New York Times on Match 29 reported that the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention held the country’s biggest infectious outbreak training exercise since the SARS epidemic in 2002 and 2003, in n July, to showcase the strides made since the virus killed hundreds and traumatised the nation. More than 8,200 officials took part in the online drill, focused on a traveler arriving from abroad with a fever who sets off temperature monitors, triggering a hunt for other passengers. The officials raced to test how quickly and effectively they could track, identify and contain the virus, including by notifying Beijing. “Who knows what the next one will be?” said Feng Zijian, a senior disease control official who helped design the exercise, according to the center. According to a recent study whose authors include an expert from Wuhan’s municipal Center for Disease Control and Prevention, aggressive action just a week earlier in mid-January could have cut the number of infections by two thirds. Another study found that if China had moved to control the outbreak three weeks earlier, it might have prevented 95 percent of the country’s cases. Dr. Ai Fen, the head of the intensive care unit at Wuhan Central Hospital, was among the first doctors to note a disturbing pattern among patients staggering into the city’s hospitals with dry coughs, high fevers and crippling lethargy. Computerized tomography or “CT” scans often revealed extensive damage to their lungs. Talking to the Chinese magazine 'People' she said of a patient who came on December 16, “It was a baffling high fever. The medicines used throughout didn’t work, and his temperature didn’t move. I regret that back then I didn’t keep screaming out at the top of my voice.” She said “I’ve often thought to myself what would have happened if I could wind back time.” By the end of the month, local disease control centers in Wuhan were receiving worried calls from doctors, telling of the strange, tenacious pneumonia cases that often seemed to emanate from the Huanan seafood market. Seven in one hospital, three in another, three in yet another. An official from a district disease control center in Wuhan told the hospital doctor handling infection reports on Jan. 3 that “this was a special contagious disease and we should report only after superiors had notified us,” the leaked report said.
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