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A worldwide 2019-nCoV coronavirus is “inevitable” according to Gabriel Leung, Dean of the Li Ka Shing Faculty of Medicine of the University of Hong Kong.

Speaking at a press conference earlier this week, Professor Leung said that without “substantial, draconian measures limiting population mobility” – by which he means a lockdown even more rigorous than the one already in force in central China – major outbreaks of the virus outside China “may become inevitable”.

Cases have been confirmed in 23 countries, most of them in mainland China but there are handfuls of cases in the UK, France, the US and Italy.

The total number of confirmed cases is approaching 10,000, and 213 are known to have died as a result of the infection.

So far, only 187 coronavirus victims have recovered. This is one of the sources of concern for virologists seeking to contain the epidemic: SARS killed 11% of cases, and so far the Wuhan virus has killed just over 2.3%. But as yet most victims are still fighting the illness and their fate is hard to predict.

Leung’s team estimates that the death rate could be as high as 14%

Leung believes that the virus is not only deadlier than SARS, but more widespread. He said in his press conference that he believes there are many more infected than current figures suggest.

In Wuhan alone, he estimates, there are probably 25,000 sick and another 19,000 carrying the virus but not yet showing symptoms.

(Image: PA)

Predicting the spread of an epidemic depends on working out how many people the average carrier will infect. Calculating this figure, called R0 by virologists, is proving particularly tricky in the case of coronavirus.

David Fisman at the University of Toronto in Canada, says that current figures for coronavirus “don’t fit” and there must be many more cases out there.

(Image: DIEGO AZUBEL/EPA-EFE/REX)

He told New Scientist that suspects that the recent sudden rise the number of in cases is mostly due to improved case finding and diagnosis. He also suspects that people who only suffer mild symptoms who don’t seek treatment will still add to the epidemic by transmitting the virus.

With no firm date on when a vaccine may be available, the only way to limit the spread of the virus is by spotting and quarantining people who are infected.

(Image: MINISTRY OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS SINGAPORE/HANDOUT/EPA-EFE/REX)

That may not be possible. A report yesterday in the New England Journal of Medicine says that an unnamed Shanghai woman passed the virus to business colleagues in Germany before she showed any symptoms.

If that is confirmed it is, as David Fisman says, a “game changer.”