"We believe our aggressive travel precautions are working. The fact that we have been able to keep this number low [13 net cases, counting separately the 2 cases of people repatriated from Wuhan and the 18 cases of people returning from the Diamond Princess cruise ship in Japan] is good news, especially given what we're seeing amongst some countries in Asia that are beginning to experience community spread: this is when cases are detected in a community but it's not known what the source of the infection was. This is being reported in Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, and Vietnam, as well as Hong Kong and Japan."
"We are not seeing community spread here in the United States, yet. But it is very possible, even likely, that it may eventually happen."
"This new virus represents a tremendous public health threat. We don't yet have a vaccine for this novel virus nor do we have a medicine to treat it specifically."
"We are now taking, and will continue to take, unprecedented aggressive actions to reduce the impact of this virus."
"We are working with state local and territorial health departments to ready our public health workforce to respond to cases and the possibility that this outbreak could become pandemic." [1]