Chile’s Health Ministry announces preventative measures in light of the outbreak of novel coronavirus in China

This Thursday, the Health Minister announced preventative measures to address the new respiratory illness produced by coronavirus 2019-nCoV, following the alert issued by the World Health Organization (WHO).

According to the international body, the outbreak began in the Chinese city of Wuhan. China has since decided to close access to three cities affected by the virus. Despite the rapid increase in the number of cases reported in China, the World Health Organization decided not to declare a public health emergency of international concern because it considers the outbreak to still be restrictive.

At this time, Chile does not have any record of people infected with novel coronavirus nCoV.

On that note, Health Minister Jaime Mañalich announced that Chile has adopted preventative measures to address novel coronavirus (nCoV), primarily reinforcing the surveillance network and developing diagnostic capabilities to confirm potential cases.

He explained these measures together with the ministry’s head of epidemiology Johanna Acevedo who, in line with the International Health Code, is the point of contact for the WHO on this matter, as well as Mario Cruz, the Advisor on Health Systems and Services for the Panamerican Health Organization in Chile.

“This is an issue without borders, so we have ceded command to the WHO and are ready to respond to their instructions,” said the minister, who added that “treatment of an infection of this nature is not any different from other serious respiratory infections, like influenza.”

The Minister added that our hospital network is prepared; it has had to face similar situations in the past, like the outbreak of AH1N1 in 2009, SARS and MERS.

Measures

In terms of measures, regarding the ability to diagnose the virus, the Health Minister explained, “in Chile, the Public Health Institute (ISP) has already mounted the technique for identifying the virus via genome sequence,” which takes three days.

In order to expand our diagnostic capacity, “we are working quickly to release a complementary technique called PCR for distribution to all the sentinel sites next week. It is expected to cut the time between taking the sample and certifying the diagnosis from three days to about twelve hours.”

The point of contact for the World Health Organization said, “the WHO recommended that all member states take public health actions to prevent the spread of the respiratory illness. Consequently, our Ministry immediately issued orders containing initial measures that focus on epidemiological surveillance, clinical case management and the capacity to diagnose in Chile.”

In terms of epidemiological surveillance, Johanna Acevedo noted that “the surveillance in the sentinel sites” has been strengthened and that “we have established mandatory universal and immediate notification for patients with severe acute respiratory insufficiency without an identified causal agent and who have been in China within the last 15 to 20 days.”

She added that in order to prevent transmission of the virus inside hospitals, health professionals must adopt standard infection control precautions (similar to those used in the case of other outbreaks like Ah1ni, SARS or MERS) in the event of suspected or confirmed cases of the disease.

Acting Public Health Undersecretary Sylvia Santander noted that "this illness and all respiratory ailments are treated symptomatically and require support if they are serious. The network is prepared for that."

Mario Cruz reported that, “at this point, there are no recommendations for avoiding the flow of persons or products.”

The Health Minister also noted that “it is one thing to give an opinion that there is no risk or that risk is low, and another to issue a certificate stating that, as the Health Ministry, we guarantee this product or package is risk-free.”