A woman wears a mask in Wuhan,which has been linked to cases of the new coronavirus.Credit:Getty Images
Chief medical officer Professor Brendan Murphy said while the spike in numbers warranted close attention,there was “no cause for alarm in Australia”.
“All confirmed reports cases have so far been people who have been in Wuhan,or visited Wuhan. Whilst there have been two deaths,one was a person with significant other medical conditions,” he said.
Associate Professor Adam Kamradt-Scott,an expert in the spread and control of infectious diseases,said health officials were “operating in the dark to a certain degree” because it was unclear exactly how the virus was spreading.
The new virus was initially reported to have only come from a fish market in Wuhan,which has since been closed,but several patients said they had not visited the market.
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“What we don’t know about this virus is if it’s achieved limited human to human transmission,but there’s no evidence of widespread human to human transmission,otherwise we’d be seeing a large number of cases far beyond what we’ve currently got,"said Associate Professor Kamradt-Scott,from the Centre for International Security Studies at the University of Sydney.
While he said the jump in cases was “a bit alarming”,more people were becoming aware of the symptoms of the virus so more suspected cases were being identified and then confirmed with laboratory testing.