Coronavirus: WHO still urges quarantine and other ‘containment measures’ despite rising doubts
- ‘Our objective remains containment,’ says Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the World Health Organisation director general
- Taiwan researchers to take part by internet in research forum on Tuesday
The World Health Organisation urged countries on Monday to continue quarantining suspected coronavirus cases and tracing their contacts – even as a growing number of human-to-human transmissions among patients with no history of travel to China has raised questions about the effectiveness of these measures.
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the WHO’s director general, said that there remained a window of opportunity for these “containment measures” to limit the outbreak outside China, where the bulk of coronavirus cases have occurred.
Doubts about these measures have heightened in recent days as initial studies, epidemiologists and health officials have suggested that the contagion could be extremely infectious and still have a low fatality rate – making it more comparable to the common flu, say, than the deadly Sars virus.
Singapore’s Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong on Saturday suggested that the city state – which has 45 confirmed cases – might reconsider its containment strategy if the coronavirus proved more widespread but less lethal than Sars.
“If we still hospitalise and isolate every case, our hospitals will be overwhelmed,” said Lee. “At that point, provided that the fatality rate stays low like flu, we should shift our approach.”
The WHO’s Tedros conceded on Monday that detection of the “onwards transmission” cases of coronavirus “could be the spark that becomes a bigger fire” – that is, possibly start a wider outbreak.