You're listening to shortwave from NPR.

You may have seen the news this week that a deadly new virus has cropped up in China.

It's something called a coronavirus.

The pneumonia-like illness originated in central China.

There are actually many types of coronaviruses.

This one causes fever, dry cough, difficulty breathing, diarrhea, and body aches.

The number of infected exploded over the weekend.

Hundreds of people have been infected.

Chinese officials taking every precaution to contain the virus.

And as of Thursday afternoon, when we're recording this, workers outside of the local

hospital in biosuits, 17 people have died.

A good afternoon.

I'm Governor Jayansley, Governor of the State of Washington.

On top of all of that, we're here today to give a briefing to the public regarding the

novel coronavirus.

On Tuesday, officials announced it had shown up here in the United States.

That patient is a man in his threese.

He is in the hospital here behind me.

And then, later in the week, Chinese authorities closed off the city of Wuhan at the center of

the outbreak.

Wuhan's 11 million people are being told they can't leave.

And more Chinese cities have followed suit.

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