Beijing (AFP)
A new SARS-like virus has killed six people in China, with nearly 300 cases of infection, fueling the fear of spread during the great Chinese New Year migration.
Cases have also emerged in Japan, South Korea, Thailand and Taiwan. Several Asian countries and the United States have implemented airport controls for passengers from the Chinese city of Wuhan, which has 11 million inhabitants, the epicenter of the epidemic. Here's what we know about this virus:
- He is new -
The virus appears to be a new type of coronavirus, a family with a large number of viruses. They can cause mild illnesses in humans, such as a cold, but also other more serious ones like SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome).
This virus is close to the one that caused the SARS epidemic in 2002-2003. It had killed 774 people worldwide (including 349 in mainland China and 299 in Hong Kong) out of 8,096 cases, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).
From a genetic point of view, there is "80% similarities" between the two viruses, explained to AFP Professor Arnaud Fontanet, head of the epidemiology unit for emerging diseases at the Institut Pasteur in Paris. Both cause pneumonia (respiratory disease).
China has already shared with the international scientific community the genomic sequencing of the new coronavirus for the moment entitled "2019-nCoV".
- It is transmitted between humans -
WHO estimated on Monday that an animal appears to be "the most likely primary source" of the epidemic, with "limited human-to-human transmission through close contact".
The virus was spotted in December in Wuhan (central China) in patients working in a wholesale seafood and fish market, which closed on January 1.
China confirmed on Monday that the virus is spread between humans, through the voice of renowned Chinese scientist Zhong Nanshan, a member of the National Health Commission.
For doctor Nathalie MacDermott of King's College London, it is likely that the virus is spread via droplets in the air during sneezing or coughing fits.
Doctors at the University of Hong Kong on Tuesday published a study on the spread of the virus, estimating at 1,343 the probable number of cases in Wuhan, a figure comparable to the 1,700 cases estimated last week by Imperial College London. These two estimates exceed official data which reports nearly 300 cases, with 922 patients under observation in Chinese hospitals.
- It seems less dangerous than Sras -
Compared to those of SARS, the symptoms seem less aggressive. "The gravity seems weaker than the SARS", judges Professor Fontanet.
According to Wuhan authorities, at least 25 of the 200 infected people in the city have already been discharged from the hospital.
"It's hard to compare this disease with SARS," said scientist Zhong Nanshan, who helped assess the scale of the SARS epidemic in 2003. "It's light," and the lungs "are not like with Sras ".
But this is "paradoxically more worrying," said Professor Antoine Flahault, director of the Institute of Global Health at the University of Geneva, to AFP because people will be able to travel before their symptoms are detected.
Hundreds of millions of people will travel to China to see their families for New Years, which begins on Saturday.
"Wuhan is a major center and the level of vigilance must remain high as travel is an integral part of the approaching Chinese New Year," said Dr. Jeremy Farrar, director of the British Wellcome Trust.
- A global health emergency? -
WHO will hold an emergency meeting on Wednesday to determine whether to declare a "public health emergency of international concern", a qualification introduced after SARS and which is used only for the most serious epidemics.
The WHO has so far used this qualification only for 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.
For its part, Beijing announced Tuesday that it classified the epidemic in the same category as SARS. Isolation thus becomes compulsory for people in whom the disease has been diagnosed. Quarantine measures can be decreed.
© 2020 AFP