From stepping up airport screenings to keeping tabs on thousands of individuals who returned from abroad, India is monitoring the new coronavirus outbreak at the highest level to prevent an epidemic, health minister Harsh Vardhan said Friday.
The fast-spreading virus was first detected in the Chinese city of Wuhan and belongs to a family of coronaviruses that cause illness ranging from the common cold to more severe diseases such as the 2003 SARS, or severe acute respiratory syndrome, outbreak. The new strain of virus, called COVID-19, has killed more than 1,300 people, mostly in China, and infected over 64,000 people worldwide.
