The Sunday Mail
SOMEONE who is infected with the coronavirus can spread it with just a simple cough or a sneeze, scientists say.
By Friday, the disease had claimed 3 387 lives around the world, while over 98 436 had been infected.
Here is what we know so far:
What is the coronavirus?
A coronavirus is a type of virus which can cause illness in animals and people. Viruses break into cells inside their host and use them to reproduce itself and disrupt the body’s normal functions.
Coronaviruses are named after the Latin word “corona”, which means crown, because they are encased by a spiked shell which resembles a royal crown.
The coronavirus from Wuhan is one which had never been seen before this outbreak.
It has been named Sars-CoV-2 by the International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses.
The name stands for Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome coronavirus 2.
Experts say the bug, which has killed around one in 50 patients since the outbreak began in December, is a “sister” of the SARS illness which hit China in 2002, so has been named after it.
The disease that the virus causes has been named Covid-19, which stands for coronavirus disease 2019.
Dr Helena Maier, from the Pirbright Institute (UK), said: “Coronaviruses are a family of viruses that infect a wide range of different species including humans, cattle, pigs, chickens, dogs, cats and wild animals.
“Until this new coronavirus was identified, there were only six different coronaviruses known to infect humans. Four of these cause a mild common cold-type illness, but since 2002 there has been the emergence of two new coronaviruses that can infect humans and result in more severe disease (Severe acute respiratory syndrome (Sars) and Middle East respiratory syndrome (Mers) coronaviruses).
“Coronaviruses are known to be able to occasionally jump from one species to another and that is what happened in the case of Sars, Mers and the new coronavirus. The animal origin of the new coronavirus is not yet known.”
The first human cases were publicly reported from the Chinese city of Wuhan, where approximately 11 million people live, after medics first started publicly reporting infections on December 31.
By January 8, 59 suspected cases had been reported and seven people were in critical condition.
Tests were developed for the new virus and recorded cases started to surge.
The first person died that week and, by January 16, two were dead and 41 cases were confirmed.
The next day, scientists predicted that 1 700 people had become infected, possibly up to 7 000.
Just a week after that, there had been more than 800 confirmed cases and those same scientists estimated that some 4 000 — possibly 9 700 — were infected in Wuhan alone. By that point, 26 people had died.
By January 27, more than 2 800 people were confirmed to have been infected, 81 had died and estimates of the total number of cases ranged from 100 000 to 350 000 in Wuhan alone.
Where does the virus come from?
According to scientists, the virus almost certainly came from bats. Coronaviruses in general tend to originate in animals — the similar Sars and Mers viruses are believed to have originated in civet cats and camels, respectively.
The first cases of Covid-19 came from people visiting or working in a live animal market in Wuhan, which has since been closed down for investigation.
Although the market is officially a seafood market, other dead and living animals were being sold there, including wolf cubs, salamanders, snakes, peacocks, porcupines and camel meat.
A study by the Wuhan Institute of Virology, published in February 2020 in the scientific journal Nature, found that the genetic make-up virus samples found in patients in China is 96 percent identical to a coronavirus they found in bats.
However, there were not many bats at the market so scientists say it was likely there was an animal which acted as a “middle-man”, contracting it from a bat before then transmitting it to a human.
It has not yet been confirmed what type of animal this was.
So far the fatalities are quite low.
Why are health experts so
worried about it?
Experts say the international community is concerned about the virus because so little is known about it and it appears to be spreading quickly.
Another reason for concern is that nobody has any immunity to the virus because they have never encountered it before. This means it may be able to cause more damage than viruses we come across often, like the flu or common cold.
Speaking at a briefing in January, Oxford University professor, Dr Peter Horby, said: “Novel viruses can spread much faster through the population than viruses which circulate all the time because we have no immunity to them.
“Most seasonal flu viruses have a case fatality rate of less than one in 1000 people. Here we are talking about a virus where we do not understand fully the severity spectrum, but it is possible the case fatality rate could be as high as 2 percent.”
If the death rate is truly 2 percent, that means two out of every 100 patients who get it will die. “Two percent case fatality rate is comparable to the Spanish Flu pandemic in 1918, so it is a significant concern globally,” he said.
How does the virus spread?
The illness can spread between people just through coughs and sneezes, making it an extremely contagious infection.
And it may also spread even before someone has symptoms.
It is believed to travel in the saliva and even through water in the eyes, therefore close contact, kissing and sharing cutlery or utensils are all risky. Originally, people were thought to be catching it from a live animal market in Wuhan city.
But cases soon began to emerge in people who had never been there, which forced medics to realise it was spreading from person to person. There is now evidence that it can spread third hand — to someone from a person who caught it from another person.
What does the virus do to you? What are the symptoms?
Once someone has caught the Covid-19 virus it may take between two and 14 days, or even longer, for them to show any symptoms but they may still be contagious during this time. If and when they do become ill, typical signs include a runny nose, a cough, sore throat and a fever (high temperature). The vast majority of patients will recover from these without any issues, and many will need no medical help at all.
In a small group of patients, who seem mainly to be the elderly or those with long-term illnesses, it can lead to pneumonia.
Pneumonia is an infection in which the insides of the lungs swell up and fill with fluid.
It makes it increasingly difficult to breathe and, if left untreated, can be fatal and suffocate people. Figures are showing that young children do not seem to be particularly badly affected by the virus, which they say is peculiar considering their susceptibility to flu, but it is not clear why.
What have genetic tests revealed about the virus?
Scientists in China have recorded the genetic sequences of around 19 strains of the virus and released them to experts working around the world. This allows others to study them, develop tests and potentially look into treating the illness they cause. Examinations have revealed the coronavirus did not change — changing is known as mutating — much during the early stages of its spread. However, the director-general of China’s Centre for Disease Control and Prevention, Gao Fu, said the virus was mutating and adapting as it spread through people.
This means efforts to study the virus and to potentially control it may be made extra difficult because the virus might look different every time scientists analyse it.
More study may be able to reveal whether the virus first infected a small number of people then change and spread from them, or whether there were various versions of the virus coming from animals which have developed separately.
How dangerous is the virus?
The virus has a death rate of around two percent. This is a similar death rate to the Spanish Flu outbreak which, in 1918, went on to kill around 50-million people.
Experts have been conflicted since the beginning of the outbreak about whether the true number of people who are infected is significantly higher than the official numbers of recorded cases. Some people are expected to have such mild symptoms that they never even realise they are ill unless they are tested, so only the more serious cases get discovered, making the death toll seem higher than it really is. However, an investigation into government surveillance in China said it had found no reason to believe this was true.
Can the virus be cured?
The Covid-19 virus cannot be cured and it is proving difficult to contain. Antibiotics do not work against viruses, so they are out of the question. Antiviral drugs can work, but the process of understanding a virus then developing and producing drugs to treat it would take years and huge amounts of money. No vaccine exists for the coronavirus yet and it is not likely one will be developed in time to be of any use in this outbreak, for similar reasons to the above.
The National Institutes of Health in the US, and Baylor University in Waco, Texas, say they are working on a vaccine based on what they know about coronaviruses in general, using information from the Sars outbreak. But this may take a year or more to develop, according to Pharmaceutical Technology.
Currently, governments and health authorities are working to contain the virus and to care for patients who are sick and stop them infecting other people.
People who catch the illness are being quarantined in hospitals, where their symptoms can be treated and they will be away from the uninfected public.
And airports around the world are putting in place screening measures such as having doctors on-site, taking people’s temperatures to check for fevers and using thermal screening to spot those who might be ill (infection causes a raised temperature). However, it can take weeks for symptoms to appear, so there is only a small likelihood that patients will be spotted up in an airport.
Is this outbreak an epidemic or a pandemic?
The outbreak is an epidemic, which is when a disease takes hold of one community such as a country or region. Although it has spread to dozens of countries, the outbreak is not yet classed as a pandemic, which is defined by the World Health Organisation as the “worldwide spread of a new disease”. — Wires .
