Prepare for outbreaks, officials warn US

It’s not a question of if, but when, says US doctor

Federal health officials starkly warned on Tuesday that the new coronavirus will almost certainly spread in the United States, and that hospitals, businesses and schools should begin making preparations.

“It’s not so much of a question of if this will happen anymore but rather more of a question of exactly when this will happen,” Dr Nancy Messonnier, director of the National

Centre for Immunisation and Respiratory Diseases, said.

She said cities and towns should plan for “social distancing measures”, like dividing school classes into smaller groups of students or closing schools altogether. Meetings and conferences may have to be cancelled, she said.

Worst day

Shortly after the news conference, stock markets plummeted for the second day as investors dumped stocks and turned to the safety of government bonds. The S&P 500 fell by more than 3 per cent, following a 3.4 per cent slide on Monday — the worst day for the US markets since February 2018. As of Tuesday, the US has just 57 cases, 40 of them connected to the Diamond Princess, the cruise ship overwhelmed by the virus after it docked in Japan. Those patients are in isolation in hospitals, and there are no signs of sustained transmission in American communities.

But given the outbreaks in more than two dozen countries, officials at the CDC seemed convinced that the virus’s spread in the US was inevitable. “We cannot hermetically seal off the US to a virus,” Alex Azar, the secretary of health and human services, told a Senate panel on Tuesday.