WHO convenes emergency meeting on China coronavirus outbreak

The World Health Organization held an emergency committee meeting on the novel strain of coronavirus on Jan. 22, in Geneva, to determine whether the outbreak constitutes a public health emergency and how to manage the spread of the virus. The outbreak originated in the central Chinese city of Wuhan, and since then more than 300 cases of the coronavirus have been reported in China and elsewhere, including Taiwan, Japan, South Korea and Thailand, and now the U.S. American officials announced Tuesday that they had detected a case of coronavirus in Washington State, the first U.S. case connected to the ongoing outbreak in Wuhan, China. As of Jan. 22, WHO officials have not declared an international public health emergency and are carefully considering the information on whether or not to do so.