Chinese authorities have reported an increase in the cases of Coronavirus overnight leading the World health officials in scrambles. Regarding the corona virus status, WHO is not able to determine how big and widespread is the virus. Chinese health authorities have confirmed 15,152 new cases and 254 additional deaths. Now named COVID-19, the flu-like virus has killed at least 1,369 people and sickened more than 60,000 worldwide.
It lead Dr. Mike Ryan, the executive director of the World Health Organization’s emergencies program, ask at a news conference at the agency’s headquarters in Geneva, “How big is the iceberg?” Ryan said that everybody knows and have accepted that there is transmission happening at some level in all communities and everyone has seen the clusters and the super spreading events. But the concern is what is happening outside of what people can see.
Ryan questioned why the assumption to the awful is the one that’s accepted by all and while the assumption of what might be a higher proportional detection of cases is almost seen as invalid. He finds this difficult to understand. He added that probably the iceberg is not that great as the public health officials all over the world have been actively testing suspected cases of the virus and haven’t discovered anything huge till now.
Health authorities in Hubei province, which is the epicenter of the outbreak, have said that they have changed the way they tabulate case totals. They are now classifying the “clinically diagnosed” cases as “confirmed case”. This has resulted in the sudden surge among the statistics. The change will make sure that a broader set of patients receive the same treatment as the confirmed case do.
