Still, preliminary genetic analysis shows that the virus strains isolated from patients in California are identical to those seen in severely ill Mexican patients.
And in the past week, two groups of geneticists, one at the Michael Smith Genome Sciences Centre in Vancouver, British Columbia, and the other at the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, Georgia, have succeeded in sequencing the genomes of coronaviruses isolated from patients in Toronto and Asia.
"If you've got people at your side encouraging you, you have such an advantage over isolated and withdrawn patients who have to do that journey alone, " Schwamm said.