A health worker checks the temperature of a man entering the Beijing subway on Jan. 26, 2020. The Chinese government has struggled to contain the spread of the coronavirus, originating in the central city of Wuhan, whose 11 million residents have been placed under quarantine.
An executive from one of the country’s largest drugmakers on Monday expressed high hopes about the company’s ability to develop a vaccine against the rapidly spreading coronavirus.
In an interview on CNBC’s “Squawk Box,” Johnson & Johnson Chief Scientific Officer Paul Stoffels said the company is “pretty confident” it can develop a vaccine in the coming months. He said the New Brunswick, New Jersey-based company started working on a vaccine two weeks ago, but that it could still take a year to reach the market.
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The virus, which is widely believed to have started at a seafood market in the central Chinese city of Wuhan that also sold wild animals, has infected more than 2,800 people and resulted in 81 deaths. A coronavirus, it is closely related to the SARS virus that was also a zoonotic virus that originated in China, causing a global epidemic in 2003.
In an effort to contain the coronavirus’ spread, China has quarantined tens of millions of people, effectively shutting down Wuhan, which is home to about 11 million people, slightly less than the combined populations of New York and Chicago. The quarantine, which bars travel into or out of the city and has also shut down public transit, has put significant strain on its healthcare system. In a video shared online, a man wearing a surgical mask and claiming to be a resident of Wuhan angrily denounced the government’s actions, saying that it prevented people from obtaining emergency medical care.
On Sunday, the U.S. State Department said it had ordered diplomats to evacuate Wuhan while also evacuating some private U.S. citizens aboard a chartered plane. And Reuters reported Sunday that neighboring Mongolia closed its border with China, in addition to closing educational institutes until March 2 and called for the cancellation of public events.
It has nevertheless spread beyond China’s borders. According to The Wall Street Journal, there are now five confirmed cases in the United States – all in people who had recently traveled to Wuhan – and about 100 people in 26 states have been investigated or are being monitored for the virus.
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Global markets fell Monday, with the S&P 500 Index, Dow Jones Industrial Average and Nasdaq Composite Index down respectively 1.6%, 1.5% and 1.9% by late morning.
Photo: Betsy Joles, Getty Images