A deadly new virus may not yet pose a major threat to the world, researchers say today.
According to the French analysis, the novel coronavirus has not yet achieved the pandemic potential of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS).
The World Health Organisation has said the virus may be the greatest current health threat to the world.
Researchers from the Institut Pasteur in Paris have analysed data on Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV) clusters to compare them to pre-pandemic SARS.
Arnaud Fontanet looked at the reproduction number (RO), which is the average number of secondary cases a single infected case will cause in a population with no immunity to the disease, and found that even in their worst case scenario, MERS-CoV had a lower reproduction number (R0) of 0.69 compared with prepandemic SARS count of 0.80.
When R0 is above 1, epidemic potential has been reached. The R0 for pandemic SARS was estimated to be between 2.2 and 3.7.
“Despite sharing many clinical, epidemiological, and virological similarities with SARS, the two viruses have distinct biology, such as the use of different receptors to infect cells in human airways,” said Mr Fontanet, who led the research.
“MERS-CoV has not spread as rapidly or as widely as SARS did. SARS’ adaption to humans took just several months, whereas MERS-CoV has already been circulating more than a year in human populations without mutating into a pandemic form.”
He said one of the main lessons from the SARS pandemic was that early control of the virus, while it was still confined to southeast China, might have prevented its global spread.
“We recommend enhanced surveillance, active contact tracing, and vigorous searches for the MERS-CoV animal hosts and transmission routes to human beings,” he added.
Meanwhile, the European Parliament has approved a report on serious cross-border health threats after weaknesses in the national and European crisis mechanisms were revealed following the pandemic of the H1N1 flu in 2009, the volcanic ash and the aluminium sludge spill in Hungary in 2010, and the E. coli bacteria outbreak in 2011.
The rapporteur, French S&D MEP Gilles Pargneaux, said: “There are still threats: we must be better prepared to deal with the H7N9 avian flu and coronavirus. This is the objective of the report that we have just adopted.
“The greatest success is the creation of a legal basis for co-ordinating the purchase of vaccines and medicines in Europe. Access to vaccines will be more equitable as they will be available at fairer prices. The EU will from now on be able to launch the production of vaccines itself, ultimately enabling faster vaccination in case of an emergency.
“We will extend the co-ordination mechanism that applies to communicable diseases to all biological, chemical or environmental health threats.
“Improved efficiency in the fight against serious health threats will be enhanced by the possibility of declaring a European ‘state of health emergency’, the obligation of information-sharing and mutual consultation between member states and the European Commission, strengthening the role of the health security committee and creating a legal basis for co-ordinating the purchase of vaccines and drugs.”
Berban R, Riou J, Fontanet A. Interhuman transmissibility of Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus: estimation of pandemic risk. Lancet 5 July 2013; doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(13)61492-0 [abstract]
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