News / China

‘Hundreds’ likely affected by Chinese virus: Researchers

Saturday, 18 January 2020 2:03 AM [ Last Update: Saturday, 18 January 2020 2:10 AM ]

In this file photograph taken on January 11, 2020, security guards stand in front of the closed Huanan wholesale seafood market, where health authorities say a man who died from a respiratory illness had purchased goods from, in the city of Wuhan, Hubei province. (Photo by AFP)

The number of people infected by a mystery SARS-like virus that has killed two people in China is likely hundreds more than officially reported, researchers have said.

Chinese authorities have said pneumonia linked to the virus has hit at least 41 people in the country, with the outbreak centered around a seafood market in the central city of Wuhan.

But a paper published Friday by scientists with the MRC Center for Global Infectious Disease Analysis at Imperial College in London said the number of those affected in the city was likely to be well over a thousand.

The scientists at the Center -- which advises bodies including the World Health Organization -- said they estimated a "total of 1,723 cases" in Wuhan would have been infected as of January 12.

The researchers took the number of cases reported outside China so far -- two in Thailand and one in Japan -- to infer how many were likely infected in the city, based on international flight traffic data from Wuhan's airport.

"For Wuhan to have exported three cases to other countries would imply there would have to be many more cases than have been reported," Professor Neil Ferguson, one of the authors of the report, told the BBC.

"I am substantially more concerned than I was a week ago," adding, however, that it was "too early to be alarmist".

"People should be considering the possibility of substantial human-to-human transmission more seriously than they have so far," he added, saying it was "unlikely" that animal exposure was the main source of infection.

China reports first fatal case of unidentified virus outbreak

China reports first fatality from unidentified virus outbreak in the country.

Two people are known to have been killed by the virus, a pathogen from the same family as the deadly SARS virus -- even as health authorities around the world sought to assure the public that the overall risk of infection remained low.

Authorities in Hong Kong have stepped up detection measures, including rigorous temperature checkpoints for inbound travelers from the Chinese mainland.

The US said from Friday it would begin screening flights arriving from Wuhan at San Francisco airport and New York's JFK -- which both receive direct flights -- as well as Los Angeles, where many flights connect.

(Source: AFP)

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