More coronavirus cases are being diagnosed outside China than in — another indication the virus is nearing pandemic status

A young tourist with both a protective face mask and a Carnival mask in Venice on Monday.
A young tourist with both a protective face mask and a Carnival mask in Venice on Monday.

Andrea Pattaro/AFP via Getty Images

COVID-19 is rapidly spreading around the globe. It’s now on every continent save Antarctica, with first cases diagnosed recently in Brazil, Greece, and Algeria.

“Yesterday, the number of new cases reported outside China exceeded the number of new cases in China for the first time,” the World Health Organization’s director-general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said on Wednesday. “The primary objective of all countries with cases must be to contain the virus.”

In China, the country where the virus is believed to have originally hopped from animals into humans in December, transmission of the novel coronavirus that causes COVID-19 peaked at the beginning of February and has been on a steady decline ever since.

Outside Hubei province (where the virus originated), however, just 10 cases of COVID-19 were diagnosed in China on Tuesday. But in Italy, more than 370 people are now infected. Iran, where the virus was just introduced last week, has tallied 19 deaths so far. That is the largest number of fatalities outside Hubei province, where more than 2,600 people are dead.

Scientists aren’t sure yet exactly how deadly COVID-19 really is, because it’s so new, but initial estimates from inside Hubei province suggest the fatality rate could be about 2%. That is startlingly higher than the death rate of seasonal influenza and just shy of the estimated death rate that occurred during the 1918 pandemic flu, which killed off a third of the world’s population.

COVID-19 seems to hit the elderly and people with preexisting conditions especially hard (it’s not been diagnosed very much in kids yet). Smokers are vulnerable too. 

The virus is most often transmitted through close contact, such as between partners, and in households and crowded places like church. That’s why it’s most important to wash your hands with soap and water (ideally, for long enough to sing “Happy Birthday to You” twice) and avoid touching your face, especially around the eyes, nose, and mouth, where virus particles could sneak their way inside the body.

A chemist in a pharmacy in San Fiorano, one of the Italian towns on lockdown over the coronavirus outbreak.
A chemist in a pharmacy in San Fiorano, one of the Italian towns on lockdown over the coronavirus outbreak.

Marzio Toniolo / Reuters

“All countries, whether they have cases or not, must prepare for a potential pandemic,” Adhanom Ghebreyesus said. “We are not just fighting to contain a virus and save lives. We are also in a fight to contain the social and economic damage a global pandemic could do.”

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source: yahoo.com