Virologist Who Helped Fight SARS Says New Coronavirus Was Already Uncontrollable
WUHAN VIRUS OUTBREAK – A leading virologist who helped fight against SARS warned that the Wuhan virus could potentially be 10 times worse than the epidemic 17 years ago.
Dr. Guyan Yi, director of the State Key Laboratory of Emerging Infectious Diseases at the University of Hong Kong echoed concerns that the virus in Wuhan was already “uncontrollable”.
According to a report from DailyMail, Dr. Yi stated that the “golden period” to contain and eradicate the virus had already passed.
“I have experienced so much and never felt scared. Most viruses are controllable, but this time I am scared.”
Dr. Guan Yi
The Wuhan coronavirus outbreak had already taken 25 lives and had infected 800 others. Meanwhile, the government had already shut down outgoing public transport from Wuhan.
However, some scientists believe that though understandable, the shut down of transportation could only do little to prevent the virus. This was because the virus had already spread outside the city.
As per the report, Dr. Guan Yi who was in Wuhan this week said that he had to “escape” after observing an appalling lack of preventative measures by the local authorities.
Dr. Guan Yi and his team were the first to identify the SARS coronavirus during the epidemic. They tracked down the source to the masked palm civet.
Due to this discovery, he urged the government to ban wildlife markets which in turn, prevented the second outbreak of the virus.
However, due to loopholes in the law banning the sale of wildlife products, some stores were still able to sell otherwise banned products to the public.
Scientists now believe that the virus may have possibly spread to humans from snakes or bats.
During an interview with Caixin, one of the biggest news outlets in China, Guan feared that a lot more people from Wuhan had already been infected than the number of SARS cases.
He also feared that the lockdown of Wuhan would do much to contain the virus as many of the infected had already left for the Chinese New Year. Dr. Guan said the sources of infection had “spread out completely”.
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