China reports explosive spike in new cases of coronavirus
Chinese officials say the jump comes down to the methodology used to diagnosed new cases; Benjamin Hall reports from London.
Author Dean Koontz eerily predicted the coronavirus outbreak in his 1981 thriller "The Eyes of Darkness."
The fictional novel tells the story of a Chinese military lab that creates a new virus to potentially use as a biological weapon during wartime. The lab is ironically located in Wuhan, China and the made-up virus is called Wuhan-400.
In the novel, the virus is called the "perfect weapon" because it only affects humans. It also cannot survive outside the human body for more than a minute and does not require an expensive decontamination process once it spreads through a population and those who contract it.
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The coincidence between the book's virus and the actual coronavirus outbreak is uncanny.
Dean Koontz published the book in 1981.
Currently, the coronavirus which originated in Wuhan, China is causing panic throughout the world. On Thursday, officials from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) confirmed that an American evacuee from Wuhan who is currently in Texas was diagnosed with the virus, making it the 15th case in the United States.
CDC officials told Fox News that there will “likely be additional cases in the coming days and weeks, including among other people recently returned from Wuhan.” Though the first 195 evacuees were released on Tuesday, “more than 600 people who returned on chartered flights from Wuhan remain under federal quarantine and are being closely monitored to contain the spread of the virus,” officials added.
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Americans were evacuated from China on two chartered flights which brought them to Texas and Nebraska. Some 250 passengers were reportedly on the flight to Texas while an estimated 70 passengers were on the one to Nebraska.
A medical staffer works with test systems for the diagnosis of coronavirus, at the Krasnodar Center for Hygiene and Epidemiology microbiology lab in Krasnodar, Russia. (AP)
The case also marks the first in Texas. The 14 other cases have been reported across the country, the first of which occurred in a Washington state man who has since been released from the hospital. Other cases have been confirmed in California, Wisconsin, Arizona, Massachusetts and Illinois. No deaths have been reported in the U.S., and the large majority of cases still remain in China.
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Overall, more than 50,000 people have been sickened globally from the coronavirus while 1,370 have died.
Fox News' Madeline Farber contributed to this report.
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