Ramaswami: CORONAVIRUS - The Chinese have also moved rapidly on isolating the disease. The scale of the quarantine – both in numbers and on a geographical scale – is simply unprecedented. It has been followed up identifying the genome sequence, and put it on a public database accessible to all. Dr Michael Ryan, WHO’s executive director for health emergencies, in a press conference on January 29, called it “probably the most rapid characterisation of a novel pathogen in history and that was shared immediately. Multiple sequences were shared immediately on global platforms and that is what has allowed a lot of the diagnostics to be developed.”