Viral Exotica: Hunan, China Coronavirus
"It is very reminiscent of SARS. I think this is very reminiscent of what happened at the beginning of SARS."
"Where we are now relative to where we were with SARS, this is November 2002, when SARS evolved from initial outbreaks associated with markets."
"The SARS virus was eradicated. The goal is to eradicate this new coronavirus. It is a bit early to be confident in predictions about what is going on. You can't cover every eventuality. People could be doing all the right things and this virus could still get away from us."
"From a distance it looks as if both the Chinese response and the global response is entirely appropriate. I think people are doing a really impressive job managing the circumstances. I think there is really good reason to hope that things will be OK."
Dr.Allison McGeer, clinical scientist, Mount Sinai Health, Toronto
"I would worry greatly that the best laid plans of mice and men are going to be scuppered because we [Canada] do not have [hospital] bed capacity."
"The code zeros for ambulances are bad now. How bad is it going to be if we have a pandemic?"
"That is my concern [no hospital wiggle-room]. We talk about the patient in the hallway and the misery of crowded waiting rooms. But when we say no surge capacity what we mean is one major epidemic and we are screwed."
Dr. Alan Drummond, emergency physician, co-chair, public affairs, Canadian Association of Emergency Physicians
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| China's new coronavirus is on the spread |
Seventeen years later, after 44 Canadians died of SARS and hundreds of other became ill with it, Canadian health officials are monitoring a new potential threat, recently identified as a coronavirus, just as SARS was. In total, 774 people died of SARS, mostly in China. Chinese health authorities ruled out SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) which also had originated in China; ruled out bird flu, influenza and Middle East Respiratory Syndrome. Hope was that it was not spreading from human to human.
The World Health Organization is on alert. Maria Van Kerkhove, acting head of the WHO's emerging disease unit, stated signs of possible limited transmission have arisen, among families. "It is still early days, we don't have a clear clinical picture". A critical danger of coronaviruses is their capacity to change quickly. SARS was also first noted among people who had frequented markets in Guandong Province.
The Public Health Agency of Canada said genetic information about the new coronavirus will permit Canada's National Microbiology Laboratory in Winnipeg and provincial public health partners "to develop and implement Canadian diagnostic testing capacity to identify this coronavirus. The National Microbiology Laboratory has a long history of offering comprehensive testing services for coronaviruses" stated spokesperson Anna Maddison.
It had isolated and provided the first genome sequence of the SARS coronavirus, identifying another coronavirus NL653 in 2004.
Dr. McGeer's sense of optimistic confidence is heartwarming. Officials in Wuhan isolated patients and cleaned markets associated with the outbreak, reporting no new cases for the past several weeks. She is no mere onlooker. She had been involved in a key role in Toronto where the Canadian outbreak occurred. She had, in very fact, herself contracted SARS.
On the other hand, fresh news has come to the fore, that the small number of patients identified with the new coronavirus in China is not entirely correct.
Two people have so far died as a result of contracting the mysterious new virus, and across China, 44 people have been formally identified as having contracted the coronavirus, including two in Thailand and another in Japan, with links to Wuhan province. And the fact appears to be that medical scientists visiting in China have divulged the true picture, not yet released by Chinese authorities, that an estimated 1,700 people have been diagnosed with the coronavirus.
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| Members of staff of the Wuhan Hygiene Emergency Response Team conduct searches on the closed Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in Wuhan. |
Coronaviruses are commonly found in animals which rarely transmit them to humans. The current strain has never before been identified in humans. This one considered a novel coronavirus originated at a seafood market in the central Chinese city of Wuhan in December, with a population of 11 million people. Live birds and animals are also reputed to have been sold at the market.
On December 30 the provincial health authority issued a directive to all hospitals to report cases of peneumonia with no determined cause. A cluster of pneumonia cases was identified in Wuhan, some of which were linked to the seafood market. The market was shut down days later, and disinfected.
Clinical signs and symptoms of this coronavirus are for the most part fever; some patients reporting breathing difficulty and pneumonic infiltrates; dense liquid filling the lungs.
There has as yet been no travel ban issued by the World Health Organization. People are warned to avoid contact with others with acute respiratory infections, to avoid being around dead animals, and to avoid eating meat and eggs not thoroughly cooked. Proper hygiene, thorough hand-washing, covering the mouth when coughing and sneezing into a tissue are other reminders of avoidance.
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| The respiratory illness is believed to be caused by a new virus from the same family as Sars, which claimed hundreds of lives more than a decade ago. Photograph: Noel Celis/AFP via Getty Images |
Labels: China, Coronavirus, Medical Emergency, Respiratory Virus
posted by Pieface @ Saturday, January 18, 2020
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