Expert: No evidence that Beijing's new cluster virus is more contagious than earlier strains

Wu Zunyou, chief epidemiologist with the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, said on Thursday that environmental samples taken in Beijing's Xinfadi market were found to be extremely contaminated, especially in the aquatic product area, with high levels of the coronavirus. The infected staff were concentrated in that area, and most of the customers are infected with the virus after shopping or visiting that area too, so it cannot be considered that this virus is more infectious than the one circulating in China in January and February.

Wu said that there are two measures of the infectivity, one is the coefficient of transmission, in which one person can infect several healthy people. The second is the second-generation secondary rate, which is how many people are infected for every 100 people exposed to infection.

From the virus observed in countries around the world between January and May, neither indicator changed significantly. From the limited data available from Beijing, there is no hard data to support a stronger infectivity than in January and February, Wu added.