SARS originated in the Guangdong province in southeastern China, near Hong Kong.
So far, experts report that the median age of those who have died from the Wuhan coronavirus is around 75. Many of these individuals had other health issues like high blood pressure, diabetes, and Parkinson's disease.
Adrian Hyzler, chief medical officer at Healix International, told Business Insider that children, elderly people, pregnant women, and those who are immuno-compromised are more susceptible to the Wuhan coronavirus' most severe complications.
It took almost four months for SARS to spread to 1,000 people. The Wuhan coronavirus has infected more than 1,200 people in just 25 days.
Source: CDC
The Chinese government didn't inform the WHO about SARS until February 14, 2003. According to The Sydney Morning Herald, doctors in Beijing were ordered by authorities to hide SARS patients from WHO officials during inspections.
During the initial stages of that outbreak, the Chinese government also concealed information from the public, limiting mitigation efforts and exacerbating the spread of disease.
"We are doing much better now ... We are paying greater attention to preventing the epidemic," he said on Wednesday.
"The speed with which this virus has been identified is testament to changes in public health in China since SARS and strong global coordination through the WHO," Jeremy Farrar, a British infectious diseases specialist who also worked on combating SARS, told Reuters.
By contrast, it took four months for SARS' genome to be published.
That work also helps experts track down which animal the coronavirus jumped from.
"Bats and birds are considered reservoir species for viruses with pandemic potential," Bart Haagmans, a virologist at the Erasmus Medical Center in Rotterdam, Netherlands, told Business Insider.
According to a group of scientists who edit the Journal of Medical Virology, the culprit spreading the Wuhan coronavirus could be the Chinese cobra, but that has yet to be confirmed.
An analysis showed that the genetic building blocks of the Wuhan coronavirus closely resembled that of snakes.
Researchers traced SARS to a population of horseshoe bats in China's Yunnan province. These bats lived in a cave just 1.1 kilometer from the nearest village.
Authorities quarantined Wuhan on Thursday at 10 a.m. local time, halting all public transportation, including city buses, trains, and ferries. The order prevents any buses or trains from coming into or leaving the city and grounds all planes at the Wuhan airport.
Just before midnight on Thursday, the city of Huanggang went into lockdown as well, as authorities closed subway and train stations. By the following day, 10 additional cities — Chibi, Enshi, Ezhou, Huangshi, Suizhou, Qianjjiang, Xianning, Xiantao, Yichang, and Zhijiang — had followed suit with their own travel restrictions.
"What they're doing is a very, very strong measure, and with full commitment," Ghebreyesus said in press conference on Wednesday.
These restrictions affect about 33 million people in China.
Anthony Fauci, a disease expert at the National Institutes of Health, told CNBC that China is "doing much better this time" than with SARS.
"If Wuhan were to explode, a vaccine best-case scenario is three-quarters of a year, if not longer," Vincent Munster, a virologist at the Rocky Mountain Laboratories, told Business Insider.
Several companies, including Moderna, Novavax, and Inovio, have announced preliminary vaccine development plans. But vaccine development has historically been an arduous, multi-year process (the Ebola vaccine took 20 years to make). None of the companies provided expected timelines to get their vaccines to market.
The World Health Organization has not declared it a global public-health emergency, either.
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