Around 80 percent of those infected with the novel coronavirus have mild symptoms, European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) Director Andrea Ammon said on Wednesday, also commenting on steps the center is taking to assist the coronavirus fight
MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 19th February, 2020) Around 80 percent of those infected with the novel coronavirus have mild symptoms, European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) Director Andrea Ammon said on Wednesday, also commenting on steps the center is taking to assist the coronavirus fight.
"One of the things that we don't know very well is how serious is this virus. This is something that is evolving now because now it's almost two months that we have cases of this virus, and it looks particularly from the data that we have from China that around 80 percent of these cases have mild symptoms like a cold. Around 16 percent have more severe symptoms, and 3 percent approximately are critically ill. All in all, the majority of people who get the disease have mild symptoms," Ammon said at a press conference.
The task of the ECDC which is an independent agency of the European Union, working on boosting the defense against infectious diseases is, therefore, to support the European Commission and the national authorities in terms of raising hospitals preparedness, which is in compliance with the agency's mission to "identify, assess and communicate", according to Ammon.
The ECDC is, in particular, looking into how well EU member states are prepared to diagnose the virus, she added.
"Currently, all the member states have capacity to detect, some can process more samples, some can only process a limited amount of samples, so countries also have a mechanism how to help each other in this," Ammon added.
The ECDC has developed special templates with guidance for people either traveling to China or coming from there, Ammon said. The templates include information on how to protect oneself from getting infected and on what to do in case one gets symptoms.
The novel coronavirus disease, dubbed COVID-19 by the World Health Organization, was first detected in Wuhan, located in China's Hubei Province, in late December 2019 and has since spread to more than 20 other countries, resulting in over 2,000 deaths.
