Coronavirus symptoms: A global pandemic is increasingly likely as death toll passes 1,000
CORONAVIRUS will likely deteriorate into a full-blown pandemic, an immunologist has warned as the China virus claims its 1,000th victim.
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The novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) has killed at least more than 1,000 people and infected more than 43,000 since December last year. Although the virus has been mostly contained to mainland China, at least three people outside of the country’s borders have died.
Dr Paweł Grzesiowski, an immunologist from the Medical Centre of Postgraduate Education in Warsaw, Poland, believes the Chinese epidemic risks going international.
Since the virus first emerged in China’s Wuhan City, Hubei Province, nearly 30 other countries have confirmed coronavirus infections.
On Monday, February 10, the Chief Medical Officer for England warned the virus poses a “serious and imminent threat” to the UK.
The dire announcement came as the number of confirmed infections in the UK doubled and four new people were diagnosed.
According to Dr Grzesiowski, a secondary point of infections outside of Wuhan is very likely to appear.
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He said: “Sooner or later we will see secondary outbreaks, the only question is what their reach will be, how many people will get out of China and infect other people in the countries they can reach.
“To date, several dozen cases of infections have been reported outside of Asia but so far outside of Germany, they have not resulted in secondary infections.”
According to John Hopkins University in the US, Singapore, Hong Kong and Thailand has suffered the most infections outside of China with 43,38 and 32 respectively.
In Europe, at least 14 people have been infected in Germany, 11 in France three in Italy, one in Finland, one in Sweden and one in Brussels.
A total of nine Britons are now also confirmed to have been infected with the novel coronavirus.
Symptoms of a coronavirus infection typically start with a cough, high temperature and shortness breath.
The symptoms may be initially mistaken for the common cold or flu but can be deadly if left untreated.
Sooner or later we will see secondary outbreaks
Coronavirus infections can deteriorate into pneumonia-like symptoms, kidney failure and death.
Unfortunately, the NHS said there is no known direct treatment and instead, patients are being treated for their symptoms alone.
And because the virus has spread outside of China, Dr Grzesiowski has argued the coronavirus epidemic has taken the first step towards becoming a global threat.
He said: “The next stage is an epidemic with an international reach and this is the situation we have right now, then the first stage of the pandemic may develop, that is, limited secondary outbreaks on another continent and then on subsequent continents.
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“However, we can talk about a pandemic when mass secondary outbreaks occur on at least two continents.”
According to the World Health Organization (WHO) the coronavirus epidemic has already developed into a global emergency.
WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said at Saturday press conference in Geneva there is still room for the rate of infections to accelerate.
He said: “It’s slow now, but it may accelerate.
“So while it’s still slow there is a window of opportunity that we should use to the maximum in order to have a better outcome, and further decrease the progress and stop it.”
In the last 10 years, the WHO has only warned of possible pandemic five times.
The warnings followed an outbreak of H1N1 Swine Flu in 2009, Polio in 2014, Ebola in 2014, Zika in 2016 and Ebola again in 2109.
Out of these killer diseases, H1N1 was the only virus to cause a pandemic, killing between 150,000 and 575,000 deaths.
Dr Grzesiowski said: “The only secondary outbreak in the world outside of China is currently Germany, where 13 people have been infected by a single Chinese woman.
“There was even a tertiary infection there because one of the Germans infected his relatives.”