January 30, 2020

American English editionIssue Number 372

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Platypus numbers warning

Middle-East peace plan presentation

Devil’s Footprints

Libya conflict ceasefire conference

Solar cycle 25 begins

Ghent Altarpiece restoration surprise

Martin Luther King holiday

Snowball Earth ending impact crater?

100 seconds to midnight

Pacific seabird die-off study

Switzerland’s Davos

Predator-prey fossil

Iridescent beetle experiments

Origin self-driving shuttle prototype

75th Auschwitz Holocaust Remembrance

Cheetah court ruling

Glossary Crossword and Wordsearch Puzzle

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Police officer in Beijing, China’s capital city, wearing protective respiratory mask

The World Health Organization (WHO) is part of the United Nations (U.N.). Based in Switzerland, it advises govern-ments about health care. Currently, Tedros Adhanom is the organization’s direc tor-general, or leader. He is from Ethiopia.

On January 30, Mr. Tedros made an announcement. He declared that the spread of a new coronavirus was a “pub-lic health emergency of international concern”. The virus originated in the city of Wuhan, in China. Chinese officials first informed the WHO about the virus one month ago. Ten days later, a person infected with it died. They were the first to do so.

Coronaviruses are a group, or family, of viruses. They cause diseases in mam-mals and birds. In humans, coronaviruses affect the respiratory (or breathing) tract. This is the inside of the nose, the wind-pipe (or trachea) and the lungs. Most of

these infections are mild. They include the common cold. Yet, some can be dead-ly. The SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) virus is one of the fatal ones. Medical experts believe that the new cor-onavirus is similar to SARS. However, so far, it seems to be less dangerous.

A SARS outbreak occurred 18 years ago. It also began in China. Over nine months, 8,000 people caught SARS. Around ten percent, or 800, died. The deaths occurred in 17 countries. The ma-jority of fatalities were in China. People over 65 who had SARS were most at risk.

SARS is an airborne virus. It is spread in small droplets of saliva. An infected person can cough or sneeze them into the air. The virus is spread from person-to-person by breathing in the droplets. Some-one with the virus can transmit it indi-rectly by touching surfaces, such as door handles, with unwashed hands. Another

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January 30, 2020 Newsademic.com™ – American English Cover Story edition page 2

person who touches the same sur-face can then become infected.

No one has had SARS, anywhere in the world, since 2004. Isolation halted its spread. People with SARS and those who they had been near were quarantined. They were kept in buildings away from everyone else. This stopped them from transmit-ting the virus to others. Once they had recovered, or were shown not to have the virus, they were “released”.

A few years ago, Chinese sci-entists tracked the SARS virus. It seems to have come from civets or bats that are found in the Chinese province of Yunnan. Civets are small mammals. Like the common cold, there is no SARS cure. Work to develop a vaccine continues.

When a new coronavirus ap-pears, it is given a temporary name. The latest one has been designated, or labeled, 2019-nCoV. Some peo-ple refer to it as the “Wuhan virus”.

Coronaviruses have a bright ring around their central part. It is visible when the virus is viewed with a pow-erful microscope. The bright ring around the Sun is called the corona. This is from where the viruses get their name. The Sun’s corona is best seen during total solar eclipses. These astronomical events occur when the Moon covers the face of the Sun.

Wuhan is the capital of Hubei. This province is in central China. Eleven million people live in the city and surrounding area. The first

people who caught the virus had all visited the Wuhan seafood mar-ket. Land animals such as rabbits, pheasants, deer, bats, and snakes are also sold at the market. Some Chinese people buy these animals to eat. Scientists are yet to trace where the virus came from. However, soon after it emerged, Chinese officials shut the market and banned the sale of all the animals.

The symptoms of the new virus are the same as SARS: breathing difficulties, coughing and fever, or high temperature. As more people in Wuhan became ill, the authorities had to make a difficult decision.

Preparations for Chinese New Year began on January 17. Also known as the Spring Festival, it lasts for seven to ten days. The New Year is the country’s most important holiday. Over one billion people live in China. Many visit their families at this time of year. Millions of people travel on trains and buses. The start and the end of the Spring Festival is the larg-est movement of people all at one time anywhere in the world. Some Chinese people choose to fly to other countries for the holiday. Crowded buses, trains and planes can quickly spread the virus “far and wide”.

The Chinese authorities ordered that nobody should leave Wuhan. All trains and buses were canceled. The city’s residents were told to stay at home and to not move around. Everyone was advised not to travel.

During the SARS outbreak, many people caught the virus by go-ing to hospitals. The authorities an-nounced that two temporary hospi-tals in Wuhan would be built. They will be only for people with the vi-rus. The hospitals will be completed within several weeks. Elsewhere in China, New Year celebrations and all gatherings have been canceled.

A person with SARS could only pass, or shed, the virus when the symptoms began. The new vi-rus is different. People can pass it on before any symptoms appear. Therefore, they can be “infectious”, without knowing it, for as long as 14 days. By the January 20, other countries began to announce cases of the new virus. Those with the in-fection had all traveled from China or been in contact with people who had. International airline companies then halted all their flights to and from China.

On January 30, Chinese officials said that the virus had spread to all the country’s provinces. The WHO confirmed that around 9,000 people in 17 countries are known to have the virus. The 200 who have died were all in China. The number of infections has already surpassed SARS. Almost all the people with the virus are in China. Most are in Hubei province. The great majority will recover.

Mr. Tedros praised the Chinese authorities for their efforts to contain the virus. The public emergency was declared because the WHO is wor-ried about poorer, or less developed, countries. These nations lack good healthcare facilities. If the virus were to reach them, Mr. Tedros explained, it would be difficult to control. 

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2019-nCoV as seen through a powerful microscope