The new coronavirus, which is centered in the Chinese city of Wuhan and has begun to spread to more and more countries, is now likely to become a pandemic around the world, according to many leading infection scientists.
The great uncertainty now, according to experts, is not so much whether there will be a pandemic (this is considered very likely), but how many people will die worldwide. The ever-increasing number of diagnosed cases worries scientists, who can not yet estimate how many deaths there may be in the future.
An epidemic - that is, an epidemic spreading to at least two continents - could have international repercussions, despite severe travel restrictions and extensive quarantine, measures that are already being imposed by more and more countries. Scientists are not yet able to know how deadly the new "2019-nCoV" virus will prove to be, but there is a growing scientific consensus that it is easily transmitted between humans, more like the common flu, which is highly contagious, than previous deadly SARS and MERS viruses, which were more difficult to transmit from human to human. "The new virus is very, very contagious and it is almost certain that there will be a pandemic.
But will it be catastrophic? "I do not know," Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told the New York Times. Over the past three weeks, the number of confirmed cases has risen from about 50 in China to more than 17.000 in at least 23 countries, and deaths have now exceeded 360. But various epidemiological models estimate that there are actually at least 100.000 cases of infection.
Although this rate of transmission between humans is not yet as fast as that of the flu, it is dramatically faster than what scientists saw when the coronary SARS and MERS coronaviruses appeared. When the first ceased to be transmitted in July 2003, after a nine-month spread, only 8.098 cases had been confirmed, while in the case of MERS, which appeared in 2012 and has been circulating since then, only around 2.500 cases have been reported. SARS killed about 10% of patients, while MERS killed about a third.
The "Spanish" flu of 1918 killed only 2,5%, but because it was highly contagious internationally and medical and pharmaceutical defenses were worse then, it is estimated that it killed 20 to 50 million patients. The highly contagious H1N1 swine flu pandemic in 2009 had a low mortality rate (around 0,02%), but killed about 285.000 people. The mortality rate for confirmed patients in the case of the new coronavirus is around 2% (from 4% at the beginning), but it is likely to decrease further, as more and more tests are performed and more less severe cases of patients are detected.
"It is increasingly unlikely that the new virus can be contained. "It's possible it will spread like the flu, but we do not yet know how far and how deadly it will be," said Dr. Thomas Frieden, a former director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. "It is much more like the spread of H1N1 flu than SARS. I'm more and more worried. "Even a 1% death rate would mean 10.000 deaths for every one million people," said Dr Peter Payot, director of the London School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine.
On the other hand, more optimistic Dr. Michael Ryan of the World Health Organization, said that "the evidence so far shows that this virus can still be controlled" and that "people need to keep trying." It will not be possible to accurately assess the "lethality" of the new virus until certain studies, such as blood tests to determine how many people have antibodies to the virus, household tests to find out how often all members of a family are infected, and and genetic tests to determine if some strains of the new virus are more dangerous than others.
Experts point out that even closing the border cannot prevent the virus from entering a country, but such measures - such as scrutiny of travelers at the gates - can delay the spread and allow time for vaccines to be developed and drugs. Unfortunately, the epidemiological models of the European Center for Disease Control and Prevention estimate that three out of four patients with the virus who arrive in Europe from China are still in the invisible stage of incubation, have no symptoms (fever, cough, shortness of breath, etc.). , therefore go unnoticed by airports.
It remains unclear which people are most at risk from the new virus, how easily contaminated object surfaces transmit the virus, how quickly it mutates and whether it will begin to disappear on its own when the weather warms up. In contrast, many flu viruses, such as the flu, are exposed to the spread of heat. But even if the virus goes "brake" this summer, a second outbreak by the fall is possible, scientists say, something that has happened in every major flu pandemic - such as those of 1918 and 2009.
Source: KYPE