London: An expert said that one coronavirus patient can infect 59 thousand persons as the virus is more than twice as infectious as a flue.
Rationale behind the claim
Explaining the rationale behind his claim, the expert, Dr. Hugh Montgomery, a professor of Intensive Care Medicine at University College London said that every infected person passes it to three persons and if each of those three passes it to another three persons and that happens at ten layers, then first persons will be responsible for infecting 59000 people.
Emphasizing that coronavirus is more infectious than normal flu, he said, “Normal flu, if I get that, I’m going to infect, on average, about 1.3-1.4 people. If those 1.3-1.4 people gave it to the next lot that’s the second time it gets passed on. By the time that’s happened ten times, I’ve been responsible for about 14 cases of flue”.
Hospital resources
As Oxford University’s study claimed that coronavirus was circulating in the UK in mid-January, the professor stressed the need to increase hospital resources to tackle spike in the number of coronavirus cases.
There is also a need to increase the capacity of ICU in hospitals.
Coronavirus cases across the globe
More than 18,000 deaths have been recorded since the virus first emerged in December.
Over 400,000 declared cases have been registered in 175 countries and territories.
Italy has suffered the most deaths with 6,820, out of 69,176 declared infections.
Mainland China has 3,277 deaths out of 81,171 cases and 73,159 recoveries.