‘Rapid expert consultation’ on new coronavirus and weather sent to top White House adviser

Hong Kong University professor John Nicholls, who is working with colleagues on one of the world’s first lab-grown copies of SARS-CoV-2, reviewed the report and told AccuWeather, “Though they mention Australia as the exception for community spread and seasonality, most cases there have been linked to cruise ships, and had these not happened, then cases would be very similar to New Zealand, which seems to have had very few cases and little community spread.” New Zealand had 1,283 confirmed cases of COVID-19 as of this writing, according to statistics from Johns Hopkins University.

Dr. Fineberg told AccuWeather that studies indicate travel appears to have affected the spread in New York City, the epicenter of the outbreak in the United States.

“Some very recent studies that have looked in detail at the genomic makeup of the virus suggest that in New York City, for example, and New York state, that much of the importation of the infection came probably from European sources,” he said, referring to information revealed in a report by The New York Times. “So that could have been American travelers returning from Europe, for example — that seems to be the prevalent sub-strain of the virus that is circulating in the state.