US increases security at airports due to coronavirus outbreak in China

The international airports in New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco began this Saturday, 18, to implement a screening process for passengers from the city of Wuhan, in China, stage of an outbreak of a mysterious coronavirus mutation that has already killed two people and infected, according to estimates, another 1,700 . The disease has also reached Japan .

According to authorities, 65,000 Whuan residents go to the United States each year, and over the next few days, 5,000 are expected to land at the three airports to be inspected by 100 employees of the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) due to a national holiday. in China, the Lunar New Year.

The outbreak of the disease is concentrated in a fish market in the city of Whuan. Officially, the Chinese government has disclosed that only 45 people have been infected, while an independent report states that 1,723 people may have been affected by the virus.

The report by the research center at Imperial College London, an institution that also provides advice to the World Health Organization (WHO) , takes into account all cases reported until January 12th. To reach this conclusion, the researchers used the number of cases detected so far outside China - two in Thailand and one in Japan - to deduce a likely number of infected people in Wuhan.

"For Wuhan to export three cases to other countries, there must be many more cases than announced," Professor Neil Ferguson, one of the study's authors, told British BBC broadcaster. "I am much more worried than I was a week ago," he said.

The outbreak raises concern after the death in China of a second patient, a 69-year-old man who fell ill on December 31 and whose state of health worsened five days later. Local authorities assured the population that the risk of transmission of the virus between humans "is not ruled out", but is considered "very low". So far, domestic travel in China has not been subject to any health restrictions.

The current situation fuels fears of a resurgence of a highly contagious SARS-like virus that killed some 650 people in mainland China and Hong Kong between 2002 and 2003.