Know the key Symptoms about coronavirus

Here are some key Symptoms of new coronavirus that was identified in the central Chinese city of Wuhan in December and is causing an outbreak of the disease in China and beyond.

■ Coronaviruses are a family of viruses that get their name from what theylook like under a microscope – they are spherical and their surfaces arecovered with "crown"-like spikes.

■ Coronavirus infections have a wide range of symptoms, including fever, coughing, shortness of breath and breathingdifficulties. Mild cases can cause cold-like symptoms, while severe cases cancause pneumonia, severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), kidney failure anddeath.

■ Like other coronaviruses, the newly identifiedChina coronavirus is being transmitted from person-to-person via droplets whenan infected person breathes out, coughs or sneezes.

■ Infection with the newly identified virus has an incubation period ofbetween one and 14 days, and there are limitedaccounts that it may also be spreading before symptoms show.

■ Infectious disease and virus specialists say the scale of the current outbreak now points to "self-sustaining" human-to-human transmission. They estimate that each infected person is infecting, on average, two to three more people.

■ Testing for the new China virus involves using a real-time polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR), which identifies the viral RNA in samples. These could throat swabs, cough samples, or blood samples from patients who are very ill.