Virus more likely to keep coming back every year, say top Chinese scientists

China’s top scientists said the novel coronavirus will not be eradicated, joining an evergrowing consensus all over the world that the pathogen will probably return in waves like the flu. It really is unlikely for the brand new virus to disappear just how its close cousin the SARS virus did 17 years back, as it infects some persons without causing clear symptoms like fever. This band of asymptomatic carriers makes it hard to fully contain transmission as they can spread the virus undetected, a group of Chinese virus and medical researchers told reporters in Beijing at a briefing on Monday.

With SARS, those infected became seriously ill. After they were quarantined from others, the virus stopped spreading. On the other hand, China continues to be finding a large number of asymptomatic cases of the coronavirus each day despite bringing its epidemic in order. “This is very likely to be an epidemic that co-exists with humans for some time, becomes seasonal and is sustained within human bodies,” said Jin Qi, director of the Institute of Pathogen Biology at China’s top medial research institute, the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences.

A consensus is forming among top researchers and governments worldwide that the virus is unlikely to be eradicated, despite costly lockdowns which may have brought a lot of the global economy to a halt. Some public health specialists are calling for the virus to be permitted to spread in a controlled way through younger populations like India’s, while countries like Sweden have opted out of strict lockdowns.

Anthony Fauci, the director folks National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said last month that Covid-19, the condition due to the virus, could turn into a seasonal ailment as evidenced by cases now turning up in countries across the southern hemisphere belatedly because they enter their winter seasons.

Over 3 million have already been sickened and over 210,000 killed in the global pandemic.

While some including US President Donald Trump have expressed hope that the virus’s spread will slow as the temperature in northern hemisphere countries rises in the summer, Chinese professionals on Monday said that they found no evidence for this. “The virus is heat sensitive, but that’s when it’s subjected to 56 degrees Celsius for thirty minutes and the elements is never likely to get that hot,” said Wang Guiqiang, head of the infectious diseases department of Peking University First Hospital. “So globally, even during the summer, the chance of cases heading down drastically is small.”