Wuhan virus spreads person-to-person
The head of a Chinese government expert team says that human-to-human transmission has been confirmed in an outbreak of a new coronavirus, a development that raises the possibility that it could spread more quickly and widely.
Team leader Zhong Nanshan, a respiratory expert, said two people in Guangdong province in southern China caught the virus from family members, state media said. Some medical workers have also tested positive for the virus, the English-language China Daily newspaper reported.
The late-night announcement capped a day in which authorities announced a sharp uptick in the number of confirmed cases to more than 200, and China’s leader called on the govern- ment to take every possible step to combat the outbreak.
‘‘The recent outbreak of novel coronavirus pneumonia in Wuhan and other places must be taken seriously,’’ President Xi Jinping said in his first public statement on the crisis. ‘‘Party committees, governments and relevant departments at all levels should put people’s lives and health first.’’
Xi’s remarks were reported by state broadcaster CCTV on its main 7pm evening news broadcast.
In Geneva, the World Health Organisation announced it would convene an Emergency Committee meeting on Thursday to determine whether the outbreak warrants being declared a global health crisis.
Such declarations are typically made for epidemics of severe diseases that threaten to cross borders and require an internationally co-ordinated response. Previous global emergencies have been declared for crises including the ongoing Ebola outbreak in Congo, the emergence of Zika virus in the Americas in 2016 and the West Africa Ebola outbreak in 2014.
The spread of the viral pneumonia comes as the country enters its busiest travel period, when millions board trains and planes for the Lunar New Year holidays. The outbreak is believed to have started late last month when people picked it up at a fresh food market in Wuhan, a city in central China.
Wuhan health authorities said Monday an additional 136 cases have been confirmed in the city, raising the total to 198. Three have died.
Authorities elsewhere also announced cases in other Chinese cities for the first time.
Five individuals in Beijing and 14 in Guangdong have also been diagnosed with the new coronavirus, CCTV reported. A total of seven suspected cases have been found in other parts of the country, including in Sichuan and
Yunnan provinces in the southwest and in Shanghai.
Zhong said the two people in Guangdong had not been to Wuhan but fell ill after family members had returned from the city, the China Daily said.
The outbreak has put other countries on alert as millions of Chinese travel for Lunar New Year. Authorities in Thailand and in Japan have already identified at least three cases, all involving recent travel from China.
South Korea reported its first case Monday, when a 35-year-old Chinese woman from Wuhan tested positive for the new coronavirus one day after arriving at Seoul’s Incheon airport. The woman has been isolated at a state-run hospital in Incheon city, just west of Seoul, the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in a statement.