On Monday at dawn, local health authorities in Beijing's Daxing district confirmed two pneumonia patients were infected by the new corona virus. Both had traveled to Wuhan in Central China, where the epidemic was first discovered, in the past several weeks. The two patients have no respiratory symptoms yet and are under treatment.
A similar case was found in South China's Guangdong province on Sunday, with five more people affected by fever in East China's Zhejiang province after traveling there from Wuhan.
The Wuhan Municipal Health Commission said they confirmed 136 new cases from Saturday to Sunday. So far, 198 patients in Wuhan have been infected by the new pneumonia, of which 25 have recovered and three died.
In an official statement released on its website on Sunday, the National Health Commission said that it has sent working groups to related provinces, and informed the World Health Organization and related countries and regions about the latest updates.
According to the official statement, the situation is still controllable. However, the infectious source of the new corona virus has not been found and a possible mutation must be strictly monitored.
The Commission said they will strengthen coordination with other departments, implement strong measures to prevent the virus from spreading, and effectively deal with the cases.
The Wuhan Municipal Health Commission also released expert advice about how to prevent the new disease, which includes taking care of one's personal hygiene and avoiding getting cold, covering one's nose while sneezing and seeking medical help if one has a fever.
On social networks, some people expressed their worries about the expression "source of infection is not confirmed yet", but Yao Qin, a former doctor in the Infectious Disease Department at Beijing Youan Hospital, said that the expression should not be a cause that arouses much panic.
"There are multiple measures of controlling an epidemic, including controlling the infection source, cutting its spread channel and protecting fragile people from it. Even without precisely confirming the source of the infection, we can still cut the spread channels of the virus and effectively prevent it from infecting more people," Yao said.
Yao listed MERS (Middle East Respiratory Syndrome) as an example. Even today its infection source is not confirmed and researchers can only guess it might come from animals that include camels. However, the epidemic is effectively controlled. She also advises people to avoid close contact with wild animals for better self-protection.
Another piece of information that easily causes panic is the "new coronavirus". Zhang Dake, an associate researcher at Beijing Institute of Genomics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, said that coronavirus refers to a kind of viruses that have RNA single chains as their hereditary materials, and can easily multiply by copying these single chains with error-prone feature.
As a result, corona viruses tend more easily to mutate and reorganize with each other. Both SARS and MERS are caused by new, mutated corona viruses. But people can still control the epidemic and lower the risk of becoming infected by following the guidelines.
记者：张周项
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