Coronavirus: Pharmacists on frontline in fight

Pharmacists are being urged to ask customers with flu-like symptoms if they have been overseas.

Chief medical officer Brendan Murphy. Picture: AAP

Pharmacists are being urged to check whether customers with flu-like symptoms have been overseas in the latest measure to strengthen ­Australia’s response to the coronavirus.

The nation’s chief medical officer, Brendan Murphy, said pharmacists were likely to be in the frontline when it came to tackling the deadly virus as it continued to spread and that it was crucial they queried customers about their travel histories. “I know that people with flu-like symptoms, such as those seen with this coronavirus, will often seek advice from their pharmacist,” Dr Murphy said. “I am encouraging pharmacists, in coming weeks, to seek a travel history from such patients, asking them whether they have been in the Hubei province of China or whether they have been in contact with people with the coronavirus infection.

“If the answer is yes, please ask your patient to put on a surgical mask and present to their GP or emergency department.”

The government indicated on Tuesday that it would dip into its emergency stockpile of face masks to provide to GPs following concerns expressed by doctors that they were having difficulty securing supplies. There have been five confirmed diagnoses of novel coronavirus in Australia, four in NSW and one in Victoria.

State health departments are awaiting tests for ­numerous other suspected cases, although four cases in Western Australia proved negative on Tuesday.

The disease can vary widely in severity, with some infected people experiencing symptoms akin to a bad cold and others suffering severe symptoms of pneumonia. Common symptoms of corona­virus include fever and respiratory symptoms including coughing and shortness of breath. The average incubation period of the virus is about seven days, with an upper limit of 14 days.

However, the disease has been rapidly evolving since its emergence at a seafood and live animal market in Wuhan, with Chinese authorities saying they had seen atypical cases in which the first symptoms of the virus were gastro­intestinal.

It was initially thought that transmission of the virus had been from infected animals to people who visited the Wuhan market, but it quickly became clear to Chinese authorities that the virus was spreading human to human.

Chinese health authorities have also indicated they believe the disease may be able to be passed on before symptoms are present, but this has been treated with scepticism by Australian authorities, given that was not the case with other coronaviruses, ­including SARS and MERS.

Dr Murphy said Australia was seeking advice from the World Health Organisation in relation to China’s claim that coronavirus could be transmitted before symptoms were present. “The expert panels were not convinced of that,” he said. “It would be very unusual ­because this virus is similar to the SARS and MERS viruses and they were not infectious before symptoms. If that were to be the case, it would have impli­cations for contact tracing.”

SARS killed 774 people in 17 countries following its initial outbreak in southern China in 2002. SARS had a much higher fatality rate than the current novel corona­virus, killing about 10 per cent of those infected. Early indications, which are being treated cautiously by experts, suggest novel coronavirus’s fatality rate is closer to 3 per cent.

Coronavirus is thought to be transmitted through coughing and sneezing, but Chinese authorities are now saying they believe it can also be transmitted via touch.

According to The Lancet, early analysis of the virus’s spread shows a high contagion rate between 1.8 and 3.4, meaning one person will infect two or three other people.