Full alert for coronavirus
WHO yet to declare a global emergency
Countries around the world are becoming increasingly fearful about the safety of their citizens as the deadly coronavirus continues to spread despite strict containment measures in China.
To contain the virus, Chinese authorities have expanded their quarantine efforts aimed at containing the virus to 13 cities impacting a staggering 41 million people.
The virus has claimed 26 lives and over 800 cases of infection have been confirmed so far.
In those restricted areas, public transport has been suspended, temples shut down, and an order issued for the quick construction of a new 1,000-bed hospital in Wuhan to treat those infected.
“This is unprecedented in China, and maybe even in the history of modern health,” said Yanzhong Huang, director of the Centre for Global Health Studies at Seton Hall University in New Jersey, of the widening travel restrictions. “It’s a tremendous legal, institutional, and logistical challenge.”
Chinese officials led by President Xi Jinping have pledged “all-out” efforts to contain the outbreak.
The government yesterday vowed to punish officials who delay virus information, with the State Council setting up online platforms to allow the public to report disclosure problems.
The spread of the virus has caused global alarm because it is too early to know how dangerous it is and how easily it can spread between people. Moreover, since the virus strain was unknown to humans, no immunity to the virus has yet been developed.
The previously unknown strain is believed to have emerged late last year from illegally traded wildlife at an animal market in Wuhan.
Initial research suggests that the virus spread to humans from snakes, however, Chinese government medical adviser Zhong Nanshan has also identified badgers and rats as sources.
As the virus spreads, China is struggling to contain rising public anger over its response to restrict travel for 40 million people on Lunar New Year.
The government has ordered travel agencies to suspend sales of domestic and international package tours after imposing transport curbs on cities near the epicentre of the outbreak.
Beyond restrictions around the epicentre, major closures have been made across the country.
Shanghai Disneyland announced that it was closing indefinitely and cinema chains cancelled movie screenings. The halt to activity comes during what is usually a peak period for spending, putting China’s economic stabilisation at risk.
Meanwhile, three cases of the virus have been reported in Singapore, two in Japan, Vietnam, and South Korea, and one in the US and Taiwan.
The Tokyo metropolitan government held an emergency meeting yesterday after a second coronavirus case was confirmed raising fears about the Olympics to be held in six months.
In the UK, nine people have been tested and results are still pending, however, Professor Paul Cosford, emeritus medical director of Public Health England, said that cases of coronavirus in the country are highly likely.
Meanwhile, the World Health Organisation has said that while the coronavirus outbreak is an emergency for China, it was still too early to announce a global health emergency.
Global efforts to tackle the disease have also been complicated by reports that several people who died after contracting coronavirus didn’t have a fever.
China’s bid to contain a deadly new virus by placing cities of millions under quarantine is an unprecedented undertaking but it is unlikely to stop the disease spreading, experts warn. The contagious virus has already reached elsewhere in China and abroad, and even an authoritarian government has only a small timeframe in which trapped residents will submit to such a lockdown, they say.
“I think we have passed the golden period of control and prevention,” said Guan Yi, an expert on viruses at Hong Kong University.
China began its campaign on Thursday, cutting off all transport links out of Wuhan, a city of 11 million people where the coronavirus linked to Sars emerged late last year.
A cascading number of nearby cities has since been added to the travel blacklist, corralling more than 40 million people in a bid to stop those with the disease travelling and infecting others elsewhere.
However, with the death toll at 26 and infections being detected as far away as the United States, there are fears the exercise is too little too late.
Mr Yi, who returned from Wuhan just before the lockdown, pointed out huge numbers of people would have already left ahead of the Lunar New Year holiday, which began yesterday.
They could have been incubating the virus “on their way out of Wuhan”, he said.
Symptoms could take several days to emerge — effectively seeding a health time-bomb across the country and abroad.
ESCAPE PLANS
Meanwhile, new gaps in the security web in Wuhan and its surroundings will likely emerge over coming days, even as China deploys its formidable security forces.
They are manning road blocks that have been set up, while train and plane services have been suspended.
“Especially people with money and connections, they’re going to make a run for it... and they’ll probably be successful,” Zi Yang, a senior analyst at the S Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore said.
University of Sydney associate professor Adam Kamradt-Scott, an expert in global health security, said only a “handful” of countries could conceivably pull off the mass quarantine.
He suggested the US was one of the few that may be able to mount a similar operation, using the National Guard, although it would face much stiffer opposition from a population accustomed to more civil liberties.
China’s communist rulers draw on a deep well of public acquiesence — partly due to control of the internet, no free press and a brutally efficient security apparatus.
“I can’t imagine there would be too many countries that would be able to do something on this scale as quickly as China has done,” Mr KamradtScott said.
Even so, Mr Kamradt-Scott warned a lockdown that extends for a week or more would produce “growing levels of discontent and frustration”.
“The Chinese authorities will be conscious of that and they’ll be monitoring it very closely to avoid the risk of any sort of social unrest,” he said.
QUARANTINE ‘ILLUSION’
Mr Kamradt-Scott said that, even though the virus would inevitably spread, the quarantine appeared designed to buy authorities time to put in place other measures.
He cited China’s plans to build a 1,000-bed hospital in 10 days.
Mr Zi, from the S Rajaratnam School, also said there was some hope the quarantines would have a level of success in containing the outbreak.
“I believe it is possible given China’s expertise in this area of population control, or urban control,” Mr Zi said.
Yet, the history of quarantine suggests controls will be far from watertight.
The concept emerged in Venice in the 14th century, where ships arriving at the city state from infected ports were held offshore for 40 days.
Over the centuries the US attempted quarantines to combat yellow fever, European nations tried to subdue cholera outbreaks, and several West African nations sealed off townships to hem in Ebola in the last decade.
Quarantine is “purely an illusion”, said Bruno Halioua, a historian of medicine at the University of Paris IV.
“Quarantine has never worked. Each time, there have been problems.”
And after seeing the situation in Wuhan first-hand, Guan Yi of Hong Kong University shared an equally pessimistic outlook.