China coronavirus: mild but infectious cases may make it hard to control outbreak, report warns

Uncertainty over the severity spectrum of the novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) and whether people with mild symptoms can efficiently transmit the virus mean it is currently “unclear” whether the outbreak can be contained within China, a report from Imperial College London has warned.1

The update from the MRC Centre for Global Infectious Disease Analysis said that the rate of transmission could come down as people become aware of the threat and try to avoid becoming infected, as happened with severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS).

But it raised concerns over reports of mildly symptomatic but infectious cases, which were not a feature of SARS. Detecting and …