Whether we classify the new coronavirus as a pandemic or not, the issue is serious. Its importance should not be minimized. In less than two months it has spread over several continents, but the virus doesn’t care what we call it. A pandemic implies a sustained, effective, continuous and simultaneous transmission of the disease in more than three different geographical regions. We may already be in that phase, but that is not synonymous with death, since the term does not refer to the lethality of the pathogen but to its transmissibility and geographical extension.<\/p>\n
We are undoubted suffering from a pandemic of fear. For the first time in history we are experiencing the evolution of an epidemic in real time: all the media, several times a day, every day, all over the planet, talk about the coronavirus. We follow live each case one by one. It has even been front-page news that in Brazil the virus has mutated three times!<\/p>\n
I insist: the issue is serious, but one of the first victims of the coronavirus in Spain has been the Ibex35<\/a>. You have to report what is happening, but we also need good news. Here are ten of them.<\/p>\n The first cases of AIDS were described in June 1981 and it took more than two years to identify the virus causing the disease. The first cases of severe pneumonia were reported in China on December 31, 2019 and by January 7 the virus had already been identified.<\/p>\n The genome was available on day 10. We already know that it is a new coronavirus of the group 2B, from the same family as SARS, which is why we have called it SARSCoV2. The disease is called COVID19.<\/p>\n It is related to coronavirus of bats. Genetic analyzes confirm that it has a recent natural origin (between the end of November and the beginning of December) and that, although viruses live by mutating, their frequency of mutation is not very high<\/a>.<\/p>\n A RT-PCR test to detect the virus<\/a> has been available to everyone as of January 13.<\/p>\n In recent months, these types of tests<\/a> have been perfected and their sensitivity and specificity evaluated.<\/p>\n The strong control and isolation measures imposed by China are paying off. For several weeks now, the number of diagnosed cases decreases every day.<\/p>\n #CoronaVirusUpdate<\/a> <\/p>\n Del total de casos en hospital, los sospechosos han bajado a ser s\u00f3lo el 2.4% y la cantidad (36,271) ha disminuido a ser pr\u00e1cticamente la mitad del m\u00e1ximo del 8 de febrero (66,193). pic.twitter.com\/Q4NxsV63av<\/a><\/p>\n — Alfonso Araujo (@Alf_ArGzz) March 1, 2020<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n
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