Within weeks, this novel virus spread the spread, closed down an airport, quarantined cruise ships and damaged the world economy.

And the outbreak is also sparking fears on Wall Street, the Dow plunging more than 1000 points on Monday.

We now know there confirmed cases in 35 countries.

By February 25th, 2020 over 80,000 people have been affected and over 2700 people had died.

And now we're on the brink of a pandemic.

Can the viral disease Covad 19 be stopped?

Viruses are the most abundant biological entity on earth, and most of them are at least 33,000 times smaller than a pea.

There's simple little things made of genetic material, cased in a protein shell and capable of survival Onley when inside another living cell.

But being microscopic parasites doesn't stop them from doing some major damage.

Ebola aids the flu on, of course, coronavirus disease.

2019 are all caused by viruses.

You see when a virus enters a living cell, it replicates, sometimes kills the cell and spreads your immune system.

Attempts to protect your body and in many cases succeeds.

But sometimes the virus winds overpowering your immune system, which can lead to illness and sometimes even death.

So how do we stop a new virus?

While the first two steps are crucial, detection and containment detection could be extremely difficult when you're dealing with a new virus.

That's because symptoms often resemble other diseases.

A lot of these are flu like illnesses, so the answer depends partly on whether the clinician, using clinical judgment, feels there's something a little bit different.

Once doctors determine that they're dealing with something new, the next step is uncovering the viruses gene sequence.

This is key.

The gene sequence is used to create detection test kits so healthcare professionals can make sure the patients actually have a specific virus instead of, say, the common flu.

But finding that sequence could take time.

When SARS broke out in 2003 it took more than four months.

Scientists have sped up the process, and, in the case of the 2019 novel Coronavirus, the sequence was released about one week after the initial announcement, followed a few weeks later by a test kit pumping thousands of these out quickly isn't easy.

And even when kits are available, using them can come with complications.

Usually these tests rely on lab processing, which takes precious time.

And in the case of the co vid 19 outbreak, some of the kits sent to the U.

S didn't work the way they were expected Thio and gave inconclusive results instead of a positive or a negative.

But this is only the beginning.

After detection, containment is vital.

Once in human populations, viruses can spread quickly and different viruses spread well differently.

HIV, for example, travels in certain body fluids like blood and semen.

Zika spreads via mosquito bites and viral diseases like influenza and Co.

Vid 19.

They transmit through human respiratory droplets, mainly in the form of spray from coughs and sneezes.

Which explains why canceling large events, quarantining cities and isolating and treating individuals who might be infected have been so important with co vid 19 quarantines may have limited the spread of the disease, but they didn't stop it, in part because the virus may not show symptoms for up to 14 days after infection, even though it may still be transmissible in that time.

And crucially, cities didn't lock down until over three weeks after the first detection.

In fact, the mayor of Wuhan stated that over five million people had left the city during that window.

So while co vid 19 could go the way of the 2003 SARS outbreak and disappear, experts worry that this is unlikely.

Which leads us to the last two lines of defense medications and vaccinations.

Multiple groups are developing vaccinations that could highly limit co vid 19 if not stop it altogether.

And the World Health Organization is testing drugs that fight HIV and Ebola as well.

Obviously it takes time, and it takes time to scale up vaccine production even once you have a suitable vaccine candidate.

That scale up and deployment is, ah, slower process.

Vaccines have to go through strict testing and approval processes, which could take months.

And viruses are notorious for changing and adapting, making it hard to nail down a precise vaccine Case in point.

Researchers were still developing vaccines for the Zika virus in 2019 years after it last wreaked havoc in 2016.

So while scientists are trying to stay ahead of Covad, 19 develop a vaccine and get it.

Through those regulations, a pandemic could break out.

It could chug along, perhaps eventually becoming more like the seasonal flu or more like coronaviruses we see in animal species.

How nasty that would be.

You know, really, we can't say at this point this might sound scary, but there is no need to panic.

Modern technology and for the research has, is much better prepared than during past outbreaks.

And if people stay vigilant, quarantine went told, and get the correct treatment.

Cove in 19 could still be stopped, Yeah.