Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, general director of the WHO, warns that the time to stop the spread of the disease “is running out.”
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While in countries such as South Korea, Singapore or Iran there are jumps in cases of covid-19 coronavirus caused by infected groups, what most worries experts is not numbers, but how difficult it is to trace the origin of These groups. Problems finding each source — the first patient that causes each new group — may indicate that the disease has begun to spread too far for known and proven measures to stop it.
“We will probably have a pandemic”
“The series of foci that occur around the world is a sign that things are moving forward, and what we are going to have here is probably a pandemic,” Ian Mackay, a virus specialist at the University of Queensland, warns at AP. in Australia.
Along the same lines, Dr. Sylvie Briand, from WHO, notes that “different patterns of transmission are observed in different places.” “We have a lot of diversity, different shoots that show different phases,” he explains.
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In expressing its concern, above all, about the rapid increase in cases in Iran, as well as in South Korea and Italy, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO’s director general, has warned this Saturday that the time to stop the spread ” it’s ending”.
“Although the total number of cases outside of China remains relatively small, we are concerned the number of cases without a clear epidemiological link, such as the history of travel to China or contact with a confirmed case, “he explains.
Thus, in South Korea, most of the hundreds of new cases detected since Wednesday are linked to a church in the city of Daegu and a nearby hospital. However, health authorities have not yet found the person among the 9,000 followers of the church that triggered the wave of infections. There have also been several cases in the capital, Seoul, where routes of infection have not yet been traced.
Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong already acknowledged earlier this month that, as the virus generalizes, trying to track each contact will prove useless.
“Containment methods will not work”
Unlike other viruses in the same family, such as severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) or Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS), the new coronavirus spreads as easily as a common cold. As if that were not enough, it is almost certain that it is being transmitted by people who show symptoms so mild that no one can detect them, says Amesh Adalja of the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Safety.
“If that is the case, all these containment methods will not work,” said Adalja, explaining that the virus is likely to “mix in the cold and flu season” in several countries and unnoticed pass until someone gets seriously ill.
These milder symptoms are good news “in terms of not so many people dying,” but they are “really bad news if you’re trying to stop a pandemic,” Mackay confirms.
“Invisible chains of infection”
When Hong Kong reported its first death from the virus earlier this month, it also confirmed three locally transmitted cases with no known link to any previous case or history of travel to the mainland of China. Chuang Shuk-kwan of the Center for Health Protection warned then that “there could be invisible chains of infection within communities.”
“Although the window of opportunity is shrinking to contain the outbreak, we can still contain it,” says Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. However, he admits, we must prepare “for any eventuality”, because this outbreak “could go in any direction, it could even be messy. “
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