Experts Believe Wuhan Coronavirus Is Likely To Become A Pandemic
WUHAN CORONAVIURS PANDEMIC – According to many of the world’s leading experts in infectious diseases, the Wuhan coronavirus is likely to become a pandemic.
The deadly virus that has plagued China had already killed at least 361 people and infected over 17,238 others. Because of this, experts have feared the worse is yet to come.
Scientists have yet to know how fatal the new coronavirus could be. However, the virus has been spreading more similarly to influenza which is highly transmissible in contrast to SARS and MERS.
According to an article from the New York Times, Dr. Athony S. Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease stated:
It’s very, very transmissible, and it almost certainly is going to be a pandemic
But will it be catastrophic? I don’t know.
Within the span of about three weeks, the number of confirmed cases in China went from 50 to 17,000 in at least 23 countries. However, epidemiological models suggest that the real number of cases is up to 100,000 or more.
While it is true that the expansion is not as rapid as the flu or measles, it is still a huge gap than what virologists saw with the SARS and MERS outbreaks.
As per the report, when the SARS epidemic was over in July 2003, there were only 8,098 cases confirmed. Meanwhile, MERS had been around since 2012 but only had 2,500 known cases.
According to Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said the virus is “increasingly unlikely that the virus can be contained”.
It is therefore likely that it will spread, as flu and other organisms do, but we still don’t know how far, wide or deadly it will be
Dr. Thomas R. Frieden
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