MACAU BUSINESS
Concerning the economic supportive measures that
have been rolled out so far, the government has allowed businesses and entrepreneurs to repay a smaller amount of money for government loans; while the annual cash handout for permanent and non- permanent residents will be distributed in April this year, rather than in July as usual. “But we have to better control this epidemic fi rst [before rolling out measures to support the economy],” said Mr. Lei.
When Will the Outbreak Peak This Time?
There are mixed views on when the outbreak of this new Wuhan coronavirus will peak and be curtailed, ranging from early February to May. Zhong Nanshan, a renowned scientist at
China’s National Health Commission, who has been greatly involved in tackling the SARS epidemic in the 2002-2003 period, told Xinhua in late January that the situation of the Wuhan coronavirus “should reach a peak in a week or around 10 days,” which means the outbreak
could peak in early February.
The outbreak “will not increase at a large scale” and the fatality rate, currently standing at 2.1 percent, would continue to fall, he said to the Chinese state-run news agency. On the other hand, Gabriel Leong, Dean of the Li Ka Shing Faculty of Medicine of the University of Hong Kong, said in a press conference in late January that the faculty only expects the infections of the Wuhan coronavirus to peak in the period between end-April and
early May, when Chongqing, with frequent exchanges with Wuhan, could see as many as 150,000 new cases a day; and Wuhan, Shanghai, and Beijing might also see as many as 50,000 new cases a day. The expert also forecasted over 44,000 people in Mainland China had been infected with the new virus as of late January, when the authorities only claimed over 6,000 confi rmed cases, given that many infections have been unreported and overlooked.
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