by Fatima Javed

ISLAMABAD, Feb. 7 (China Economic Net) – Director-General World Health Organization (WHO) Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said that the steps China took to fight the virus at its epicenter were a good way of stopping its spread. Dr Tedros praised the Chinese authorities for their response at the epicenter of the outbreak.

According to a WHO report released, there are altogether 153 confirmed cases of the 2019-nCoV outside China, which is less than one percent of the number in China.

In contrast, in 2009, the H1N1 flu in the US spread to 214 regions and countries. Thanks to China’s efforts that they effectively contained the cross-border spread of the 2019-nCoV. WHO therefore applauded China, saying it’s setting a new standard for outbreak response.

The fact is that since the onset of the outbreak, China has taken unprecedentedly strict prevention and control measures, many of which far exceed WHO recommendations and IHR requirements.

Chinese authorities first warned people to stop traveling in and out of Wuhan (the epicenter of the outbreak) , and then said they would put the city under quarantine beginning January 23rd , suspending public transport within Wuhan, and canceling flights and trains leaving the city. It was an extraordinary move given that Wuhan has a population of 11 million, more people than New York City.

By the evening of January 24, quarantine measures had expanded to 12 cities near Wuhan, effectively stifling the movement of 35 million people. By January 25, President Xi Jinping said the new virus posed a “grave” threat, and his government ordered travel agencies to suspend tours for Chinese citizens inside China and overseas.

Chinese officials have already responded to the outbreak by quarantining millions of people in affected cities and restricting domestic and international travel. But some experts are questioning whether China has fully learned the lessons from the 2003 SARS outbreak.

China is doing all they can to contain the spread of the virus, and we witnessed their decisive actions to put in place strong measures. With the recent outbreak, the Chinese government has been much more willing to share information and be open.

A coronavirus outbreak that originated in Wuhan, China, has killed at least 637 people and infected more than 30,000 since December. The virus might have jumped from animals to people at a Chinese wet market where living and dead animals were sold.

SARS was also a coronavirus, and that outbreak started in a wet market, too. It killed 774 people and infected 8,098 between November 2002 and July 2003.

The Wuhan coronavirus shares 80% of its genome with the coronavirus responsible for the SARS outbreak, according to two new studies. The total Wuhan coronavirus case count surpassed that of SARS in just a month. It seems to be less deadly than SARS.

One of the biggest changes since SARS is advances in technology needed to understand the virus and develop diagnostic tests or treatments. Chinese scientists have already sequenced the virus, which first appeared in December. They’ve also made that information available to scientists around the world.

With SARS, it took scientists about 5 months to identify the virus after it began to spread. New genetic technologies will be a game changer for how China and other countries handle the new coronavirus. 

Even with all of these new technologies available, it’s going to come down to good disease surveillance, good case identification, and good contact tracing.

Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, director of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, and his colleagues, said in a JAMA editorial Trusted Source that it was these kinds of “classic public health measures” that brought the SARS epidemic to an end.