Health authorities: The new virus in China is not as strong as Sars, most of the patients are curable

The new form of coronavirus that has emerged in China is not as strong as the Sars virus, which caused an epidemic in the early 2000s, but has proven to be more contagious with the possibility of transmission before symptoms appear, senior Chinese health officials said today.

The new virus that first appeared in Wuhan in the center of the country in December, and which has infected nearly 2.000 people in China and killed more than 50, belongs, like Sars, to the coronavirus family, and is also transmitted between people and recognized by serious respiratory symptoms. difficulties.

Sars has killed 774 people in the world, of which 349 in mainland China and 299 in Hong Kong.

"As far as we can see, the disease is not as strong as Sars," Gao Fu, head of China's Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told a news conference in Beijing.

However, it seems that the capacity to spread this virus is stronger, Ma Xiaowei, head of the National Health Commission (CNS), which is at the ministry level, said at the same press conference.

The new virus has an incubation period that can last up to two weeks, and infection is possible during the incubation period, that is, before symptoms appear, Ma said, adding that this is also different from Sars.

The crisis erupted in the midst of the Chinese New Year travel rush, a seven-day holiday that usually sees mass travel around the country. Officials believe that this could be the best chance to stop the spread of the virus, since if the traffic restrictions are successfully implemented, it could allow the next stage of epidemic prevention and control to be prepared in time, said Lee Bin, assistant minister in to CNS.

"We still don't know exactly how the epidemic will develop. The situation in which it develops is not completely under our control," he said.

Gui Xien, an infectious disease expert at Wuhan University, believes that the number of infected people could reach a peak around February 8, before starting to decline.

"Now the number of newly diagnosed patients is increasing day by day, but it shouldn't be long before the peak, the turning point, is reached, which could be somewhere around the Lantern Festival (February 8 this year)," he estimated. , reports the newspaper Dnevnik Naroda.

He also confirmed that the new coronavirus is less dangerous than Sars. As he said, the mortality rate from Sars was about 10 percent, and from the new coronavirus it was lower. "You shouldn't be careless, but you shouldn't panic, the symptoms are benign and treatable in most patients," he said.