A little over a week ago healthcare workers in Wuhan, a city in central China, first noticed some unusual viral infection in 4 men, who worked in a local meat market, the symptoms were nearly identical to SARS and that scared them, and they immediately alerted the health department, the authorities took emergency measures but the culture of secrecy and the red tape in Beijing made it impossible for them to quickly issues a city-wide health emergency alert.

It took authorities in Beijing a week to realize how serious it was (the delay of just one week made all the difference) thousands of people from Wuhan traveled all over China and the world spreading infection, the first cases of infection outside of China started to appear in Europe, Japan, Hong Kong and around the world and that prompted World Health Organization to issues a global health emergency.

So far 6 cases of infection are reported in the USA, all of the infected arrived from Wuhan - and one case of human-to-human transfer was reported – the most scariest scenario is the human to human transfer and that has prompted a travel ban from the USA and around the world. There are currently no specific drugs or vaccines available for the Virus, hospitals are using combination of antiviral drugs to treat patients, while labs around the world working 24/7 to identify the genetic sequence of the virus and develop a vaccine, one of the labs that are at the forefront of these efforts is in San Diego, and could be among the first to develop a vaccine, the chief of the vaccine research said that the vaccine may be ready by summer of 2020.

source: WHO, WSJ, OxBridge Research, Daily Stock Deals

Editor Daily Stock Deals