let's get the thoughts of our guest joining us here in doha is dr patrick tang division chief of pathology sciences at sidra medicine from nairobi via skype we're joined by dr abdullah a medical doctor and research scientist at the african population and health research center and from oxford dr dominic wilkinson medical doctor and director of medical ethics at the your hero center for practical ethics at the university of oxford gentlemen welcome to the program let's start with you dr. at what point does this become a pandemic with the already with the disease spreading so far from the original outbreak we are certainly at the verge of a pandemic we are not technically in the midst of a pandemic yet but for all purposes we need to prepare for a pandemic and you know everyone in all different countries need to prepare for that eventuality does it matter what we label it i mean it it's spread around the world already the label that we give this outbreak is irrelevant at this point given the spread in so many different countries around the world all citizens in every country around the world

but joining us now here on set it's up to patrick tang division chief of facility sciences at city. medicine here in castle thanks for talking to us. let's raise and that terribly scary dame in my opinion pandemic is it time to cool corona virus so all see that 9900 a pandemic technically it's not a pandemic yet that doesn't change how we approach this outbreak the same measures that we're taking we still have to do so what is the definition of a pandemic then as opposed to a global outbreak which is what we seem to be experiencing at the moment so deafening this is definitely a global outbreak a pandemic will require sustained transmission and in many of the countries around the world now the sustained transmission is occurring in a limited number of countries still what are all the specific concerns about the nature of the way this outbreak is evolving and about the nature of the virus what's most concerning now are the cases that we're seeing in iran which we're not expected and. it's very concerning for us because we're not been leveled preparedness the made in iran may be a lit

right now let's talk to dr patrick tang division chief of pathology sidra mets and hearing cats thank you for talking to us would be interesting at this point to note that dr ted ross the head of the w.h.o. has been tweeting sim card for cation some context if you like in suggesting that 80 percent of the is you've got the infected by the virus actually mild suffer as in the likely to recover he's saying that 20 percent maybe critical of these pointing out that there is a fatality rate so far of up to 2 percent i mean does that make it a killer virus if stephanie a virus that we have to be concerned about because 2 percent is not an insignificant number if you think about how many people could potentially be infected 2 percent of the world's population is significant but we're not as a pandemic stage despite the fact that we're hearing it now in the middle east and in europe they're isolated cases should we be concerned should the w.h.o. be considering reclassifying this now as a global pandemic well that is sort of a technical kind of decision whether you call it a pandemic or not th

and i'm joined by patrick tang dr patrick tang who's division chief of pathology sciences at cedar medicine here in doha thank you so much for coming in a lot of alarm obviously around the world but how would you compare this strain of the corona virus to let's say the saws virus in 2002 other emergencies like ebola in central africa is it spreading more quickly is it more lethal than in those viruses if we compare this novel coronavirus to sars we find that this new novel coronavirus is the last little than sars think the early data all shows that one of the other things about it is that it maybe just says infectious as sars if not more based on some of the data that we're seeing right now it's quite possible that the number of cases might be underestimated in china there might be other people that they haven't been able to test for the virus so so right now we're still in this stage where we're learning a lot more about the virus so is is it is declaring it then a global emergency causing more panic than it should i mean was that the right move to declare it a global emergency health emer

how long their extended and now enforced holiday will be adrian brown al jazeera hong kong dr patrick tang is the chief of pathology sciences at cedar medicine here in doha earlier i asked him how the new corona virus compares to other deadly strain such as the size and maize if we compare this novel coronavirus to sars we find that this new novel coronavirus is less lethal than sars i think that early data all shows that one of the other things about it is that it maybe just says infectious as sars if not more based on some of the data that we're seeing right now it's quite possible that the number of cases might be underestimated in china there might be other people that they haven't been able to test for the virus so so right now we're still in this stage where we're learning a lot more about the virus so similar to the severe krohn of ours is so that sars the people that have died are mostly older elderly people that have had other illnesses as well to have been fewer people younger who have died. i think it's very hard to predict how long it's going to last it's probably the last a fe