The coronavirus continues to spread in countries beyond China, including Britain, Italy, Iran, South Korea and the United States.
Despite raising the risk assessment to ‘very high at a global level’, the World Health Organization has expressed that containment of COVID-19 is still feasible and it does not yet constitute a pandemic.
“I think they’re a little hesitant because the word pandemic sounds a little bit alarming, and so they don’t want to unnecessarily cause undue panic,” said Assistant Professor Clarence Tam.
“But it is important for people to realise that pandemic really means that the disease is being transmitted potentially in all countries of the world. It doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s a very severe disease,” he added.
He was commenting on the ongoing COVID-19 outbreak for Channel 8’s Focus 焦点 programme.
On Europe’s capability to confront the outbreak, he said that one positive thing was their strong history of collaboration on infectious disease control and good surveillance systems.
He added, “They have the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control that can provide coordination and technical guidance, and there’s a strong culture of sharing information for disease control.”
In the US, Dr Tam shared the concern that they may already be experiencing community transmission that has gone undetected “simply because they don’t have the testing capacity as of this moment”.
However, since more tests have been made available recently, he expects that more cases will be reported as more testing is being conducted.
In South Korea, the number of reported cases has risen steadily, exceeding 6,000 confirmed cases and 40 reported deaths as of 6 March 2020.
While Dr Tam does not think the epidemic has reached its peak, he pointed out that most of the cases “seem to be limited to well-recognised clusters of disease”, which will make containment much easier.
Watch the interview:
- Focus 焦点 (10.45pm), Channel 8, 5 March 2020
- 焦点 | 冠状病毒可能全球大流行？, 8world, 6 March 2020