Discussion: The coronavirus outbreak — tracking COVID-19

The World
Updated on
A large open area of a train staton is shown crowded with people most of which are wearing protective face masks.

Health officials in Washington state said late Sunday that a nursing home resident had died after contracting coronavirus, marking the second death from COVID-19 in the United States.

And in South Korea, where the second largest number of coronavirus cases have been reported outside of China, prosecutors in the capital Seoul sought murder charges against leaders of a secretive church at the center of a ballooning coronavirus outbreak in the country, as the global death toll rose above 3,000.

Video: What we know and don’t know about COVID-19

World stock markets are working to recover after the dramatic plunge last week, the worst market dive since the 2008 financial crisis.

The coronavirus, which emerged in China late last year, has decimated global markets as it quickly moves around the world. It appeared poised for a spike in the United States, in part because of more testing to confirm cases.

On Monday, March 2, 2020, we streamed a live discussion (featured above) on the coronavirus outbreak moderated by The World’s Elana Gordon at The Forum at Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health. As policymakers and researchers continue to grapple with the impact of COVID-19, experts in the Forum examined pressing questions like: What do we know about the virus itself? How likely is a future vaccine? How is China’s stressed health system coping and how are US hospital systems preparing for cases?

The Coronavirus Outbreak: Tracking COVID-19
Presented jointly with The World from PRX & WGBH

Participants:

Paul Biddinger
Director of the Emergency Preparedness Research, Evaluation and Practice Program, Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health

Marc Lipsitch
Professor of Epidemiology and Director of the Center for Communicable Disease Dynamics, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health

Chi-Man (Winnie) Yip
Professor of Global Health Policy and Economics, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, and Faculty Director, Harvard China Health Partnership

Hilary Marston
Medical Officer and Policy Advisor, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, National Institutes of Health

Sign up for our daily newsletter

Sign up for The Top of the World, delivered to your inbox every weekday morning.