CHINA’S VIRUS EPIDEMIC : A Potential Replica Of The 1918 Flu Pandemic That Infected 500 Million Globally and Killed More Than 45 Million People?
18 cities In China now In lockdown affecting 56 million people, death toll now 45 and numbers infected have risen to almost 1,500.
A ghastly scene form the 1918 Flu Pandemic
China has now expanded the lockdown to cover a total of 18 cities affecting 57 million people with more cities coming under lockdown the next few days. It has also declared that the country is in a state of emergency and that all state and government officials are to report back to work with no holidays. All Chinese New Year celebrations have been cancelled and many establishments have been closed. Starbucks, McDonalds, many Shopping Malls etc have all announced closings in the affected cities whiles all cinemas nationwide have closed.
All agencies have been officially asked to comply with stopping all domestic and international travel, just short of an actual ban which many are expecting to come into force in the next few days as the situation is getting out of control all over
China.
The unofficial death toll as of Saturday 6pm (Bangkok time) by
China officials is now 45 while the number infected has already crossed the 15 hundred mark. However doctors at various hospitals in the affected cities are stating that a more realistic figure for the whole of
China should be in the range of more than 10,000 considering that fact that all state hospitals in the affected cities are overflowing with patients all exhibiting symptoms. Even the death figures should be much higher as doctors are witnessing deaths at various hospitals in the affected cities by the hour.
Almost all provinces in
China now have cases of the
2019-nCoV virus with the exception of Tibet. The last province was Western province of Qinghai that reported cases as of 5pm Bangkok time.
Besides the 1,000 bed hospital that is being built in
Wuhan at the moment,
China authorities have announced another 1,200 bed hospital is also to be build raising concerns that the situation is actually much more worse than anticipated. Also of concern is that Chinese doctors are reporting that
incubation periods of the new
coronavirus seems to be confusing as in some cases it was short while in certain patients it was as long as 12 days. (ie this is the period in which a person is infected but does not exhibit any symptoms yet.) Also symptoms of those dying in the early stages of when the disease was first discovered and those dying now seems to be slightly different , with implications that the
virus is mutating and becoming more
virulent.
The new
coronavirus strain has also now surface in most countries starting with Thailand (5 cases), Hong Kong ( 5 cases),Australia (4 cases), Malaysia (3 cases), France(3 cases), Japan (3 cases), Singapore (3 cases), Taiwan (3 cases), Macao (2 cases), South Korea (2 cases), Vietnam (2 cases), United States(2 cases) ,Nepal (1 case) and Mexico (1 case). Many countries are however repor
ting that they have lots of patients with similar symptoms but they do not have access to the diagnostic test kits. These countries included Pakistan, Myanmar and also the Philippines.
When looking at the
SARS Epidemic which started in November 2002 and ended in July 2003, the number of cases actually only started to rise and peak in February 2003 and ended with about 8,098 individuals being infected and 774 people dying.
A prominent European
epidemiologists from UK who wished to remain anonymous told
Thailand Medical News that when comparing
SARS in 2002/2003 and the new Wuhan virus or
2019-nCoV figures in which the infections started to become public only in late December 2019,he expects it to be far worse than even
SARS. He commented that this could have the potential to be like the
Flu Pandemic of
1918 in which 500 million people were infected globally while more than 45 million people died during a duration of two years.
He also commented that governments not only in
China but also elsewhere and also Health authorities are trying to downplay the severity of the epidemic due to economical and political issues but it is definitely going to blow up in a couple of weeks.
