coronavirus spreads from china to India and Philippines
in
many parts of China this is the new normal very few people on the streets and the
usually crowded public transport system Albert empty like here in Shanghai every
passenger has stopped and every passenger screened for signs of the coronavirus
it's fine our temperature was taken both getting on and off the train everyone
has a mask on I feel relieved it may look like a country grinding to a halt but
this is China’s response to a mass public health emergency one week after these
drastic measures were introduced the numbers of infected still keep climbing up
people are anxious they prefer to stay at home and not to go out on the streets
or wear mask when they go out on the streets this here is a major tourist destination
usually this area is quite busy with people walking around having snacks
sightseeing now people prefer staying at home nobody really knows whether the measures
the government has taken will be able to contain the virus so people are taking
their own measures of precaution and that means minimizing social contact as
much as they can elsewhere a lack of basic necessities and information are
eroding confidence in the authorities in Hong Kong
people have been queuing
since 2:00 a.m. Hoping to buy face masks the Hong Kong government should do
like Macau's and say every resident can only buy ten pieces that way every
single Hong Kong person could have a face mask to wear right as the second
plane load of repatriated Japanese nationals touched down in Tokyo it caused
some to wonder what this type of outbreak could look like if it happened during
the Olympics here in July take it as a wake-up call for us to take precautions
against an outbreak like this especially towards the Olympics yes Japan is
naive I think Japan should step up measures in South Korea the government is
building a containment facility for those infected people here fear for their
safety the governor and Minister should come here and try to find a point of
compromise what are they doing bringing troops here are we in battle this is
such nonsense they’re really creating a mood of fear in South Korea as in many
other countries some residents feel the government's response to the crisis has
lacked the apparent intensity and clarity of China's all right let's get some
analysis on this story now we can speak to virologist Intones from the University
of Reading in England hi Ian good to have you here now I would ask you about
the raft of measures that we've seen countries take to try to contain this
outbreak multiple countries evacuating their citizens from affected areas we've
seen China shutting down or locking down entire cities is this the right
approach to stop this from spreading it's the right approach at the current
time time will tell whether or not it's been effective in either stopping or
slowing the progress of the virus I think as the numbers continue to rise it
looks increasingly likely likely that this will become a pandemic and will
eventually spread around the world we've seen as you said this is spreading and
we see in first cases reported in the Philippines in India these are densely populated
countries in how worrying is that you
if we look at the efforts now to try to
contain the spread yes it is worrying for two distinct reasons one is as you
say these are very dense populations so the opportunity for transmission among
people is much higher than it would been a low population density country but
in addition to that these are areas of the world which also have quite a hide
burden of respiratory disease particularly things like TB outbreak and until the virus
gets there we really don't know what to expect in terms of the severity of the infection
in those target populations and you said this could become a pandemic how
dangerous is this virus in comparison to other diseases other outbreaks we’ve
seen like SARS in 2003 for example it certainly lost much less in serious hangars
the case fatality rate for SARS was around about 10 percent currently thesis
running around 2 percent that is still pretty high it would at that number it
would be almost like the Spanish influenza at the early part of last century
however if it's true that there are many more infected people than the
confirmed cases then the actual fatality rate is somewhat lower than that and
more like a seasonal influenza which perhaps could be coped with more easily by
the existing health resources the World Health Organization is set to decide
today whether they should declare this a global health emergency should they do
so I mean what would that change or whether they should do so or not depends on
them and the data that they have at hand which I don't have I would guess
perhaps that on this occasion they didn’t on the last occasion but on this
occasion they will consider it a global health emergency there's been sufficient
spread internationally I think and what that would do was just mobilize more
resources with alerts barriers upcountry boundaries and maybe alert healthcare
systems that they need to put mitigation processes in place all right Ian Jones
speaking to us from the University of Reading in England thank you for your
insight
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