The New York Times: Is the world ready to confront the Corona virus?

Experts do not know how widespread the new Corona virus is raging in China and do not know how dangerous it is, but the growing crisis is causing panic among people all over the world.

The New York Times, in its opening note, indicates that this disease, which appeared in early December in the Chinese city of Wuhan, affected last Wednesday more than six thousand people in about 15 countries, and claimed more than 130 lives, all of them in China.

As cities around the world begin to prepare for a possible wave of contagion, the New York Times adds that stock and oil prices are falling, and experts in all industries are terrified of the possibility of supply chains disrupted if the disease turns into a more serious pandemic.

The newspaper points out that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had already warned for a long time that the rate of new pathogens was rising, and that this was partly due to global warming.

New causes
The New York Times adds that every year the World Health Organization identifies new pathogens of outbreaks, especially those that include viruses transmitted from animals to humans, such as the new Corona virus.

She says it appears that China - the epicenter of the current disease outbreak - has learned some lessons from its recent crisis. In 2002, when severe acute respiratory syndrome first appeared (a viral disease of animal origin), the country's leaders waited about three months before informing the World Health Organization of what had caused the virus to reach more than a dozen countries.

She explained that the Chinese officials moved faster this time, alerting the Health Organization within one month of discovering the first cases of coronavirus, and that they moved quickly to search the sequence of the new virus and ways to contain it. As a result, about 56 million people, including the entire city of Wuhan, have been quarantined.

However, the newspaper attributed to global health experts saying that China's response is still not up to the desired level.

Experts and warning
The New York Times notes that global health experts have warned other countries of the need to prepare if Chinese efforts to contain this disease fail.

The newspaper points to the infection of people in the United States with this virus, adding that the administration has succeeded in keeping some of the world's leading infectious disease experts in key roles in the best agencies, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institutes of Health and the Food and Drug Administration.

She adds that if these specialists are provided with the resources and authority to deal with the crisis, then their experience combined with scientific knowledge can contribute to avoiding the worst scenarios, especially if they are encouraged to develop vaccines, deploy experts, and collaborate with response teams in affected areas.

The newspaper believes that it is good for the United States and the rest of the world to learn from this experience, and that it will almost certainly not be the last time the world faces such a crisis.