Difficulties in fighting against the novel coronavirus pneumonia

00:43

New research based on more than 1000 coronavirus patients in China found that the incubation period for the novel coronaviruspneumonia can be as long as24 days —10 days longer than what experts previously thought, and lessthan half of the patients showed fever symptoms when they first saw doctors.

The research was co-authored by Doctor Zhong Nanshan, a leading adviserto the Chinese authoritiesin tackling the current coronavirus crisis.

CGTN Senior Correspondent Tian Wei asked expertsabout the difficulties in both scientificresearch and in responding to the crisis.

When asked why there is no vaccine developed since the SARS epidemic, Jonas Schmidt-Chanasit, professor of arbovirology at the University of Hamburg, said, "Resources are limited. The cases of SARS and MERS are limited... Meanwhile,there are other pathogens that we need to care about, like Ebola and Zika.And that's why we don't have vaccines available for the current novel coronavirus.”

However, he also saidscientists can draw on what has been learnedfrom the SARS outbreak 17 years agoanduse the experience to develop a vaccine faster and bring it into clinical studies.

02:23

As of Tuesday morning, the total number of confirmed cases in China have surpassed 42,000. The death toll stands at over 1,000, and more than 4,000 people have recovered. Still, numerous peopleacross the country have been affected, and many of them have toself-quarantineat home.

To ramp up the efforts to contain the spreadof the virus,China implemented a four-tiered management systeminHubei Province where the epidemic began.

Suspected cases are first tested in the local community health center, confirmed patients with lighter symptoms willbetransferredto makeshift hospitals, thosewithmore severe symptoms are sent to the Huoshenshan orLeishenshanhospitals, while the most critical patients will go to specialized top-tier hospitals, said Xi Chen, assistant professor of health policy and economics at Yale School of Public Health and presidentof the China Health Policy and Management Society.

He said some of the more significant challenges community health centers face is that many of those who have caught the virus are not displaying symptoms, and the tests may not be standardized, which makes it hard to identify the patients.

China has tried to strengthenthecapacity of community-level health centers during itshealthcare reform in the last decade. However,according to Chen, big hospitals have more resources, and people trust them more,so understaffingat local community health centers is an issue,which increases difficulties in testing people suspected of contracting the virus.

Meanwhile, a major bottleneck has been a shortage of nucleic acid testing kits.

"At this very difficult moment, I would say that they may need to try multiple ways (to speed up testing). For example, I know that CT scans are more appropriate in testing them.But there is a shortage in medical supplies (as well)," Chen said.

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Time (GMT): 1415, 2015

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