WHO says will decide on Thursday if China virus is a global health emergency

The World Health Organization (WHO) said it will decide on Thursday whether to declare a global emergency over the outbreak of a new flu-like virus spreading in and beyond China.

If it does so it will be only the sixth international public health emergency to be declared in the last decade.

“The decision is one I take extremely seriously and one I am only prepared to make with appropriate consideration of all the evidence,” WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said.

“This is an evolving and complex situation,” he added. “Our team in China is working with local experts and officials to investigate the outbreak.”

He was speaking after the WHO held a day-long meeting of an independent panel of experts in Geneva on Wednesday.

Deaths from China’s new coronavirus virus rose to 17 on Wednesday with more than 540 cases confirmed, increasing fears of contagion from an infection suspected to originate from illegally traded wildlife.

The WHO’s head of emergencies programme, Mike Ryan, said the priority now was to find the roots of how the virus is passing between people.

“We are in agreement with Chinese authorities who have been clear and transparent that there is evidence of human-to-human transmission,” he said. “The primary issue is to limit (that) human-to-human transmission.”

The previously unknown coronavirus strain is believed to have emerged from an animal market in the central city of Wuhan, with cases now detected as far away as the United States.

Wuhan is closing its transport networks and advising citizens not to leave the city, state media reported on Thursday.

Deaths from China's new flu-like virus rose to 17 on Wednesday, with more than 540 cases confirmed, leading the city at the centre of the outbreak to close transportation networks and urge citizens not to leave as fears rose of the contagion spreading.

The previously unknown coronavirus strain is believed to have emerged from illegally traded wildlife at an animal market in the central city of Wuhan. Cases have been detected as far away as the United States.

Contrasting with its secrecy over the 2002-03 Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), which killed nearly 800 people, China's communist government has this time given regular updates to try to avoid panic as millions travel for the Lunar New Year.

Wuhan shuts down urban transport networks

As it seeks to stop the spread of the virus, Wuhan's local government said it would close all urban transport networks and suspend outgoing flights from the city as of 10am on Thursday (10am Malaysian time), state media reported, adding that the government said citizens should not leave the city unless there were special circumstances.

The measure was intended to "effectively cut off the transmission of the virus, resolutely curb the spread of the epidemic, and ensure the health and safety of the people," state media cited Wuhan's virus task-force as saying.

Wuhan's move was praised by Ghebreyesus as a "very strong" measure that could minimise the risk of contagion.

"If Wuhan is taking such drastic measures, we must assume widespread community transmission in this central China megacity & transport hub," Lawrence Gostin, a public health expert at Georgetown University Law School in Washington, wrote in a tweet.

With more than 11 million people, Wuhan is central China's main industrial and commercial centre, home to the country's largest inland port and gateway to its Three Gorges hydroelectric dam.

The virus has already spread beyond the city to population centres including Beijing, Shanghai, Macau and Hong Kong.

The official China Daily newspaper said 544 cases had now been confirmed in the country. Thailand has confirmed four cases, while the United States, Taiwan, South Korea and Japan have each reported one.

Many Chinese were cancelling trips, buying face masks, avoiding public places such as cinemas and shopping centres, and even turning to an online plague simulation game as a way to cope.

"The best way to conquer fear is to confront fear," said one commentator on China's Twitter-like Weibo.

Respiratory threat

China's National Health Commission Vice Minister Li Bin said the virus, which can cause pneumonia and has no effective vaccine, was being spread via breathing. Symptoms include fever, coughing and difficulty breathing.

"I feel fearful, because there's no cure for the virus," said Fu Ning, a 36-year-old woman in Beijing. "You have to rely on your immunity if you get an infection. It sounds very scary."

The European Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (ECDC) said in a risk assessment that further global spread of the virus was likely. "The likelihood of case importation is highest in countries with the greatest volume of people travelling to and from Wuhan," the ECDC's director Andrea Ammon said in a statement.

Airports globally stepped up screening from China.

Russia strengthened its sanitary and quarantine controls, and Singapore and Saudi Arabia started screening all passengers from China.

The Chinese-ruled gambling hub of Macau confirmed its first case of pneumonia linked to the coronavirus and tightened body-temperature screening measures.

A first case emerged in Chinese-ruled Hong Kong, media reported, with the patient arriving via high-speed railway from the mainland, and Mexico was investigating a potential case.

North Korea banned foreign tourists, several foreign tour operators said. Some qualifying boxing matches for the 2020 Olympics set for Wuhan were cancelled and women's football qualifiers were shifted to Nanjing.

- Reuters