Health service prepared in case of coronavirus

The likelihood of a case of the new coronavirus emerging in Ireland is “quite low”, the director of the HSE’s Health Protection Surveillance Centre has said.

Health service prepared in case of coronavirus

The likelihood of a case of the new coronavirus emerging in Ireland is “quite low”, the director of the HSE’s Health Protection Surveillance Centre has said.

John Cuddihy said Ireland had no direct flights to Wuhan in China where the outbreak is thought to have originated.

“If we were to see a case in a European country the risk of a secondary case — a person transmitting to somebody else — is also low,” said Dr Cuddihy.

HSE assistant national director of public health and child health Kevin Kelleher said there had been a “massive” change in how China reacted.

During the outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome (Sars) the Chinese did not talk about it and did not have the systems in place to deal with it, said Dr Kelleher.

Now they were being “utterly open” about the novel coronavirus outbreak and some of the measures taken were “phenomenally” strong, he said.

Dr Cuddihy said testing for the virus was available at the National Virus Reference Laboratory and the current turnaround time of 24 hours was likely to be shortened over the next few days.

He said most of the information from the World Health Organisation and the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control was showing that there was very limited human-to-human transmission.

Dr Kelleher said no one had yet been tested for coronavirus because it was possible to establish from a person’s travel history that they were not at risk.

However, the health service was prepared if cases did arise.

Dr Cuddihy said earlier indications were that the virus was causing a milder illness than previous Sars and Middle Eastern respiratory syndrome (Mers), also known as camel flu.

“The fatality rate for this novel coronavirus so far is about 2% whereas in Sars it was 10% and in Mers it was 30%,” said Dr Cuddihy.

“That initial data, combined with the fact that all of the cases to date have been associated with being in Wuhan City gives us an indication as to why the risk in Ireland specifically is still low.”

Meanwhile, there have been 52 deaths from flu so far this season. About 80% of those who died were aged 65 and older.

There have been 3,083 people hospitalised with flu, with 103 admitted to intensive care.

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