WE had our first confirmed case of the novel coronavirus infection and people quickly emptied the drug stores’ shelves of surgical masks even at prices that had gone sky-high. Panic? Not yet but it’s close.
There is no sugarcoating it. The threat of the novel coronavirus is no longer imagined. No, not after it was confirmed that a Chinese national entered the country without being discovered until much later that she had the dreaded viral infection. Whatever happened to government assurances that they were on top of the situation, that we had men in the airports and other entry points who are equipped and competent to screen arrivals and make sure that they were not carriers?
Yes sir, the threat is real. One case does not an epidemic make, it’s true, but we don’t have to wait for that to happen before we start worrying, do we? The fact that the woman was able to take at least three flights in the country before she was eventually discovered is not very reassuring. And that’s an understatement.
How many people had she come into contact with in the Philippines? How many others were here who, like her, came unknowingly carrying the virus but, unlike her, flew out without being detected? No one can tell and when we are made to guess, it is worrisome.
So we ask: How prepared are we for real panic? In Wuhan, which is the epicenter of the 2019-nCoV outbreak, anxious relatives of coronavirus patients attacked on two separate occasions three doctors, pulling their masks and damaging their protective clothing.
“Anger and desperation have escalated in Wuhan as the city’s overwhelmed hospitals pleaded for urgent help to replenish diminishing supplies,” the New York Times reported.
It cannot happen to us, we say in reassurance but without conviction. No place in our country will have 2019-nCoV cases approximating Wuhan’s numbers. But what if, God forbid, it does? Do we have enough hospital rooms to accommodate the patients?
Those who have had loved ones hospitalized only recently will tell you that our hospitals are almost always fully occupied and that you have to wait if you wanted to get a room. Where then will we send patients to for medical care if and when, again God forbid, we have an unusual number of 2019-nCoV cases?
China was able to build a hospital in Wuhan only in a few days, which we cannot. Will we just ask victims to stay at home and wait for the infection to blow over because it is self-limiting and kills “only” two percent of the afflicted anyway?
What can we do to eliminate or at least minimize the risk of that happening? The United States has already barred entry not only to the Chinese but any foreign national who has visited China in the past two weeks. Singapore has similarly closed its borders to all travelers from China. Israel has barred all flights to and from China.
Even China’s friends have adopted similar antagonistic (to China) measures. Russia has closed its 4,300-kilometer far-eastern border with China. And North Korea has indefinitely suspended all flights and trains to and from China.
Us, what shall we do?