Figure 4 – Graph showing changes crude fatality ratio over the period from the 1 st January to the 20th of February in mainland China (Source – WHO-China Joint Mission, 2020).
What often happens in the media is that a lot of importance is given to the number of deaths while no attention is given to the number of full recoveries. As of the date of writing of this paper, compared to 2,990 deaths, there were 42,670 recoveries to date. That means that there were 14.27 times more recoveries than deaths as well as 48.78% of all recorded cases up to that point had recovered and were no longer ill. Even cases of severe infections have shown high recovery rates with only 13.4% being fatal (this last percentage is based on data collected up to 20th of February 2020).
Containing and Avoiding the Virus Whilst admittedly the virus infectiousness is very high and has allowed it to rapidly be exported from mainland China to numerous countries, containment efforts have been nonetheless relatively successful, especially in China. As previously discussed, spread of the disease in mainland China outside of Hubei province has been hindered significantly through effective surveillance and quarantine measures. So much so that in a large number of provinces which at some point exceeded the 1000 confirmed cases threshold are, as of the date of writing this paper, well on their way toward eradicating the disease, with active cases just over 100. All this shows that if countries adopt China’s quarantine methods and handling of the epidemic, they should be able to easily stop the further spread of the virus, both nationally and internationally. This goes especially to countries in which the number of infected patients is still rising rapidly such as South Korea, Italy and Iran. For as of yet uninfected countries, it is paramount that the necessary contingency plans based heavily on China’s experience are pre-emptively formulated so that, in the event of importation of the disease, rapid quarantine and containment of the virus could occur, hindering further propagation among the country’s populace.
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