Chinese authorities maintained that the new corona virus, which originated in Wuhan, remained preventable and controllable. Local health experts said there remained to be no known cases that the virus is spreading from people to people.
According to health officials, the virus crossed the species barrier and inflicted people by the meat and seafood they ate which were sold in a wildlife market in Wuhan. The World Health Organization said China's analysis was helpful and was significant in studies being conducted at present.
China's National Health Commission, however, called for strict monitoring since experts have yet to trace the actual virus source and its means of transmission and mutation.
Caution is especially needed now that millions of Chinese travelers are expected to fly from airport to airport for the Chinese New Year which already begun on January 10 and will last until February 18. The 40-day festival is crowded this year because it coincided with university students' winter holidays. By estimate, local tourism officials said Chinese tourists would be taking a total of 3 billion trips to celebrate the festival. Elsewhere, the event is now being dubbed as the "largest annual human migration in the world."
Indeed, major airports are strictly monitoring the tourists coming in and out, especially if they are coming from China.
In Shanghai, screening for suspected carriers is already in place. Shanghai health experts said the fear of new corona virus is especially heightened since it coincided in the season where common infectious diseases are also in peak.
Shanghai Health Commission said these are the months when flu, bird flu, epidemic meningitis. Measles, chickenpox, and norovirus infection are on the highest. The Commission said the epidemic level is at the status quo, nothing higher than in 2019. They call for the elderly and children to have flu shots.
Singapore and Hong Kong airports are also screening their passengers. Three major airports in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and New York are also doing the same measures.
Most recently, China said the virus already spread in Beijing with local health experts confirming 139 new cases. There had already been two cases in Guangdong province and one in Shenzhen.
There were already 198 confirmed cases in Wuhan, including three deaths. Hospitals are treating some 170 people while 25 others were already cured.
Outside China, Thailand confirmed two cases and Japan had one. These patients all traveled Wuhan recently.
The global fear about the new strain is rooted in the fact that the new coronavirus belongs to the same family of coronaviruses that causes Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome. SARS killed nearly 800 people worldwide and the outbreak also started in China.
