answering the call for help medical
teams from North China leaving for Wuhan
and Hubei Province the epicenter of the
outbreak of the novel coronavirus none
of them knowing what they will face when
they get there nor how long they will
have to stay and late this afternoon the
World Health Organization issued this
warning the whole world needs to be on
alert now the whole world needs to take
action and be ready for for any cases
that come either from the original
epicenter or from from other epicenters
that that become established Wuhan and
surrounding cities remain and virtual
lockdown villages even barricading
themselves against a virus that does not
respect borders and the w-h-o has also
announced that tomorrow it will
reconvene its committee to decide if
this is a public health emergency of
international concern that would trigger
an international response but the team
who has just returned from China praised
the country for its handling of this
outbreak the fact that to date we have
only seen 68 cases outside China and no
disease is due in no small part to the
extraordinary steps the government has
taken to prevent the export of cases for
that China deserves our gratitude and
respect and they're doing that at the
expense of their economy and other
factors there is no end in sight though
confirmed cases are now just under six
thousand more than the number in China
infected during the SARS outbreak in the
early 2000s the death toll has also
risen to a hundred and thirty-two and
now airlifts of foreigners from who Bay
Province have begun for passengers on
the evacuation flight to Japan had
coughs and fevers and two were diagnosed
with pneumonia although it's not
confirmed that they have coronavirus
tomorrow Britons who want to leave will
be flown out but wives or partners with
Chinese passports will have to remain
behind and those who do return will be
put into quarantine for 14 days the
incubation period for the virus we
should be reassured that the NHS is well
set up to deal with with this sort of
infectious disease public health England
have done lots of training and the NHS
executive of sent out information to all
conditions and GPS so it's really up to
the public to take some responsibility
here as well the source of it is still
unknown though theories are at may be
like SARS in bats and transmitted to
humans via a wild animal sold at the
Blue Hen seafood market her crackdown
was earlier this week announced on the
sale of these creatures but that came
too late to prevent this outbreak and
health experts continue to say the best
protection is hand-washing staying at
home if you feel unwell and keeping away
from those who are sick Victoria
MacDonald reporting now joining us is
dr. Rosalind
Eggar who works in public health
epidemiology and I'm wondering are we
any clearer about the cause of this
outbreak yes so we know that this is
caused by a corona virus and corona
viruses are a family of viruses that
affect people and animals all around the
world and there's really very very new
evidence now from the genetics of the
virus that it's closely related to
something that exists in bats but we
don't yet know how it how it came into
humans so whether it was from bats into
people or from bats into an intermediate
host and then into people but what we do
know it's clear that this is a do or not
expel over so a circuit of virus it
circulates and animals that spread into
people and now we have person-to-person
transmission between people
now you model public health epidemics
some sizes have models that suggest
maybe a hundred thousand cases will flow
from this outbreak what does that tell
you so at the very beginning of
outbreaks and epidemics we is there's a
lot of uncertainty especially around key
characteristics of the virus so for
example for
when somebody gets infected too when
they start to become symptomatic or when
do they start to shed virus these
durations are very important and that
means these early estimates there's a
lot of uncertainty there's a there's a
wide window of what we might expect to
see and as time goes on and we learn
more our confidence in our estimates
will come down and that will allow us to
better understand what we expect to see
is it sensible to airlift people out of
China
so repatriating Britten's is a perfectly
fine policy and the key thing is that
even within Wuhan it is an enormous City
there are a lot of cases but on an
individual level it's still quite and
you it's unlikely that that the people
will be infected but as I just mentioned
there the people coming back are going
to be closely looked after and monitored
so if they do show symptoms or if they
then they'll get you know medical
assistance as quickly as possible and
there's very unlikely there'll be any
transmission into the community now
actually we heard somebody at the w-h-o
saying that there are only 68 cases in
the whole of the rest of the world do we
accept as expect a spike so right now as
I as I mentioned there's this incubation
period the time from when you get
infected to when symptoms start to show
and we think this is on average five or
six days but in some people can be as
long as two weeks as was mentioned and
so some of the cases that we're seeing
now that have been exported are from
further back in transmission they
happened quite a few days ago before
some of these interventions happen in
China so right now we have to wait and
see if these interventions that have
been put in place in Wuhan and in other
places have had an impact on the
transmission the waho committee is
meeting tomorrow to decide whether to
declare an international emergency what
do you think they'll do so this is a
really critical point in the outbreak
really critical time and regardless of
whether they declare a public health
emergency of international concern
tomorrow what we need is increased
collaboration
increased transparency and that's what
that global health community working
together is really what's going to stop
this outbreak but if they do determine
that it should be an international
emergency what is that
it means there'll be particular
activities that are that happen in
certain countries and that'll really
bring together the collaboration amongst
countries