It’s a race – a race against time, against a viral scourge that is claiming lives and hobbling economies around the world and, most of all, a race against the unknown.
As scientists at the University of Queensland announced they are almost ready to begin animal testing of a coronavirus vaccine, the head of the World Health Organisation admitted opportunities to restrict the spread of the virus are vanishing by the day.
“Our window of opportunity is narrowing,” said WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. “We need to act quickly before it closes completely.”
Others believe it may already have shut.
“What we find is that this virus is going to be very difficult to contain,” said Jeffrey Shaman, an infectious disease researcher at Columbia University.
“Personally, I don’t think we can do it.”
For virologists and epidemiologists, the global spread of the virus is approaching a watershed – the day when health authorities will need to abandon attempts to isolate the infected and instead focus on minimising casualties among the most vulnerable.
“We should assume that this virus is very soon going to be spreading in communities here, if it isn’t already, and despite aggressive actions, we should be putting more efforts to mitigate impacts,” said US epidemiologist Jennifer Nuzzo, of the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security.
“That means protecting people who are most likely to develop severe illness and die.”
In other words, when the outbreak moves from an epidemic to a pandemic.
So far, as of February 22, coronavirus is known to have infected more than 77,000 people in 29 countries, with almost 2400 deaths.
As the point of origin, China has been hardest, and the impact of the virus is escalating, with an additional 118 deaths reported on Saturday alone.
The New England Journal of Medicine this week pointed to a statistical analysis which posits that the disease reaches peak infectiousness shortly after people start to feel sick.
It is a conclusion backed by rapidly escalating figures from two nations, South Korea and Iran, that are half a world apart.
South Korea reported 142 new confirmed cases of the coronavirus on Saturday, almost all linked to outbreaks at a hospital in Cheongdo county and a church in Daegu city, bringing the national tally to 346.
Cases from the Cheongdo hospital jumped in the latest daily figures, with the total rising from 16 to 108 overnight.
Of the national total, almost half have been linked to a 61-year-old woman, known as “Patient 31”, who attended church of Jesus in Daegu. The woman had no recent record of overseas travel, authorities said.
Half a world away in Iran, the fear is that the country is poised on the brink of a similar sudden eruption.
Seven days ago, authorities in Tehran acknowledged only a single case. On Saturday they put the figure at 28, with five confirmed fatalities.
If the spread of the virus continues to gain traction, as many as seven out of every ten people on the planet will be infected, Harvard epidemiologist Marc Lipsitch told the Washington Post.
And the damage isn’t limited to human suffering.
The economics of an epidemic
Finance leaders from the Group of 20 major economies, including Treasurer Josh Frydenberg, were set to discuss risks to the world economy in Saudi Arabia this weekend.
The International Monetary Fund said it was too soon to assess what the impact would be on global growth, but China is bracing for a major downturn. With its factories closed and exports stalled, the global supply chain that depends on the country’s cheap labour is slowing.
In Australia, for example, Optus is advising that it can’t be sure when modems will be available to new wireless customers due to “logistical difficulties”.
-with AAP
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