COVID-19: Officials fear global outbreak of coronavirus

part of the

coronavirus

story we're following this morning canada has recorded a tense case of suspected kovat 19 at this point a woman who arrived in ontario went to hospital with a cough after returning to canada from china on friday and is now home alone. -isolation with mild symptoms this morning we will have a press conference from Ontario health

officials

. New cases and deaths associated with the corona virus continue to increase around the world. China, of course, even with the vast majority of cases already overcome. 79,000 and outside of China we are talking about more than 1,700 cases in 33 countries.

South Korea, a major flashpoint on red alert with more than 830 infections surpassing the diamond princess as the largest cluster outside of China. Iran with now over 60 cases, but there are reports that the number is much higher, we are hearing about 50 deaths in one city today and Italy we had that report from Megan Williams in Rome currently with over 150 cases, five deaths reported today and great efforts to take strong measures and contain the spread throughout Italy and Europe, let's talk about all this with dr. Peter Dasha and infectious disease expert, the president of the Eco Health Alliance, we have spoken to him before.

He is credited with identifying the origins of SARS. His work has been key to predicting the

global

impact of emerging diseases. He was at that WHO conference in Geneva earlier. this month where we talk about the latest science coming out of that and he's in New York this morning joining us again and we're happy to welcome him back to the show dr. - thanks for being here. I've been looking at various headlines and reports this morning, one of them quoted the head of the WHO as saying that the window of opportunity is narrowing to stop the progress of Covid 19, essentially that experts are saying that we are reaching a critical point. .

In this

outbreak

, what is your assessment of who is right? We're at a point where I wouldn't be surprised if this week or next we call this a pandemic. We have several infected countries with community transmission in those. countries that is really the definition of a pandemic on different continents, so they called a press conference for this morning at 9:30 is something that you could hear or expect to hear from them today. I think we will hear that pandemic call or an explanation of what needs to happen for it to become a pandemic, but look, this is all semantics right now, we have a serious situation on the planet with an

outbreak

that is spreading and we have to do something pretty drastic right now.

I'll come back to that point, but just to make clear what are the indicators that you will look at and that you fellow scientists will look at to determine whether this would be a disease, this is a pandemic. So I'm sure it's a disease. The definition of a pandemic is that there are several infected countries on different continents than a self-sustaining outbreak. In other words, there is ongoing transmission in several countries on two different continents. I think we're pretty much at that point now, especially with the situation in Iran and Italy, if you look at this spread, as I mentioned, in just 33 countries in over 1,700 cases now outside of China and, increasingly, these are cases where there is no direct link to China or travel to China, what is the biggest concern for you?

Well, that concern is that there are many more cases that we don't know about, so when we hear about them maybe and it's not clear how many deaths there have been in Iran, but if there are 50 deaths that I suggest you know a three percent mortality, we have hundreds of cases that have not been found yet, if we don't find those cases, quickly bring them to the hospitals, snarling at the people, they are going to continue spreading this virus and once it starts to leak across the borders to other countries , then you see other outbreaks and that's really what happens in a pandemic.

We still have that window of opportunity, but we have to act really quickly right now and act quickly because, looking at what most countries have done. Until now it has been that containment strategy. I think it raises questions about whether that strategy is right and we think the lockdown in China has given us a few extra days at the beginning of the outbreak as they blocked travel around the Lunar New Year, perhaps. A few weeks as a

global

pandemic to slow this down so that containment works to a certain extent, but of course if that containment continues, it actually blocks the ability to fight an average because we need open communication, we need workers of health move from one side to the other. from one country to another and we need the supply chain to keep us supplied with critical control equipment like masks, syringes and disinfectants, that type of thing, so those are the things that we really need to do in the short term in this narrow window of opportunity if we want to stop its spread even further, you know what we were talking about when the WHO declared the

coronavirus

a global health emergency and there were all kinds of conversations about what it would take to make that designation, what it would mean if the WHO would deliver that designation the types of resources and systems that they could take advantage of if they say pandemic, what does that change?

What changes in the public mind is what we are facing now and I think we have already seen that with an outbreak in Italy for example, we have seen quite draconian measures to close down villages where there are infected people, we should expect that to happen in our own countries and I think what we really learn from calling this a pandemic is what we, the public. We have to do to prepare for that and that is to stay calm to think logically and start thinking about what we should do and if we have the medications that we need and that are critical, make sure that we have enough to last a few weeks and Overall, we're preparing for how we're going to deal with this if 10% of people aren't working, how we're going to continue to open our businesses, and as we look at our healthcare workers, are we protecting them?

Do we have enough equipment and supplies to keep them operational? Do we have enough hospital beds? Do we have places where we can start to be very patient if the hospitals become overwhelmed? These are the kinds of things I think healthcare professionals are doing well. now in multiple cultures, so they are making special preparations, we, the public, must also mentally prepare for this. We are talking about where the corona virus has spread in these 33 countries, which we are not talking about yet. It's Africa, we're not really talking about India, we're not talking about much of the developing world, how much do you care about that part of the world?

Well, it's a big concern for me and for everyone, I mean, if you look at what happened in Iran, we still don't know for sure and how many cases there are, and Iran is a pretty rich country compared to others. This is a resource problem. Countries that have less funds and fewer resources will have fewer doctors and less quarantine capacity. so they will find infected people more slowly, they will quarantine them more slowly and the virus will have a chance to spread, so we hope that the virus can spread better in countries that have low capacity and that includes sub-Saharan Africa Indonesia India and countries of everyone with much lower GDP and very dense populations is going to be at risk.

We've certainly heard

officials

express concern as well as they watch for any signs of spread to those countries. In some parts of the world we heard the director general of the WHO say that this could even be complicated, you know, looking at the worst case scenario, he didn't really describe that, but he did say that it could be complicated, are you in on this? Doctor, are you still optimistic or are you veering towards... pessimistic, what would Messi be like for you? Well, I'm always an optimist, I mean, let's put it in context and right now there are a few hundred thousand at most infected people on the planet of many.

For billions of people the death rate is 3% not 10% so let's be positive and start shooting this and I think as long as we stay optimistic we will continue to be able and ready and willing to fight but I think when we look at what could happen in a pandemic, things are complicated, look how the public is going to accept these draconian quarantine measures and being told you can't leave your house even if you're not infected, are we ready for that yet ? I think it corresponds to the health authorities. around the world to start telling their audiences what to expect and how to mentally prepare for what's going to happen, because the tricky part is when people don't accept that and we start to see riots like we saw with Ebola and other diseases. as things become acute, you know, there are shortages of supplies and stores and people start fighting over it, that's where it becomes a real problem.

China has handled this incredibly well considering the chaos they're working through right now, but we have to see what that would mean if that kind of level of infection occurred in our own countries. It is a sobering portrait, but an important one for the doctor to consider. Acai, thank you for sending it to us today. My pleasure Heather stay safe yes positive. In fact, stay positive dr. Peter: Visit New York this morning.