Six people are now reported to have died after being infected with a new virus spreading in China. The coronavirus, which is of the same family as SARS and MERS, can be transmitted between people, the country鈥檚 health ministry has confirmed.
The two latest reported deaths from the virus were that of a 66-year-old man and a 48-year-old woman in Wuhan, . Sixty new cases were reported in the region on 20 January. Among them, fifteen healthcare workers have been diagnosed, .
Zhong Nanshan, head of the Chinese national health commission team investigating the outbreak, confirmed that two cases of infection in China鈥檚 Guangdong province had been .
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鈥淚t is now clear that there is person-to-person transmission, which is a worrying development,鈥� says Rosalind Eggo at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. 鈥淲e鈥檝e got to wait and see how sustained that transmission is.鈥�
The Wuhan Municipal Health Commission has confirmed . Currently, 227 patients are still being treated in the hospital. Cases have also been confirmed in Guangdong province, Beijing and Shanghai, as well as Japan, Thailand, South Korea and Taiwan. In those countries, a handful of cases have been confirmed, either in people from Wuhan or people who visited the city.
The World Health Organization鈥檚 director-general will hold an on Wednesday to determine whether the outbreak represents a public health emergency of international concern, and issue recommendations on how to manage it.
鈥淭his is a critical point in the outbreak,鈥� says Eggo. 鈥淎lthough there are more signs that this outbreak is serious, we still don鈥檛 know exactly what is going on.鈥� Over the next week or so, we will find out how easily the virus can be passed from one person to another and whether the infection is spreading in countries outside China, says Eggo.
Delayed symptoms
In total, nearly 300 cases of infection with the virus have been confirmed. But a report released on 17 January based on infectious disease modelling suggests there may be hundreds more cases in the city that haven鈥檛 been diagnosed. Given the number of cases reported outside of China, it is possible that more than 1700 people have been infected in the city, suggest .
The team reached that estimate based on the number of international travellers flying out of Wuhan, the population of Wuhan international airport鈥檚 catchment area and the fact that, on average, it appears to take around 10 days for an infected person to start showing symptoms.
In Australia and several countries in Asia, air passengers arriving from China will be screened on arrival to see if they have symptoms or a raised body temperature. The US Centers for Disease Control announced last week that it will begin screening travellers from Wuhan at airports in San Francisco, New York and Los Angeles.
