Coronavirus cases TRIPLE in 3 days with more infected in China than SARS – as death toll hits 169
CASES of deadly coronavirus have tripled in just 3 days - with the strain infecting more people in China than SARS did.
It comes as the death toll reaches 169, and experts warn the outbreak of the new killer infection is likely to peak in 10 days.
Chinese health authorities reported that confirmed cases has hit 5,974 bringing the global total to more than 6,000 - up from 2,014 on Sunday, according to World Health Organization figures.
But Zhong Nanshan, from China's National Health Commission, warned: "I believe it should reach a peak in a week or around ten days."
He added that he doesn't expect the outbreak to "increase at a large scale" - despite the soar in case numbers.
During the SARS pandemic, between 2002 and 2003, the number of infections reached 5,327 in mainland China, where 349 people were also killed.
While some experts believe coronavirus is not as deadly as SARS, there are fears over it spreading quickly and key features are still unknown, including how lethal it really is.
Like other respiratory infections, it is spread by droplets from coughs and sneezes, with an incubation time from one to 14 days.
There are limited signs it may also be able to spread before symptoms show.
Contain it
The World Health Organisation (WHO) has said it is confident in China's ability to contain the coronavirus, but concern is mounting as cases continue to rise.
Last night, the death toll rose by 37 to 169 - almost all in the province of Hubei - where the virus emerged last month at an animal market in the capital, Wuhan.
The central province of about 60 million people is under virtual lockdown.
Concern is also growing over the impact of the virus on the world's second-biggest economy, with airlines cutting flights to China and global companies restricting employee travel there.
Vaccine trials
In what could be a major step towards reining in the disease, scientists in Australia said they had developed a lab-grown version of the coronavirus, the first to be recreated outside China.
Efforts are underway to find a vaccine, but even the most optimistic timelines suggest eight weeks to several months of scientific development before human clinical trials can begin.
By that time, hundreds more could have died and numerous other countries infected.
As infections spread and the number of cases rises, numerous countries are scrambling to get citizens out of Wuhan, while also hoping to keep the virus at bay.
The city, with a population of 11 million, is racing to build two dedicated hospitals for coronavirus victims, with the first 1,000-bed facility to be completed next week.
The capacity of the second will be expanded from 1,300 to 1,600 beds, the official Peoples Daily said.
It comes amid fears over a rise in coronavirus cases in patients who've never been to China.
Vietnam was the first country to report a positive coronavirus case spread to a person who hasn't been to China, the World Health Organisation confirmed at the weekend.
Since then there have been further cases of domestic human-to-human transmission in patients in Germany, Taiwan and Japan.
A taxi driver from Japan, who was driving tour groups of people visiting from Wuhan, where the virus originated, was among those to test positive for the bug.
Another included a man in Germany who had come into contact with a colleague who had travelled from China for a training course.
The virus has spread across China and to at least 16 countries globally after the initial outbreak in the city of Wuhan.
Its terrifying spread is being tracked across the globe on a live heat map charting where and when it has struck.
Experts at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore are using the interactive graphic to of coronavirus in "near real time."
The first death, that of a 50-year-old man, has now been recorded in Beijing, where the youngest case was also reported - a nine-year-old girl.
So far there have been no reported deaths from coronavirus outside of China.
Where did coronavirus start? From bats to snakes - the theories on deadly virus' origins
The killer coronavirus was spread from bats to snakes to humans, experts have claimed.
An outbreak of the virus is understood to have started at an open air fish market in the Chinese city of Wuhan - which has since been put in lockdown after 25 people died and more than 600 people were infected globally.
A new study published in the China Science Bulletin this week claimed that the new coronavirus shared a strain of virus found in bats.
Previous deadly outbreaks of SARS and Ebola were also believed to have originated in the flying mammal.
Experts had thought the new virus wasn't capable of causing an epidemic as serious as those outbreaks because its genes were different.
But this latest research appeared to prove otherwise - as scientists scrabble to produce a vaccine.
In a statement, the researchers said: “The Wuhan coronavirus’ natural host could be bats … but between bats and humans there may be an unknown intermediate."
Meanwhile, scientists at Peking University also claim that the deadly virus was passed to humans from bats - but say it was through a mutation in snakes.
The researchers said that the new strain is made up of a combination of one that affects bats and another unknown coronavirus.
They believe that combined genetic material from both bats and this unknown strain picked up a protein that allows viruses bind to certain host cells - including those of humans.
After analysing the genes of the strains the team found that snakes were susceptible to the most similar version of the coronavirus.
It meant that they likely provided a "reservoir" for the viral strain to grow stronger and replicate.
Snakes are sold at the Huanan Seafood Market in central Wuhan and may have jumped to other animals before passing to humans, they claim.
But a senior researcher at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, who asked not to be named, said the findings should be treated with caution.
He told the : “It is based on calculation by a computer model.
“Whether it will match what happens in real life is inconclusive.
“The binding protein is important, but it is just one of the many things under investigation. There may be other proteins involved.”
The expert believes that the new strain was an RNA virus, meaning that its mutation speed was 100 times faster than that of a DNA virus such as smallpox.
MORE ON CORONAVIRUS
British Airways announced it has halted all its flights to and from China - as the Government's urgent plans to evacuate Brits from the outbreak epicentre of Wuhan are being finalised.
The Government has advised against "all but essential" travel to mainland China due to the coronavirus outbreak.
Experts have warned the deadly bug will become a worldwide pandemic if governments do not impose heavy global travel bans.