The Chinese authorities are facing a literal life or death race against the novel coronavirus, according to the man who helped tackle Ebola forty years ago.
"Time is precious. In an epidemic, when you control it early on, you can prevent not only a few cases, but every single subsequent contagion," Peter Piot, a Belgian microbiologist who helped to discover and contain the Ebola virus in 1976, told CGTN.
"In an epidemic, you know, when you can control it early on, you prevent not only a few cases but every single subsequent contagion, so, time is very of the upmost importance and having the system, good laboratories and all that, that's one thing. Then, transparency, because you cannot hide anything, you've seen it with SARS, but today it is much better, transparency, in the community, so communication about it, explaining to people. But you also have to take important measures depending on the mode of transmission.
"The new virus we don't know all this, but we know it's respiratory, you know you have to isolate people, washing your hands is usually extremely important, it can be closing down a market. So all these measures have to be put in place but for me, the key is then communication, explanation.”
Speaking at last week's World Economic Forum in Davos, Piot continued "At the moment, there are so many unknowns that it is very hard to predict where we will go, but I think it's safe to say that we can't take the risk of not acting, and so that we should assume that this is going to become a very big epidemic and therefore we need to act early and if we act now we may prevent this wider epidemic.
"Transparency, communication about it and working together not only within the country but also internationally because there are cases everywhere and exchanging that information is going to be absolutely crucial but [we] cannot be complacent.”
Despite the danger from the virus, a bigger risk for Europe right not is that citizens panic, according to Josep Jansa, Principal Expert for Emergency, Preparedness and Response at the European Center for Disease Control. If healthy people become concerned and flock to hospitals for reassurance, they risk aiding the disease's spread, he said.
He also offered key advice for preventing the spread of coronavirus.
"The people that are in Europe or people that are outside of the affected zones, they have to be very calm, there is not an issue if you have not had contact with someone that has traveled to the affected areas so there is no reason, there is no way for worrying the general population at the current stage.... The main driver of the cases is contact with the affected zones in Wuhan and other areas in China."
"Nonetheless, in the recommendations that we are putting in our risk assessment, we recommend as usual to take precautionary measures as hygiene, avoiding contact with someone that is coughing and also avoiding contact with animals with wet markets. Those are general recommendations that in any case are good to take into account.