UK China expert confident nation will get to grips with virus outbreak

Leading British economist and China expert Jim O'Neill is optimistic about China's handling of the novel coronavirus outbreak because of the nation's experience from similar situations but warns that future outbreaks could present a challenge.

O'Neill, who chaired the United Kingdom government's Review on Antimicrobial Resistance, said: "In the past, China has already had potentially really threatening epidemics and it has dealt with this surprisingly quickly and very effectively. So, I am guessing it will deal with this quite efficiently, but what it highlights is China's vulnerability to repeated ones in the future."

O'Neill, who is chair of the Royal Institute of International Affairs, which is known as Chatham House, said the Chinese authorities have reacted more promptly and proactively than they did at the start of the 2002-03 SARS outbreak. But he said there is still a long way to go before the nation develops a more comprehensive health system.

And he said it will be important for the nation to educate its population, particularly those in less developed regions, about healthy lifestyles.

"A lot of people in rural areas probably have no idea on some of the personal health risks they are taking," he said.

Having traveled to China more than 30 times since 1990, O'Neill said he has seen, first-hand, advanced medical facilities in major cities including Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou. But he believes there is still a need to upgrade facilities in smaller towns and villages.

"I strongly suspect the Chinese clinical health system (in those places), including the ability to see a truly qualified doctor, is probably not very good, so China has to deal with that," he added.

While chairing the Review on Antimicrobial Resistance, O'Neill analyzed the global problem of diseases becoming resistant to medicines because of their improper use. He suggested China "dramatically reduce the inappropriate use of antibiotics".

"In less educated or less informed areas in China, you probably have quasi-medical people to help individuals buy over-the-counter antibiotics without knowing it is not going to help, which among other things, cause the resistance to grow," he said. "So, if the country does not treat these things seriously, as this decade gets older, there will be more and more new disease risks that could potentially become epidemics."

But, despite the challenges, he believes China will cope with the current outbreak and ultimately improve its preventive health system.

The novel coronavirus, named 2019-nCoV, appears to have emerged from a seafood market in Wuhan, China. The nation reported more than 20,000 confirmed cases of the virus and 425 deaths as of Tuesday evening, with 66 percent of infected people coming from Wuhan. Outside China, 176 cases had been confirmed.