<![CDATA[China coronavirus: US reports first case of person-to-person transmission, while France announces its sixth confirmed infection]>
The United States identified its first confirmed case of person-to-person transmission of the China coronavirus on Thursday, but health officials stressed that the immediate risk to Americans from the outbreak remained low.
Also on Thursday, officials in France announced the country's sixth confirmed case of the disease, which also known as the "novel coronavirus".
The two announcements came just ahead of a news conference by the World Health Organisation (WHO) following a meeting of its emergency committee that declared the outbreak of the China coronavirus to be a public health emergency of international concern (PHEIC).
A week ago, the WHO committee met but declined to make that declaration. On Thursday, though, it reversed that position, citing the potential of the virus to spread to countries not prepared to deal with the contagion.
Concerning the person-to-person transmission case in America, the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said that the US' latest case involved the husband of a woman in Chicago, Illinois, who was found to have the illness on January 21, following a trip to the Chinese city of Wuhan, the epicentre of the outbreak.
In the press conference, WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said there had been a total of eight cases of human-to-human transmission outside of China, with instances recorded in Japan, the US, Vietnam and Germany. Outside of China, a total of 98 people across 18 countries have been infected by the coronavirus.
The CDC and Illinois state health officials announced the US case on Thursday.
"Given what we've seen in China and other countries with the novel coronavirus, CDC experts have expected some person-to-person spread in the US," CDC director Robert Redfield said in a statement.
Moreover, the CDC statement said, "it is likely there will be more cases of 2019-nCoV reported in the US in the coming days and weeks, including more person-to-person spread".
There are now six confirmed coronavirus cases in the US; the new case was among a small number of infections around the world that involve person-to-person transmission. The other five cases in the US have been travellers who developed the illness after returning to the US from China. The latest patient had not been in China.
The WHO, an agency of the United Nations, had refrained from declaring the outbreak a global health emergency partly because of the lack of person-to-person transmissions outside China.
There have been more than 8,000 confirmed cases, and 171 deaths attributed to the virus; the bulk of the cases and all of the deaths have occurred in mainland China.
Health experts have said they expected additional cases, and that at least some limited spread of the disease in the United States was likely.
Gary Whittaker, a virology expert at the Cornell College of Veterinary Medicine, said that the person-to-person spread of the illness in the US "was to be expected based on what is happening elsewhere in the world".
"Things are still evolving quite rapidly, but the risk to the general population remains low, and there is no reason to panic," he said.
Health officials think that the coronavirus spreads mainly from droplets when an infected person coughs or sneezes, similar to how the flu spreads.
The virus can cause fever, coughing, wheezing and pneumonia. It is a member of the coronavirus family that is a close cousin to the Sars and Mers viruses that have caused outbreaks in the past.
The international outbreak caused by the virus first emerged last month in China. Doctors there first began seeing the new virus in people who got sick after spending time at a wholesale food market in Wuhan, a central Chinese city of 11 million.
Officials said the virus probably initially spread from animals to people, as did the 2002-03 Sars and 2012 Mers viral outbreaks.
Additional reporting by Associated Press
Sign up now for our 50% early bird offer from SCMP Research: China AI Report. The all new SCMP China AI Report gives you exclusive first-hand insights and analysis into the latest industry developments, and actionable and objective intelligence about China AI that you should be equipped with.
This article originally appeared on the South China Morning Post (SCMP).
Copyright (c) 2020. South China Morning Post Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved.
