(Photo : Reuters)
Pictures uploaded to social media on January 25, 2020 by the Central Hospital of Wuhan show medical staff attending to patients, in Wuhan, China. THE CENTRAL HOSPITAL OF WUHAN VIA WEIBO /via REUTERS
China has recently confirmed that 20,438 people have been infected by the coronavirus which is higher compared to the 5327 cases recorded during the SARS outbreak according to the World Health Organization. The increase in number and the heartbreaking plight of Wuhan, China sparks end of the world theories anew.
On December 31, 2019, China announced that a mysterious pneumonia broke out in the City of Wuhan, 12 days after which the whole province of Hubei was placed under lockdown by authorities with the millions of people inside the Province unable to leave. The death toll of the Novel Corona Virus in China with 425 deaths surpassed the death toll of the Sever Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) outbreak in 2002 and 2003 with 349 deaths.
According to the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease, Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the nCoV outbreak is likely to become a pandemic which means it may become an ongoing epidemic in at least two more continents. Some saying it may become the next plague, looking at it as a similar occurence to the black plague.
And while the same virus may cause the pandemic, the effect would be different in some countries comapared to others. Wealthier countries may be able to better control the disease and study treatment and detection, while poor countries which usually have fragile health care systems may be in a tougher situation.
Scientists said that there is no solid evidence yet proving how lethal the new strain of coronavirus is but consensus is that it is highly transmissible. They also found out that nCoV is spreading faster compared to SARS and MERSCoV.
Amidst the rising death toll of the Novel Corona Virus in it's not yet the end of the world as hope sprouts in the country as the number of recoveries rise. Despite the high number of deaths, coronavirus still has a lower fatality rate which explains the increase in number of recoveries yet.
Last Tuesday, China's Health Commision revealed that 632 people have recovered from the dreaded virus that haunted Wuhan. This steady rise in the number of recoveries has health workers encourage as evidence that treatments have been effective and proving that the virus is not as deadly as SARS.
Whilst having a fewer deaths than nCoV, SARS has a relatively higher mortality rate which reached 9.6% as compared to the 2% mortality rate f nCoV.
In Hubei, the outbreak's ground zero, the number of recoveries have gone higher than the number of deaths with 80 patients recovered and 56 deaths, Sunday. Last Saturday, 49 patients were reported to have left hospitals and 45 died.
However, despite the rising recoveries, the number of new infections continue to climb, thus authorities suggest that the outbreak would still take sometime before being completely eradicated.
According to Zhexuan Huang, a student from Pennsylvania who is currently stranded in his home in Wuhan City, the outbreak seems like a zombie apocalypse with people not leaving the comfort of their homes to protect themselves from contacting the virus.
Even with some speculations that nCoV may be a sign of the end of the world, there is still hope since people are starting to recover and the number of recoveries are rising higher than deaths.
