World currently 'not in a pandemic' of China virus

GENEVA/ BEIJING — The World Health Organisation said Tuesday that the outbreak of the deadly novel coronavirus, which has spread from China to two dozen countries, does not yet constitute a "pandemic".

"Currently we are not in a pandemic," Sylvie Briand, head of WHO's Global Infectious Hazard Preparedness division, told reporters in Geneva.

Instead, she said, "we are at the phase where it is an epidemic with multiple foci".

The disease has killed more than 425 people and infected a further 20,000 in China, nearly all of them in central Hubei province — the epicentre of the outbreak — and spread to two-dozen countries since it emerged in December.

Briand said that while there is rapid spread of transmission in Hubei, the cases outside the province are mainly "spillover cases" with sporadic clusters of transmission.

At the same time, authorities in China have taken dramatic measures to halt transmission, while other affected countries have also taken steps to avoid the spread of the virus.

"We hope that based on those measures in Hubei but also in other places where we have had spill-over, we can stop transmission and get rid of this virus," she said.

Hundreds of empty beds lined an exhibition centre converted into a make-shift hospital at the epicentre of China's deadly virus epidemic on Tuesday, awaiting coronavirus patients.

Authorities are scrambling to provide facilities, beds and medical treatment for an influx of sick people in Wuhan in central Hubei province, the ground-zero of China's fight against the virus.

State media said the converted exhibition centre, along with a nearby gymnasium, will house an extra 3,400 beds and provide "emergency treatment and clinical testing" for those infected with the virus in Wuhan.

Other coronavirus patients began arriving on Tuesday at a field hospital in Wuhan built from scratch in under two weeks, state media said, following a round-the-clock construction marathon that became a national social media sensation.

Fifty patients arrived at the military-run facility, the state-backed China Daily reported, with images showing workers in protective suits pushing people in wheelchairs up a ramp and into the pre-fabricated structure.

As reports surfaced of bed shortages in hospitals in Wuhan, construction began on Huoshenshan — “Fire God Mountain” in Chinese — on Friday January 24.

Workers toiled day and night amid a forest of earthmovers and trucks carting materials around the site, southwest of the centre of the city of 11 million.

On the side of one of the trucks, the isolated city’s new rallying cry — “Let’s go Wuhan!” — was written on a banner.

Leishenshan (“Thunder God Mountain”), another hospital on an adjacent site, is set to start admitting patients on Thursday, with 1,600 beds.

Fire and thunder are traditionally associated in China with protection against illnesses.