A virus that was first discovered on 31 December in Wuhan now has over 500 confirmed cases and has spread abroad. Anxiety is growing as 11 million people are told not to leave the city and experience lockdown in an attempt to control the spread which is killing people (17 dead, with the toll rapidly rising). Planes and trains in and out of the city are suspended, and no buses, subways, taxis or ferries are running. Millions of Chinese people travel to different destinations for the 25 January lunar New Year holiday. Supermarket shelves were reportedly bare as residents scrambled for supplies, while people took to social media to complain about soaring prices for groceries. The virus, which originated in a seafood market ‘conducting illegal transactions of wild animals’, may have originated in snakes. The centre for infectious disease analysis at Imperial College London estimates that there could be 4,000 people sick with the virus in Wuhan.