Name: A new global epidemic? I Inside Story
Uploaded: 2020-03-16T22:50:53.000Z
Duration: 24 min 1 s
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China is stepping up efforts to contain a new Corona virus outbreak, but people abroad have already been affected.

Adverbs of degree

So are these efforts enough, or is the world witnessing the start of a global epidemic?

China's reporting People with Corona virus outside the epicenter of the outbreak have now died.

This as health authorities fear around the world, the infection rate could increase during what's usually China's busiest travel period of the year.

Hundreds of millions of Chinese air preparing to celebrate the Lunar New Year.

Although Beijing has canceled all public celebrations and as the death toll rises, more countries are taking their own precautions.

Scott Heidler has more from Beijing Rushing to catch the last trains before the Lunar New Year, many of these passengers of the Beijing West Railway Station are thinking of the Corona virus.

I don't think this virus has been properly controlled.

I'm not very satisfied with how the government prevented and controlled the disease.

I am really afraid off those people relieved and left hand.

But I do hope the situation in Wuhan can be improved, and those inside the city of Wuhan are becoming more frustrated because medical supplies are running short and hospitals are short staffed.

Many festivals for the Lunar New Year holiday have been cancelled across China and not just in the central hub, a province the epicenter of the virus.

In a rare move, the government has closed the Forbidden City here in Beijing over health concerns related to the Corona virus, something they didn't do some 17 years ago.

During the SARS crisis, the Chinese government was criticized for the way it handled the SARS virus back in 2003 mainly for its lack of transparency.

The World Health Organization has decided not to declare the current outbreak a global health emergency.

But there's growing concern over the coming week when the millions of people have travelled to the holiday return again, raising the risk.

The virus may be spread further by people who are contaminated but have yet to show symptoms.

Scott Heidler, AL Jazeera Beijing In a moment we'll bring in our panel, but first let's speak to Tarek Yashar, a bitch from the World Health Organization in Geneva.

O, said it was too early to consider this outbreak of public health emergency of international concern.

Well, what are the reasons for that decision and what would have to happen for it to become a global health emergency?

Well, as we have said yesterday in a press conference following the meeting, there were different opinions that have been expressed at the meeting of the emergency Committee and Director General of the W.

Chou was very clear when he said that this is clearly an emergency in China on there is a high risk off further spread.

Ah, he may reconvene a the meeting of emergency committee at that very short notice as the as the situation develops further, China has locked down numerous cities in their response so far to this outbreak.

O believe that that is an appropriate or effective containment measures?

Well, the role of W chore is to provide a science based recommendations and opinion to our country's.

Every country obviously has the right to introduce measures that dating are necessary on their territory.

We hope that these measures will be will be effective and that they will not last very long.

It is really important to say that that, uh, what is important when you have an outbreak of a new virus, you have to have containment measures and mitigation measures, meaning providing help, who those who fall sick and containment basically trying to reduce the risk off a spread so different measures can be introduced to do that, to try to at least slow down the disease.

What is really important is that health systems are on alert around the world as China has already put in place monitoring for sick people, being able to test them and diagnose them and being able to treat them.

It is also important to provide a writer information to the population.

So when it comes to the measure measures, it's it's really difficult sometimes to strike the balance between the benefit for the population off some containment measures on some social disruption.

So I think each country, based on their context, we'll decide what measures are needed.

Since you're speaking about measures, the W.

H O warned the public not to underestimate the severity of this epidemic.

Could you speak to specific measures that people can take to try to protect themselves going forward?

So I mentioned what health systems should do, what health officials should do.

They should raise a preparedness levels in the health facilities being equipped on and be able to provide assistance to those who are sick now for the general public for the time being.

There still much off unknown about the virus itself, but we know it is a Corona virus, so it is co causing respiratory illness.

So we recommend the measures that are always recommended for respiratory illnesses.

That is basically a covering mouth when, when sneezing and coughing, avoiding contact with the person who is sick with the flu like symptoms, avoiding contact with the live animals in the market, and really for people before they travel.

If they are sick, if they should really first go and see they're doctors so they can be diagnosed.

So really everyone should try really to help the health system, because what may happen as well that lot off people because of this outbreak will rush to the hospitals even though they may not have symptoms that are that are consistent with a respiratory only symptoms.

Do we know yet the actual extent of human to human transmission rate?

Well, we know that there is a human to human transmission on this is consistent with the Corona viruses in general, as we have seen with sauce with Merce on me that a current of our says this means that there is a human to human transmission among close contacts.

Eso we have no really clear this off sustained human to human transmission Although there are some indications that that virus the virus has infected from the infected person to another one.

So second generation, but again, so far we see clusters.

So we know about Corona viruses in general.

But we have to get into the data and try really to understand, understand better and and same goes really for the severity of the virus.

We still don't know if there are are symptomatic cases.

We have noticed that the majority of people who get sick are older people and those who eventually died.

Most of them had underlying health conditions.

But again, it's really too early to draw conclusions because we need really to to look, to look more.

We need to do more testing and more studies to be able to understand.

But as we do these studies to understand the virus, we need to be ready to help those who will fall sick and make sure that all measures are being put in place to reduce the risk.

All right, thank you so much for your time talk.

He's an associate professor at City University of Hong Kong and specializes in Asian health, security.

She is a clinical lecturer at King's College London, who researches disease outbreak control.

The Chinese government was criticized for how it handled its reaction to the SARS virus in 2003 especially for its lack of transparency.

And do you believe that they have learned the lessons from the SARS outbreak?

I think that we need to sort of break this down a little bit.

I think on the technical side with the medical people, this was a very fast response.

We found out about the market on the 31st of December in line with the W H O.

Chinese authorities shut down the market on the first.

On the seventh, the genome was sequenced on the eighth, it was confirmed as a Corona virus.

However, I think that when we look at maybe at the local level, measures could have been implemented a lot faster.

It's but the central level at least has beens significant concern and pressure from the Chinese leadership that the policies to address these issues, lessons that China has learned sent size be taken forward.

Natalie Right now, in China, there is an unprecedented lock down of cities going on.

Do you believe that this will actually minimize the risk of the virus spreading S.

So I think that's a difficult question because essentially, we've never locked down an entire city before to see how well we can contain an outbreak.

It depends on the population that you're dealing with often because the primary understanding is that if you look down a city, you prevent people migration.

And so you prevent the disease spreading further afield.

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A new global epidemic? I Inside Story

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