• Friday, March 29, 2024
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Explainer: What You Need to Know About China’s Virus Outbreak

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Alarm is spreading over a mysterious outbreak of sometimes fatal pneumonia in central China that has been linked to a new coronavirus — a family of bugs responsible for diseases that range in severity from the common cold to Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, or SARS.

Concern that the pathogen might have come from animals, as SARS probably did, has revived memories of the epidemic that killed almost 800 people about 17 years ago.

1. Who’s getting sick?
The outbreak began in Wuhan, a city of 11 million, in early December and spread to other parts of the country. As of Jan. 28, the virus had claimed more than 100 lives.

Some cases have been confirmed elsewhere involving travelers arriving from China as far away as Europe and the U.S.

There have been cases reported where the virus has spread along a four-person chain, indicating that it’s more easily transmissible than earlier thought.

And a top Chinese health official said it could be contagious before the carrier shows symptoms, which would make the spread much harder to stop.

2. Why is a new virus so alarming?
There is always a concern when a new pathogen emerges in a population because people typically lack immunity to it, and there usually aren’t specific treatments or vaccines available.

Novel coronaviruses (not seen in humans before) represent a particular concern because they have been known to spark complicated outbreaks that have sickened thousands of people, like SARS did as it swept across the globe from southern China.

3. How serious is the virus?
As of late January, the virus, labeled 2019-nCoV by the WHO, appears to be less virulent, and less deadly, than SARS.

A report done for the International Journal of Infectious Diseases found it is at least 70% similar in its genetic makeup to the SARS virus but “appears clinically milder” in terms of severity, fatality rate and transmissibility.

Of the first handful of deaths linked to the virus, at least some were people who already were seriously ill.

Regular pneumonia, a viral,bacterial or fungal infection that inflames the air sacs in one or both lungs, kills about 50,000 people annually in the U.S. Influenza has killed an estimated 12,000 to 61,000 each year in the U.S. over the past decade.

Chinese workers rush to build a new hospital in Wuhan on Jan. 28.
Photographer: Getty Images)

4. What are the symptoms?
Mainly fever, with some patients experiencing fatigue, a dry cough and difficulty breathing.

Chest X-rays have shown invasive lesions of both lungs, the WHO said.

However, almost all the reported cases so far are those requiring hospitalization. It’s very likely other people have been infected and experienced no, or only mild, symptoms.

Many people have recovered and been discharged from the hospital. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control estimates the incubation period, the time between infection and the onset of symptoms, is around 14 days; Chinese doctors say about 10 on average.

5. Where did the virus come from?
Investigators in Wuhan have focused on the seafood and animal market, where most people infected early in the outbreak either worked or shopped frequently.

It has been closed since Jan. 1, though cases continued to appear, including in people who hadn’t gone there.

That raised the possibility that the pathogen is lurking more widely in the city. Unlike during the SARS pandemic, when China was criticized for a lack of transparency, it made genomic data about the virus publicly available quickly.

That has enabled scientists anywhere to study the genetic fingerprint of the virus for clues about where and how it might have emerged.

6. What are authorities doing?

Chinese President Xi Jinping ordered resolute efforts to curb its spread ahead of the Lunar New Year holiday, which fell this year on Jan. 25 and for which many people typically travel.

The government imposed a quarantine on Wuhan and more than a dozen other cities in the region, a travel ban covering in excess of 50 million people.

Authorities dispatched medical personnel from the military to Wuhan to help out at hospitals. Patients have been isolated to prevent any spread.

Health officials are looking for, screening and monitoring people the patients had contact with, and searching for current and past cases that may have been treated in medical institutions throughout the city. Hong Kong, the international financial center that functions with some autonomy from China, announced travel restrictions from the mainland.

Outside China, airports have begun screening some passengers for symptoms, including in the U.S.

7. What happened with SARS?
SARS is thought to have spread indirectly from a “wildlife reservoir,” believed to be bats, to humans via masked palm civets and other species in live-animal markets.

The SARS outbreak began in late 2002 in Guangdong province and spread across the border to Hong Kong and beyond.

The WHO issued a global health alert in March 2003 and didn’t declare the outbreak contained until July 5 that year. China’s tourism, transportation and retail sectors were heavily hit as people stayed home; domestic consumption fell sharply, as did real estate prices and financial markets.

The epidemic subtracted an estimated 0.8 percentage point from gross domestic product growth in China in 2003, according to a China Daily report that cited a National Bureau of Statistics official. A 2003 academic study estimated the global economic cost at close to $40 billion or more.

8. What’s a coronavirus?
Coronaviruses are named for their crown-like shape. There’s a large family of them. Some transmit easily from person to person, while others do not.

There’s growing recognition of the role of coronaviruses in severe cases of pneumonia. The WHO says that new coronaviruses emerge periodically in different areas globally, and several known versions are circulating in animals and haven’t infected humans.

They tend to morph and mutate a lot, which means the level of risk they pose can change the longer they circulate.

Diseases transmissible from animals to humans, sometimes referred to as “zoonoses,” comprise a large percentage of all nearly identified infectious diseases.