HEALTH – An unidentified virus has been spreading for over a month now in China. Three people died. The epidemic has spread to several major Chinese cities as well as several countries in Asia. A total of 218 people would be affected. Abroad, prevention measures are multiplying at airports from Wuhan, especially in the United States and Thailand.
2020-01-20T13: 11: 43.330Z – The drafting of LCI
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The epidemic comes as the Chinese New Year festivities approach, the busiest time of the year in transportation, during which hundreds of millions of people travel by bus, train and plane to visit their families. A period of forced close contact capable of creating psychosis in the country …
On Monday, China reported a third death from a mysterious virus that appeared last month, as the epidemic spread to the north and south of the country, a few days before the great Crusaders of the Chinese New Year. According to the authorities, the epidemic has so far been confined to Wuhan (center), one of around 11 million inhabitants where the virus, of the same family as SARS, appeared last month.
But for the first time, Chinese health officials reported on Monday January 20 new cases in other cities of the country: two in Beijing (north) and another in Shenzhen, the metropolis of the far south which faces Hong Kong. More than 218 people have now been infected across the country.
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Wuhan as a common point
What these new cases have in common is that all the infected people had gone to Wuhan in recent weeks.
Patients hospitalized in the capital are in stable condition and are being treated for pneumonia, local health officials say.
However, the virus is causing growing concern after the death this weekend of a third person since the start of the epidemic and a significant increase in the number of new cases in Wuhan (nearly 140, the total now reaching 198).
Despite everything, the city’s health authorities want to be reassuring: according to them, the risk of transmission of the virus between humans is considered “low”, even if it is “not excluded”. The focus of the epidemic appears to be a wholesale market in seafood and fish in Wuhan, where several infected patients worked. It has since been closed and decontamination operations have taken place.
The virus has crossed borders
Despite the risk of spread, movement in China is not currently subject to any restriction, even if first uses of thermal cameras are used in certain places to identify possible patients.
The offending strain is a new type of coronavirus, a family with a large number of viruses. They can cause mild illnesses in humans (like a cold) but also other more serious ones like SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome). Highly contagious, this virus killed some 650 people in mainland China and Hong Kong in 2002-2003.
Symptoms of SARS resemble those of pneumonia, with high fever and various respiratory problems. During the pandemic, the World Health Organization (WHO) strongly criticized China for delaying raising the alarm and trying to conceal the extent of the disease.
Control at American and Thai airports
The concern is now perceptible abroad, where prevention measures are multiplying. Since Friday, the United States has been filtering flights from Wuhan to San Francisco Airport and New York JFK Airport – both of which receive direct flights from Wuhan – as well as to Los Angeles, where many connections are made.
Thailand, where two cases have been identified, has also tightened up controls at its airports. The Hong Kong authorities have stepped up their control measures at the borders of the autonomous territory, in particular with body temperature detectors.
South Korea also confirmed on Monday the first case of the mysterious virus of the same family as SARS that appeared in China last month, heightening fears about the spread of the epidemic. The Korean Center for Disease Control and Prevention (KCDC) said the virus was isolated from a 35-year-old Chinese woman who arrived by plane from Wuhan, a city in central China where the epidemic appears to have started. She had consulted at the hospital in Wuhan on Saturday because of a cold. She was prescribed medication before she took a flight on Sunday to South Korea’s Incheon airport, where her symptoms were detected. She was placed in quarantine.
