May 20, 2020 / Isabel Togoh, Forbes Staff
TOPLINE
Chinese doctors are monitoring an outbreak of coronavirus in the northeast that appears to have stemmed from contact with arrivals from Russia and that manifests differently, with patients taking longer to develop symptoms after becoming infected than the outbreak seen in Wuhan.
KEY FACTS
- Patients in the Jilin and Heilongjiang regions in northeastern China are taking more than one to two weeks after infection to develop symptoms, according to top critical care doctor Qiu Haibo, Bloomberg reported.
- The longer incubation period is said to be making it tougher for authorities to confirm cases before they potentially spread and is creating “clusters of family infections,” Qui said.
- But the observed changes could be due to the fact that doctors are able to monitor patients for longer and in more detail than in Wuhan, which became overwhelmed with cases at the peak of the outbreak there, according to the report.
- The doctor added that patients in the northeast appeared to experience the worst of the damage in their lungs, whereas patients in Wuhan suffered damage across multiple organs.
