“This Could Be Bad:” CDC Warns Americans to Prepare for Coronavirus Pandemic to Hit US

NBS News reports that the CDC is warning Americans that the coronavirus pandemic could strike the US:

Top U.S. public health officials said Tuesday that Americans should prepare for the spread of the coronavirus in communities across the country.

“It’s not so much a question of if this will happen any more, but rather more a question of exactly when this will happen and how many people in this country will have severe illness,” Dr. Nancy Messonnier, the head of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, said during a media briefing Tuesday.

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Measures to contain the virus in the U.S. so far have involved restricting travel to and from China — the center of the outbreak — and isolating cases identified so far in this country.

But Messonnier said that evidence that the virus is spreading countries outside of Asia, such as Iran and Italy, has raised CDC’s “level of concern and expectation that we’ll see spread” in the U.S.

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Meanwhile, CNBC is also reporting on today’s CDC warnings, describing the possibility of school closures.

“We are asking the American public to work with us to prepare for the expectation that this could be bad,” a top CDC officials told reporters in a conference call outlining what schools and businesses will likely need to do if the COVID-19 virus starts to spread throughout the U.S.

READ MORE AT CNBC