The coronavirus appears to flare up again in some patients, China warns

(Image credit: Greg Baker/AFP/Getty Images)

published 27 February 2020

There were more than 82,000 confirmed cases of the COVID-19 coronavirus spread across every continent except Antarctica as of Thursday morning, plus about 2,800 deaths, and countries are taking drastic steps to contain its spread. Japan told all 12.8 million students in the country's elementary, middle, and high schools to stay home until the end of March; Saudi Arabia banned all foreign pilgrims from visiting the holy city of Mecca for an indeterminate period of time, possibly up through the annual hajj pilgrimage at the end of July; and the U.S. reported its 60th confirmed case and the first not tied to any overseas travel.

Since the virus is new, not much is known about it and nobody has built up an immunity, Dr. Dean Blumberg, an infectious disease specialist at UC Davis Medical Center, told CNN. Adding to concerns about the spread of the virus, Chinese health officials said 14 percent of patients in Guangdong province who tested positive for the coronavirus, recovered, and were discharged have tested positive again, BBC News reports. A woman in Japan experience a similar phenomenon, testing positive three weeks after recovering and testing negative.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says it's now a question of when, not if, the coronavirus will start spreading among people in the U.S. The patient at UC Davis Medical Center could be the first known case. When that patient transferred from another Northern California hospital to UC Davis on Feb. 19, doctors asked the CDC to test the patient for the coronavirus, which the CDC did not do until Sunday, the San Francisco Chronicle reports. You can watch Blumberg and CNN's Dan Simon run through some of what we know and don't know on Thursday's New Day. Peter Weber

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Peter has worked as a news and culture writer and editor at The Week since the site's launch in 2008. He covers politics, world affairs, religion and cultural currents. His journalism career began as a copy editor at a financial newswire and has included editorial positions at The New York Times Magazine, Facts on File, and Oregon State University.