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Coronavirus in China: 9 dead and a risk of mutation which worries

2020-01-22T06:13:01.661Z


The World Health Organization (WHO) is meeting this Wednesday to determine whether to declare a "public health emergency from


The death toll of the new coronavirus increased further on Wednesday in China with a death toll that rises to nine. Authorities warn that the virus, which is transmitted through the respiratory tract, could "mutate" and spread more easily.

Nine dead and fear of spread

Deputy Minister of the National Health Commission, Li Bin said that the virus had been diagnosed in 440 patients, adding to a previous count of around 300 cases.

Many parts of the country are affected, including mega-cities like Shanghai and Beijing. Authorities fear virus may spread due to long Chinese New Year holidays, which start on Friday, and cause hundreds of millions of bus, train and plane trips every year across the country .

Preventative measures

Relaying a call from President Xi Jinping to "stop" the epidemic, Li Bin announces preventive measures such as ventilation and disinfection at airports, stations and shopping centers.

Temperature detectors could also be installed in busy sites, he said.

WHO conclave

While cases have been confirmed elsewhere in Asia and even in the United States, an ad hoc committee of the World Health Organization (WHO) meets Wednesday from 19 hours to determine whether to declare a " public health emergency of international concern ”.

The WHO has so far used this term only in rare cases of epidemics requiring a vigorous international response, including the H1N1 swine flu in 2009, the Zika virus in 2016 and the Ebola fever, which ravaged part of West Africa from 2014 to 2016 and the DRC since 2018.

VIDEO. Coronavirus: mysterious virus born on a market worries China

The virus was spotted in December in Wuhan, a megalopolis of 11 million inhabitants in the center of the country, in people working in a wholesale seafood and fish market, whose exact origin is still unknown or the incubation period.

Many countries already affected

Since then, cases have been reported elsewhere in Asia (Japan, South Korea, Thailand, Taiwan), and a number of countries with direct or indirect air links to Wuhan have tightened controls on arriving passengers, drawing on their experience. of the epidemic of SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) in 2002-2003, a virus of the same family.

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On Tuesday, a first person infected with the coronavirus was hospitalized as a precaution in the United States. He is a man in his thirties, originally from Wuhan and living near Seattle, in the northwest of the country. He arrived on January 15 without fever at Seattle Airport, and contacted local health services himself on Sunday after seeing symptoms.

He has been hospitalized as a precaution and is doing well, but will remain in solitary confinement for at least another 48 hours, according to local authorities.

In France, the risk is "low but cannot be excluded," said Health Minister Agnès Buzyn.

Australia, Russia, Nepal, Singapore, Malaysia, Vietnam, Bangladesh and India have tightened controls in recent days. At Moscow Sheremetyevo Airport, the largest in Russia, the temperature of passengers from China is monitored on planes by thermal cameras.

A new type of coronavirus

The strain is a new type of coronavirus, a family with a large number of viruses. They can cause mild illnesses in humans (like a cold) but also other more serious ones like Sras.

Zhong Nanshan, a Chinese scientist with the National Health Commission, said on Monday that contagious transmission between people was "proven". It was the first time that such an assertion was made publicly.

Out of 8,096 cases, the SARS virus had killed 774 people worldwide, including 349 in mainland China and 299 in Hong Kong, according to the WHO. The international organization at the time strongly criticized Beijing for having delayed raising the alarm and trying to conceal the extent of the epidemic.

Source: leparis

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