 Hello and welcome to NewsClick and today we are going to talk about the novel coronavirus or COVID-19. The death toll globally has reached nearly 2800 and at least 50 countries are reported to be affected. To talk more about this, we have with us Prabir Pulkarstha. Hello Prabir, thank you for joining us. So the WHO has not declared it a pandemic yet but especially over the past few days we have seen a massive increase in the number of infections in other countries and for the first time maybe it really looks like the spread is much, much more than and it almost seems a bit uncontrollable. So do you think we have a pandemic on our hands? Well, the danger of pandemic is far closer today than earlier. China had managed to contain it largely within the Hubei province. Wuhan is a part of the Hubei province and other provinces in China had shown much less number of cases and they had also brought it down quite rapidly in rest of China to levels which were 15, 20, even sometimes as low as 10 in the last two weeks that we have been seeing. Even Hubei province numbers have come down from what used to be two and a half thousand, three thousand two, roughly about four hundred. So there have been huge changes. New infections indeed. New infections a day and the number of recovered patients have been of course quite large. So this was a change China did manage to do, seem to have been able to contain it but now when you see the way it has spread in South Korea, Italy and Iran, three countries where we see lots of instances. This is a part of the diamond princess which was one of the most botched cases with Japan, the United States and others seem to have done by deciding that they would have the quarantine within the ship and out of three thousand seven hundred people more than seven hundred have already reported to be sick. Of course now it has been that process has been abandoned, people have been shipped to their countries locally quarantined all of that but it's interesting if you take the numbers now even now diamond princess is the third largest country if you will of infections the first being China, second is now South Korea. Of course the way it's going Iran and Italy will probably overtake it pretty quickly. Now we have as of yesterday the figures that we are seeing the number of newly infected cases has risen very rapidly in South Korea. We now have more cases in South Korea with a much smaller population than the whole of China. China is about 400 odd cases we are seeing more than 550 cases in South Korea alone. So that is one issue but also the rate of rise has been very rapid. So it does seem that has got into the communities and it's not just one focal point of infection the one cult Christian cult which was thought to be the one where it started from it's now got into a much larger set of people. So otherwise you don't get the scale of infection that we are seeing. Also the rapid rise of the infections when we come to for instance Italy. Now from what I see of the figures that roughly 200 people have been detected only yesterday. So this is again a very rapid rise from 50, 60 to 80 and now we have 200. So it does seem that as more testing takes place more cases are being uncovered. We do not know is it the consequence of much better testing testing a larger number of people or it is something else that is really now spreading rapidly also. Probably a combination of both. In Italy it's a northern provinces of Italy which have been affected and Lombardy, Bento these are the provinces but also neighboring provinces and it does seem that Milan as a city is really affected. It's also under almost a semi lockdown while certain other northern towns have been put under complete lockdown. It does seem now Italy is looking seriously at stopping schools, colleges, cinemas all of these things to what extent they will do it, how far they will do it are all questions but it does seem they are proceeding in the direction China did which was lockdowns and that's one immediate issue. The second is how much support do they have from the hospital system, how many beds are there, how much of intensive care facilities are available because that's going to be crucial as people turns very sick. Second thing is going to be after we have detected or we have the ability to detect people I'm going to come back to that is going to be how much facilities do we have to take care of the people who are sick. China built up both quarantine facilities as well as intensive care support very rapidly and that deployment also from outside of more than 30,000 doctors, nurses and so on into Wuhan was a mobilization which is unthinkable for most countries. So this support is what brought the facilities in Wuhan, Hubei down. Now how quickly others can do it is a question. Third which the WHO leader of the team along with the Chinese leader who did a joint evaluation of all of it also said that they use quarantine lockdowns along with what turbocharging science and technology flexibility changing guidelines rapidly. They changed it six times in seven weeks treating Hubei Wuhan differently from other provinces. So this graded approach which they had which Dr. Ailward from WHO called the all in government all in society approach by which the people cooperated with the government how others can replicate it is the issue and even the WHO leadership has said we do not know whether other countries can do what China has done because that's what they will need to do in order to lock down control the epidemic. All these can be done but can others do it. We have to see South Korea South Korea is at the moment currently failing the spread is really rapid. Italy touch and go doesn't doesn't seem to be doing well. What do they now do is is an important question. Iran we still don't know much about really the extent. They also have exceeded more than 100 infections reported yesterday. Now Iran has an extra problem under sanctions how easy it is for them to get access medical test kits and other things we have to see. I think rest of the world the position is pretty bad as well. And when you come to CDC itself the premier organization which the world looks up to as the place to go to for infectious disease control United States. Now United States set out a set of kits if you remember and they had think had dispatched the X number of kits which had so many tests they could do. Numbers were insufficient people said it's only for 15,000 people. So that's not going to be enough. But more important than that those test kits I think 200 of them. It was found the reagents one of the reagents which were used was not okay and it gave inconclusive results. So that is also the problem that even after a month of that the CDC has not been able to actually provide kits. So if this happens in United States for instance and that is a possibility then the US doesn't seem to be also prepared for it. And if this is the condition of the United States European Union South Korea what is it going to happen to other countries which are less equipped to face all of this. And I must end with this if we look at the map and here is your map you can see that from South Korea you are likely to infect Southeast Asia as well and of course Japan. Okay in Japan already has a large caseload because of the Diamond Princess. If we look at Italy the European Union of course is the first target people are coming back and forth. There are also said people coming from Latin America there's already a case in Brazil for example. And there are no passport or customs control this free movement. In European Union yes. So that is the second part of the issue that that is the western world can get infected from Italy. And the fact that it is exploded there means that now we have a problem how to control it can it be controlled in Northern Italy, Italy itself or will it spread to rest of Europe. And then when you come to West Asia let's not forget Iran it has bordering countries two kinds of issues over there. You have medieval monarchies I don't know whether they're even equipped to think about all this. And secondly you have countries the United States NATO has destroyed towards Iraq, Syria and so on. So there is the rapid possibility fortunately Iran has a strong state. So there's a possibility of that also spreading to that part of the world and if it does then South Asia is going to follow because as you know the nine million eight to nine million people of Indian origin who work in West Asia similar numbers for Pakistan also Bangladesh also Nepal also Philippines. So you are going to see then an explosion also into South Asia possible explosion into South Asia. Looking at all of this I think at the moment the world needs to prepare for a pandemic and every country needs to now see do they have test kits do they have hospital beds what I'm going to do do they have people who understand what has to be done do we have enough masks all of this particularly for the medical community who are going to address this these are all the issues which are coming up now. And as you mentioned earlier it's also a question for the political structures itself that the extent of the outbreak was is being controlled to a large extent in China because of the political will of on the one hand and also the ability to mobilize those kind of resources and deploy them at short notice which probably almost no other country right now has. And also two other things both of which Dr. Hilbert from W.H.A. mentions one is the fact that people have faith in their government so the people are told that they should wear masks they should not go out except for X number of occasions only all of that people not only have collaborated they have actually imposed this discipline on others who are not working. I see pictures in Italy for instance going to the supermarket and you have half the people with masks other half not with masks so obviously that kind of social ethos is not there in most of the countries this is one part there is faith in the government. The second is China has used the traditional methods isolation quarantine being one of that but also be able to use artificial intelligence contact to contact tracing using social media platforms their databases so they have combined the 5G networks to reach rural areas they have really combined modern technology modern science with the organization and the methods which are with time tested so this combination and flexibility which they have shown it's really also flexibility those kind of things are very very difficult for most bureaucratic systems to adapt to and there the leadership was in the also led this effort President Xi himself led the most of this efforts that kind of leadership is almost impossible to think of in most of the countries and I think therefore we are going to see failures of governance and also the credibility of the governments affect the fight against such a pandemic so what is possibility now our best hopes because I think we need to also have some hopes that a the pandemic is coming at a time hopefully the influenza epidemics in the northern hemisphere because of temperature gets getting warmer will have waned if that happens then more hospital beds facilities intensive care unit facilities identical to what the flu bag people infected people particularly the older people required they will be available so that is one the health system will be better equipped at that time the second is and this is of course a long shot that maybe maybe the virus is going to turn more as it mutates and passes to every generation as it mutates it is going to turn more benign so the death rates may come back come down and it may be like the flu viruses infect us but it becomes then infection which the body can fight some people will die flu viruses every year tens of thousands of people die but also millions of people are affected the death rate is something like 0.1 percent in flu but the numbers of people infected are really maybe 20 25 percent the world's population every year gets a flu in fair you know influenza infection at least once a year so those are the kind of then countervailing tendencies which may be there to see that it does not take the shape that otherwise looking at China we may expect thank you so much for that's all we have time for today keep watching this click