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Estudio de síntomas y reproduccón del coronavirus
February 3, 2020 - Un estudio de casos iniciales de una nueva enfermedad viral originada en la ciudad china de Wuhan revela que más de una cuarta parte de los pacientes hospitalizados desarrollaron una complicación potencialmente fatal que requirió terapia intensiva.
The study, reported by The Lancet medical journal, involved the first 41 patients hospitalised with confirmed cases of the virus in Wuhan.
The patients displayed a wide range of symptoms, many of which were similar to those caused by SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome), which spread around the globe in 2003, eventually infecting more than 8,000 people.
All 41 patients in the study had pneumonia, and most had fever and cough. Some patients had fatigue and more than half of them also experienced shortness of breath. The researchers noted that, unlike SARS, the new virus – known as 2019-nCoV – rarely produces runny noses or intestinal symptoms.
Like SARS, the majority of 2019-nCoV cases affected healthy individuals, with less than a third of cases occurring in people with underlying medical conditions such as diabetes, high blood pressure or heart disease.
Twelve patients (29 percent) developed acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS), a life-threatening condition which occurs when the body does not receive enough oxygen from the lungs. About a third of the patients needed intensive care, and six of them died.
Two thirds of patients had visited the Huanan seafood market that was linked to the first cases in the virus outbreak, the study found.
- What you need to know about China’s virus outbreak (Bloomberg)
- Clinical features of patients infected with 2019 novel coronavirus in Wuhan, China (The Lancet)
- Virus cases in China top SARS as evacuations begin (AP)
- Factbox: The new coronavirus - What is it and how does it behave? (Reuters)
- Factbox: The new coronavirus - What is it and how does it behave? (Reuters)How Contagious is the Coronavirus? (Statista)