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A Kenya Airways passenger who arrived from Guangzhou with flu-like symptoms has been quarantined at the Kenyatta National Hospital (KNH) over fears of the coronavirus.

A statement from Kenya Airways confirmed that the Kenyan passenger had travelled to Nairobi from Guangzhou on Tuesday.

“Decision to quarantine the passenger was reached by the Kenya Government port health authorities stationed at JKIA,” the statement reads.

SHANGHAI—Hundreds of Americans were preparing to fly out of Wuhan, bound for California, as fears grew at the epicenter of China’s health crisis. But more U.S. citizens aren’t leaving, having failed to secure a seat on the single U.S.-bound flight—or decided to ride out the emergency where they are.

A State Department evacuation flight promised relief for a segment of Wuhan’s roughly 1,000 Americans, as a lockdown triggered by a coronavirus outbreak turned the focus to the dangers of contagion and a long quarantine in China’s…

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A new study from Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis suggests that bone marrow — or blood stem cells — from healthy donors can harbor extremely rare mutations that can cause health problems for the cancer patients who receive them.


A stem cell transplant — also called a bone marrow transplant — is a common treatment for blood cancers, such as acute myeloid leukemia (AML). Such treatment can cure blood cancers but also can lead to life-threatening complications, including heart problems and graft-versus-host disease, in which new immune cells from the donor attack a patient’s healthy tissues.

A new study from Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis suggests that extremely rare, harmful genetic mutations present in healthy donors’ stem cells — though not causing health problems in the donors — may be passed on to cancer patients receiving stem cell transplants. The intense chemo- and radiation therapy prior to transplant and the immunosuppression given after allow cells with these rare mutations the opportunity to quickly replicate, potentially creating health problems for the patients who receive them, suggests the research, published Jan. 15 in the journal Science Translational Medicine.

Among the concerns are heart damage, graft-versus-host disease and possible new leukemias.

Analyses of the viral genome are already providing clues to the origins of the outbreak and even possible ways to treat the infection, a need that is becoming more urgent by the day: Early on Saturday in China, health officials reported 15 new fatalities in a single day, bringing the death toll to 41. There are now nearly 1,100 confirmed cases there.

Reading the genome (which is made of RNA, not DNA) also allows researchers to monitor how 2019-nCoV is changing and provides a roadmap for developing a diagnostic test and a vaccine.

“The genetics can tell us the true timing of the first cases” and whether they occurred earlier than officials realized, said molecular biologist Kristian Andersen of Scripps Research, an expert on viral genomes. “It can also tell us how the outbreak started — from a single event of a virus jumping from an infected animal to a person or from a lot of animals being infected. And the genetics can tell us what’s sustaining the outbreak — new introductions from animals or human-to-human transmission.”

The Pennsylvania-based biotechnology company said early Thursday that it was awarded a grant of up to $9 million by the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) to develop a vaccine for the new strain of coronavirus, 2019-nCoV, which originated in Wuhan, China, and has killed no less than 17 people.

Kim said after the DNA sequence of the new coronavirus strain was made publicly available on Jan. 11, Inovio was able to design and construct a potential vaccine in “a matter of hours,” and the animal-testing process has already begun.


As the coronavirus out of China spreads and gets deadlierof health care companies that announce plans to take part in finding a vaccine, or identifying patients with the new strain, have rallied sharply in very active trading.

On Thursday, among the bigger coronavirus gainers was Inovio Pharmaceuticals Inc.’s stock INO +10.42%, which ran up 12% to the highest close since May 9. Trading volume swelled to 12.3 million shares, compared with the full-day average over the past 30 days of about 1.4 million shares, according to FactSet.

The first case of novel coronavirus was confirmed in Orange County Saturday, health officials said.

The Orange County Health Care Agency’s Communicable Disease Control Division, which received confirmation from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said the infected person is a traveler from Wuhan, China.

The respiratory disease has sickened 1,975 people and killed 56, almost all in Wuhan.

CHICAGO/LONDON (Reuters) — When a newly organized vaccine research group at the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) met for the first time this week, its members had expected to be able to ease into their work. But their mandate is to conduct human trials for emerging health threats — and their first assignment came at shocking speed.

Circa 2019 Event 201, hosted by the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, envisions a fast-spreading coronavirus with a devastating impact.

Back in 2001, it was a smallpox outbreak, set off by terrorists in U.S. shopping malls. This fall, it was a SARS-like virus, germinating quietly among pig farms in Brazil before spreading to every country in the world. With each fictional pandemic Johns Hopkins experts have designed, the takeaway lesson is the same: We are nowhere near prepared.


Event 201 simulation hosted by university’s Center for Health Security envisions a fast-spreading coronavirus with a devastating impact.