Coronavirus Doesn’t Show Much Mutation So Far, WHO Official Says

(Bloomberg) -- Coronavirus hasn’t caused a pandemic and strategy is still to extinguish transmission, World Health Organization’s Sylvie Briand said at press conference in Geneva.

• Unknowns that remain about virus are because “it takes time to come to strong conclusions:” Briand
• It’s not clear that asymptomatic patients are contagious, they could just be at early stages of experiencing symptoms
• WHO giving advice to businesses to keep employees safe, for instance to airlines, where personnel can be exposed to infected passengers
• “It’s very hard to combat stigma” but agency working with Google and others to provide advice and combat rumors
• WHO expects to be able to give a better estimate of the severity of the disease in coming days

To contact the reporters on this story: Marthe Fourcade in Paris at mfourcade@bloomberg.net;Thomas Mulier in Geneva at tmulier@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Eric Pfanner at epfanner1@bloomberg.net

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