Expert answers 8 key questions on novel coronavirus

Feng Zijian, deputy director of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, answered questions about the novel coronavirus epidemic during an interview with CCTV on Monday night. Below are excerpts from the interview:

Q1. Why has the number of confirmed cases of the novel coronavirus increased dramatically?

A: The sharp increase of confirmed cases has a lot to do with the ability of the coronavirus to spread. Currently it seems that the human-to-human transmission of the virus is getting stronger.

Another factor contributing to the rocketing number of infections lies in the time of the epidemic outbreak, which happened in early December. As the Spring Festival travel rush kicked off less than a month later, people in areas with severe infections traveled nationwide, which accelerated the spread of the disease.

Especially Wuhan, Hubei province, the epicenter of the outbreak and with a backlog of suspected cases, has seen a rapid growth of confirmed cases due to the recent centralized diagnosis.

Q2. Why did the number of confirmed cases surpass that of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) in a shorter time?

A: The research shows that human-to-human transmission of the novel coronavirus is similar to SARS, which means that a patient can infect two to three people on average.

However, the doubling time of the novel coronavirus is shorter than that of SARS. Compared with nine days to double the number of infected cases in terms of SARS, it only took about six or seven days for the novel coronavirus.