(Eagle News) — People who have either no symptoms of the novel coronavirus or have not developed them yet seem to be able to spread the virus, according to China’s Director of the National Health Commission Ma Xiaowei.
Based on new information and research on the latest coronavirus strain, the 2019-nCoV, Ma said that the spread of the epidemic is “relatively fast” and there are cases, even those from outside China, where patients have no fever, and can transmit the virus.
China’s top health official described these cases as “walking source of infection” which are more difficult to control as the patients themselves may not know initially that they have the virus.
“From the perspective of transmission characteristics, some patients have low or normal early body temperature, more mild cases, and recessive infection,” he said in a recent press briefing in Beijing.
“At present, the infectivity of the virus is increasing, and the ‘walking source of infection’ has greatly increased the difficulty of prevention and control,” he explained.
Before this new data, many airports and other ports of entry around the world only relied on thermal scanners to determine possible carriers of the 2019 novel coronavirus.
The virus is also highly contagious during its incubation period which is between one to 14 days.
-Virus entering “more severe, complicated period”-
China’s National Health Commission even warned that the virus is “entering a more severe and complicated period.”
“Judging from the present, the spread of the epidemic situation is relatively fast, which brings some challenges and pressures to prevention and control,” health committee director Ma said.
“Experts predict that the epidemic is now entering a more severe and complicated period, and the measures taken by Wuhan’s prevention and control work have played an important role in controlling the epidemic. Judging from the work across the country, the epidemic is still in its early stages of spread,” he noted.
China’s Deputy Director of the National Health Committee and Member of the Party Group Li Bin admitted that they still have “limited knowledge” about the virus, and the progress of the epidemic is not within their control.
“From our understanding, this disease is a new disease, and humans have limited knowledge of it. It is not clear about the possible changes in the disease, and the progress of the epidemic is not fully controlled in our hands,” he said.
-Epidemic situation constantly changing-
“The epidemic situation is constantly changing, policies are continuously adjusted, measures are perfected, and various prevention and control requirements are implemented. In this way, we can be fully prepared to continuously improve our ability to respond to changes in the epidemic, effectively achieve prevention and control goals, and control the epidemic,” Li said.
The number of confirmed new cases was at least 7,783 worldwide, based on the data from the nCoV 2019 database of the John Hopkins University.
Total deaths have reached 170, all in China.
The National Health Commission in China said that while the main route of transmission is respiratory, the mechanism of transmission and the virus’ mutation are still not clear.
“Judging from the epidemic situation, the main route is respiratory transmission. Our knowledge of the new coronavirus is still very limited, the source of infection has not been found, the mechanism of transmission and the mutation of the virus are unclear,” NHC director Ma said.
He said that clinical epidemiological data also showed that the virus has began to adapt to “survive in humans” as it entered the human-to-human transmission phase.
“Judging from the clinical epidemiological data, it was initially understood that the virus may have changed from wild animals to humans in the early days, and now it gradually began to adapt to survive in humans and enter the period of human-to-human transmission. From the current clinical cases, there are In some severe cases and some mild cases, the virus has begun to spread from person to person,” he explained.
“According to recent clinical data, the transmission of the virus seems to have increased, and the toxicity and pathogenicity of the virus need to be analyzed based on more clinical data,” he added.
A report from the Wall Street Journal said that “many of the first patients who died were over 60 years old.” It said few children have been reported with the infection.
(Eagle News Service)