World braces for spread of new virus
China’s massive travel restrictions, house-to-house checks, huge isolation wards and lockdowns of entire cities bought the world valuable time to prepare for the global spread of the new virus.
But with troubling outbreaks now emerging in Italy, South Korea and Iran, and U.S. health officials warning Tuesday it’s inevitable it will spread more widely in America, the question is: Did the world use that time wisely and is it ready for a potential pandemic?
Some countries are putting price caps on face masks to combat price gouging, while others are using loudspeakers on trucks to keep residents informed. In the United States and many other nations, public health officials are turning to guidelines written for pandemic flu and discussing the possibility of school closures, telecommuting and canceling events.
Countries could be doing even more: training hundreds of workers to trace the virus’ spread from person to person and planning to commandeer entire hospital wards or even entire hospitals, said Dr. Bruce Aylward, the World Health Organization’s envoy to China, briefing reporters Tuesday about lessons learned by the recently returned team of international scientists he led.
“Time is everything in this disease,” Dr. Aylward said. “Days make a difference with a disease like this.”
In other developments: • South Korea’s President Moon Jae In described the situation in the country as “very grave” on Tuesday during his first visit to the virus-stricken Daegu area since the outbreak, according to his office. In the past 24 hours, the country has seen an increase of 144 coronavirus cases, bringing the total to 977, including the first U.S. military soldier. Two more people died, according to the health authorities, bringing the total to 10.
• In Italy, new cases on Tuesday popped up farther from the original Italian epicenter of Lombardy, including in the southern island of Sicily and the tourist-heavy Tuscan capital, Florence. Italy has at least 322 confirmed cases and 11 deaths, all people who were elderly or already sick.
• Iran said Tuesday its coronavirus outbreak, reportedly the deadliest outside China, had claimed 15 lives and infected nearly 100 others — including the country’s deputy health minister.
• Spanish authorities scrambled Tuesday to trace everyone who had come in contact with an Italian doctor and his partner who tested positive for the coronavirus while on vacation in the Canary Islands, locking down a major resort with about 1,000 guests in the hopes of limiting any possible outbreak.
The U.S. National Institutes of Health’s infectious disease chief, Dr. Anthony
Fauci, said the world is “teetering very, very close” to a pandemic. He credits China’s response for giving other nations some breathing room.
China locked down tens of millions of its citizens and other nations imposed travel restrictions, reducing the number of people who needed health checks or quarantines outside the Asian country.
It “gave us time to really brush off our pandemic preparedness plans and get ready for the kinds of things we have to do,” Dr. Fauci said. “And we’ve actually been quite successful because the travel-related cases, we’ve been able to identify, to isolate” and to track down those they came in contact with.
With no vaccine or medicine available yet, preparations are focused on what’s called “social distancing” — limiting opportunities for people to gather and spread the virus.
That played out in Italy this week. With cases climbing, authorities cut short the popular Venice Carnival
and closed down Milan’s La Scala opera house. In Japan, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe called on companies to allow employees to work from home, while the Tokyo Marathon has been restricted to elite runners and other public events have been canceled.
Is the rest of the world ready?
In Africa, three-quarters of countries have a flu pandemic plan, but most are outdated, according to authors of a modeling study published last week in The Lancet medical journal. The slightly better news is that the African nations most connected to China by air travel — Egypt, Algeria and South Africa — also have the most prepared health systems on the continent.
Elsewhere, Thailand said it would establish special clinics to examine people with flu-like symptoms to detect infections early. Sri Lanka and Laos imposed price ceilings for face masks, while India restricted the export of personal protective equipment.