1 What is Coronavirus?
Coronaviruses are a family of viruses that range from the common cold to MERS coronavirus, which is Middle East Respiratory Syndrome coronavirus and SARS, Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome coronavirus. Coronaviruses are circulating in animals and some of these coronaviruses have the capability of transmitting between animals and humans. It is called a spillover event.
The first patient was detected in December 1st, 2019, a continuous customer of the seafood market. Since December, novel coronavirus has spread to more than 20 countries from the Chinese city of Wuhan. By the 9th of March 2020, a total of 110,000 people has been affected and more than 3,000 people died of the disease in mainland China. The virus was first announced by Li Wenliang a Chinese doctor from Wuhan Central Hospital in the 30th of December, but he was taken into the custody and forced to apologies for “spreading rumours”. He passed away in the 7th of February.
The spread of infectious diseases is invariably linked to travel. Today, tourism is a huge global business that accounts for 10.4 percent of global Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and 10 per cent of global employment. The impact on travel to and from China of this new coronavirus, however, has been devastating. Airlines, including Turkish Airlines, have cancelled all flights or significantly reduced the number of flights in and out of China. Russia closed its land border to passenger travel with China and Hong Kong shut down its borders, cross-border ferries and railways.
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2- Why more people died of CoronaVirus than SARS?
The 2003 SARS outbreak accounted for a drop in international tourist arrivals into China of almost 9.4 million and a loss of between $30 billion and $50 billion. Officials in China and those in the rest of the world have been much quicker to take more drastic action after learning bitter lessons from the SARS outbreak in 2003.
China was not nearly as well-connected in 2003 during the SARS outbreak. Large numbers of migrant workers now travel domestically and internationally to Africa, other parts of Asia and Latin America where China is making an enormous infrastructure push with its Belt and Road Initiative. This travel creates a high risk for outbreaks in countries with health systems that are not equipped to handle them, like Zimbabwe, which is facing a worsening hunger and economic crisis. Overall, China has about four times as many trains and air passengers as it did during the SARS outbreak.