Yahoo News Coronavirus may have been in Italy for weeks before it was detected
The new coronavirus may have circulated in northern Italy for weeks before it was detected, seriously complicating efforts to track and control its rapid spread across Europe.
What is Covid-19 - the illness that started in Wuhan?
It is caused by a member of the coronavirus family that has never been encountered before. Like other coronaviruses, it has come from animals. Many of those initially infected either worked or frequently shopped in the Huanan seafood wholesale market in the centre of the Chinese city.
Have there been other coronaviruses?
Severe acute respiratory syndrome (Sars) and Middle Eastern respiratory syndrome (Mers) are both caused by coronaviruses that came from animals. In 2002, Sars spread virtually unchecked to 37 countries, causing global panic, infecting more than 8,000 people and killing more than 750. Mers appears to be less easily passed from human to human, but has greater lethality, killing 35% of about 2,500 people who have been infected.
What are the symptoms caused by the new coronavirus?
The virus can cause pneumonia. Those who have fallen ill are reported to suffer coughs, fever and breathing difficulties. In severe cases there can be organ failure. As this is viral pneumonia, antibiotics are of no use. The antiviral drugs we have against flu will not work. Recovery depends on the strength of the immune system. Many of those who have died were already in poor health.
Should I go to the doctor if I have a cough?
UK Chief Medical Officers are advising anyone who has travelled to the UK from mainland China, Thailand, Japan, Republic of Korea, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia or Macau in the last 14 days and who is experiencing a cough or fever or shortness of breath to stay indoors and call NHS 111, even if symptoms are mild.
Is the virus being transmitted from one person to another?
China’s national health commission has confirmed human-to-human transmission, and there have been such transmissions elsewhere.
How many people have been affected?
As of 20 Februrary, China has recorded 2,118 deaths from the Covid-19 outbreak. Health officials have confirmed 74,576 cases in mainland China in total. More than 12,000 have recovered.
The coronavirus has spread to at least 28 other countries. Japan has 607 cases, including 542 from a cruise ship docked in Yokohama, and has recorded one death. There have also been deaths in Hong Kong, Taiwan, France and the Philippines.
There have been nine recorded cases and no fatalities to date in the UK. As of 17 February, a total of 4,501 people have been tested in the UK, of which 4,492 were confirmed negative.
Why is this worse than normal influenza, and how worried are the experts?
We don’t yet know how dangerous the new coronavirus is, and we won’t know until more data comes in. The mortality rate is around 2% at the centre of the outbreak, Hubei province, and less than that elsewhere. For comparison, seasonal flu typically has a mortality rate below 1% and is thought to cause about 400,000 deaths each year globally. Sars had a death rate of more than 10%.
Another key unknown is how contagious the coronavirus is. A crucial difference is that unlike flu, there is no vaccine for the new coronavirus, which means it is more difficult for vulnerable members of the population – elderly people or those with existing respiratory or immune problems – to protect themselves. Hand-washing and avoiding other people if you feel unwell are important. One sensible step is to get the flu vaccine, which will reduce the burden on health services if the outbreak turns into a wider epidemic.
Is the outbreak a pandemic?
A pandemic, in WHO terms, is “the worldwide spread of a disease”. Coronavirus cases have been confirmed outside China, but by no means in all 195 countries on the WHO’s list. It is also not spreading within those countries at the moment, except in a very few cases. By far the majority of cases are travellers who picked up the virus in China.
Should we panic?
No. The spread of the virus outside China is worrying but not an unexpected development. The WHO has declared the outbreak to be a public health emergency of international concern. The key issues are how transmissible this new coronavirus is between people, and what proportion become severely ill and end up in hospital. Often viruses that spread easily tend to have a milder impact. Generally, the coronavirus appears to be hitting older people hardest, with few cases in children.
Sarah Boseley, Hannah Devlin and Martin Belam
The claim follows laboratory tests that isolated a strain of the virus from an Italian patient, which showed genetic differences compared with the original strain isolated in China and two Chinese tourists who became sick in Rome.
Massimo Galli, professor of infectious diseases at the University of Milan and director of infectious diseases at the Luigi Sacco hospital in Milan, said preliminary evidence suggested the virus could have been spreading below the radar in the quarantined areas.
“I can’t absolutely confirm any safe estimate of the time of the circulation of the virus in Italy, but … some first evidence suggest that the circulation of the virus is not so recent in Italy,” he said, amid suggestions the virus may have been present since mid-January.
The beginnings of the outbreak, which has now infected more than 821 people in the country and has spread from Italy across Europe, were probably seeded at least two or three weeks before the first detection and possibly before flights between Italy and China were suspended at the end of January, say experts.
The findings will be deeply concerning for health officials across Europe who have so far concentrated their containment efforts on identifying individuals returning from high risk areas for the virus, including Italy, and people with symptoms as well as those who have come in contact with them.
The new claim emerged as the World Health Organization warned that the outbreak was getting bigger and could soon appear in almost every country. The impact risk was now very high at a global level, it said.
“The scenario of the coronavirus reaching multiple countries, if not all countries around the world, is something we have been looking at and warning against since quite a while,” a spokesman said.
The World Health Organization is recommending that people take simple precautions to reduce exposure to and transmission of the Wuhan coronavirus, for which there is no specific cure or vaccine.
The UN agency advises people to:
Frequently wash their hands with an alcohol-based hand rub or warm water and soap
Cover their mouth and nose with a flexed elbow or tissue when sneezing or coughing
Avoid close contact with anyone who has a fever or cough
Seek early medical help if they have a fever, cough and difficulty breathing, and share their travel history with healthcare providers
Avoid direct, unprotected contact with live animals and surfaces in contact with animals when visiting live markets in affected areas
Avoid eating raw or undercooked animal products and exercise care when handling raw meat, milk or animal organs to avoid cross-contamination with uncooked foods.
Despite a surge in sales of face masks in the aftermath of the outbreak of the coronavirus outbreak, experts are divided over whether they can prevent transmission and infection. There is some evidence to suggest that masks can help prevent hand-to-mouth transmissions, given the large number of times people touch their faces. The consensus appears to be that wearing a mask can limit – but not eliminate – the risks, provided they are used correctly.
A viral outbreak that began in China has infected more than 83,000 people globally, with almost 3,000 deaths. As the list of countries hit by the illness edged towards 60, with Mexico, Belarus, Lithuania, New Zealand, Nigeria, Azerbaijan and the Netherlands reporting their first cases, the threats to livelihoods were increasingly eyed as warily as the threats to lives.
While there were some tentative indications the outbreak may be slowing in China, South Korea’s tally of infections exceeded 2,300, while cases in France and Germany continued to rise.
With new cases being reported across Europe, and the first case confirmed in sub-Saharan Africa – in an Italian man who recently returned to work in Nigeria – governments were increasingly moving towards proposing ever more stringent measures to control the global outbreak
As $5tn (£3.9tn) has been wiped off global stock markets amid fears over the impact of the virus, Switzerland moved to ban all gatherings of more than 1,000 people until 15 March, announcing the postponement of the Geneva Motor Show.
The British budget airline easyJet announced it would axe 500 flights to Italy, alongside plans for freezes on hiring and pay, as other airlines announced similar measures.
In Iran, where there has been one of the most serious outbreaks outside of China, with 34 people known to have died and 388 infected, the government announced on state television on Friday that all schools would be closing for three days from Saturday.
“Based on assessments, it was felt that there was a need for closing all the schools in the country and for this reason all the schools in the country will be closed for three days starting from tomorrow,” the country’s health minister, Saeed Namaki, said.
Similar measures were under way in Japan, prompting angry reactions from parents and teachers, who on Friday were told by the prime minister, Shinzo Abe, that all schools would close for a month.
In another drastic move, the northern island of Hokkaido, where there has been the largest number of cases in Japan, on Friday declared a state of emergency. Its population of about 5 million people were told to refrain from venturing outside their homes over the weekend.
Meanwhile authorities in Moscow announced they were deporting 88 people who they said had violated the country’s quarantine measures.
The Nigerian case is just the third to be confirmed in Africa– a fact that has puzzled health specialists given the continent’s close ties to China – and was not picked up for 48 hours, part of a familiar pattern in the spread of the disease from California to Germany.
According to Nigerian officials, the Italian man affected by Covid-19 stayed in a hotel near the airport on the evening of 24 February, then continued to his place of work in neighbouring Ogun state.
He was treated on 26 February at his company’s medical facility before health practitioners called government biosecurity officers, who transferred him on 27 February to a containment facility in Yaba, Lagos.
This World Health Organization warned that porous borders, a continuing flow of travellers and poorly resourced healthcare systems meant the risk of an outbreak across Africa was “very, very high” and raised significant concerns about the ability of “fragile health systems” to cope.
Experts, meanwhile, said the scale of the task involved in tracing suspected cases would put strain on developed countries.
“The worry is that there may be other countries that are less prepared, and that the virus may become more widespread worldwide,” said Martin Hibberd, professor of emerging infectious disease at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.
“If that were to happen, even [developed] systems would possibly struggle to be able to check every possible suspect.”
In other developments, Mexico’s assistant health secretary announced that the country now had two confirmed cases of coronavirus.
And at least 23 guests left H10 Costa Adeje Palace hotel in Tenerife on Friday, four days into a 14-day imposed quarantine, after the Canary Islands regional government on Thursday cleared 130 holidaymakers to leave the hotel. About 700 holidaymakers remained quarantined in the compound.
