Tracking Wuhan virus a ‘jigsaw puzzle’ as China cracks down with quarantine powers
- Prevention and control in hospitals is key to controlling outbreak, disease specialist says
- Hospitals nationwide authorised to quarantine any suspected carriers of the virus and their close contacts
Tracking down the source and the infection route of the newly emerged coronavirus in the central Chinese city of Wuhan is akin to putting a jigsaw puzzle together, as the death toll rises and carriers of the pathogen emerge across the country and the world, according to a disease specialist.
“It’s early days, it’s a real jigsaw puzzle right now,” said David Heymann, professor of infectious disease epidemiology at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.
“What’s key to all of this is good infection prevention and control in hospital settings. If health workers continue to get infected now that they know this virus is present, they can inadvertently infect other patients,” he said.
China’s National Health Commission (NHC) said on Wednesday that tougher measures introduced this week authorised hospitals nationwide to quarantine any suspected carriers of the virus and their close contacts, even against their will. The coronavirus has killed 17 people – all of them in Hubei province – since it first caught the attention of medical authorities a little over three weeks ago. As of 11pm Wednesday, 541 people in mainland China had been infected, according to official reports.
