De Blasio said that city hospitals are capable of making 1,200 more beds available if they were to see a surge in patients and public health officials have already distributed 1.5 million masks to medical personnel and first responders.

"We have the greatest public health capacity of any city in this country," de Blasio said. "There's not a single reason for panic.

The city is requesting 300,000 more protective masks but needs help from the federal government to get an order of that size filled. It's also asking the CDC to allow it to test for coronavirus at locally laboratories rather than waiting for the federal agency to conduct testing on samples. So far seven patients in New York City have tested negative.

In Nassau County, 83 people who recently returned from areas affected by coronavirus are being monitored by county health officials, said a spokeswoman for Laura Curran, the county executive.

All those individuals are not showing symptoms of coronavirus but the county is following federal protocols to monitor them and ask them to avoid public places. Six people have been tested for coronavirus in Nassau, with five testing negative and one case still pending.

The 2019 novel coronavirus, which has been dubbed COVID-19, originated in Wuhan, China, and has sicked more than 81,000 people worldwide, according to the World Health Organization.

The virus has been present in 41 countries, including 59 cases in the U.S., with California reporting 20 of those cases.

Stocks have plummeted on fears of a global slowdown, and New York’s tourism and real estate industries are expected to suffer if the virus spreads locally.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo said Wednesday that 27 people have been tested for coronavirus in New York and all have tested negative except one person whose test results are pending.

The governor has requested the state Legislature to appropriate $40 million in emergency funding for the sickness.

"We're preparing, but this situation is not a situation that should not cause undue fear among people,” Cuomo said at a press conference Wednesday afternoon.

The respiratory illness causes flu-like symptoms such as coughing and fever, making it difficult to identify at health care facilities. Medical personnel have been asking patients about their travel history to assess whether coronavirus is a possibility.

Correction, Feb. 26, 2020: There have been 27 people tested for coronavirus in New York state and all have tested negative except one person whose test results are pending. The number of people tested was misstated in an earlier version of this article.