Foreign Policy: China Deserves Some Credit for Its Handling of the Wuhan Pneumonia
Daniel Lucey of Georgetown University Medical Center and Annie Sparrow, assistant professor of population health science and policy at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai

“…Within weeks of detection of the initial outbreak in December in Wuhan, China has already identified the novel coronavirus (‘nCoV’) that is the likely cause of infection in 41 patients and shared the genetic sequence of that virus with the world to allow for specific laboratory testing. China’s rapid recognition of this outbreak is particularly remarkable given that it is winter, when influenza and other infections cause many respiratory illnesses that make it difficult to tell whether any particular case of illness is the responsibility of a new respiratory disease. The major clue to this outbreak was that the initial patients had all had recent exposure to a single seafood and live animal market in Wuhan. … Beyond the credit Beijing should rightly take for acting relatively swiftly on this disease, the World Health Organization (WHO) has also played a key supporting role. … However it plays out, the Wuhan pneumonia is unlikely to be the last such outbreak. While China and Hong Kong seem to have pulled off a scientific success story and an impressive level of national preparedness, control at a global level requires timely and complete information-sharing — or, even better, a universal coronavirus vaccine that could end this kind of epidemic for good” (1/14).