WHO to again consider if coronoavirus is a global emergency
Death toll now at 170, with 7200 cases reported
The World Health Organization’s emergency committee will meet on Thursday to reconsider its decision not to declare a global public health emergency over the spread of coronavirus.
The United Nations body said last week that it was “too early” to announce a public health emergency over the outbreak.
But WHO called new cases announced Wednesday as being 'deeply concerning", according to the South China Morning Post.
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Since then, at least six cases have emerged where the infected individual had not travelled to China.
As of Wednesday, almost 7,200 people in mainland China are confirmed to have contracted the virus, most of them coming from the contagion’s center of Wuhan, capital of Hubei province.
The death toll has reached at least 170, with those deaths coming in China.
Passengers wear face mask as they arrive at Kuala Lumpur Low Cost Terminal in Sepang, Malaysia, Wednesday, Jan. 29, 2020. Malaysia has tightened control at its borders and banned travelers from China's Hubei province as virus cases in the country ros
One human-to-human transmission case outside of China occurred in Germany.
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Eric Feigl Ding, an epidemiologist and health economist at Harvard University’s Chan School of Public Health, said in a Twitter post on Monday:
“The facts are pretty clear this #coronoavirus epidemic is no longer localized to China and has higher pandemic risk than SARS.”
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Current WHO estimates put the rate of severe cases at around 20 per cent. The fatality rate currently stands at just over 2 per cent, significantly lower than those of Sars and Mers.