There were thousands of people traveling via commercial air from Wusan from Dec 15 thru Jan 15 to multiple points in the United States. Many had to carrying the virus. Yet there have been no reported cluster outbreaks in the US.Could be that there are many cases that are being misdiagnosed as flu because the vast majority of hospitals and physicians do not have access to COVID 19 diagnostic kits. Another possibility is that there are at least three variants of coronavirus that most hospitals can reliably test. Have to at least wonder if these cluster cases in Iran and Italy are really a coronavirus infection other than COVID 19. If the CDC took specimens from these infected people and confirmed it was COVID 19, then this current pandemic in China is likely to become a worldwide epidemic with a significant number of people dying.
A note about terminology: an outbreak is confined to a local area, for example a county or a few counties. An epidemic is confined to a region or state. A pandemic involves several regions and can be worldwide. Therefore the covid-19 situation is at outbreak or epidemic status in China. It is not pandemic yet because the outbreaks in other countries have been contained (so far). If it starts to spread uncontrollably, it is a pandemic.
Iran has a Pasteur institute in Tehran, so let’s hope they are sharing their information with other Pasteur Institutes .