beijingwalker
ELITE MEMBER
- Joined
- Nov 4, 2011
- Messages
- 65,195
- Reaction score
- -55
- Country
- Location
As China’s Virus Cases Reach Zero, Experts Warn of Second Wave
Bloomberg News
March.19 2020
China has no new infections of the coronavirus domestically for the first time since the start of a crisis that has sickened over 80,000 Chinese people. But what could be a sign the country has defeated the fatal pathogen is likely to just be a temporary reprieve.
While the outbreak’s epicenter has shifted to Europe, where there are now more cases being reported daily than at the height of China’s crisis, epidemiologists warn that the Asian giant could face subsequent waves of infections, based on patterns seen in other pandemics.
The nature of this particular virus also raises the risk of a resurgence. The coronavirus is harder to detect and lingers longer than the one that caused Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome in 2003, which infected 8,000 people before fading out. That will make future waves of the new pandemic more difficult to prevent.
As other countries wrestle with how far to close down civic life, they’ll be watching China, where the virus first emerged last December, to see what happens when it lifts the harsh lockdowns and social distancing measures that have helped curb the its outbreak.
There were no new cases reported Thursday in Wuhan, the city in central Chinese Hubei province from which the outbreak began. There have been no new cases in the rest of the country for seven days, a dramatic plunge from the height of an outbreak that killed more than 3,000, and caused a historic economic contraction.
China’s measures -- which included a massive quarantine of Hubei province, a region of 60 million people -- had success in interrupting transmission in the rest of the country, said David Heymann, a professor of infectious disease epidemiology at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine.
“The concern is what will happen after they end these measures.”
Even if there had been many times more coronavirus cases than officially reported by the Chinese government, less than 1% of the population would have been infected in its first wave, “leaving most people in China susceptible,” said Raina MacIntyre, a biosecurity professor at the University of New South Wales in Sydney.
“The global pandemic will not be contained until we have a vaccine, or most of the population is infected,” she said.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/arti...s-cases-near-zero-experts-warn-of-second-wave
Bloomberg News
March.19 2020
China has no new infections of the coronavirus domestically for the first time since the start of a crisis that has sickened over 80,000 Chinese people. But what could be a sign the country has defeated the fatal pathogen is likely to just be a temporary reprieve.
While the outbreak’s epicenter has shifted to Europe, where there are now more cases being reported daily than at the height of China’s crisis, epidemiologists warn that the Asian giant could face subsequent waves of infections, based on patterns seen in other pandemics.
The nature of this particular virus also raises the risk of a resurgence. The coronavirus is harder to detect and lingers longer than the one that caused Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome in 2003, which infected 8,000 people before fading out. That will make future waves of the new pandemic more difficult to prevent.
As other countries wrestle with how far to close down civic life, they’ll be watching China, where the virus first emerged last December, to see what happens when it lifts the harsh lockdowns and social distancing measures that have helped curb the its outbreak.
There were no new cases reported Thursday in Wuhan, the city in central Chinese Hubei province from which the outbreak began. There have been no new cases in the rest of the country for seven days, a dramatic plunge from the height of an outbreak that killed more than 3,000, and caused a historic economic contraction.
China’s measures -- which included a massive quarantine of Hubei province, a region of 60 million people -- had success in interrupting transmission in the rest of the country, said David Heymann, a professor of infectious disease epidemiology at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine.
“The concern is what will happen after they end these measures.”
Even if there had been many times more coronavirus cases than officially reported by the Chinese government, less than 1% of the population would have been infected in its first wave, “leaving most people in China susceptible,” said Raina MacIntyre, a biosecurity professor at the University of New South Wales in Sydney.
“The global pandemic will not be contained until we have a vaccine, or most of the population is infected,” she said.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/arti...s-cases-near-zero-experts-warn-of-second-wave
