USA News Group has reported that passengers from Wuhan, China are now being screened at JFK New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles airports for infection with a respiratory virus that has killed and sickened people people overseas, the news source said.
As part of the efforts to overcome new and deadly viruses, research and developments with multidisciplinary approaches are proving vital. Companies, including Bristol-Myers Squibb Company (NYSE: BMY), Oncolytics Biotech Inc. (NASDAQ: ONCY) (TSX: ONC), and Emergent BioSolutions Inc. (NYSE: EBS), are working to offer new treatments that can handle the influx.
The news suggests that people who have contracted the infection are believed to have derived it through exposure to animals at a specific market that sells seafood and meat in Wuhan. Officials cannot say whether the virus spreads from person to person or how it´s being contracted.
A few reported cases that have not been linked to animals, and so researchers are indicating that some human-to-human transmission could be possible. There are several deadly viruses known as SARS and MERS, which have resulted in mass outbreaks in recent years. Those viruses also emerged from China.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention´s position is that there will probably be cases in the United States which emerge at some point, but they have ranked the current risk to the general public as low.
