The Contagion Next Time

It began with a bat. This was the species in which the virus first emerged before infecting humans. A member of the coronavirus family of diseases, the symptoms of the virus included high fever, dry cough, body aches, diarrhea, and pneumonia. It spread primarily through respiratory droplets emitted when an infected person coughed or sneezed. This made it important to minimize person-to-person contact and observe social distancing in public spaces where the virus could be transmitted. Once the world became aware of the disease, it mobilized to stop it. These efforts were successful. Quarantine measures, quickly adopted, substantially slowed the spread of the disease. Within months of the detection of the virus in humans, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the outbreak contained. A total of 8,098 people were infected during the outbreak, and 774 died--