
(AP Photo/Vincent Yu)
Epidemiologists want to quickly identify any emerging disease’s potential to spread far and wide. Dependent on a number of factors, this R0 number helps them figure that out and plan accordingly.
A horseshoe bat chasing a moth. Horseshoe bats were the source of SARS. Scientists consider bats to be a possible source of coronavirus.
DE AGOSTINI PICTURE LIBRARY / Contributor
Some of the world’s worst diseases have come from animals. Bats, cows, camels and horses have all contributed. Now, scientists are working to know which animal introduced the new coronavirus.
Colorized scanning electron micrograph of filamentous Ebola virus particles (blue) budding from an infected cell (yellow-green).
NIAID
The Trump administration has cut funding for infectious disease research and reduced high-level staffing for global health security, leaving the nation less prepared for major outbreaks.
Cambodian high-school students line up to sanitize their hands to avoid coronavirus in Phnom Penh, Cambodia.
AP Photo/Heng Sinith
Arne Ruckert, L’Université d’Ottawa/University of Ottawa; Hélène Carabin, Université de Montréal, and Ronald Labonte, L’Université d’Ottawa/University of Ottawa
China’s coronavirus outbreak is stoking fears that it could become the next great global pandemic. As the World Health Organization declares a global emergency, it’s also fanning a pandemic of fear.
Kenyan health workers from port health services screen inbound travelers for temperatures at Nairobi’s Jomo Kenyatta International Airport.
EPA/Daniel Irungu
Talk of bioterrorism might provoke fears of smallpox and anthrax, but mundane threats like salmonella may pose greater danger. And experts say that the U.S. is not prepared for an attack.
UNICEF carers at a creche for children whose parents are being treated for Ebola. Building health infrastructure is crucial to stopping the next outbreak.
Epa/ Hugh Kinsella Cunningham
The emergency in the DRC shows that despite all these positive changes, the global response to containing Ebola outbreaks is undermined by the lack of health care and public health infrastructure.
Part-time lecturer at the Global Health & Social Medicine, Harvard University, and Lecturer at the School of Public Health, College of Health Sciences, University of Liberia
Director of the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Health Protection Research Unit in Emerging and Zoonotic Infections, and Professor of Neurology, University of Liverpool