WHO calls for emergency meeting on new virus in China, as cases spread to health care workers
The World Health Organization announced Monday that it would convene an expert panel to determine whether a fast-developing outbreak caused by a new virus in China should be declared a global health emergency.
The news came as China reported confirmed cases in Beijing and in Guangdong province, 14 cases in health care workers — a first — and a confirmed incident involving human-to-human spread of the new virus, known provisionally as 2019-nCoV. It is a coronavirus, from the same family as the viruses that caused the 2003 SARS outbreak, which sickened more than 8,000 people globally, killing nearly 800.
