While there were no new confirmed cases of on Sunday, CDC officials said Monday they will probably revise their travel guidance in the coming days.
Details were sparse, but Nancy Messonnier, MD, director of the CDC National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases in Atlanta, previewed that the agency was "imminently thinking" about this decision, but would not elaborate what it would entail.
"I expect in the coming days, travel recommendations will change," she said on a conference call with reporters, adding that "there may be some disruptions."
Both the U.S. State Department and the CDC issued on Monday, with the CDC now recommending to
The Washington Post also reported on Monday that the CDC now plans to expand screening on passengers from China, increasing staffing at with quarantine facilities.
So far, somewhere around 2,400 people have been screened at U.S. airports, Messonnier said on the press call, and enhanced screening measures continue at the five previously reported U.S. airports. However, she added that the agency is "considering broadening screening."
Currently, 110 persons are under investigation in 26 states. Messonnier said reporters should contact state health departments if they want to know if any of these people are in a particular state. Of these, so far 32 have tested negative, with five confirmed positive.
Data as of Tuesday morning indicated 4,774 global cases and 107 deaths related to the novel coronavirus. As of Monday, 16 international locations with confirmed cases of the virus, Messonnier said.
Johns Hopkins University's Center for Systems Science and Engineering has posted a "in near-real time," .
"As you know, there's lot of new information coming out of China and we're trying to take that into account as we move as quickly as we can towards any decision," Messonnier noted. "We want to make sure we're being expedient and sensible."
Messonnier also addressed the issue of transmissibility raised by a reporter, who discussed the ongoing dispute about the coronavirus's "reproduction number," the average number of people likely to be develop infection from contact with an infected person.
"I wouldn't say it's a dispute," she said, adding that the reproductive number is "somewhere between 1.5 and 3, which is not really a dramatic difference." In contrast, the -- one of the most contagious pathogens known -- is roughly 12-18.
While Messonnier noted just a "handful of patients with the virus" in the U.S., she reiterated that it doesn't appear to be spreading in the community. On the other hand, Reuters reported on Monday that was confirmed in the first patient's wife.
On the press call, CDC officials also said that they have developed a real-time reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (rRT-PCR) test for novel coronavirus to diagnose the virus from respiratory specimens. CDC posted the blueprint for this test on Friday, and officials said they anticipate getting it out to clinicians and public health departments in the next 1-2 weeks.
Messonnier also said that the CDC has posted the entire genome of the virus from the first and second patients. She said it is "similar to the one China initially posted a couple weeks ago," meaning that "it doesn't look like the virus has mutated."