Hello and welcome back to our Roundtable discussion show, Backchat, where we look at the stories behind the stories here at nature.

On this edition of the show, we're going to do a deep dive into the ongoing coronavirus outbreak that originated in China.

We'll be talking how we report on such a fast-moving story, and with the deluge of news about this story out there, where does nature fit in?

I'm Nick Howe, and joining me in the studio are you in Calloway?

Hi there, I'm a senior reporter at Nature in London, specialising in life sciences.

Nisha Gained.

Hi, I'm Nature's European Bureau Chief, also in London.

And on the phone line from Japan, I'm joined by David Sinovsky.

Hello, I'm Nature's Asia-Pacific correspondent.

David, you've been reporting on this since day one.

How has this story evolved?

And did you have any inkling of how big this might become?

No, I really didn't at the beginning.

When it first came out, it was the early days of January when I heard about it.

And at that time, they were just calling it a mysterious pneumonia, which doesn't sound that scary. But then I think around January 7th, they

identified it as a coronavirus, which then became very scary because then it was, you know,

reminded everyone of SARS in 2003, which spread around the

world and killed a lot of people. And China's obviously been where there's been the most cases.

Do you have a sense of what the atmosphere is like there now with the lockdowns and everything

for the people affected? In Wuhan, they still have about a 2.3% fatality rate, I think, was the last figure that I saw.

So anybody that thinks they might have it is going to be very scared, I think, because

the hospitals have been overwhelmed.

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