MOSCOW, March 10. /TASS/. China has been able to bring the novel coronavirus outbreak under control and can fully solve that problem in the near future, Russia’s former chief sanitary inspector, member of the Russian Academy of Sciences Gennady Onishchenko said on Tuesday.
"I can state with certainty that China has coped with the situation by and large. If they retain that pace and those measures, which they take, the hotbed of the disease in the Wuhan province will be eliminated in the near future. The criterion will be the discharge of the last patient [from the hospital] and the maximum incubation period of 14 days," he said.
A pneumonia outbreak caused by the COVID-19 virus (previously known as 2019-nCoV) was reported in China’s Wuhan, a large trade and industrial center, in late December 2019. The World Health Organization (WHO) declared the new coronavirus outbreak a public health emergency of international concern, describing it as an epidemic with multiple locations. Besides China, major coronavirus outbreaks have been reported in South Korea, Iran and Italy. More than 100 countries, including Russia, have reported confirmed coronavirus cases.
Over 3,100 people have died in China, which accounts for the majority of novel coronavirus cases, more than 59,900 patients have recovered, while the total number of infected people stands at 80,700.
According to the World Health Organization, over 110,000 have been infected globally, slightly more than 3,800 patients have died.