COVID-19: CO for corona, VI for virus, D for disease, and 19 for the year it emerged....

"What has happened in China is that they have changed the definition of what the disease really is -- now they are taking people who have lesser symptoms."
"The deaths are quite worrisome, there is an increased number of deaths reported, but if you look overall at the total number of deaths and the total number of cases, the fatality ratio is about the same as it has been - but it is still high, as high as the death rate in influenza."
David Heymann, Professor of Infectious Disease Epidemiology, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine

The WHO has said a vaccine will likely be found but it will take time   Getty Images

China is assuring the world community that it has the Novel Coronavirus -- now officially named COVID-19 -- well in hand. Wednesday, it reported the lowest number of new cases in two weeks following Beijing's senior medical adviser, epidemiologist Zhong Nanshan stating with apparent confidence that this month would see the peak of the epidemic before it subsides, and that by April the outbreak would be in its last gasps. On Wednesday the figures showed 2,015 new confirmed cases diagnosed, bringing China's total to 44,653 representing the lowest daily rise since January 30.

Well, oops, another day, another story. New figures have been released, that indicate new cases and deaths in the province of Hubei, the epicenter of the epidemic, have pushed the national death toll above 1,350 with almost 60,000 infections in total. Quite a leap for a day (Wednesday) that was, according to Chinese officials, the lowest victim-count day yet. But that would have been the count for the day before. The new count is quite displeasing to Beijing, which has taken steps to dismiss two top officials in Hubei province hours after the new figures were released.

The World Health Organization chief, Tedros Adanom Ghebreyesus, though courteously willing to take China at its word, advised that "extreme caution" should be taken when viewing the optimistic Wednesday figures. "This outbreak could still go in any direction", he advised at a Geneva briefing. And it took little time for that to happen. "It has spread to other places where it's the beginning of the outbreak", responded head of the Global Outbreak Alert and Response Network coordinated by the WHO. "In Singapore, we are at the beginning."



Of Singapore's 50 cases identified at that point, its largest bank, DBS was speedily evacuated at its head office, when one of the cases was found to be located there. Dozens of other countries -- at last count, 24 and growing -- have reported hundreds of cases; so far three people have died of the virus outside mainland China; in Hong Kong, Japan and the Philippines. And though China reported 1,113 deaths by the end of Tuesday, social media is abuzz over suspicions regarding reliability of the data.

On the cruise ship quarantined off Yokohama with around 3,700 people on board, there have been 175 people who have tested positive for the coronavirus. The MS Westerdam, another cruise ship which had been refused docking by Thailand, Japan, Taiwan, Guam and the Philippines was finally able to dock in Cambodia where its 1,455 passengers and 802 crew will be quarantined and medically tended to. The first Japanese medical officer to examine patients on board the Diamond Princes came down with the virus himself. The ship's total confirmed cases now stand at 174 and rising.

Relatives of passengers wave towards the Diamond Princess cruise ship, with around 3,600 people quarantined onboard due to fears of the new coronavirus. | AFP-JIJI

China bitterly accused the U.S. and other countries of victimizing China when they took steps to curb visitors from China. At a time when China itself has strictly quarantined about 60 million of its own citizens in quarantined cities in Hubei province, including the centre of the outbreak, the provincial capital of 11 million people, Wuhan. A commentary in the Xinhua news outlet spoke of "racist reporting" in some Western media, accusing them of ignoring "the unswerving efforts and huge sacrifice China and its people have made".

China, which has staked so much of its future on its 'one belt, one road' enterprise, with its huge investments in Asia, Africa and the Middle East to increase its already enormous trade potential, now finds itself in a quagmire of a stand-off in its aspirations. It sits frozen in time, unable to do anything while the entire country goes into lockdown, for however long is anyone's guess.

Factories are shuttered. Trains sit in their stations, in Wuhan the streets are still and empty of people, and state censors are working overtime to quell criticism and stop insde information and videos from reaching the outside world.



Front-line accounts from overflowing hospitals with their scarcity of medical equipment and drugs, and where infected patients lie in crowded close proximity, and overworked health care professionals are at the point of breaking down as tens of thousands of people continue to become ill while ever more die from the virus do not reflect a country that has a viral epidemic well in hand.

The principal deputy director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Washington stated recently: "We absolutely assume that the reported cases are an underestimate".

Chinese citizen journalists risk their personal freedom to travel to the virus hotspot of Wuhan, to post what they see and  hear of the real situation as it unfolds, and then suddenly they are incommunicado, arrested, imprisoned, silenced.

"In the evening, the people of Wuhan turned off their lights when Li Wenliang passed away and, using flashlights or their cellphones, shot beams of light into the sky and blew whistles. In the deep dark night, Li Wenliang is this beam of light. After all this time, what can Wuhan people do to dispel the gloom, sadness and anger in their hearts? Perhaps it can only be done this way", wrote novelist Fang Fang, before falling silent.

  Li Wenliang  on Weibo, a Chinese social media platform.Kuang Biao

Li Wenliang was warned by Chinese authorities to stop spreading false rumours, when the young doctor communicated with his medical school colleagues to warn them of a strange, new virus that had appeared at a local hospital that looked suspiciously like a viral pneumonia, but was not, and could have been SARS, but was not.... He was among many medical professionals tending the ill who themselves became infected. And he died a week ago.