THE ASAHI SHIMBUN
February 5, 2020 at 17:37 JST
A quarantine officer asks travelers from China if they had recently visited Hubei province and its capital, Wuhan, at Narita Airport in Chiba Prefecture on Feb. 1. (Yoshifumi Fukuda)
The health ministry expanded the scope of testing for the new coronavirus to include those who are not displaying symptoms of pneumonia but are coughing and running a fever if they came into a close contact with people who visited China's Hubei province, where the outbreak started, officials said Feb. 4.
Doctors are now required to alert their local public health center when they come across such cases to ensure the patients undergo virus testing.
Until now, doctors were required to contact public health centers when seeing the following two types of people: Those with a fever of 37.5 degrees or higher with respiratory symptoms, such as coughing, and pneumonia, who visited the Hubei provincial capital of Wuhan within two weeks of falling sick; and those who had contact with people who visited Wuhan and developed a fever and respiratory symptoms.
From now on, the ministry said the scope of the reporting and the testing will be expanded to include those who have visited Hubei province within the past two weeks even if they show no symptoms of pneumonia, or who came into prolonged close contact with people who visited the province.
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