As of today (January 29), the World Health Organization had confirmed a total of 6,065 cases of the new coronavirus that started causing pneumonia-like symptoms in people in Wuhan, China, late last year. Sixty-eight of those confirmed cases come from 15 countries outside of China, raising concerns about the worldwide spread of the pathogen. Researchers are studying the virus in hopes of aiding the effort to treat infections and minimize further transmission. Julian Druce, head of the Virus Identification Laboratory at the Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity in Melbourne, Australia, and colleagues announced yesterday that they?d successful grown the virus in cell culture, after having isolated it from the first person in the country to be diagnosed with 2019-nCoV infection. The group, the first outside of China to successfully culture the virus, will share it with the WHO, which will distribute samples to research labs around the globe?something Chinese groups who claim to have grown the virus in the lab have not yet done. Working with the cultured virus may allow researchers to develop better treatments as well as diagnostics by detecting antibodies specific to 2019-nCoV, for example. ?There are some things that are much easier to do when you have the virus,? Mike Catton, a deputy director of the Doherty Institute, tells Nature.