What started as a small viral outbreak in the Wuhan district of China has turned into a global emergency that claims lives in the hundreds and infects by the thousands everyday. The Coronavirus, a respiratory illness that has turned fatal, has killed over 500 people and infected upwards of 30,000.

The disease has strikingly similar attributes to that of the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, or SARS Disease. The last outbreak of SARS occurred from 2002-2003 and killed 774 people worldwide. Although coronavirus has infected more people in a short time span, the mortality rate sits at only 2.2%, while SARS had a rate of 9.5%.

Currently, the coronavirus has spread to two dozen countries and does not show any sign of stopping. 12 of the 28,000 confirmed cases reside in the United States, one of which occurred through person-to-person transfer.

United States citizens traveling from China will go under mandatory quarantine following the next few days. Various flights have been rerouted to select airports across the nation, where they will meet Homeland Security. As for China, most cities in the southern region have been placed on lockdown. However, it does not make up for the thousands of people flocking to the hospitals in order to see if they have the virus. This, in turn, provides the virus perfect habitat to spread.

At this point in time, around 300 people have recovered, but what does that mean for the majority of patients that have not? A cocktail of treatments used to treat AIDS and the flu have proven effective. However, curing every patient appears impossible while the numbers grow so rapidly.