Jesse McKinley, The Times’s Albany bureau chief, is covering the outbreak, and he spoke to me about the state’s response.

Jesse, how are state and local officials responding to the coronavirus?

The State Department of Health, in Albany, is testing possible cases and tracking people who may have come into contact with anyone who tested positive. City health officials are doing similar work.

Federal health officials are examining whether the virus is mutating and seeing if the mortality rate is getting worse.

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A lot happened in the days after the state’s first case was confirmed. What could happen by Friday?

New York officials have two playbooks. One was written by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in 2017. The other was written by state officials in 2015. Both were written after the H1N1 swine flu of 2009.

Those playbooks called for pretty extreme stuff: closing schools, calling off concerts and sporting events. I don’t know if we’ll ever get to that. But this could accelerate quickly.

What is it exactly about the coronavirus that worries New York officials?

Last week, I spoke with Howard A. Zucker, the state’s health commissioner. He said there were probably more people who have the coronavirus than officials have confirmed. That may mean that the mortality rate is probably lower than we realize.