World Health Organisation reports that coronavirus is less dangerous than SARS
The World Health Organisation (WHO) has been studying new data provided by China regarding the coronavirus. WHO director, Tedros Adhanom Gebreyesus, reported last Monday that cases of Covid-19 have decreased.
Last week, microbiologist Raul Rivas told Mega Interesting that despite coronavirus being a very contagious the mortality rates are relatively low.
According to WHO, only 2% of the reported cases are fatal and other contagious viruses, such as SARS or MERS have demonstrated more lethal effects previously.
“This trend must be interpreted very cautiously,” noted Gebreyesus, adding that “trends can change as new populations are affected. It’s too early to tell if this reported decline will continue. Every scenario is still on the table.
“In about 14% of cases, the virus causes severe disease, including pneumonia and shortness of breath. And about 5% of patients have critical diseases including respiratory failure, septic shock and multi-organ failure.”
Another interesting point to keep in mind is that the risk of dying due to Covid-19 increases with age. “We see relatively few cases among children,” added the director of WHO. “More research is needed to understand why.”
Gebreyesus understands that more funding, about 675 million dollars, is necessary to help countries prepare for the Covid-19. At the moment, he has displaced a team of experts to China to better understand the outbreak, along with sending sent test kits to laboratories around the world.
Regarding travelling to Asia, the organisation rules out banning cruises in the continent or limiting travel to avoid contagion. The Diamond Princess cruise ship, which is quarantined in the Japanese port of Yokohama, has registered 454 infected. Of the 300 US citizens evacuated, 14 are infected, as confirmed by the United States Government. Some scientists have criticised this quarantine measure for the risk of contagion among travellers.
The World Health Organisation considers that these are manageable risks and that proportionate measures must be taken between passenger rights and the common good.
“Outside Hubei this epidemic is affecting a tiny proportion of people - so if we're going to disrupt every cruise ship in the world on the off-chance that there might be some potential contact with some potential pathogen, then where do we stop?,” asks the head of the WHO emergency program Michael Ryan.
“Do we shut down the buses around the world? What happens when other countries are affected, do we take the same measures in that case? We need to be extremely measured in what we do and everything we do needs to be based on public health and backed by evidence. There’s no such thing as a zero risk and every single person on this planet understands that. It is impossible to reduce anything to zero,” concluded Ryan.
