Chinese experts say China’s experience with SARS helps it contain Ebola

Ebola Outbreak

Medical experts say China’s experience dealing with the SARS epidemic puts it in a special position to help contain Ebola. CCTV America’s Wu Guoxiu reports.

In 2003, Xiao Tangshan hospital in suburban Beijing was a center for isolating and treating SARS patients. The 1,000-bed isolation ward was built in just one week and became a key tool in halting the SARS epidemic that infected over 5,000 and killed more 300 people on the Chinese mainland.

China’s public health emergency response system includes the practices of early identification, early reporting, early isolation, and early treatment. Governments and individuals are asked to follow instructions that have been written into the country’s infectious disease prevention law.

SARS taught China a hard lesson. The national campaign didn’t start until five months after the first SARS case was detected. But the campaign was effective, when it first broke there were 150 new SARS cases a day in Beijing and six weeks later there were none. While Wang says a vaccine is essential to ending the Ebola epidemic, controlling its spread the most urgent task.

The World Health Organization said Tuesday that the number of new Ebola cases per week could reach upwards of 10,000 by mid-December. Here’s how the number of new cases has grown over time. (“New Cases” are the number of newly confirmed, probable, and suspect cases of Ebola since the previous WHO situation report. These reports are not always released at standard time intervals, so the number of days between releases often differs.)