Hong Kong, Macao, Taiwan, South Korea, Singapore, and Malaysia are on alert and stepping up precautionary measures to prevent an outbreak of a mysterious illness from China, Nikkei Asian Review has reported.
The report stated that stricter health control at borders and temperature screenings on all flights from Wuhan, in China’s central Hubei Province, where the outbreak reportedly originated, have been put in place.
Officials said 44 cases of “viral pneumonia of unknown origin” have been documented in Wuhan. Chinese officials also reported there were 11 patients that have remained in critical condition with respiratory tract infection symptoms, including fever and breathing difficulty.
Yuen Kwok-yung, a microbiologist at the University of Hong Kong was quoted in the same report saying that the viral infection in Wuhan appeared to be similar to the 1997 outbreak of bird flu and severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) epidemic in China.
He added that there are chances that other animals also carried the virus in this latest outbreak.
In a separate report, the Wuhan Municipal Health commission said most of the patients worked in a seafood wholesale market.
All of them have been held in isolation and their close contacts are under medical observation.
Initial lab tests showed there was “no apparent human-to-human transmission”.
