In China, citizens wear masks while riding a subway, to protect from a new coronavirus
In China, citizens wear masks while riding a subway, to protect from a new coronavirusReuters

Deaths from the 2019 novel coronavirus have surpassed 210 in China. We’ll look back at lessons learned during the 2003 SARS outbreak and explore how to stop a pandemic today.

Listen to Dr. Anthony Fauci, Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases; Dr. Samira Mubareka, infectious disease physician and microbiologist at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre in Toronto, Canada; and Dr. Jennifer Nuzzo, epidemiologist and global health security policy scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security.

Coronavirus outbreak resembles SARS, but virus experts say science moves far faster now.

Dr. Paul Sax remembers SARS all too well, and the similarities with the new coronavirus that has now killed more than 210 people are obvious: Both are coronaviruses first diagnosed in China. Both seem to have originated in bats. Both cause severe lung infections and worldwide alarm.

But Sax, Clinical Director of the Division of Infectious Diseases at Brigham and Women's Hospital, says this outbreak also strikes him as very different. "What's different is the pace of scientific discovery," he says. "It's like someone pressed the fast-forward button, and we're accelerating through things that took much, much longer then."