KEY POINTS
The CDC is working with state and local health departments to ready the public health workforce to respond to a possible pandemic.
The agency is collaborating with supply chain partners, hospitals, pharmacies and manufacturers to understand what medical supplies are needed.
The CDC is reviewing all of its pandemic materials and adapting them to COVID-19.
In the wee hours of a rainy Monday, more than a dozen buses sat on the tarmac at Tokyo’s Haneda Airport. Inside, 328 weary Americans wearing surgical masks and gloves waited anxiously to fly home after weeks in quarantine aboard the Diamond Princess, the luxury liner where the novel coronavirus had exploded into a ship-wide epidemic.