Health officials are sounding the alarm over a new respiratory virus outbreak in China, with no available antiviral treatment or vaccine. The virus has drawn comparisons to COVID-19
For more, Infectious Diseases Expert, Professor Nigel McMillan joins.
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Health officials are raising the alarm of a new virus outbreak in China, which has sparked comparisons to COVID-19. It's a type of respiratory infection which is surging across the country, particularly alarming for young children, the elderly and vulnerable individuals. And currently, there's no antiviral treatment or vaccine available, but remedies, we're told, they're under development. For more on what all that means, infectious diseases expert Professor Nigel McMillan joined us live from Brisbane. Nigel, good morning to you. Should we be concerned here as it reached our shores? Well, I think we understand that people are concerned about it because it has similarities to COVID-19 and we've been through this all before. But really, this virus is something that is in the community all the time. Every child would have been exposed to this virus by the age of five. We know this from studies. And it's one of those viruses that causes essentially the common cold. And so we all have existing immunity to this virus. And I think this is one of the key differences with COVID-19. We expect these winter outbreaks in the northern hemisphere at this time of year. We have them ourselves in winter, it's a very seasonal virus. So I think we really shouldn't be that concerned about these sorts of outbreaks. But we do need some key information from the authorities in China, India and Malaysia weather are out breaking. And that is what are the strains that we're seeing there? There are two common strains. And so we really want a little bit more information before we can really be rest assured that this is just another normal outbreak of human metanumifars. Yeah, that's the hard part, isn't it? Getting the information out of China about exactly what strain it is to help us here. Professor McMillan, thank you for that. [BLANK_AUDIO]
