A top infectious disease doctor warned that the likelihood of preventing a U.S. outbreak of the coronavirus dependson whether the virusis transmitted by peoplewho are not exhibiting symptoms.And that information, he warned, is something that world health experts do not know yet.

You could be carrying it and not know so you wouldnt have the symptoms. Doesnt that make it extremely dangerous? Wall Street Journal columnist Mary Anastasia OGradyasked a panel of doctors on Fox NationsDeep Dive.

The Chinese Ministry of Health has said that they believe this is possible, that people can be spreading it before they show symptoms, said Dr. Stephen Morse, who is a professor of epidemiologyat the Columbia University Medical Center.

But thats why were doing a lot of screening at the airports based largely on geography, he continued. But once it spreads further, its going to be hard to be that targeted.

I agree that we have heard that from the Chinese, but we havent seen the evidence thats behind that, saidDr. Mark Mulligan, whois a senior professor in the NYU Langone Department of Medicine anddirector of both NYU Langone Vaccine Center and theDivision of Infectious Diseases and Immunology.

We do know you can have asymptomatic infection, he went on. There are reports of people that were shown to be infected but we dont know that those people can transmit.

The World Health Organization on Thursday declared the newcoronavirus outbreaka global emergency, as38 new deaths and 1,737 new infected cases have been reported in the last 24 hours.

In general, the transmission occurs when an ill person is coughing a lot. When youre sicker, you have more virus around. It may be that older people get more illness and transmit more. Younger people, less illness, maybe transmit less. But we dont know everything yet., Dr. Mulliganwarned.

Roughly 99 percent of all cases of the virus have appeared in China but it has spread to at least 18 countries.

The American officials are all saying, Dont panic, dont panic. But you can be carrying the disease without showing the symptoms, you have all this air travel going on, its already gotten out of China. How reasonable is it to think that were not going to have a serious outbreak here? asked OGrady.

I dont think we should panic, saidDr. Janette Nesheiwat,the medical director at CityMD,an urgent care practice in New York City. But we should remain on alert and be vigilant because it can take up to two weeks for symptoms to appear.

We know that the usual sort of shoe leather, public healthsteps of isolationof cases, contact tracing, quarantining of them works, notedMulligan. So I think if those things also work for this novel coronavirus, that we do have the opportunity to contain it.

However, Mulligan cautioned if it is shown that individuals can carry and transmit the virus without exhibiting symptoms that would be a troubling discovery.

We think that we have a real opportunity [to contain coronavirus], assuming there arent any curves like this thing about asymptomatic individuals transmitting. If that were true, that would change things, he concluded.

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Fox News Vandana Rambaran contributed to this report.

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