VIDEO: Brown Alpert Medical School Emergency Preparedness Expert on Coronavirus LIVE
VIDEO: Brown Alpert Medical School Emergency Preparedness Expert on Coronavirus LIVE
"This is a novel coronavirus, which means we’ve never seen this virus in the world before," said Suner. "Coronaviruses are ubiquitous, they’re everything where, and people get them all the time without getting sick."
"Occasionally these coronaviruses mutate and they mix with other viruses in other animals such as bats and they come back to the human host and wreak havoc like this one," said Suner. "We’ve seen this before with the SARS epidemic and MERS in the Middle East."
“What we don’t know yet is how this virus interacts with the human host to cause disease,” said Suner on Monday, before participating on a CDC conference call.
Suner spoke to the epicenter of the outbreak still being located in Wuhan, China, and how cases identified around the world so far have been people who have been in that region.
"Right now someone in the United States should not panic. It’s very unlikely that they will contract this virus unless they travel too," he said.
On Monday, the CDC said that despited 5 identified cases in the U.S., the virus is “not spreading.”
"We understand that many people in the United States are worried about this virus," said Dr. Nancy Messonnier, director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases (part of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention).
"At this time, in the U.S., the virus is not spreading in the community," she added. "For that reason we continue to believe that the immediate health risk from the new virus to the general public is low at this time.”