It’s the declaration of Dr. Simon Clarke, a specialist in cellular microbiology at the England’s University of Reading. A global team of researchers from US and UK universities concluded that at least half of the infected people could pass a screening testing for signs of the Covid-19 virus.
The most challenging feature of the virus seems to be its asymptomatic course of action. Hundreds of people were diagnosed positively with the virus without showing any symptoms. The cases detected without any apparent source of infection in South Korea and Iran are also alarming.
The virus can spread human to human in its incubation phase or without the infected individual showing any symptoms. This puts a lot of pressure on the possibility of becoming optimistic about containing the outbreak. This is the declaration made on Tuesday by the World Health Organization’s joint head of experts, gathered to manage Covid-19: they are “simply not ready.”
According to the WHO, the new Coronavirus, Covid-19, is challenging to track
Although WHO doesn’t consider the coronavirus to be a pandemic yet, comparisons with SARS and MERS are left behind. In Australia, a new frightening comparison took their place: the Spanish flu. The two previous pneumonia-like viruses, SARS and MERS, killed half the people Covid-19 did so far.
Covid-19 made 2710 victims of 80.382 infected people. Back in 1918, the Spanish flu infected one-third of Australians and killed between 50 to 100 million people globally. The comparison might seem exaggerated, but the evolution of medicine also seemed to be able to keep us safe from such a pandemic. It looks like it is not.
Meantime, Australia has activated “The COVID-19 plan”. It is a three-phase emergency response plan for global pandemics. The three phases indicate the level of severity of the emergency: low impact, moderate, and high. The swine flu pandemic in 2009 was considered a low impact virus. “Does this virus have pandemic potential? Absolutely, it has. Are we there yet? From our assessment, not yet,” said Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the chief of WHO.
