If we cannot control the corona virus, two thirds of the world’s population can be infected. That is what the most important epidemiologist from Hong Kong, Gabriel Leung, says.
His warning follows a message from the World Health Organization (WHO) stating that recent cases of corona virus outside of China are just “the tip of the iceberg.”
Professor Gabriel Leung of Hong Kong University says that the underlying question is what the size and shape of the iceberg is. Most experts assume that every infected person transfers the virus to 2.5 other people. Then you come to a total infection of 60 to 80 percent. “Sixty percent of the world’s population is a horrible number,” Leung said in The Guardian. Even if the death rate is only 1 percent – where Leung assumes if you take milder cases into account – then the number of deaths is huge.
Leung, who also played an important role in the Sars outbreak in 2002, works closely with other top researchers in this field. At the end of January, he warned in The Lancet magazine that “single outbreaks in major cities worldwide are inevitable,” because of the large number of people leaving China without symptoms but with the virus.
If it turns out that the Chinese lockdown did not work, then it is time for the world to switch from methods to get the disease under control to measures to limit the consequences, Leung said.
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