Zhong Nanshan told the opening of the Guangzhou Science and Technology and Activity Week on Saturday that people with symptoms – particularly the elderly – should seek medical treatment within 48 hours.
He said that in the current cycle, the virus was more infectious and the symptoms were similar to general influenza but with a more obvious sore throat, according to Shanghai-based news site Thepaper.cn.
Citing data from the Chinese Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), he said that between March 31 and May 4, tests on outpatients with flu symptoms and hospital patients with severe symptoms had seen an increase in the number of positives from 7.5 per cent to 16.2 per cent.
However, the overall number of acute respiratory infectious diseases remained at a low level, according to the CDC report released on May 8, but there was an upward trend in the number of positives in April.
Test results showed that all detected pathogens were known common ones and no unknown pathogens or newly emerging infectious diseases had been found.
