January 23 coronavirus news

What started as an unknown virus last month in Wuhan, China, has now killed at least 17 people and infected hundreds more around the world.

Here are some things you can do to protect yourself if you are worried about contracting the virus.

Do "what you do every cold and flu season," according to Dr. John Wiesman, the health secretary in Washington state -- where the first US case of Wuhan coronavirus was confirmed.

More specifically:

If you're the one feeling sick:

Read more here

CNN's David Culver, Yong Xiong and Natalie Thomas visited Wuhan, ground zero of the coronavirus outbreak, on Wednesday.

Watch their report:

Read more here about their mad dash to leave the city after authorities announced that public transport would be "temporarily closed."

The World Health Organization (WHO) is holding a meeting today where it could decide whether the spread of the Wuhan virus constitutes "a public health emergency of international concern."

The WHO held a similar meeting yesterday but delayed its decision, due to a lack of information.

"The decision about whether or not to declare a public health emergency of international concern is one I take extremely seriously, and one I am only prepared to make with appropriate consideration of all the evidence,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told reporters Wednesday. 

"Today, there was an excellent discussion during committee meeting but it was also clear that to proceed, we need more information," he said.

The WHO defines a public health emergency of international concern as "an extraordinary event" that constitutes a "public health risk to other States through the international spread of disease" and "to potentially require a coordinated international response." Previous emergencies have included Ebola, Zika and H1N1.

Health officials in China have confirmed a total of 581 confirmed cases of the Wuhan coronavirus across 25 provinces as of mid-day Thursday, according to official statistics. Those figures do not include cases in the special administrative regions of Macao and Hong Kong or in the self-governing island of Taiwan.

Chinese National Health Commission said in a statement Thursday that as of the end of the day Wednesday:

On Wednesday alone:

Macao’s Health Bureau said a second case of the Wuhan coronavirus has been identified in the city.

In a statement, the Health Bureau says the patient was a 66-year-old male tourist from Wuhan. He was screened on arrival into Macao, where officials detected he had a high temperature. He was immediately sent to the hospital, where he tested positive for the new coronavirus.

Snakes -- the Chinese krait and the Chinese cobra -- may be the original source of the newly discovered coronavirus that has triggered an outbreak of a deadly infectious respiratory illness in China this winter.

The many-banded krait (Bungarus multicinctus), also known as the Taiwanese krait or the Chinese krait, is a highly venomous species of elapid snake found in much of central and southern China and Southeast Asia.

The illness was first reported in late December 2019 in Wuhan, a major city in central China, and has been rapidly spreading. Since then, sick travelers from Wuhan have infected people in China and other countries, including the United States.

Using samples of the virus isolated from patients, scientists in China have determined the genetic code of the virus and used microscopes to photograph it. The pathogen responsible for this pandemic is a new coronavirus. It's in the same family of viruses as the well-known severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus (SARS-CoV) and Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV), which have killed hundreds of people in the past 17 years. The World Health Organization (WHO) has named the new coronavirus 2019-nCoV.

Read more here from The Conversation

Macao’s Government Tourism Office has announced all Lunar New Year festivities are being canceled “due to the Wuhan coronavirus."

The semi-autonomous Chinese city and gambling enclave confirmed its first case of the virus on Wednesday.

Dr. Lei Chin-ion, the director of the Macao Health Bureau, said Wednesday a 52-year-old woman from Wuhan was confirmed as being infected with the virus after she went to hospital in Macao on January 21.

She had arrived in Macao from Wuhan on January 19 and had traveled by train and bus, Lei said at a news conference today. She claims she had no contact with anyone with a confirmed Wuhan coronavirus back home, Lei said.

Macao joins neighboring Hong Kong in calling off New Year festivities, albeit for very different reasons. Earlier this month Hong Kong officials announced that the city’s traditional fireworks display in Victoria Harbor, held on the second day of the Lunar New Year holiday, would be canceled for security reasons due to the ongoing anti-government protests.

Hong Kong’s Mass Transit Railway (MTR) has halted the sale of high-speed railway tickets to and from Wuhan, said Dobie Yam, the public transportation company's public relations manager Thursday.

Yam said the decision was made after discussions with railway officials in mainland China.

Wuhan, a city of 11 million people, is on partial lockdown from in an effort to stop the spread of the virus. 

Scientists at Imperial College London estimate that around 4,000 people are likely to have been infected by the Wuhan coronavirus in Wuhan city alone as of January 18.

Official numbers show 17 people have died and more than 500 people have been infected with the Wuhan coronavirus within the Chinese mainland, but a team at Imperial believes these numbers are a gross underestimate. Mild symptoms and delayed onset mean many cases are likely to have been undetected.

The new estimates are more than double previous estimates the scientists released last week, which suggested 1,723 people were likely to have been infected by January 12. The revision takes into account new information available this week, such as reports of exported cases in Thailand, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and the United States.

Wuhan is still the epicenter of the outbreak, explained Neil Ferguson, professor of mathematical biology at Imperial College London, highlighting that the majority of cases continue to be reported in this region. Estimates are likely to change as more information becomes available, such as a newly reported case in Macao.