Dozens of residents of Wuhan, the capital of Hubei province in China, have been hospitalized with an unidentified virus causing pneumonia-like symptoms.
Chinese health officials have no idea how the virus is spreading or where it originated, but experts are tracking the outbreak in an effort to stop the spread of the virus.
According to the South China Morning Post, the disease is called "unknown pneumonia," although this is not accurate. It appears that many of those infected with the virus worked in the seafood industry and were reportedly employed at outlets in the Huanan seafood market.
Because of this disease, at least seven people were in serious condition, which, of course, is a little scary. Fortunately, the unidentified virus has not yet claimed lives.
According to the Wuhan Department of Health, at least a couple of those hospitalized have recovered to the point that they have been discharged from the ward and are now being held in quarantine pending further testing.
Based on what Chinese health officials were able to figure out, none of the infections were the result of transmission from one person to another. None of the doctors in the hospital staff who treated the patients contracted this disease. All this suggests that infected people were in contact with the virus at their workplace.
Officials are still working to sort out this cryptic outbreak, although at this point it seems they have a pretty good idea of where to look.
Detecting the virus is a top priority, according to reports from the Wuhan Department of Health, and tests are underway to narrow down the list of suspected candidates.
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Editorial comment
China is a huge country, with a population of under two billion people, so if ten people there fell ill with some kind of pneumonia, it’s nothing. However, the name of pneumonia is strange: there is no "unknown pneumonia" in diagnoses. Moreover, there two people seemed to come to their senses, but they were placed in quarantine, which is also strange. Furthermore.
When a person enters a clinic and is diagnosed with pneumonia, it is only in the Mayo Brothers Clinic or in the NATO military hospital that they will bother with a detailed examination and bacterial culture. Everywhere, especially in some Wuhan, they are treated with a conveyor belt, and only if a standard antibiotic does not help, then they start looking. Sometimes.
Hence, in order to single out a certain group of people from the general mass of patients, and to give them a general diagnosis, even a diagnosis of "unknown pneumonia", there must be some general symptoms. What kind?
And then we, not really trusting the Chinese press, went to read the press in Hong Kong - what if something was written there? And as it turned out, Hong Kong is now on its ears and university and other experts have been invited to follow the situation. Meanwhile, this glorious city of Wuhan is a thousand kilometers from Hong Kong.
According to an official notice sent to Hong Kong, there are 27 hospitalized with symptoms resembling SARS (SARS) and bird flu.
At the same time, there is still some noise in Chinese social networks, which raises the question: can 27 people raise a noise in China's social networks? Well, only if half of the relatives are famous bloggers - then maybe. But since we are talking about ordinary people, it takes not 27 people to raise a noise on social networks, but a little more. At least a couple hundred, if not a couple thousand.
Therefore, we are most likely talking about some kind of serious outbreak of pneumonia caused by some unknown pathogen. For example, the mutated bird flu or the mutated swine fever, which has already destroyed more than half of the population in China. In general, situations can be different, so we follow the development of events.