From the New York Times, I'm Michael Babaro. This is Daily.

Today, China says it has made life-saving reforms since the last time it was the source of a

public health crisis 17 years ago. So why is the deadly coronavirus spreading so rapidly across

the country? My colleague, Javier Hernandez, reports from the center of the outbreak.

It's Thursday, January 30th.

Javier, how did you first hear about this outbreak?

Well, we started hearing reports in early January that there was this mysterious virus that was

affecting Wuhan, which is a city in central China.

Staff at Wuhan Hospital are working around the clock to identify a mystery virus.

People were falling ill to this kind of pneumonia-like virus, which scientists were calling a coronavirus.

Experts believe this is a new kind of coronavirus, which typically causes symptoms of the common

cold, but in some rare cases can lead to pneumonia. It's a very frightening virus that spreads from

animals to humans. It was believed to be behind some very serious respiratory illnesses, so it

was sounded pretty scary. But the official narrative was that this strain couldn't pass from human

to human. It would only go from animals to humans. The potentially deadly coronavirus is thought to

have spread from animals into humans that alive produce markets in Wuhan. And at that point,

they were saying that it was all originating at a single meat market in central China. This meat

market sold wild animals, things like bamboo rats, badgers, wolves even. And the assumption was that

people had come into contact with these animals and picked up this virus.

And it sounds like because it was one meat market and because this virus could only pass from

animals to humans, this is a pretty small problem. At this point, the reports were that only about

130 people had been infected and that of those only about four had died. Chinese officials say the

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