BEIJING, Jan 23 — A new SARS-like virus has killed 17 people in China, infected hundreds and reached as far as the United States, with fears mounting about its spread as hundreds of millions travel for Lunar New Year celebrations, which start tomorrow. Many countries have stepped up screening of...
WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus in a news conference on the Novel Coronavirus 2019-nCoV in Geneva, Switzerland January 22, 2020. — Reuters pic
Arnaud Fontanet, head of the department of epidemiology at the Institut Pasteur in Paris, told AFP the current virus strain was 80 per cent genetically identical to SARS. More than 500 cases of the virus have now been reported, with most in Wuhan, according to officials. Li Bin of China's National Health Commission yesterday said 1,394 people were still under medical observation.
However, Antoine Flahault, director of the Institute of Global Health at the University of Geneva, told AFP that the fact that the virus seems milder in the majority of people is “paradoxically more worrying” as it allows people to travel further before their symptoms are detected. The WHO has only used the rare label a handful of times, including during the H1N1 — or swine flu — pandemic of 2009 and the Ebola epidemic that devastated parts of West Africa from 2014 to 2016.
In Thailand, officials have introduced mandatory thermal scans of passengers arriving at airports in Bangkok, Chiang Mai, Phuket and Krabi from high-risk areas in China.
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