Manila: Alarmed by coronavirus, a new strain of virus that causes severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), Philippine health department ordered authorities to revive machines that monitor temperatures of people who arrive at air and sea ports nationwide, a senior official said.
“The department of health is watching coronavirus closely because it’s a SARS-like virus,” explained Abigail Valte, deputy presidential spokesperson.
“A team from the Bureau of Quarantine is also on alert for any possible illnesses that may be carried by (Filipino) citizens or tourists who come to the country,” said Valte, adding, “We have dealt with illnesses like that [in the past].”
But the World Health Organization (WHO) has not advised special screening of temperature of people arriving at air and seaports as a measure to contain the spread of coronavirus.
WHO has also not recommended countries to issue travel advisories or trade restrictions on places where two cases of people with coronavirus came from.
A 49-year-old man confirmed to have coronavirus was transferred to a London hospital by air ambulance from Qatar.
A patient in Saudi Arabia with coronavirus had died three months ago.
It was the first time that a particular strain of coronavirus was identified in the UK, and the second time in the world. Both infection cases occurred in the Middle East, experts said, adding the coronavirus found in UK’s case was genetically the same as the one found in a laboratory in Saudi Arabia (three months ago), the genetic material of which was sequenced in a laboratory in the Netherlands.
“In the light of the severity of the illness that has been identified in the two confirmed cases, immediate steps have been taken to ensure that people who have been in contact with the UK case have not been infected; there is no evidence to suggest that they have,” Prof John Watson, head of the respiratory diseases department of UK’s Health protection Agency (at Colindale in London) was quoted as saying in the UK.
Although he called for “increased vigilance for this virus,” Watson said there was no evidence to show that coronavirus spread from person to person.
There is no vaccine for coronavirus, experts said, adding that coronavirus could be a mutation of an existing virus, or an infection circulating in animals that has infected humans.
“No additional confirmed cases have been reported and there is no evidence so far of person to person transmission of the novel coronavirus,” WHO also concluded in a news update.
In 2002, Philippine authorities imposed the use of machines that monitored temperature of people arriving at international air and seaports to detect SARS carriers.
SARS virus spread from Hong Kong to more than 30 different countries, killing around 800 people in 2002. It was not eradicated but was contained in 2003.
