The ongoing Wuhan coronavirus outbreak is now on the verge to become a pandemic, according to many infectious disease experts.
A pandemic, which is an epidemic over a wide geographical area, could have a global threat in spite of strict travel restrictions and quarantines imposed in China and other nations, including the United States. The prospected seems daunting.
Unfortunately, scientists have no idea how lethal the new coronavirus, aka 2019-nCoV, is. Therefore, it is unclear how much damage the outbreak would cause as there is growing evidence that the new virus is highly contagious and readily transmits from person to person.
Like influenza, the 2019-nCoV has been spreading because it is highly transmissible, which is similar to severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) and the Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) coronavirus.
Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease Dr. Anthony Fauci said, “It’s very, very transmissible, and it almost certainly is going to be a pandemic. But will it be catastrophic? I don’t know.”
So far, Chinese officials have confirmed more than 17,200 cases and 367 deaths caused by the new coronavirus. In the United States, the virus has sickened nine people.
Dr. Thomas Frieden, former director of the CDC who now runs a nonprofit called “Resolve to Save Live” that devotes to fighting epidemics, said, “It 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.”
Meanwhile, Chinese stocks are facing their worst days in years because investors have been reacting to the ongoing coronavirus outbreak.
After an extended Lunar New Year holiday, the shares of Shanghai Composite (SHCOMP) and the Shenzhen Component Index plummeted by more than 8%, putting Shanghai on pace for its worst day since “Black Monday” that was observed in August 2015. In addition, China’s currency has fallen.
In China, the number of new cases numbered roughly 800 but now there are over 17,200 cases of the new coronavirus. Global markets were originally scheduled to reopen last Friday; however, the Chinese government has extended the holiday in order to control the worsening outbreak.
