New video animation shows how the coronavirus outbreak has outpaced the SARS, MERS, Ebola and swine flu epidemics.
Made by production company Abacaba, and uploaded to YouTube on February 12, the clip compares how quickly each disease spread once cases were reported.
At first, the coronavirus outbreak spread slower than Ebola, Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) and swine flu.
But, by Day 41 of their respective outbreaks, 243 were ill from Ebola, 182 were sickened by Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS), 520 had come down with swine flu, and 3,600 were infected with SARS.
In comparison, on Day 41 of the coronavirus outbreak – February 12 – more than 41,700 people were infected worldwide.
The video also compared the current coronavirus outbreak to the Ebola outbreak that hit West Africa in 2014. Despite Ebola infecting far fewer people than either SARS or coronavirus, its fatality rate was as high as 90 percent.
‘Ebola was a very different kind of infection,’ Dr Amler said.
‘It was similar in its ability to arouse worldwide concern. But in terms of transmissibility, it was blood-borne as opposed to airborne. It was not a respiratory virus in the way SARS, MERS and coronavirus are.’
The scary thing about coronavirus is not death rate, but how easy it’s to spread, how hard it’s to detect, how long it takes to clear yourself of it, and no cured found yet. What is the way out?