Tokyo – As an extraordinary two-week quarantine of a cruise ship ended last Wednesday in Japan, many scientists say it was a failed experiment.

The ship seemed to serve as an incubator for the new virus from China instead of an isolation facility meant to prevent the worsening of an outbreak.

Of all places, why are 13 people potentially exposed to a viral outbreak being treated and observed in Omaha, Nebraska?

Nearly 20 years ago, a few doctors, public health experts and officials realized that nearly no one was meeting a national need for such specialized care, and they figured, why not Omaha?

Nebraska Medicine and the University of Nebraska Medical Center are hosting 13 Americans exposed to the new coronavirus at the recently opened National Quarantine Unit.

Some of the patients have tested positive for COVID-19, the new disease first discovered late last year in Wuhan, China. They had been quarantined on a cruse ship docked off the coast of Japan for two weeks before arriving in Omaha.

Geneva – The World Health Organization chief has traveled a dozen times to monitor the Ebola response in Congo. But when he planned to visit China’s capital last week over a new viral outbreak emerging from central Hubei province, his daughter got worried.