COVID-19 — how dangerous is the coronavirus outbreak?

In early December 2019, the first cases of a new coronavirus emerged, a virus that has since come to grip the world’s media and worry regulators in every country.

With echoes of the 2002 SARS epidemic, the pathogen - shortly dubbed COVID-19 by the World Health Organization (WHO) - originated in China and was thought to have derived from a mutation occurring at a since-closed animal market in the city of Wuhan.

With a population of 11 million, Wuhan is a major commercial and industrial hub with large streams of people arriving and departing, prior to the Chinese government’s effective shutdown of the area.