No reason to panic over Coronavirus, Serbian doctor tells N1

N1

Epidemiologist Zoran Radovanovic told N1 on Monday that the Coronavirus most probably won’t reach Serbia, just as similar diseases didn’t in the recent past.

“There is no reason to panic about the Coronavirus since it’s highly probable that the sickness will not even get to Serbia, just as SARS and the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome didn’t,” he said. “And if it does, there will be two or three patients. It’s very unlikely, considering the measures we are taking, that anything serious will happen,” the doctor added.  

He said thermal vision checks have been set up at the borders with anyone running a fever or are sick being removed.   The Coronavirus has killed at least 80 people in China and hundreds have contracted it with the first cases being reported in Europe.  

Dr Radovanovic said that about 100,000 people are probably infected with the Coronavirus which he recalled is one of many causes of the cold, adding that the mortality rate of two to three percent, as the Chinese authorities said, means that the situation is serious. “We have two Coronavirus events in this centry – SARS in 2003 when the mortality rate was 10 percent and the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome with a mortality rate of more than 35 percent in 2012. This is a significantly weaker illness but the mortality risk is higher than the flu, for example,” he said.  

Radovanovic said that there is no cure yet and added that a diagnosis can only be done in laboratory conditions.