China is taking great measures to prevent the spread of the new 2019-nCoV coronavirus. The sprawling city of Wuhan is now under quarantine. 11 million people live in this city in the center of the country and they can no longer leave it or almost.
There is no question of leaving for the long Chinese New Year holiday, by plane or train. Motorway controls have been put in place to measure the temperature of those who try to leave by car. And inside the city, public transport is at a standstill. The New Years festivities have been canceled.
Wuhan is at the heart of the epidemic which has infected more than 500 people and left 17 dead since December. And all the deceased died in Wuhan or its region.
Scientists have identified a new strain of coronavirus, a very large family of viruses that can cause a simple cold like deadly pneumonia. It also includes SARS, acute respiratory syndrome and MERS.
In Geneva, the World Health Organization is still collecting information to decide whether or not to declare an international public health emergency. The Director-General of WHO, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus praised the strong measures taken by China:
“Transparency is very important if we want the world to be safe. Being transparent is essential. And we believe that China is and we encourage it to continue in this direction.”
You should know that at the time of SARS, in 2002-2003, the WHO had strongly criticized Beijing for having delayed raising the alarm and trying to conceal the scale of the epidemic which had ultimately killed 774 people in the world.
In the UK, at Heathrow Airport, passengers who were still arriving from Wuhan yesterday were questioned about the situation there:
“Everything is completely normal, except that everyone is wearing a mask. And we were entitled to a piece of paper when we landed, just to say contact us if you had any symptoms.”
Many countries are now strengthening screening at their borders. The Chinese coronavirus has already been identified in Beijing, Shanghai, Macao, Hong Kong, Thailand (4 cases), the United States (1 case), South Korea (1 case), Japan (1 case) and Taiwan (1 case).
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