Wuhan, China Coronavirus Spread
"The hypothesis that the 2019-nCoV jumped from an animal at the market is strongly supported by a new publication in the Journal of Medical Virology. The scientists conducted an analysis and compared the genetic sequences of 2019-nCoV and all other known coronaviruses.""The study of the genetic code of 2019-nCoV reveals that the new virus is most closely related to two bat SARS-like coronavirus samples from China, initially suggesting that, like SARS and MERS, the bat might also be the origin of 2019-nCoV. The authors further found that the viral RNA coding sequence of 2019-nCoV spike protein, which forms the "crown" of the virus particle that recognizes the receptor on a host cell, indicates that the bat virus might have mutated before infecting people.""But when the researchers performed a more detailed bioinformatics analysis of the sequence of 2019-nCoV, it suggests that this coronavirus might come from snakes."
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"Snakes -- the Chinese krait and the Chinese cobra -- may be the original source of the newly discovered coronavirus that has triggered an outbreak of a deadly infectious respiratory illness in China this winter.""The many-banded krait (Bungarus multicinctus), also known as the Taiwanese krait or the Chinese krait, is a highly venomous species of elapid snake found in much of central and southern China and Southeast Asia."CNN
It hasn't taken very long for the coronavirus identified as having started at a fish-and-live-animal market in Hunan, a Chinese city of over eleven million, to quickly spread. The hope was that the virus would not spread from person-to-person, but it does. Now the hope is that the virus is not air-borne, making it even more communicable. To date -- though numbers are increasing at a steady rate, and Chinese figures cannot always be relied upon for accuracy -- over 570 people have been infected, with 17 deaths.
Cases have now been identified in Thailand, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and the United States. In China, authorities were at first confident that they would have no trouble controlling the spread. That looks far less likely now. Millions of Chinese are on the move, with the tradition of returning home for a visit in a mass migration during Chinese New Year. People living in Wuhan have been asked to remain in the city, but it's unlikely many will; likewise people living outside Wuhan are being asked to avoid returning.
The virus that was first recognized last month has now entered Washington State with a Seattle man being the first confirmed case in the United States to be diagnosed with the new coronavirus. In his 30s, the man is in stable condition at the Providence Regional Medical Center in Everett, Washington with officials monitoring him. He arrived last week before federal health officials began screening travellers from Wuhan at Los Angeles, San Francisco and New York airports.
The Washington resident had returned from a trip to a region close to Wuhan, arriving at the Seattle-area international airport, when shortly afterward he began feeling ill, and arranged to see his doctor. Screening at international airports in Canada and the United States has been implemented. Initially self-reporting was deemed sufficient, later upgraded to having medical personnel on site to question travellers.
According to Adrian Hyzler, chief medical officer at Healix International, which offers solutions around risk-management for global travellers: "The people who are likely to die first will have other illnesses. But as it spreads, it'll pick up more people like flu does." Coronaviruses run the range from the common cold to more serious diseases. According to the World Health Organization, the strain spreading in China and moving globally is related to two other coronaviruses both of which impacted heavily enough in their contagion and outcomes to cause major outbreaks.
The Middle East respiratory syndrome known as well as MERS, and Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, or SARS, the latter of which raged not only in China, but caused deaths in 32 countries, including Toronto where 44 people died before it was brought under control, out of a total worldwide death toll of 774. According to experts in the field of virology, the science has advanced enormously since the SARS outbreak17 years ago, and medical communities are now better equipped to handle such serious public health risks. On the other hand:
"SARS came to a hospital in Toronto in 2003. One case made three cases, three cases made 12 cases, and so on, and so on,"
"What you see here is a bug that is behaving just like SARS did; just like MERS did… What we know from our experience from SARS is that we do have vulnerability in Toronto from hospital outbreaks."
"[It’s likely Canada could see a case of coronavirus considering the number of Chinese nationals and Chinese-Canadians who live here, or have family here]. In general, that should be no big deal outside of the healthcare context."
"The difficulty is just the physical plant. People come to you, they’re sick and you can’t say go away. We don’t have a lot of space especially in our ERs."
David Fisman, Infectious disease expert, professor, University of Toronto, Dalla Lana School of Public Health
Labels: China, Contagion, Coronavirus, World Health Organization
posted by Pieface @ Thursday, January 23, 2020
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