- A coronavirus outbreak that originated in Wuhan, China, has killed at least 427 people and infected more than 20,000 since December.
- The virus might have jumped from animals to people at a Chinese wet market where live and dead animals were being sold.
- SARS was also a coronavirus, and that outbreak started in a wet market, too. It killed 774 people and infected 8,098 between November 2002 and July 2003.
- The Wuhan coronavirus shares 80% of its genome with the coronavirus responsible for the SARS outbreak, according to two new studies.
- The total Wuhan coronavirus case count surpassed that of SARS in just a month. It seems to be less deadly than SARS so far, however.
- Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.
At least 427 people have died from a coronavirus outbreak that started in Wuhan, China, and at least 20,000 have been infected across 26 countries.
The spread of this new virus, which is marked by fevers and pneumonia-like symptoms, conjured a sense of déja vu for some who remember the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) outbreak that started in November 2002. That was also a coronavirus, and it jumped to people from animals in wet markets, which the new coronavirus probably did, too.
The new coronavirus, known as 2019-nCoV, appears to be similar to SARS in two other important ways: They share 80% of their genetic codes, and both originated in bats.
Those are the findings of a study published Monday in the journal Nature, which took a close look at the genome of the coronavirus.
Experts called SARS "the first pandemic of the 21st century," since it spread across 29 countries. The virus emerged in Guangdong and infected 8,098 people over the course of eight months, killing 774. Just one month after the first confirmed case of the novel coronavirus, the total global case count has surpassed that of SARS. The death toll in mainland China has also exceeded that of the SARS outbreak there.
"In essence, it's a version of SARS that spreads more easily but causes less damage," Ian Jones, a virologist at the University of Reading in the UK, said in a press release about the new study.
Here are some of the crucial differences between this outbreak and the SARS one 17 years ago.
The first report of the novel coronavirus came on December 31, though some people might have gotten sick earlier that month. Wuhan is a city of 11 million people in the central province of Hubei, China.
Google Maps/Business Insider
SARS originated in the Guangdong province in southeastern China, near Hong Kong.
Patients with the SARS coronavirus experienced fevers, headaches, and a type of deadly pneumonia that could cause respiratory failure. But that virus hasn't been seen in humans since July 2003.
The new coronavirus has spread far faster than SARS did.
Reuters
It took eight months for SARS to spread to more than 8,000 people. The Wuhan coronavirus infected over 20,000 people in about five weeks.
Ma Xiaowei, minister of China's National Health Commission, said the coronavirus' incubation period ranges from one to 14 days, the South China Morning Post reported. The illness may jump between people before patients show symptoms, which makes it challenging to control the virus' spread. SARS' average incubation period, by comparison, was seven days.
The new coronavirus' fatality rate has not yet been determined with accuracy, but it seems to be around 2% so far. The SARS fatality rate was 9.6%.
Associated Press
According to a recent study in The Lancet, however, the fatality rate among a group of 99 coronavirus patients that researchers studied was about 11%.
One month into SARS outbreak, only five people had died. The new coronavirus had killed at least 213 people by the one-month mark.
See the rest of the story at Business Insider
See Also:
- The outbreaks of both the Wuhan coronavirus and SARS likely started in Chinese wet markets. Photos show what the markets look like.
- The flu is a far bigger threat to most people in the US than the Wuhan coronavirus. Here's why.
- Wuhan, China, and at least 15 other cities have been quarantined as China attempts to halt the spread of the coronavirus. That's about 50 million people on lockdown.
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