Health care professionals in Connecticut are urging people to be more concerned with flu season than the coronavirus.

Doctors at American Family Care say there have only been a handful of confirmed cases of the virus in the United States and that it is very unlikely residents will be exposed if they haven't traveled recently to the Wuhan region of China.

The coronavirus infection usually isn't life-threatening, unless it's combined with wider immune or respiratory problems. In fact, officials say residents should still be more concerned about the flu than coronavirus.

Dr. Mark Wasserman says global health scares like this seem to come up every few years.

"We see these scares kind of periodically," said Wasserman. "You probably remember the Ebola scare from a few years ago. And these things all have some potential, but the authorities at CDC and WHO are very aware of it, they jump on it right away. And you see the travel restrictions in China came up very quickly."

Officials say this coronavirus is similar to the one that caused the SARS outbreak back in 2002.

Doctors say influenza kills more Americans each year than any other virus. This year, Connecticut has seen 23 flu-related deaths.