路透社全英文专访钟南山：李文亮是一个英雄，我为他自豪！
中国工程院院士钟南山2月11日在广州接受路透社采访时表示，中国国内的新型冠状病毒感染肺炎疫情有望很快减缓，他预计峰值会在2月中下旬出现，疫情可能会在4月份结束。
83岁的钟南山院士在这次长约90分钟的英文采访中指出，上述看法是基于数学模型、最近的疫情发展和政府采取的行动。
这位国家卫健委高级别专家组组长在广州一所收治有11名患者的医院中说，包括广东和浙江在内，一些地区的新增病例已经出现下降，“这对我们是个好消息”。
不过他也承认，人们对新型冠状病毒依然存在未知。“我们还不知道病毒为何有如此大的传染性，这是最大的问题。”其他不确定性还包括新冠病毒能否通过粪便传播，疫情中是否有所谓“超级传播者”等等。
针对政府封锁感染地区并限制交通以减少传播的做法，钟南山表示赞赏和支持。他表示，在此次疫情中，中国政府采取的措施比2003年SARS疫情期间更加有力，在透明性和与世界卫生组织(WHO)的合作方面做得更好。
谈到因染上新冠肺炎不幸去世的李文亮医生，眼中带泪的钟南山说，绝大多数人把李医生视为“中国的英雄”。“我为他感到骄傲。他在12月底把真相告诉了人们，后来他去世了。”他说。
钟南山说，在李医生背后还有成百上千想要讲出实情的医生，而现在政府也鼓励他们这么做。“我们真的需要去倾听。”他说。
The coronavirus outbreak is hitting a peak in China this month and may be over by April, the government’s senior medical adviser said on Tuesday, in the latest assessment of an epidemic that has rattled the world.
In an interview with Reuters, Zhong Nanshan, an 83-year-old epidemiologist who won fame for combating the SARS epidemic in 2003, shed tears about the doctor Li Wenliang who died last week after being reprimanded for raising the alarm.
But Zhong was optimistic the new outbreak would soon slow, with the number of new cases already declining in some places.
The peak should come in middle or late February, followed by a plateau and decrease, Zhong said, basing the forecast on mathematical modelling, recent events and government action.
“I hope this outbreak or this event may be over in something like April,” he said in a hospital run by Guangzhou Medical University, where 11 coronavirus patients were being treated.
Though his comments may soothe some global anxiety over the coronavirus - which has killed more than 1,000 people and seen more than 40,000 cases, almost all in China - Zhong’s previous forecast of an earlier peak turned out to be premature.
“We don’t know why it’s so contagious, so that’s a big problem,” added Zhong, who helped identify flaws in China’s emergency response systems during the 2002-03 SARS crisis.
He said there was a gradual reduction in new cases in the southern province of Guangdong where he is based, and also in Zhejiang and elsewhere. “So that’s good news for us.”
With China taking unprecedented measures to seal infected regions and limit transmission routes, Zhong applauded the government for locking down Wuhan, the city at the epicentre which he said lost control of the virus at an early stage.
“The local government, local healthcare authority should have some responsibility on this,” he said.
“Their work had not been done well.”
The virus is believed to have originated in early December in a Wuhan seafood market where wildlife was illegally sold.
‘HERO OF CHINA’
Local authorities have also come under fire for their heavy-handed treatment of the late doctor Li, who was reprimanded by police in early January for “spreading rumours” about the disease before becoming its best-known fatality last Friday.
“The majority of the people think he’s the hero of China,” Zhong said, wiping tears. “I’m so proud of him, he told people the truth, at the end of December, and then he passed away.”
Behind him stood hundreds of other doctors all wanting to tell the truth and now being encouraged by the government to do so, he said. “We really need to listen,” he said.
The virus has now infected more than 40,000 people on the Chinese mainland and spread to at least 24 countries.
Zhong, who said the government’s unwillingness to share information prolonged the SARS crisis, said Beijing had done much better this time on issues like transparency and cooperating with the World Health Organization (WHO).But more should be done, he said, including an end to wildlife trade, better international cooperation on hygiene technology, improved operation of disease control centres, and a global “sentry” system to warn of potential epidemics.
“If we have better cooperation and coordination, we can find it earlier and figure out the human-to-human transmission earlier,” he said during the roughly 90-minute interview, adding that the outbreak would not be quite so serious if such a system was in place.
Zhong said uncertainties remained about how the coronavirus was infecting patients, if it can spread via faeces and whether so-called “superspreaders” were helping transmit the disease.
So far, China’s data shows the recovery rate to be quite low, with less than 10% of confirmed patients discharged, but Zhong said authorities were leaving nothing to chance, with many patients still quarantined in wards now reasonably healthy.
“They didn’t know if they were going to re-infect or not... so that’s why the cure rate up to now is not that high.”
Wearing masks outside contagion zones was not always necessary, he said, and the United States’ and others’ entry ban on Chinese was an over-reaction. Furthermore, it appeared children were less vulnerable, he added.
Global, apolitical cooperation was crucial, Zhong said.
“I think maybe we should be going closer, I mean in particular our colleagues and scientists, and have more cooperation,” he said. “We’re just dealing with the disease - nothing to do with the political, nothing.”
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