The World Health Organisation (WHO) said it will decide on January 23 whether to declare a global emergency over the outbreak of a new flu-like virus spreading in and beyond China. If it does so, it will be only the sixth international public health emergency to be declared in the past decade.

“The decision is one I take extremely seriously and one I am only prepared to make with appropriate consideration of all the evidence,” said WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. “This is an evolving and complex situation. Our team in China is working with local experts and officials to investigate the outbreak.”

Deaths from China’s new coronavirus virus rose to 17 on January 22 with more than 540 cases confirmed, increasing fears of contagion from an infection suspected to originate from illegally traded wildlife.

The WHO’s head of emergencies programme, Mike Ryan, said the priority was to find the roots of how the virus is passing between people.

“We are in agreement with Chinese authorities who have been clear and transparent that there is evidence of human-to-human transmission,” he said. “The primary issue is to limit (that) human-to-human transmission.”

The previously unknown coronavirus strain is believed to have emerged from an animal market in the central city of Wuhan, with cases now detected as far away as the US.

Here’s a look at the five international public health emergencies that have been declared in the past decade…

Swine flu

The swine flu pandemic of 2009 killed an estimated 284,500 people, about 15 times the number confirmed by laboratory tests at the time, according to an international group of scientists. A 2012 study in the Lancet Infectious Diseases journal said the toll might have been as many as 579,000 people. The original count, compiled by the WHO, put the number at 18,500.

Ebola in West Africa

An Ebola outbreak in Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia between 2013 to 2016 killed at least 11,300 people, more than all other known Ebola outbreaks combined. It cost the economies of those three countries an estimated $53 billion, according to a 2018 study in the Journal of Infectious Diseases.

Polio

In 2014, the WHO declared the resurgence of polio to be a public health emergency of international concern. Pakistan’s failure to stem the spread of the disease triggered the global measures, which also applied to Syria and Cameroon. Polio cases in Pakistan rose from 58 in 2012 to 93 in 2013, more than a fifth of the world total of 417.

Zika

The WHO in 2016 declared Zika a public health emergency of international concern. Zika had spread to more than 60 countries and territories since the outbreak was identified in Brazil in 2015. By November 2016, when the WHO declared an end to the Zika emergency, there had been some 2,300 confirmed cases worldwide of babies born with microcephaly, most in Brazil. Microcephaly is a condition marked by abnormally small heads that can lead to developmental problems.

Ebola in Democratic Republic of Congo

The WHO’s Emergency Committee on Ebola declared the outbreak an international emergency in July last year. By January 14, there had been 3,406 cases of Ebola, including 2,236 deaths, in the outbreak declared in August 2018 which the WHO has said will have cost $1 billion by the time it is halted.

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