Science Magazine ‘This beast is moving very fast.’ Will the new coronavirus be contained—or go pandemic? But is containment realistic? Success will depend in part on whether infected people who don’t have symptoms can spread the virus. Asymptomatic people are hard to find and isolate, so if they can spread disease, 2019-nCoV “will be very difficult to stop in China,” says Alessandro Vespignani, a modeler of infectious diseases at Northeastern University.