COVID-19, Turning into an Uncontrollable 'Disease X'... Not Detectable by Thermal Scanning

[Image source=EPA Yonhap News]

[Asia Economy Beijing=Correspondents Sunmi Park and Hyunwoo Lee] There are growing concerns that the novel coronavirus infection (COVID-19) might become the 'Disease X'?a deadly virus warned about by the World Health Organization (WHO) in 2018. The virus has evolved into one that is difficult to predict and control, as cases have emerged where patients with mild symptoms suddenly worsen and die, hence the 'X' designation. However, attention is focused on whether the spread of the virus will slow down as Chinese authorities have announced the commencement of full-scale diagnostic sample and vaccine development.

According to Bloomberg on the 23rd (local time), Marion Koopmans, head of the Department of Viroscience at Erasmus Medical Center in the Netherlands and a global authority on viruses, recently stated in the American scientific journal Cell that "COVID-19 is becoming the first pandemic comparable to Disease X." Unlike Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), a virus similar to COVID-19, it is impossible to detect confirmed cases by measuring fever, patients admitted with mild symptoms have died from acute sepsis, and infections occur even without symptoms, showing completely different patterns from existing viruses.

The fatality rate of COVID-19 announced by the Chinese National Health Commission on the 20th is 2.3%, which is much lower than the 9.5% recorded for SARS. However, unlike SARS, there have been cases of death among people with very mild or no symptoms. Linfa Wang, a professor at Duke-NUS Medical School in Singapore, explained, "Even Dr. Li Wenliang, an ophthalmologist in Wuhan who first warned about the dangers of COVID-19 and later died, was known to be in good health before infection at the young age of 34, and his initial symptoms were also very mild."

As the number of daily confirmed cases in China has dropped below 1,000 and the spread of COVID-19 has begun to slow, Chinese authorities are accelerating the development of diagnostic reagents and vaccines. According to the Chinese state-run Global Times, Zhong Nanshan, a top authority on respiratory diseases and an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, stated that government authorities are speeding up the approval of diagnostic drugs that can confirm COVID-19 infection.

Zhong said, "The National Medical Products Administration of China has approved several effective drugs for diagnosing COVID-19 infection," adding, "Among the approved reagents is a special drug developed by Beijing-based pharmaceutical company CapitalBio that can distinguish between COVID-19 and common influenza infections." The day before, the Ministry of Science and Technology of Zhejiang Province also announced that a genetically recombinant adenovirus vaccine has recently entered the animal testing phase. Xu Nanping, Vice Minister of the Ministry of Science and Technology of China, said, "Clinical trial applications for the COVID-19 vaccine could be possible as early as late April."