So are these efforts enough, or is the world witnessing the start of a global epidemic?

This is inside story.

Hello and welcome to the program.

I'm Mohammed Jamjoom.

China's reporting People with Corona virus outside the epicenter of the outbreak have now died.

This as health authorities fear around the world, the infection rate could increase during what's usually China's busiest travel period of the year.

Hundreds of millions of Chinese air preparing to celebrate the Lunar New Year.

Although Beijing has canceled all public celebrations and as the death toll rises, more countries are taking their own precautions.

Scott Heidler has more from Beijing Rushing to catch the last trains before the Lunar New Year, many of these passengers of the Beijing West Railway Station are thinking of the Corona virus.

I don't think this virus has been properly controlled.

I just came back to China.

I read a lot of news.

I Internet.

I'm not very satisfied with how the government prevented and controlled the disease.

I'm very afraid of getting infected.

I am really afraid off those people relieved and left hand.

But I do hope the situation in Wuhan can be improved, and those inside the city of Wuhan are becoming more frustrated because medical supplies are running short and hospitals are short staffed.

Many festivals for the Lunar New Year holiday have been cancelled across China and not just in the central hub, a province the epicenter of the virus.

In a rare move, the government has closed the Forbidden City here in Beijing over health concerns related to the Corona virus, something they didn't do some 17 years ago.

During the SARS crisis, the Chinese government was criticized for the way it handled the SARS virus back in 2003 mainly for its lack of transparency.

The World Health Organization has decided not to declare the current outbreak a global health emergency.

But there's growing concern over the coming week when the millions of people have travelled to the holiday return again, raising the risk.

The virus may be spread further by people who are contaminated but have yet to show symptoms.

Scott Heidler, AL Jazeera Beijing In a moment we'll bring in our panel, but first let's speak to Tarek Yashar, a bitch from the World Health Organization in Geneva.

Tareq, the W H.

O, said it was too early to consider this outbreak of public health emergency of international concern.

Why?

Well, what are the reasons for that decision and what would have to happen for it to become a global health emergency?

Well, as we have said yesterday in a press conference following the meeting, there were different opinions that have been expressed at the meeting of the emergency Committee and Director General of the W.

Chou was very clear when he said that this is clearly an emergency in China on there is a high risk off further spread.

Ah, he may reconvene a the meeting of emergency committee at that very short notice as the as the situation develops further, China has locked down numerous cities in their response so far to this outbreak.

What is the W H.

O stance on that?

And does the W.

H.

O believe that that is an appropriate or effective containment measures?

Well, the role of W chore is to provide a science based recommendations and opinion to our country's.

Every country obviously has the right to introduce measures that dating are necessary on their territory.

We hope that these measures will be will be effective and that they will not last very long.

It is really important to say that that, uh, what is important when you have an outbreak of a new virus, you have to have containment measures and mitigation measures, meaning providing help, who those who fall sick and containment basically trying to reduce the risk off a spread so different measures can be introduced to do that, to try to at least slow down the disease.

What is really important is that health systems are on alert around the world as China has already put in place monitoring for sick people, being able to test them and diagnose them and being able to treat them.

It is also important to provide a writer information to the population.

So when it comes to the measure measures, it's it's really difficult sometimes to strike the balance between the benefit for the population off some containment measures on some social disruption.

So I think each country, based on their context, we'll decide what measures are needed.

Since you're speaking about measures, the W.

H O warned the public not to underestimate the severity of this epidemic.

Could you speak to specific measures that people can take to try to protect themselves going forward?

Exactly.

So I mentioned what health systems should do, what health officials should do.

They should be on alert.

They should raise a preparedness levels in the health facilities being equipped on and be able to provide assistance to those who are sick now for the general public for the time being.

There still much off unknown about the virus itself, but we know it is a Corona virus, so it is co causing respiratory illness.

So we recommend the measures that are always recommended for respiratory illnesses.

That is, hand hygiene.

That is basically a covering mouth when, when sneezing and coughing, avoiding contact with the person who is sick with the flu like symptoms, avoiding contact with the live animals in the market, and really for people before they travel.

If they are sick, if they should really first go and see they're doctors so they can be diagnosed.

So really everyone should try really to help the health system, because what may happen as well that lot off people because of this outbreak will rush to the hospitals even though they may not have symptoms that are that are consistent with a respiratory only symptoms.

The target.

Do we know yet the actual extent of human to human transmission rate?

Well, we know that there is a human to human transmission on this is consistent with the Corona viruses in general, as we have seen with sauce with Merce on me that a current of our says this means that there is a human to human transmission among close contacts.

Eso we have no really clear this off sustained human to human transmission Although there are some indications that that virus the virus has infected from the infected person to another one.

So second generation, but again, so far we see clusters.

But we really have to look at it.

We have to look at the data.

We are still at the early stage.

So we know about Corona viruses in general.

But we have to get into the data and try really to understand, understand better and and same goes really for the severity of the virus.

Some people have mild symptoms.

Some people have severe symptoms.

We still don't know if there are are symptomatic cases.

We have noticed that the majority of people who get sick are older people and those who eventually died.

Most of them had underlying health conditions.

But again, it's really too early to draw conclusions because we need really to to look, to look more.

We need to do more testing and more studies to be able to understand.

But as we do these studies to understand the virus, we need to be ready to help those who will fall sick and make sure that all measures are being put in place to reduce the risk.

All right, thank you so much for your time talk.

We can now speak to our other guests.

In Hong Kong, we have Nicholas Thomas.

He's an associate professor at City University of Hong Kong and specializes in Asian health, security.

And in London we have Natalie McDermott.

She is a clinical lecturer at King's College London, who researches disease outbreak control.

Nicholas, let me start with you.

The Chinese government was criticized for how it handled its reaction to the SARS virus in 2003 especially for its lack of transparency.

How is China dealing with this outbreak.

And do you believe that they have learned the lessons from the SARS outbreak?

I think thank you.

I think that we need to sort of break this down a little bit.

I think on the technical side with the medical people, this was a very fast response.

We found out about the market on the 31st of December in line with the W H O.

Chinese authorities shut down the market on the first.

On the seventh, the genome was sequenced on the eighth, it was confirmed as a Corona virus.

That's fairly quickly.

However, I think that when we look at maybe at the local level, measures could have been implemented a lot faster.

It's but the central level at least has beens significant concern and pressure from the Chinese leadership that the policies to address these issues, lessons that China has learned sent size be taken forward.

Natalie Right now, in China, there is an unprecedented lock down of cities going on.

Do you believe that this will actually minimize the risk of the virus spreading S.

So I think that's a difficult question because essentially, we've never locked down an entire city before to see how well we can contain an outbreak.

It depends on the population that you're dealing with often because the primary understanding is that if you look down a city, you prevent people migration.

And so you prevent the disease spreading further afield.

Now we already know that with this Corona virus outbreak, we have cases in what is 29 different provinces in China.

Already on, we've had cases go overseas, So whether quarantine in the entire city or several cities is going to achieve much now, I'm not sure it also depends on how compliant the population are willing to be.

With that, in this context, we do seem to have a population who are being very compliant with what they've been asked to do.

But in some circumstances, if you quarantine an entire city, you introduce fear and panic.

And sometimes you have people who take things into their own hands, and you might end up creating a situation where you have defiance and rioting on people trying to escape the city on that ultimately makes the situation worse.

So it really depends on the population you're you're addressing.

In that context, Nicholas, is the region capable of handling this effectively.

Well, I think I'd agree with Natalie.

I think China is trying to deal with this as best it can.

But to a certain extent, it's winter.

In China, there are already different viruses.

Different fluids in circulation on DSO people's immune systems are already going to be challenged.

Now, as we've seen, we are getting second and there are reports from the W H O off third generation transmission, which means we no longer thinking just about the people who are initially exposed to the infected wildlife.

We're thinking about the people that they have infected, and then the people, the next tier, the people that they have infected as well.

This is going to make the job of the authorities to actually bring this to Ah Holt that much more difficult, especially because it is coming up to Chinese.

New Year is well on.

We are looking at hundreds of millions of people about to be going on the move eso beyond Wuhan beyond the 10 shut down cities, we are gonna have a lot of people who do carry the virus who are moving to other parts of China and also beyond China as well.

At the moment, we're talking about quarantines on flights out of Wuhan in particular.

But we're already finding cases in Shanghai, for example, or in Guangdong, where there are major international transit hubs on.

That's going to further challenge not just the Chinese authorities to contain it, but also the regional and international ports as well.

To deal with this, Natalie, how much does the concern grow if the virus spreads to a poorer country?

Let's take me and Maura's an example.

A country whose health sector is not as developed may not be able to respond as quickly.

Yes, so I think that that's probably where the major concerns are because we're aware that countries that have a very developed and robust health infrastructure are probably able to contain any cases that arrive in their country and identify them very quickly and trace any contacts.

And so the likelihood of of a disease spreading in a country like that is much more limited.

But if you take a country that perhaps doesn't have ready access to testing facilities, that perhaps doesn't have the personnel or the infrastructure to implement any kind of screening or monitoring of people who have arrived in the country on also that may have a health infrastructure that's quite limited.

With a limited number of health professionals, perhaps not even appropriate isolation facilities or equipment, things start to become much more complicated.

Andi.

It's likely that in that situation, while this virus may cause disease and may cause problems and spread in a country like that, it's likely actually that it's the overwhelming of the health infrastructure in that country.

That's gonna cause secondary effects, such as people who have other diseases or other illnesses not being able to access treatment.

Because the facilities are overwhelmed by trying to deal with a viral disease outbreak, Nicholas hospitals and medical workers in Wuhan are making urgent appeals for supplies.

The central government has acknowledged the severe strain on resource is, but just how bad is the situation?

Right now we're seeing video is being uploaded through various Chinese social media sites, showing very crowded hospitals where people are going along to them still wearing face masks, of course, but going along complaining of high fevers and other flu like symptoms.

Now, in some cases on the social media sites these have been cardinals have been jam packed with people and simply not enough healthcare.

Frontline health care, pret helpers around doctors and nurses.

Now the danger with this, of course, is that most those people will not actually have the Corona virus.

They may have the flu, which makes them more susceptible.

But then, in being in tight, confined spaces with someone who would have the Corona virus, there's a much greater risk of it spreading into the general population.

And as you said at the same time, the hospitals in Wuhan in the quarantined cities simply don't have the resource is to deal with this massive influx.

And so here's another question for China.

How do they get this?

All the equipment they need from the rest of the country and indeed from overseas into these affected cities.

This is very much a supply and logistics question, which I think the learning curve on this is very steep, and I think what we're seeing here is China really trying to sort of play catch up to all the technical infrastructure type issues such as gowns, masks and so on that the people coming into the hospitals need Natalie.

I just want to take a step back for a moment for our viewers so we can help them better understand this topic.

Could you tell us more about Corona viruses?

How rare is it that they transmit from animals to humans?

How rare is it they transmit from human to human?

So we know now that there's about seven Corona viruses that cause disease in humans.

This most recent one from Wuhan is the seventh eso.

We've known that there are Corona viruses for quite a long time that can infect humans on the vast majority of them cause some form of respiratory illness.