“It is clear some people are being affected and are infectious while experiencing only very mild symptoms or possibly without experiencing symptoms at all – asymptomatic.
“This may be masking the true numbers of infected and the extent of person to person transmission. It is a matter of urgency to work this out.”
The Novel Coronavirus or 2019-nCoV belongs to a family of pathogens responsible for the 2002 to 2003 SARS pandemic.
SARS or Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome killed at least 774 people and infected more than 8,000 when humans contracted the SARS-CoV virus from civet cats in Asia.
The coronavirus family is zoonotic, meaning it can spread between animals and humans, and the World Health Organization (WHO) believes there are many undiscovered strains in the wild.
This time around, the coronavirus outbreak was traced to a seafood market in Wuhan City, Hubei Province.