The Wuhan-borne coronavirus has finally received an official name, while the definition of a “case” has also had a makeover. Yet, worries persist that there may be many, many more infected than we realise.
Finally, the World Health Organisation (WHO) has come up with a standardised name for the coronavirus; Covid-19. Until now, the viral infection was going by a variety of names, The Nanjinger having previously opted for 19-nCoV. China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs is continuing its preference for NCP (Novel Coronavirus Pneumonia), probably on account it is easier to say.
WHO Director General, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, spoke at a press conference on 11 February to explain the reasoning behind the name. He said, “Under agreed guidelines between WHO, the World Organisation for Animal Health and the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations, we had to find a name that did not refer to a geographical location, an animal, an individual or group of people, and which is also pronounceable and related to the disease”.
Surge in Reported Covid-19 Cases
An additional 242 fatalities and 14,840 cases of the virus were announced by health authorities in Hubei Province yesterday. The latter represents an increase of 31.4 percent on the day before.
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Such a sudden rise put an end to the near-constant decline in the percentage increase of new cases each day.
The surge in cases has been widely explained by media worldwide. In an article published by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, it said, “According to experts, the number of newly confirmed cases of the novel coronavirus pneumonia (NCP) on 12 February released by Hubei Province increased significantly because it included the 13,332 cases confirmed by clinical diagnosis. This new diagnosis standard will contribute to the targeted treatment of previously unconfirmed cases as well as the overall epidemic control.”
With the new definition in place, numbers today had returned to their trend of showing a continuous decline in the percentage increase. There were 9.7 percent more fatalities reported today.
Covid-19 Cases Hiding in Plain Sight
While the trend gives reason to be optimistic, there remain concerns that there may be many more cases that we just don’t know about.
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Asha George is Executive Director at the privately-funded Bipartisan Commission on Biodefense in the USA. She put some numbers on these possible hidden cases.
George spoke at a US Senate hearing on Wednesday. CNN reports she remarked that in American public health schools, students are taught to assume they are partially in the dark and to account for such unknown cases.
“We’re often taught to multiply by seven or eight times what you’ve been told”, she said. “For every one case you see, there are seven or eight out there that you don’t”, she explained. “So that means actually we’d be looking at hundreds of thousands of cases. I think that’s the scale at which we should be planning.”
