How the Coronavirus Response Is Aided by Analytics

The rapid emergence and spread of the novel coronavirus, 2019-nCoV, has alarmed people around the world. While the possibility of a global pandemic is real, people can take some solace in the fact that public health officials have at their disposal an array of powerful data collection and analytics techniques that previous generations lacked. The virus, which causes a pneumonia-like illness that's quite similar to the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) outbreak 2003 that killed 800 people, appears to have jumped into the human biome at an exotic meet market in Wuhan, China, where delicacies like bats and snakes were sold to the public. But what makes 2019-nCoV dangerous is its ability to spread from human to human, and that's how more than 17,000 Chinese citizens have gotten sick. However, before Chinese authorities could quarantine Wuhan and surrounding areas, infected individuals were allowed to travel around the world, and today individuals in 20 countries have been reported to be infected with 2019-nCoV, which the World Health Organization (WHO) last week declared a global health emergency.