The death toll from the coronavirus, which gained strength in China at a vulnerable time — the Chinese New Year, a major travel season in the country, has reached more than 300 so far.
With the first person-to-person transmission of the new coronavirus reported in the US, the World Health Organization on Thursday declared the virus outbreak a global health emergency.
Seventeen years after the SARS outbreak of 2002-2003, the first global pandemic of the 21st century, another novel zoonotic coronavirus has been reported from Wuhan, China.
In 2003, the outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome-related coronavirus, or SARS, sparked a major health crisis in a number of countries around the globe.