The rapidly spreading coronavirus has killed more people in China than the SARS outbreak of 2002-03.
China’s National Health Commission said on Sunday that the coronavirus, which has infected more than 17,000 people worldwide, has killed 362 people in mainland China, eclipsing the death toll from the severe acute respiratory syndrome that resulted in the deaths of 349 people in that country.
Although the coronavirus is spreading more rapidly than SARS, the mortality rate is lower. About 2% of those infected with coronavirus have died, compared to 9.6% from SARS.
Chinese stocks plummeted about 8% in value on Monday after the first trading since the Lunar New Year holiday in China began. The outbreak has caused the entire country to be on high alert and has shuttered stores and businesses across the mainland. Hundreds of thousands of people have been quarantined in cities in Hubei province, which is where the virus originated.
There are fears that the outbreak will become a pandemic, which is a disease that spreads across the globe.
“It’s very, very transmissible, and it almost certainly is going to be a pandemic,” Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease, told the New York Times. “But will it be catastrophic? I don’t know.”
Fauci also said on Friday that “there is no doubt” the coronavirus can spread to other people before symptoms set in, further exacerbating the infectious nature of the disease.
The World Health Organization declared the outbreak a global public health emergency, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirmed Thursday that there has been a case of human-to-human transmission in the United States, which has documented 11 cases of infection.
Although the official number of those infected worldwide sits at 17,489, experts say that the real number of cases is likely at 100,000 or more.
