Taiwan is continuing to screen arriving airline passengers for signs of illness amid fears that a pneumonia outbreak in China could spread.
The outbreak is centered in the Chinese city of Wuhan. A number of recent visitors to the city have fallen ill, including three people in Taiwan. Two of the Taiwanese cases appear to be unrelated to the outbreak, but a third Taiwanese patient remains undiagnosed.
Chinese authorities say that a strain of coronavirus is behind the outbreak. But while Chinese scientists have finished sequencing the virus’ DNA, they remain unsure of what type of coronavirus it may be.
Doctor Huang Wan-ting of Taiwan’s Centers for Disease Control says that there are around ten known types of coronavirus, of which six are known to affect humans. These include well-known pathogens like those responsible for SARS and MERS.
However, Huang said that animals are the usual hosts of these viruses. She said it is therefore possible that the virus behind this outbreak is either new to science or a virus that has not been known to affect humans before.
Huang said it is likely that the virus was first transmitted from animals to people, and has only a limited ability to spread between people. She said the virus is likely to spread through coughing and sneezing. She also said that if the virus is not the same one behind SARS or MERS, it is likely somewhere between the common cold and the flu in terms of severity.