UKC

One to watch very closely, I think...

The suspicion is that there are a lot more than the confirmed 62 cases in Wuhan, mostly supported by the numbers (though small) of confirmed cases in travellers (2 in Thailand, 1 in Japan, as of Friday last week). Colleagues at Imperial College have estimated somewhere between 427 and 4,471 infections. Clearly, if this is the case then it appears to be relatively mild compared to SARS, but suggests that human-to-human transmission is ongoing and sustained. Control is going to be very difficult if infection is largely sub-clinical (ie, people aren't sick enough to present to health-care services where they can be identified as a case). Even if the fatality rate is low (relative to SARS and MERS), if we see a big enough epidemic, it could still make a nasty impact.

I suspect we will see more cases in travellers to other countries, further investigations in Wuhan may reveal the true size of the outbreak, and we'll see outbreaks in other provinces in China. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019%E2%80%9320_outbreak_of_novel_coronavirus...

http://www.imperial.ac.uk/mrc-global-infectious-disease-analysis/news--wuha...

Forget it. Two confirmed deaths so far. Compare that to the current measles outbreaks in the DRC (thousands dead, much worse than Ebola) or Samoa.

CB

These kind of things are always worrying, but I worry more about flu - 500,000 deaths per year, every year.. 50 million deaths in the Spanish flu pandemic.

Given the NHS is now  under "winter" pressure all year, and there hasn't really been a proper flu outbreak since 2009, I dread to think what would happen here.

I'm not sure China agrees with you at the moment.

Some data:

​Relative Risk of Importing a case of 2019-nCoV

https://datastudio.google.com/reporting/e693c1f9-13fa-42f6-86e6-c637b159a74...

Looks like it, but I still think they are massively overreacting. Yes, in principle you want to stop any novel disease in its tracks, but at the moment measles and flu, two entirely preventable diseases, kill many more people even in the nCV affected areas. I have to travel to Shanghai for work in March, no idea whether that will work out...

CB

Listened to a number of virology experts on the Briefing Room speaking about this. They felt the largest risk to any UK persons was from moronic scaremongering causing people to absorb NHS time resulting in less time to deal with things that actually are a real risk.

Good point well made. Advances in monitoring/testing/diagnostics (don't know the correct jargon!) means that the days of "ignorance is bliss" are receding fast. Add current media habits into the equation and you have something akin to a storm in a teacup, especially when compared to other risks. However, I have not lost a close family member in the Wuhan province, so this might sound a bit heartless!