Coronavirus data from outside the outbreak epicenter is just as valuable as from the inside

Photo by TOLGA AKMEN/AFP via Getty Images The active impact of the new coronavirus is very different in China, where tens of thousands of people are sick, than it is in the rest of the world, which only has a few dozen scattered cases. But data from both environments is helping scientists as they work to understand the virus and the illness it causes.
“With a large number of cases you get a better sense of how the virus behaves on average in a community,” says Caitlin Rivers, senior