Story at a glance
- Six people have died from the new coronavirus.
- More than 200 cases have been confirmed.
- The CDC is screening travelers at airports in the U.S. (JFK, SFO, LAX).
Six people have died from a virus in an outbreak in Wuhan, China. The first cases were reported in Dec. 2019, and there are now more than 200 confirmed cases, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). There has been one case in the US as of Jan. 21.
The new virus causing illness in Wuhan is a coronavirus, the same family of viruses as the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) virus. In the 2003 outbreak that originated in China, the information about the early cases were covered up initially by Chinese authorities. The new 2019 coronavirus may be less deadly than SARS, but it seems to be spreading and infecting people at a higher rate.
A concerning fact about the current outbreak is that health care workers are also getting infected and a recent report states that this new coronavirus can be passed from person to person, though that may be rare. SARS was also able to be transmitted between people, but potentially at a different rate as this new coronavirus. To compare, this is unlike avian flu, which was only transmitted from birds to people.
There are cases reported in Beijing, South Korea, Japan and Thailand. To try to prevent the spread, airports in the U.S., Australia and other parts of Asia have begun screening passengers for symptoms. In Wuhan, officials have been using infrared thermometers at transportations hubs since Jan. 14. In the U.S., the CDC announced on Jan. 17 that passengers would be screened at three airports: New York (JFK), San Francisco (SFO) and Los Angeles (LAX).
But health officials may not be catching all the cases, especially because symptoms may not appear until several days after infection. For example, with MERS, another coronavirus, symptoms may appear within five to six days but range from two to 14 days. An analysis by Neil Ferguson and colleagues at Imperial College London estimates that the number of people with symptoms coming out of Wuhan could be around 1,700 based on the number of people traveling out of Wuhan International Airport. A flight mapping web tool demonstrates that there are many critical flight connections to Wuhan within Asia and to international locations.
And here’s the modeled passenger flow, it’s busy but the busiest arrival airports from #Wuhan, including indirect links, are shown with the yellow circles. Feel free to play around with airport selection, passenger volume, and dates in the app yourself. https://t.co/bjeIsnhMmV pic.twitter.com/8Kn416pLbb
— Kevin J Olival (@nycbat) January 17, 2020
Now with the coming Lunar New Year, a national holiday involving mass travel of a large proportion of China’s population, experts are concerned about what that will mean for transmission of the virus and spread of the geographical range of cases. Experts say that the virus can be contained, but that hinges on whether people continue to travel out of Wuhan where it all started. “If you live in Wuhan and have a fever, you should not leave the city right now,” says Zhong Nanshan of the China’s National Health Commission, according to the Washington Post.
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