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On December 31st, the Wuhan Municipal Health Commission issued an urgent notice stating that hospitals in the city were treating a series of pneumonia cases caused by an unknown virus.
Specifically, statistics show that in less than a month, a total of 27 cases of pneumonia have been recorded in Wuhan city, Hubei province, central China.
Most of the patients reported had visited a seafood market in downtown Wuhan. Doctors have not yet identified the primary virus causing the outbreak, but initial tests suggest the cases are not transmissible from person to person.
Nevertheless, the patients have been isolated and are being closely monitored medically. The Wuhan Municipal Health Commission said that among those infected, 7 are in critical condition, 18 are in stable condition, and the remaining 2 have shown improvement.
The seafood market is believed to be the source of 27 cases of pneumonia.
News of the outbreak of 27 pneumonia cases suggests a possible link to Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS). Many health experts in Wuhan have indicated that the cause is likely viral pneumonia, not SARS as suspected. State-run CCTV reported on December 31st that a team of experts from the National Health Commission had been dispatched to Wuhan to conduct an investigation and verification related to the issue.
In late 2002, Chinese officials also covered up the first reported cases of SARS in southern China until the outbreak escalated, causing a surge in deaths and forcing the government to declare an epidemic and apologize to the media. During that devastating epidemic, China reported 349 deaths in mainland China and 299 in Hong Kong.
Additional information
SARS is an acute respiratory syndrome characterized by severe pneumonia. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), SARS is believed to have first appeared in November 2002 in Guangdong Province, China.
On March 26, 2003, China officially announced the outbreak. In a short time, the disease had spread to 32 countries, infecting more than 8,000 people and causing 775 deaths worldwide.
