China confirms human-to-human transmission of new coronavirus

Human-to-human transmission has been confirmed in an outbreak of a new coronavirus, the head of a Chinese government expert team said Monday, as the total number of cases more than tripled and the virus spread to other cities in China.

Team leader Zhong Nanshan, a respiratory expert and head of the health commission team investigating the outbreak, said two people in Guangdong province in southern China caught the disease from family members, state media said.

The National Health Commission task force also found that some medical workers have tested positive for the virus, the English-language China Daily newspaper said. 

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Human-to-human transmission could make the virus spread more quickly and widely. The outbreak is believed to have started from people who picked it up at a seafood market in the city of Wuhan in central China. 

Zhong said the two people in Guangdong had not been to Wuhan but family members had returned from the city, the China Daily said.

The virus belongs in the same family of coronaviruses as Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), which killed nearly 800 people globally during a 2002-03 outbreak that started in Guangdong, China. In Canada, 44 people died, many of them health-care workers.

Symptoms include fever and difficulty in breathing, which are similar to many other respiratory diseases and pose complications for identifying cases.

The official Chinese Xinhua News Agency reported that as of 6 p.m. local time on Jan. 20, a total of 224 cases of pneumonia of new coronavirus infection were reported in China, including 217 confirmed cases:

• 198 in Wuhan.
• Five in Beijing.
• Fourteen in Guangdong.
• Seven suspected cases: two in Sichuan, one in Yunnan Province, two in Shanghai, one in Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, and one in Shandong Province.

Some medical staff have been infected, Xinhua added, but gave no number.

Authorities elsewhere also announced cases in other Chinese cities for the first time.

World Health Organization director general Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus will convene an emergency committee on what it calls the novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV).

The committee will meet on Wednesday in Geneva to determine whether the outbreak constitutes a public health emergency of international concern, and what recommendations should be made to manage it.
 

Declaring a global health emergency can bring more international attention and aid.

WHO has not recommended trade or travel restrictions.

Previous global emergencies have been declared for crises including the ongoing Ebola outbreak in Congo, the emergence of Zika virus in the Americas in 2016 and the West Africa Ebola outbreak in 2014.
 

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Dr. Isaac Bogoch, an infectious disease physician at Toronto General Hospital, said Monday the key questions about the virus include:

• How easily does it transmit between people, which is an important factor in how widespread the outbreak will ultimately get?
• What is the source of the infection?
• What proportion of people become severely ill or need hospitalization, compared with what proportion of people have few to no symptoms?

"This may be more widespread in China than it was earlier believed," Bogoch said.

Dr. Theresa Tam, Canada's chief public health officer, told reporters that there are no reported cases of this new coronavirus in Canada.

There were three travellers from Wuhan who were investigated and ruled out in the last week, Tam said. She would not say where in Canada they were screened.

Thailand, Japan, South Korea report cases

Zhong said the two people in Guangdong had not been to Wuhan but fell ill after family members had returned from the city, the China Daily said.

The outbreak has put other countries on alert as millions of Chinese travel for Lunar New Year.

Authorities in Thailand and in Japan have already identified at least three cases, all involving recent travel from China.

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