Editorial | Vigilance is only the first line of defence against mystery virus
- Less than three weeks ahead of Lunar New Year festivities, transparency and a sense of urgency are critical – both on the mainland and in Hong Kong
Amendments to the disease-control law to list the still unidentified virus as a notifiable disease will empower health authorities to isolate patients suspected of having contracted it after visiting Wuhan in central China, and compel doctors to report cases.
In the case of Sars, also an unidentified respiratory virus at the time, isolation soon extended to family and close contacts of victims.
Health authorities have ruled out Sars (severe acute respiratory syndrome) or other known highly contagious viruses such as bird flu as the threat. But its unknown nature is ample justification for emergency precautions. It also explains why we overcame our usual reluctance to publish a photograph readers might have found confronting.
Our page one picture on Monday of a wet market in Wuchang, Wuhan, showed a bloody scene in which a man was cutting up fish in a bowl, near another containing frogs, watched over by a chicken perched nearby. It is not an uncommon scene on the mainland, with birds, fish, animals, frogs and turtles mixed together in wet markets.
Amid the spreading outbreak, we published the picture to show how risky it can be. In terms of exposure to viruses and their mutations, it showed a disaster waiting to happen. For example, chickens run free despite the potential danger of deadly bird flu being transmitted.