Update….Another Coronavirus Infection Detected Outside of China
Another person has been affected by the new coronavirus, this time in Japan. It was reported in The Japan Times that the infected man in his 30s was a Chinese national who recently returned from a trip to Wuhan City. Health officials do not seem alarmed as he was treated and released from the hospital with mild symptoms.
At the airports in Tokyo, passengers have to pass through a screening that uses thermal cameras to detect passengers who have fevers. The man who was infected with 2019-nCoV (2019 novel coronavirus) passed this screening and was hospitalized 4 days later on January 10th. He spent 5 days in the hospital and was released.
Although the idea of a new virus spreading around seems alarming, at this stage there seems to be minimal risk of a widespread event. Even though coronaviruses are typically spread through human-to-human contact, the rate at which this happens with 2019-nCoV appears to be minimal.
As reported in the recent article in The Japan Times:
“Satoshi Kutsuna, an expert at the Disease Control and Prevention Center under the National Center for Global Health and Medicine, said in a web article that people don’t need to be excessively worried about the virus.
Although the infection case between the couple suggests the possibility of human-to-human transmission, examinations on nearly 1,000 people who came in contact with the infected patients have shown they were not infected.
This indicates that “it’s unlikely that it will spread widely around the globe,” Kutsuna wrote.”
There seems to be no need for alarm…for now.