After SARS, the world is now under threat from another outbreak
Almost 20 years ago, a relatively unknown disease called Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) infected a person in Guangdong, south of China.
Soon enough, the disease spread to more than two dozen countries such as North America, parts of South America, Europe, and Asia before the global outbreak was successfully contained in July 2003.
However, SARS did a lot of damage before it was subdued. According to World Health Organization (WHO) 774 from 37 countries died due to the illness, with the majority of them coming from China and Hong Kong.
SARS, as its name suggests, cause respiratory problem to those infected. It was believed to have been transmitted from an animal virus from unknown animal reservoir.
Experts suspect it could have come from bats, which then spread to civet cats before transmitting it to humans.
Two decades on, China is now being ravaged by another mysterious disease. A new coronavirus, which is causing people to suffer pneumonia, has claimed four lives, to date.
Not much is know about the new communicable disease but fearing the worst, many countries in Asia, including Malaysia, Europe and the United States have taken steps to prevent the spread of the coronavirus before it hits their shores.
To date, China authorities had confirmed that 217 have been infected by the disease. 198 of them are from Wuhan.
Cases of the coronavirus infection has been reported in other nations such as South Korea, Thailand and Japan.
Medical experts and scientists are scratching their heads on how to resolve this new outbreak, with whatever little information they have. To China’s credit, they have managed to contain the spread of the coronavirus, albeit for now.
All we can hope for is that this new deadly virus does not become a global problem, killing people from across the globe like what SARS and H1N1 did.
Irman Hashim is a member of The Leaders Online team.
