In the past week China launched a battle against an epidemic of a new coronavirus which emerged in Wuhan, capital of Hubei province. There are now close to 6,000 cases of the infection reported in China and about 64 abroad, none of them in Belgium. France and Germany both have reported four cases. So far, 132 people have died, all of them in China, 126 in Hubei province and 6 in other cities in China. There are also more than 7,000 suspected cases. But some research suggests there may be 44,000 people infected in Wuhan. The U.S. and Japan already evacuated some of their citizens from Wuhan, the epicenter of the outbreak, and other countries are preparing to follow. British Airways already canceled all flights between the UK and China scheduled for January and February.

The Chinese government took drastic measures to limit the spread of the epidemic. On January 23, Wuhan – a city of 11 million inhabitants and about 3 million migrants – was put in lockdown. All transport – subways, buses, trains – has been suspended. Private cars are no longer permitted to be driven on the streets without a special permit. Everybody venturing in public is required to wear a face mask. “To my knowledge, trying to contain a city of 11 million people is new to science,” Gauden Galea, the World Health Organization’s Representative in China, told the Associated Press in an interview at the WHO’s Beijing office. “It has not been tried before as a public health measure. We cannot at this stage say it will or it will not work.”

Air traffic in Hubei province has also been suspended and the borders with other provinces largely sealed. In Beijing, Shanghai and other cities long-distance bus services have been canceled. About 18 cities in China with a total population of 56 million people are under lockdown with all transport in and out of the cities and also within the cities suspended to prevent the spread of the novel coronavirus epidemic.

The Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party has set up a special leading group – headed by Premier Li Keqiang – to direct the fight against the epidemic. Premier Li visited Wuhan in the past days. Two special hospitals with 1,300 and 1,000 beds are being build in record time to care for victims of the epidemic. They are expected to be put into service by the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) on February 4. More than 4,000 medical personnel have arrived in Hubei from all over China to assist in local hospitals. Producers of protective gear, such as suits and gloves, have been ordered to keep on producing through the Spring Festival holiday to ensure sufficient supplies. Practically all activities to celebrate the Chinese New Year have been canceled and tourist spots – including the Forbidden City and the Great Wall in Beijing – have been closed to the public.

On 31 December 2019, Chinese authorities alerted the World Health Organization (WHO) to the outbreak of a novel coronavirus called 2019-nCoV. The new strain was subsequently isolated from a patient on 7 January 2020. On 21 January, the WHO suggested there was possible sustained human-to-human transmission. Most cases from the initial cluster had links to the Huanan South China Seafood Market were live wild animals were sold. The exact origin of the virus is still unknown, but scientists have pointed to fruit bats and snakes.

WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus held meetings in Beijing with Chinese health authorities on January 27, but the organization has so far not declared the coronavirus outbreak a “public health emergency of international concern”. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention(CDC), however, have upgraded their travel warning to Level 3 – the highest warning level – which means they advise to avoid all unnecessary travel to China, as the outbreak is of “high risk to travelers and no precautions are available to protect against the identified increased risk”.

Compared to the SARS outbreak in 2002-2003, the 2019-nCoV virus seems to be spreading faster, but the mortality rate is lower. While SARS killed 9.6% of those infected – 774 of 8,098 cases worldwide – the mortality rate in mainland China is now 2.4% and in Hubei province 3.7%. It took almost four months for SARS to spread to 1,000 people, but the Wuhan coronavirus has infected more than 1,200 people in just 25 days. In the case of SARS it took four months for authorities to implement the first quarantine measures; this time it took only 23 days, and the measures were much more drastic.

“At a conservative estimate, the scale of infection may eventually be 10 times higher than SARS,” Guan Yi, Virology Professor at the University of Hong Kong, told Caixin. Guan Yi is also Director of the State Key Laboratory of Emerging Infectious Diseases and was on the team that first identified SARS. He recently visited Wuhan to investigate the coronavirus outbreak. “I’ve experienced so much and I never felt scared. Most of them are controllable. But this time I’m afraid,” he said.

According to China’s National Health Commission (NHC), “respiratory droplet transmission is the main route of transmission”, but the virus can also be transmitted through close contact. It added that “based on current epidemiological investigations, the incubation period is generally 3 to 7 days, with the longest no more than 14 days”.

So far there is no vaccine or cure, and this could still take several months to develop. Scientists at several universities and institutes in the U.S. and China, including the University of Texas and Shanghai’s Fudan University – and also at the KUL in Leuven – are working to develop a vaccine for the virus. An initial study shows the elderly may more easily become infected, while minors are less sensitive to it, according to Gao Fu, Director of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention. To minimize the risk of infection, quarantine is the most drastic measure. Attention to personal hygiene is very important, including wearing a face mask and gloves when going outside, frequently washing hands, and also avoiding touching the eyes and mouth.

Concerns are also mounting about the economic toll from the outbreak as Wuhan is a major transport hub, also called the “thoroughfare of China” and a major engine of economic growth. Major car and steel producers are located in the city. Wuhan’s GDP growth was 7.8% in 2019, 1.7 percentage points higher than the national average. “The economic impact for China – and potentially elsewhere – will be significant if the virus continues to spread,” the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) said in a report. The virus could shave between 0.5 to 1 percentage point of China’s gross domestic product growth (GDP) this year against a baseline forecast of 5.9%, the EIU said. More than 300 of the world’s top 500 companies have a presence in the city.

The China-focused research group Plenum predicted that the effects of disease control policies could see “economic growth slow by as much as four percentage points” in the first quarter. The government has decided to extend the New Year public holiday by three days till February 2. The transport sector is poised to see “huge losses”, Plenum said, noting that the volume of airline and railway transport declined by 40% year-on-year on the first day of the Lunar New Year. If that decline extends for the week, the two transit industries will lose 6.4% of annual revenue, or CNY64 billion, the South China Morning Post reports.