China’s health authorities have decided to no longer count as confirmed cases those patients who test positive but don’t show symptoms. Skepticism was immediate.
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- , 06, but experts say definitive numbers are elusive.
- How contagious is the virus? According to preliminary research, it seems moderately infectious, (similar to SARS) , and is possibly transmitted through the air. Scientists have estimated that each infected person could spread it to somewhere between 1.5 and 3.5 people without effective containment measures.
- Where has the virus spread? The virus originated in Wuhan, China, and has sickened tens of thousands of people in China and at least two dozen other countries
. - How worried should I be?
- While the virus is a serious public health concern, the risk to most people outside China remains very low, and seasonal flu is a more immediate threat.
- Who is working to contain the virus?
- What if I ‘m traveling? The United States and Australia are temporarily denying entry to noncitizens who recently traveled to China and several airlines have canceled flights .
World Health Organization officials have praised China’s aggressive response to the virus by closing transportation, schools and markets. This week, a team of experts from the W.H.O. arrived in Beijing to offer assistance .
- Where has the virus spread? The virus originated in Wuhan, China, and has sickened tens of thousands of people in China and at least two dozen other countries
- How do I keep myself and others safe?
Washing your hands frequently is the most important thing you can do, along with staying at home when you’re sick. In all, China’s National Health Commission has retroactively subtracted at least 728 cases. But the change in how cases are classified could mean even steeper changes in the totals going forward.
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“That may be terribly unfair,” Mr. Brown said. But, he added, “to redefine things – even legitimately – at a moment like this is always going to be a presentational challenge, because people are going to be very sensitive, and they’re going to suspect there’s another agenda.”
- It is is a novel virus named for the crown-like spikes that protrude from its surface. The coronavirus can infect both animals and people, and can cause a range of respiratory illnesses from the common cold to more dangerous conditions like Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, or SARS.
Scientists have even debated just how much of a danger asymptomatic transmission poses. Chinese health officials were among the first to raise the prospect of asymptomatic transmission, even as health experts in other countries were (skeptical of early reports) that the virus could be passed on by such patients. But in recent days, Chinese officials have also played down the asymptomatic transmission risk.
The uneven information comes as China’s leader, Xi Jinping
- , said that the containment efforts were working. “After hard work, the epidemic situation has seen positive change, and the prevention and control work has achieved positive results,” he said during a meeting of the Communist Party leadership in Beijing on Wednesday, according to a summary of his remarks by state- run media. “This is hard-won, and all parties have contributed.”
. The agency said that it would no longer count patients who had tested positive for the coronavirus but did not display symptoms as “confirmed cases.” Instead, those patients would be counted separately, as “positive diagnosis” patients, and would become confirmed only if they began showing symptoms. Chinese health officials have given little public justification for the labeling change. The National Health Commission did not immediately return a request for comment. Reached by phone, Wu Zunyou, the chief epidemiologist of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, directed inquiries to the health commission’s news office. The changes prompted debate among some public health experts. “Adapting definitions during an outbreak is not unusual, with increasing insights and also with prioritizing where efforts need to go,” said Dr. Marion Koopmans, the head of the viroscience department at Erasmus University Medical Center in the Netherlands. By shifting emphasis away from asymptomatic cases, officials can concentrate resources on more serious cases, she said. Dr. Benjamin Cowling, who leads the division of epidemiology and biostatistics at the University of Hong Kong, said the number of cases affected by the change in terminology would most likely be low. He added that attempts to count individual infections become less reliable anyway as outbreaks increase in size. Still, even experts who said that the effect of discounting certain cases would be small said that it would be useful to epidemiologists – and the public – to have a complete count of all cases, including asymptomatic ones. - said in an email that mild or asymptomatic infections could form an “invisible iceberg” that made a given virus’s fatality rate much lower than it initially appeared.
Determining the true denominator of the number of people infected – whether symptomatic or not – would, he said, “be most informative to, hopefully, calm current panic in China and the world. ”
“We’re not aware of that change. Certainly not a change that would discount lab-confirmed cases, ”Dr. Michael Ryan, who leads the W.H.O.’s health emergencies program, said when asked this week about the labeling change. “That sounds strange.”
Dr. Chen Bingzhong, a former senior government health official in Beijing who has been vocal in calling for more transparency about public health crises , said a full tally of the number of cases would keep the authorities accountable. “Add a confirmed case, and the leaders’ responsibilities increase,” Dr. Chen said. He added that a positive test result should be disclosed as such, Regardless of symptoms.
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