Experts: What To Expect After Coronavirus Declared Global Health Emergency

Juliet Song
By Juliet Song
January 31, 2020COVID-19
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The World Health Organization (WHO) declared the coronavirus outbreak in China a global health emergency on Jan. 30. Experts say the announcement will help countries to mobilize resources to support China while forcing China to be more transparent about the details of the outbreak.

The declaration, in part, is alerting countries that the virus must be taken seriously in terms of its global pandemic risk. Governments will likely ramp up efforts to prevent the disease from further spreading in their countries, says Eric Feigl-Ding, an epidemiologist at Harvard Chan School of Public Health.

“I think the CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) would definitely respond much more urgently in terms of stepping up screening. It’s partly a message to countries: You need to take this seriously,” he said.

Declaring the emergency will also enable international experts to go to China to support the outbreak control, according to Sean Lin, a former microbiologist at Virus Disease Branch of Walter Reed Army Institute of Research. He says China’s Public Health Commission will need to collaborate with WHO and international governments on a deeper level and share information more timely.

“This is actually good for the international society to have a better understanding of what exactly happened at the ground zero in Wuhan, as well as in other cities in China,” said Lin.

He warns, though, to get first-hand information of the outbreak, it’s not enough for U.S. officials and experts to only collaborate with health officers in the Chinese system. Finding ways to communicate with medical doctors in hospitals treating coronavirus patients directly is the key.

“A lot of these medical doctors, they don’t have a voice in China on the Chinese media, because the government does not allow them to accept media interviews,” said Lin.

Chinese medical doctors can only write medical reports and submit to scientific journals to increase the chance of spreading first-hand knowledge they have. “It’s kind of a sad situation,” Lin said.

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