Q*****i
发帖数: 349 | 1 https://news.yahoo.com/75-000-wuhan-infected-coronavirus-study-estimates-
183409651.html
75,000 in Wuhan infected with coronavirus: study estimate
s
[AFP Relax News]
AFP Relax News•January 31, 2020
More than 75,000 people have been infected with the coronavirus in Wuhan,
according to new research.
More than 75,000 people -- ten times the official tally of confirmed cases -
- have been infected with the coronavirus in Wuhan, ground zero of a global
health emergency, according to research published Friday.
"We estimate that 75,815 individuals have been infected in Wuhan as of
January 25, 2020," a team led by Gabriel Leung from the University of Hong
Kong reported in The Lancet.
As of January 31, the Chinese government said the number of confirmed cases
had risen above 9,700 for all of China, including 213 deaths.
For Hubei Province -- including Wuhan, a city in central China of 11 million
-- the official figure was nearly 6,000 confirmed cases and just over 200
deaths.
- ADVERTISEMENT -
The World Health Organization on Thursday declared the outbreak a global
health emergency, but said it was not recommending any international trade
or travel restrictions.
"The apparent discrepancy between our modelled estimates of 2019-nCoV
infections and the actual number of confirmed cases in Wuhan could be due to
several factors," Leung said in a statement.
A time lag between infection and symptom onset, delays in infected persons
getting medical treatment, and the time needed to confirm cases with lab
tests "could all affect overall recording and reporting," he said.
The study found that each person infected with the virus, which emerged in
December, could have infected two to three individuals on average, and that
the epidemic had doubled in size every 6.4 days.
If the virus spreads as quickly on a national scale, "it is possible that
epidemics could be already growing in multiple major Chinese cities, with a
time lag of one to two weeks behind Wuhan," said co-author Joseph Wu, a
professor at the University of Hong Kong.
"Large cities overseas with close transport links to China could potentially
also become outbreak epicentres."
If the new estimate of cases is accurate, it would mean that the mortality
rate of the 2019-nCoV virus is significantly lower than preliminary figures
suggested, with well under one percent of cases proving deadly.
But a low mortality rate can still result in a large number of deaths if the
virus spread widely.
The seasonal flu, for example, kills 290,000 to 650,000 people per year,
according to the World Health Organization (WHO).
In the United States, the mortality rate among people infected with
influenza is 0.13 percent, the Centers for Disease Control has calculated.
2019-nCoV is part of the coronavirus family, which was the source of two
previous deadly epidemics.
The 2002/03 SARS outbreak (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) started in
Guangdong Province and killed 774 people out of a total 8,096 infected. The
2012 MERS outbreak (Middle East respiratory syndrome) killed 858 people out
of the 2,494 infected.
The respective mortality rates for SARS and MERS patients was 9.5 and 34.5
percent, far higher than for the new coronavirus. |
|
