ISLAMABAD: Special Assistant to Prime Minister on Health Dr Zafar Mirza on Wednesday said coronavirus had no specific symptoms, therefore it was difficult to diagnose it.
Addressing a press briefing in Islamabad regarding the spread of the infection, Dr Zafar Mirza said, “Four other viruses, similar to coronavirus, already exist.”
He said coronavirus was spreading fast. Its patients had started coming to hospital in China in December 2019. While, Chinese researchers found the virus on Jan 7, he said. “This virus first transmitted from animal to human being.”
He said more than 6,052 people had been diagnosed with the disease worldwide so far and 99 percent of the cases had been reported in China only. Apart from China, it has been found in 14 other countries, but no death has taken place outside China yet, he relayed.
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The special assistant to PM on health said the People’s Republic had taken very extraordinary measures to contain the infection in Wuhan or its vicinity.
“Wuhan, a city of more than 60 million people, has been turned into a quarantine. Neither anybody can enter it, nor can exit it. This is the boldest and biggest measure in the history of public health,” he said.
He said China had restricted its citizens from leaving the country, while completely banning the citizens of Wuhan to leave the city.
Zafar Mirza said death toll from the virus had climbed to 132 in China.
The one affected from the virus was kept in observation for 14 days, he said. First body temperature of the suspected patient was noted during the incubation period, he maintained.
“It is contagious, so if one has this disease his family and friends are susceptible to contracting the virus,” he said. He also said fortunately, fatality rate due to the infection, as per the research, was three percent.
