Expert: People can transmit virus to others

He says measures available to control outbreak; president urges all-out efforts

The latest evidence has proved that the new virus causing the pneumonia outbreak in Wuhan, Hubei province, can spread from human to human, said Zhong Nanshan, head of a high-level expert team organized on Monday by the National Health Commission.

However, he added, the pneumonia outbreak in Wuhan will not evolve into a massive outbreak similar in scale to the SARS outbreak 17 years ago.

"It has been confirmed that two people in Guangdong province were infected through human-to-human transmission," Zhong said at a news conference on Monday.

The two patients had not been to Wuhan, where the outbreak began, but they became sick after their family members recently returned from the city, he said.

In addition, some medical workers have also tested positive for the virus, which proves the infectiousness of the virus, said Zhong, who is also a member of the Chinese Academy of Engineering and a prominent expert in respiratory diseases.

Cases of the contagion rose to 224 on the Chinese mainland, all but six of them confirmed, as of 8 pm Monday.

"I believe the outbreak will not cause the impact on society and the economy that SARS did 17 years ago," Zhong said. "We identified the new coronavirus just two weeks after the outbreak was reported, and we have very good virus monitoring and quarantine measures."

Zhong said a major reason for the surge in the number of cases over the past few days is that new testing methods have improved the efficiency of testing for suspected cases. The other reason is that in the past few days, local authorities have been authorized to confirm such cases on their own, as long as the patient has tested positive twice. Previously, confirmation could only be made by the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention and other national institutes, which slowed confirmation, he said.

However, the number of cases of the new virus is expected to continue rising during the Spring Festival holiday, which starts on Friday, due to the large number of people traveling nationwide, which will allow the disease to spread more easily, he said.

President Xi Jinping urged resolute efforts on Monday to contain the spread of pneumonia cases caused by the new strain of coronavirus.

Xi, also general secretary of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and chairman of the Central Military Commission, made the remark in an instruction on the prevention and control of the disease.

All-out efforts must be made in the prevention and control of the contagion, Xi said, as he called for closer attention to related work.

Given massive population flows during the upcoming Chinese New Year holiday, it is an urgent task to properly prevent and control the disease, Xi said.

He urged Party committees and governments at various levels as well as relevant departments to make people's lives and health a top priority, devise meticulous plans, mobilize all available resources and take concrete and effective measures to contain further spread of the sickness.

Every means should be tried to save and treat the infected, identify the cause of the contagion's spread, strengthen case monitoring and standardize diagnostic procedures, Xi added. He called for timely disclosure of outbreak information and a deepening of international cooperation.

Premier Li Keqiang also issued an instruction on Monday urging local governments and relevant departments to identify, report, isolate and treat patients in a timely manner and promptly and objectively release information about disease prevention and control.

Li also called for good coordination with the World Health Organization, relevant countries and the Hong Kong and Macao special administrative regions and Taiwan province to take united action to resolutely prevent the contagion from spreading.

A State Council executive meeting chaired by Li on Monday also worked out concrete steps to prevent and control the disease.

Of the total of 218 confirmed cases of novel coronavirus infections reported on the Chinese mainland, 198 were in Wuhan, five were in Beijing, 14 in Guangdong province and one in Shanghai.

Japan, Thailand and the Republic of Korea were also reported to have confirmed cases of the illness.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said at a regular news conference on Monday that China had informed the WHO, as well as organizations in relevant countries and regions, of the disease in a timely manner, and has been in close communication with them.

China has lost no time in sharing the DNA sequence of the virus with the WHO, Geng added.

Wuhan has taken measures to manage and control people who are leaving the city, the spokesman said.

wangxiaodong@chinadaily.com.cn