Scientists in Australia have become the first to recreate the new coronavirus outside of China in what they have called a "significant breakthrough".
The discovery will be shared with the World Health Organization (WHO) in the hope it may help efforts to find to diagnose and treat the virus.
There are at least 47 cases confirmed in 15 other countries, including in Thailand, France, the US and Australia. No deaths have been reported outside China.
Researchers at a specialist lab in Melbourne, Australia, said they were able to grow a copy of the virus from an infected patient. The sample was sent to them last Friday.
"We've planned for an incident like this for many, many years and that's really why we were able to get an answer so quickly," said Dr Mike Catton of the Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity.
Doctors said the copy could be used as "control material" for testing and "will be a game changer for diagnosis". That could involve an early-diagnosis test which could detect the virus in people who have not displayed symptoms.
"An antibody test will enable us to retrospectively test suspected patients so we can gather a more accurate picture of how widespread the virus is, and consequently, among other things, the true mortality rate," said Dr Catton. "It will also assist in the assessment of effectiveness of trial vaccines."
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-51289897
Misinformation is running rampant. One conspiracy I saw said that the virus escaped from China's highest level lab which is in Wuhan and holds the worlds deadliest diseases. No evidence just rumors.
https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-trending-51271037
Interview with top US health officials.
The four officials — HHS Secretary Alex Azar; CDC Director Dr. Robert Redfield; Dr. Nancy Messonnier, director of CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases; and Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases — stressed that the situation is fluid but outlined what is known and still unknown about the virus.
The CDC has already created a diagnostic test, although public health officials are working on faster tests that can be widely disseminated to hospitals so patients can be rapidly diagnosed. Fauci said a vaccine could start human trials in as little as three months, but that’s just the first step in a longer journey to establishing that the vaccine is safe and effective. He noted that it’s possible the outbreak could end before a vaccine is available, but “we are proceeding as if we will have to deploy a vaccine.”
New drugs will take longer to develop, although there are already studies underway based on drugs that were tested earlier for SARS and MERS, which are also coronaviruses. Other compounds are being screened to see if they can target this virus. (There are drugs that can help treat pneumonia symptoms and support seriously ill patients, but that’s not the same thing as a cure for this virus.) Azar said the HHS branch responsible for emergency preparedness and response is assessing whether the Strategic National Stockpile, the largest national repository of emergency treatments, has adequate medical supplies.
China has said there “may be evidence” of asymptomatic transmission but U.S. scientists want to get a better look at that data. That's one big reason Redfield said the U.S. wants to get CDC experts on the ground in China.
“We’re watching closely,” for such transmission, Messonnier said. Fauci also emphasized that even if there is some transmission among people not experiencing symptoms, everything scientists know about coronaviruses strongly suggests that it would not be what propels an epidemic. “The driver of outbreaks is always a symptomatic person,” Fauci said “An epidemic is not driven by asymptomatic carriers.”
Another unanswered question. China has reported 4,500 cases and slightly more than 100 deaths. That’s a high mortality rate, but we don't know if the reported cases are an accurate representation of the outbreak. It's possible there are many more people with far milder cases — so mild that they haven’t even gone to seek treatment. In that case, the fatality rate would be much lower.
Azar said our perception of the virus can be skewed by these earliest cases, since we're looking at the sickest subset of people who have been exposed. “One challenge is that, with an emerging virus like this, our current assessments are based on an uncertain denominator,” he said. Early reports also indicate that patients who are most at risk of severe disease or death are older or have other health conditions.
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/01/2 ... lth-108197
There is a report that China will allow World Health Organization into the country.
"Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts." - Daniel Patrick Moynihan