Philippines spread of corona virus from China low — DOH

MANILA, Philippines — While not ruling out the possibility of the new virus discovered in China coming to the Philippines, its risk of spreading in the country is low, according to the Department of Health (DOH).

In an interview yesterday, DOH Undersecretary Eric Domingo noted there is a “moderate risk of a person with an illness coming here” because of the big travel volume between the Philippines and China.

But Domingo maintained the risk of the illness spreading “seems to be very low,” citing reports from Chinese authorities and the World Health Organization (WHO).

“Even if we detect cases here, there is no human to human transmission so the risk that it will spread is very low... And aside from that, it seems that they have already contained it as there is no new case,”  he added.

On Thursday, the World Health Organization (WHO) reported that the pathogen that causes the “mystery respiratory disease” is a new coronavirus and not severe acute respiratory syndrome  (SARS) as earlier feared.

SARS was first documented in China in 2002. It soon spread across the globe, infecting more than 8,000 people.

The other coronavirus-related disease that emerged in the past decade is the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome-Corona Virus (MERS-CoV), first reported in Saudi Arabia in 2012.

According to Domingo, it was “good” that the disease in China was neither SARS nor MERS-CoV, which are fatal.