Would You Cancel Trip To China Due To Wuhan Virus?

I am in Vietnam right now and it is fine. However, it was slightly unnerving to find out that I went through Nha Trang Airport the same day that a confirmed case in Vietnam went through. Luckily I had an early flight but who know?! There were a lot of Chinese in the airport that day. THat was a week ago and I am fine here in Danang and I am not worried about it here so far. However, I am not planning on flying anywhere for at least a couple of weeks just to see how this plays out. For example, you get a lot of Chinese at the hub airports of Bangkok, Kulala Lumpur and Singapore and all of those locations have had cases of Wuhan virus going through although the numbers are in the single digits at this point. I lived in China for two years and my advice right now is DON'T EVEN THINK ABOUT GOING THERE!! Even the major cities are getting shut down now and the true figures are MUCh WORSE than what is reported - the CCP lies and covers up all the time. Count on at least 10,000 case now.

We are going on a Celebrity Millenium Cruise on March 14th leaving Hong Kong with a stay of 3 days in Bejing and finishing in Shanghai. As of now, ships wont go to Shanghai. No idea about Hong Kong. I am expecting that Celebrity comes up with an alternative schedule. Maybe there will be a refund involved ( We just going back because of a refund as we got hit by taifun back in October in Japan). Celebrity gave us 50% back of the cruise far.

Anyhow. right now I would continue to monitor the news. For the next 2 to 3 weeks news wont become better especially consider not everyone receives treatment. So numbers will go up until we will see an improvement even if improvement starts earlier.

Also based on the fact that no group travel is allowed, i am expecting 0 transportation is available in China at this stage. Therefore there will be upcoming changes but I would stay calm especially for cruise passengers. Celebrity or any other cruise line is not interested to have empty ships nor they are interested to get the virus.
I might call them up next week to get a better idea but also considering flights etc. as long there is no worldwide guidance out to avoid certain areas, I am expecting you cant cancel your flights but I might would go somewhere else instead means book another flight to go to the philipines, indonasia etc

I would not at all travel to China. You may not go to Wuhan but how do you know the people you encounter have not been there, how do you know people haven't come into contact with the virus and it's still in the incubation period. You could contract it and not know and then come back home and spread it to everyone on the plane etc. There are so many possible scenarios of how this could go wrong - on top of the fact that China is notorious for not being honest about the gravity of their outbreaks. Trusting the number they have provided regarding infected persons and deaths is in my opinion naive.

China will always be there to visit - when there isn't a new virus circulating. In my opinion they should ground all flights to and from China, it's drastic but until this virus is contained people who think they'll be fine are those that will be helping this virus spread. Not fair to everyone else in the world.

To those saying oh it's fine it's already spread so I will go anyways - that is quite a daft statement. The more people who travel to and from China the quicker the virus will spread before it can be contained, the further it will spread. Be a responsible global citizen and don't go looking for what you haven't lost, dragging everyone else along with your ill-advised decision.

Hysteria, media loves it and well it even got me to respond.

Here is what people are reading and this from NYT:

"...Of those who died, many were older men with pre-existing chronic health problems, like diabetes and high blood pressure, that made them susceptible to complications.

At least 24 of those who died were from Hubei, the Chinese province of which Wuhan is the capital. Of those, the youngest was a 48-year-old woman, and the eldest were two 89-year-old men who died on Saturday and Sunday."

See that term, pre-existing...

I have a 4-week trip planned in March. 10 days in mainland China visiting friends in Shanghai and Guangdong then I join a 12-day train tour Beijing-North Korea-Vladisvostok, after which I will spend another week in that area of Russia.

The decision whether to go ahead will be made for me. North Korea has already closed to visitors due to coronavirus, and if it is still closed in mid-Feb, the tour company will cancel the train tour.

That would leave me with just the 10 days in China, which I could fairly easily expand. But with this virus spreading, and millions of people travelling huge distances around China for New Year right now, it is starting to seem like a stupid idea.

Providing an Asian perspective here. It's CNY and billions (e.g. 3 billion in 2016, will be much more now) will be criss-crossing China to visit their hometowns. Transport in China will also be crazily dense and packed.

The viruses have also occurred in at least 14 other provinces apart from Wuhan, including Beijing and Shanghai. The coronavirus cases brought in from China to other countries were not from Wuhan. E.g. the man who brought the virus in to Singapore was flying in from Guangzhou.

It can't be overstated just how important CNY celebrations are for us, and if it's enough of a hazard for Beijing to cancel CNY festivities, it's enough of a threat for tourists to take note.

Finally, Chinese residents and public health officials are certain China is massively under-reporting cases. Researchers estimate 1,300 to more than 4,000 undetected cases --- in Wuhan alone.

I would understand a casual attitude if it were somewhere like Taiwan. There, people tend to wear masks, practise good hygiene and self-report illness (like the single coronavirus patient, who immediately self-reported).

However, people in China have a very cavalier attitude towards hygiene in public and working/travelling while sick, even in times of epidemic. This phenomenon was well-documented during the SARS period and has already been reported in this case. That's how SARS became an epidemic with over 8000 cases throughout Asia, *despite* many Chinese residents knowing full well that they should have turned themselves in for quarantine.

On a last note, some commentators mentioned the flu. The difference between this and the flu is that there's a known cure for the flu. Like its predecessor SARS, we don't know how to treat coronavirus.

As with SARS for instance, it was always a certainty in Singapore that the coronavirus would make its way here, due to all the above factors. Now that it has, as with SARS, it's a certainty that the old and weak who catch it are bound to die (as there's no cure). It's just a matter of whether the deaths will be in the double or triple digits.

So yeah, it's certainly a personal decision (especially if it's just 1 night for a stopover) but just hoping to provide some context that readers may not be aware of.

I'm sitting right now in the Flagship Lounge in DFW, waiting to board my flight to HK. There I'll have a layover of 13 hours before continuing to Phuket, and back same route in a week.
I've been aware of the virus scare, but thought myself not much of it so far. Too few cases, seemed still contained mostly to mainland China.
However now I'm reading this here and threads on FT where people are advising wearing masks in the plane and all. I've got nothing of that kind with me. Is this all warranted? Will I be the only one in HKG and in the connection without mask?

I officially claim this as WuHARS. Wuhan acute respiratory syndrome.

@Daiko

If what you are saying is true, then someone should be a whistle blower.
What surprises me is that I'm sure they can track phones and should have done a better job on quarantines. Locking down the whole city is a bit too much too late. Could have sent the army to snatch everyone at the market 4 weeks ago.

On a different side, this will be interesting to see how effective a large scale lockdown can be executed. So far WuHARS isn't as lethal as SARS (yet?) so this will be a good case study if something more lethal surfaces.

@Farnorthtrader

SARS actually has a case-fatality rate of 11%. How about diarrhoea?

The only reason the death count wasn’t that high was because (late) actions were taken by the respective governments and WHO. WHO issued a list of infected areas and travel warning to these area. They also issued a ‘global travel warning’.

The HK government stepped up its city hygiene efforts and suspended schools for a month ( and a lot of schools started the suspension before the government asked them to anyway). If you look up the pictures HK airport was basically dead at the time. People didn’t travel as usual to avoid spreading the disease, which is exactly what people should do right now.

However Lucky, by all means go ahead with your trip - I look forward to reading your review on a lacklustre HU product.

"Would I travel to Wuhan right now? No, probably not. Not because I necessarily think it’s that risky (in my opinion the statistics simply don’t support that in a city of over ten million people)"

Apparently the Chinese government has closed all train stations and airports in Wuhan to outgoing travel and have been directing people to stay home and imploring people NOT to travel to Wuhan. So while you may think its not risky the Chinese government apparently sure as hell does. Also, not sure where you get your numbers from. There are at least 17 people dead from this and counting.

I think your analysis is reasonable but I would add a few things to consider:

1) as always the benefits must outweigh the risks. You can review these flights another time. There's no urgency. If someone is visiting a dying relative or needs to complete a million dollar business deal, then maybe even traveling to Wuhan is worth it. Yes the risks here are pretty small, but frankly Lucky, your reasons for traveling are also pretty small. I think your Dad is right wondering whether you absolutely *have* to take this trip right now.

2) you also have to consider the risk of *you* becoming one of those carriers that brings home the virus. Just like all those millions of Chinese that will be traveling for New Years pose a cumulative risk of spreading the disease, so does every international passenger. Yes, your individual chance of doing so is small, but consider that virus spreading isn't always only done by "other people". Every person that travels adds to the risks of spread.

3) during the sars epidemic, China was terrible in reporting, due to a combination of incompetence and wanting to hide the true extent. Indeed, initially it was thought the disease started in Hong Kong because they were there first ones to report it. Only later did we realize that's because the disease had been brewing quietly in China but they weren't reporting it, and HK was actually the spillover.

I'm sure China is better at this now (ironically, due to how badly SARS went). But I wouldn't place 100% faith in their case counts just yet.

Anyway, on balance I agree with you, but I'm more equivocal about your decision than you are.

Things are evolving fast and the picture could look very different later this week. The virus is so widespread in Wuhan that a domestic air passenger who spent a two-hour layover at Wuhan airport caught it. Hospitals in Wuhan have been overwhelmed for over a week.

I afraid Wuhan has very likely under-reported the true extent of the outbreak, perhaps against Beijing's will. Chinese censors are not taking down all the Weibo complaints over Wuhan's lame handling of the outbreak.

On the other hand, there are indications that the virus has not made everyone very sick (as SARS did). Young people and children might have better defense. But the real risk is that while a traveler might catch the virus not even noticing it, he/she could provide a hitchhike for the virus to reach vulnerable people who live far from Wuhan.

Later this week would be okay as Beijing is half deserted during Chinese New Year. But as the cases stack up and people return to work early next month, the situation will look grim. Unnecessary travel to China this spring should be reconsidered.

Well said Lucky! I’m currently on business in Guangzhou. Would I be worried? Yes but I take my precautions. At the end of the day it’s an influenza, your body have to fight it. But it’s bad for old ppl as they will struggle to fight it off. Just for reference, influenza kills about 600 people in UK every year. I had it myself and was bed bound for 3 weeks it was horrible.

Having said that, i will avoid wuhan at all cost. This is what the government is doing telling ppl in wuhan NOT to travel.

The western media made as ppl are dying in China but it simply not the case.

So be vigilant if you have planned a trip to China, don’t. If you have take precautions.

There's no reason to equivocate on whether to travel to Wuhan - the analysis here appears sound that the risk is probably low but it's based entirely on what appears to be sensible to a lay person based on what appears to be situation, about 20 days after the illness began to appear. Civil authorities and epidemiological experts have urged people not to travel to Wuhan; that should carry substantial weight. Much of the pathology and transmission of the virus remain unknown and coronaviruses are thought to mutate easily (bringing the potential of becoming more lethal or more easily transmitted). Deciding to go to ground zero where a novel virus - only known to mankind for a few weeks - is sickening, and in some instances killing, people seems extremely poor judgment even if the risk appears low based on current knowledge. At least not if the decision to go is purely discretionary.

By the end of this week, this thing will spread all over China due to the world's greatest annual human migration. They do not have the capability of stopping Chinese people to travel home for the lunar new year.

I have chastised and forbid family members that live in Shanghai (not near Wuhan) to visit my elderly grandmother next week.

DO NOT go to China/Hong Kong/Macau in the foreseeable future, unless you have a very good reason. Reviewing a 787 business class on a broke airline that won't exist much longer is NOT a valid reason.

Many people die every year due to influenza because they are stupid and do not get flu shots that are widely available. Coronovirus is different, it has no cure or remedy at the moment and likely won't have one for a while.

For those of you with leisure travel plans thru/to China in the next few months, you should cancel/reroute your trip. I am pretty sure airlines will soon have adjusted policies regarding this situation.

As with the person who posted about their impending transit at HKIA, dust mask is useless. You have to wear surgical/antivirus masks. You do not need N95 masks as one cannot breath easily with those, forcing you to remove it often, which kills the the purpose of wearing masks. There is an outage (not shortage) of masks in China right now, family and friends are asking me to mail them masks from the States. I went to/called 17 targets/CVS/Walgreens in my area yesterday and everyone is sold out.
Currently Amazon is out of stock on usable masks until February 5th. How's that for data folks?!

Lucky, please don't be stupid (I am sorry if this is too direct), but it is not worth it.

No, you shouldn't go to Wuhan due to gross incompetence and handling of the epidemic, hospitals were full of patients, and before the news exploded nationwide, they were told to go home. Doctor was first confirmed infected 11 days ago and local government covered, claimed the virus can't go person to person at the time. And many companies already forbid their employees from entering/exiting Wuhan
Other parts in China are probably fine, but avoid Wuhan by all means. And this will go down as bad as SARS, if not worse, in history, IMO