Expert: Virus 'is less lethal than SARS'
Professor Lu Hongzhou says early diagnosis and treatment has proved beneficial.
The new coronavirus which leads to pneumonia is no less infectious but much less lethal than SARS, Lu Hongzhou, a professor at the Shanghai Public Health Clinical Center, said on Tuesday.
"Early diagnosis and treatment has proved to be very beneficial to the patients if the patients are not put on respirators once diagnosed," he said, adding that the use of ECMO, or extracorporeal membrane oxygenation, is also more developed today than it was when SARS broke out.
Lu said the key is to take preventive measures against the virus in residential communities and prevent communities from becoming a source of virus.
Wu Jinglei, director of Shanghai Health Commission, said the number of confirmed coronavirus cases has been rising in Shanghai because the government had started to take proactive measures to discover suspicious cases at residential communities and also at entrances to Shanghai besides the effort of hospitals to be more efficient in screening such cases.
Also, over 4,000 drugstores in Shanghai have been required to register information on people buying medicines to combat fever.
