The fight to contain the coronavirus entered an alarming new phase on Thursday as caseloads soared in Europe and West Asia, and health officials in the US and Germany dealt with patients with no known connection to others with the infection.

The German and American cases raised the possibility that the virus could have begun to spread locally, or that infected people had spread it to others sequentially, making it virtually impossible to trace and isolate the origins.

Either way, the cases, thousands of miles apart, underscored how quickly the virus was making its way around the globe after emerging in China.

“We have before us a crisis, an epidemic that is coming,” President Emmanuel Macron of France said on Thursday. “We are going to have to confront it as best we can.”

Iran cancelled Friday Prayers in major cities, a cornerstone ritual of the Islamic Republic.

American effort

President Trump announced that Vice-President Mike Pence would lead the American effort to combat the virus, but the administration continued to send mixed messages. Public health officials warned of potentially “major disruptions,” while Trump blamed Democrats and cable news channels for overstating the threat.

Financial markets continued their weeklong declines.

European borders

In Europe, Denmark, Estonia, Norway and Romania all reported their first cases, while several other countries registered new infections that illustrated the diverse ways the pathogen could cross borders.

New cases in UK

Two new cases in Britain, for instance, were linked to Italy and to Tenerife in the Canary Islands of Spain. None of the remaining 700-plus guests at a hotel in Spain’s Canary Islands on lockdown have shown any symptoms of the virus and 130 of them have been cleared to leave.

California patient

A person in California who was not exposed to anyone known to be infected with the coronavirus, and who had not travelled to countries where it is circulating, had to wait days to be tested, despite doctors’ suggestions.

WHO warning

It would be a “fatal mistake” for any country to assume it will not be hit by the new coronavirus, and rich countries that might have thought they were safer should expect surprises, the head of the WHO said on Thursday.