WHO Official Says Coronavirus Containment Remains Possible
Aylward led a fact-finding trip in China in February on behalf of the World Health Organization. He says the experience there altered his view of what can be done.
"They actually changed the course of a respiratory-borne outbreak without a vaccine, which was extraordinary," says Aylward. The number of daily new cases in China went from around 2,000 a day just a few weeks ago to less than 100 in recent days.
But Aylward says other countries may be taking the wrong lesson from China by attributing its success to the government's unprecedented restrictions of daily life in several cities, most famously Wuhan, the city of 11 million people where the outbreak began. There, the government has suspended transportation out of the city and for the most part required people to remain in their homes – with only brief forays permitted to stock up on food and other supplies.
"China has 31 provinces, thousands of cities," notes Aylward. "And it was only a few cities where they took those draconian measures. In the vast majority of them they ... really went back to fundamentals of public health."
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