http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/01/who-says-no-need-yet-declare-spread-novel-virus-international-emergency

Amid travel restrictions and canceled public gatherings, millions of Chinese people, like this couple at a Beijing rail station, are now traveling to celebrate the Lunar New Year.

Because a novel coronavirus has spread throughout China and jumped to four other countries, the world is on red alert. But the World Health Organization (WHO) today, to the surprise of many global health experts, decided the outbreak does not merit the loudest siren it can sound, a declaration called a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC). “It has not yet become a global health emergency,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said at a press conference in Geneva this evening. “It may yet become one.”