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Walter Chingwaru Correspondent
A new coronavirus (2019-nCoV or Novel Coronavirus 2019), first identified in Wuhan — the capital of Central China’s Hubei Province and home to at least 19 million inhabitants, has spread to several countries around the globe. Cases have been reported in People’s Republic of China including the Chinese mainland where Hubei lies as well as Taiwan and Hong Kong, South Korea, Japan, Thailand, Vietnam, Nepal, Malaysia, Singapore, Australia, France, USA, and counting.
The Wuhan coronavirus causes a respiratory infection, which presents little to no symptoms to severe illness and death.
The disease presents with symptoms that include pneumonia, fever, cough and fatigue, with over half of its victims also presenting shortness of breath and a small proportion also complaining of headache and diarrhoea.
The new outbreak had, as of January 28, been confirmed in at least 2 700 people, with at least 56 including at least one doctor having died in China.
However, some reports quote the number of dead at over 80. The disease has put global health agencies on high alert.
In fact, the outbreak has caused some degree of panic around the world. The city of Wuhan — the established epicentre of the outbreak, has been placed under lock-down, with travel into and out of the city having been banned. No planes, trains or buses are going into and out of the city. Travel restrictions have also been imposed on other places around Hubei province — a province with at least 58 million inhabitants.
President Xi Jinping of China has said that the coronavirus disease is ‘‘accelerating’’ and that China is facing a ‘‘grave situation’’.
The US is said to be preparing to evacuate its citizens from crisis-hit Wuhan. Meanwhile, Zimbabwe’s Ministry of Health and Child Care is reportedly monitoring at least 70 people who arrived from Wuhan in the past week for the signs and symptoms of the rare respiratory infection.
The ministry has put in place a system where people arriving from Wuhan are monitored for a period of 21 days without being placed under quarantine — isolation of a person suspected of carrying the virus in an effort to prevent the disease from spreading.
While some information about the identity of the virus is now available, little is known about where the virus came from and how it spreads. Just like its relatives — severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) and Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) that hit the airwaves around 2003 and 2012 respectively, the new coronavirus 2019-nCoV is also thought to have been passed from animals into the human population. Coronaviruses (Coronaviridae) are a large family of viruses – some causing illness while others only circulate ‘‘harmlessly’’ in animals such as camels, cats, civets — a group of cat-like animals that are native to Asia and parts of Africa) and bats.
The coronaviruses that do rounds in animals may not be transmitted to – and cause disease in humans. But sometimes mistakes do happen — some of these otherwise harmless viruses can change their genetic outlook and gather the ability to be passed into – and spread among humans. Parts of Asia have huge wet markets where meat is sold alongside live animals including dogs, chickens, hares, civets, domestic cats, beavers, racoon, snakes and pangolin.
The 2019-nCoV outbreak is thought to have started at a large seafood and animal market in Wuhan — the place now dubbed the ‘ground zero’ for the 2019-nCoV epidemic.
The fact that these viruses can change and find their way into – as well as quickly spread in humans is part of the ongoing scare.
Besides, it is difficult to contain respiratory viruses when they start to spread. One only needs to breathe the virus in to get infected.
New strains of existing viruses – that start to cause illness in animals and humans – tend to pose greater challenges since no antivirals or vaccines would be available that early.
While vaccines and other forms of treatment can be developed and made available in relatively short times against viruses and other diseases, small outbreaks (restricted to small populations and time) such as 2019-nCoV tend to trigger little appetite among pharmaceutical companies. In fact, these small outbreaks may yield financial loses to these companies.
As a result, epidemics such as Ebola in Central Africa, Zika in South America and the frequent outbreaks of flu in Asia have not received the full attention of pharmaceutical companies. Many such small outbreaks simply end up resolving naturally.
Precautionary measures against such outbreaks can be taken to mitigate the spread of the diseases — hence contribute to the dissipation of the epidemic.
Need for panic in Zimbabwe?
While the disease continues to spread around the globe, there is still no reason for panic in Zimbabwe. However, authorities need to take all due precautions especially at points of entry into the country.
Should the virus find its way into Zimbabwe, there may be little that we can do about it. All we need to do is stay calm while we take precautions as recommended by authorities.
This article aims to inform members of the public about the disease — so that at least we stay prepared. In order to control the 2019-nCoV outbreak, scientists need to know where the virus comes from and how it spreads, as well as discover new treatments.
This way, measures to reduce its spread as well as reduce suffering can be put in place. Scientists are working around the clock to do just that. But time is not on our side — so it appears. In fact scientists were able to quickly sequence the virus’ genome and managed to release it to a dedicated team of international research collaborators on January 10, 2020 — just over a month after the first case of the disease was reported (on December 1, 2019).
Below is everything experts know about the new virus-2019-nCoV-so far.
What is the Wuhan Coronavirus?
While the 2019-nCoV has been characterised, the disease itself is still poorly understood. The information available seems to suggest that the disease may be changing rapidly. While the first cases of 2019-nCoV that appeared in December of 2019 in Wuhan are thought to have come from non-human animal host/s, the exact source of the virus is yet to be identified.
Coronaviruses are a family of viruses that often cause mild respiratory symptoms (the common cold is one of them), with some — such as this Wuhan Coronavirus, MERS and SARS causing serious illness and death.
The SARS outbreak — caused by a coronavirus called SARS-CoV, is known to have entered the human population from bats in China’s Guangdong Province in 2002, and to have infected more than 8000 people worldwide and killed at least 774 — mainly in China.
The MERS outbreak, caused by MERS?CoV (another coronavirus), was first identified in Saudi Arabia in 2012, and managed to spread to 27 countries mostly in Asia, Persia, Europe, USA and North Africa before dissipating.
The three coronavirus diseases — 2019-nCoV, MERS and SARs are different, but share several similarities. They present with symptoms that include pneumonia, fever, cough and fatigue, shortness of breath, headache and diarrhoea. In addition, the three respiratory diseases tend to cause life-threatening pneumonia in any patient, but elderly and individuals with underlying health problems including compromised immune systems as in the case of cancer, diabetes, liver or kidney disease, alcoholism, and HIV/AIDS are at particularly high risk.
Professor Walter Chingwaru is an Associate Professor of Biomedicine and Microbiology or Biomedical Scientist attached to Biological Sciences Department at Bindura University of Science Education (Zimbabwe). Feedback: Twitter – @walterchingwaru, Email: [email protected], Phone: +263 7777 666 06.
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