中学生课外英语拓展阅读：新冠病毒肺炎相关文章整理

1. CNN关于新型冠状病毒疫苗的最新报道 (疫情发展变化中)

本文话题词汇：

vaccine 疫苗

virus 病毒

infect 传染;使感染

clinical trial 临床试验

coronavirus 冠状病毒

influenza 流行性感冒

health care worker 医护人员

infected patient 受感染的病人

genetic code 基因序列

背景知识

coronavirus 冠状病毒，这样称呼的原因是这种病毒在显微镜下呈冠状，像一顶王冠。而 “王冠”一词在拉丁语中是corona 。按西方学术概念名称使用拉丁语(或古希腊语)的习惯，人们将corona与virus 放在一起构成合成词coronavirus，即“冠状病毒”。(virus 一词也来自拉丁语)

(CNN) — Ateam of scientists in Texas, New York and China are at work on a vaccineagainst the new virus that has infected lots of people worldwide. The NationalInstitutes of Health (NIH) is also working on a vaccine. It will take a fewmonths until the first phase of the clinical trials get underway.

来自德克萨斯州、纽约和中国的一组科学家正在研制疫苗，以对抗这种已感染世界上很多人的新型病毒。美国国立卫生研究院(简称NIH)也在着手研制疫苗。到第一阶段的临床试验开始将需要几个月的时间。

This newvirus is a coronavirus, which is the same family as the virus that causes SARS,or Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, which was first reported in Asia in 2002and killed more than 700 people. Middle East Respiratory Syndrome, or MERS,which has killed more than 800 people since 2012, is also caused by a coronavirus.

这种新型病毒是一种冠状病毒，与引起SARS(重症急性呼吸系统综合征)的病毒属于同一科。SARS于2002年在亚洲被首次报道，导致700多人死亡。自2012年以来已经导致800多人死亡的中东呼吸综合征(MERS)也是由一种冠状病毒引起的。

“Thelesson we’ve learned is coronavirus infections are serious and one of thenewest and biggest global health threats,” said Dr. Peter Hotez, a vaccinescientist in Houston. He added that it’s less challenging to develop a vaccinefor coronaviruses than for other viruses such as HIV or influenza. If a vaccineis developed, he said, health care workers might be among the first to receiveit because they are exposed to infected patients.

“我们得到的教训是，冠状病毒感染是严重的，是最新和最大的全球健康威胁之一，”休斯敦疫苗科学家彼得·霍特兹博士说。他补充道，开发一种针对冠状病毒的疫苗，其难度低于针对艾滋病或流感等其它病毒的疫苗。他说，如果研制出了疫苗，医护人员可能是最先接种的人，因为他们接触受感染的病人。

It is“remarkable” that scientists are able to start developing a vaccine for a virusthat was identified less than a month ago, he said. He credited Chineseresearchers, who quickly sequenced (确定…的化学结构序列) and published the virus’s genome(基因组).“With SARS, it took almost a year to be able to identify and map the fullgenetic code,” he said. “Now we’re doing this in just a few weeks.”

他说，科学家能够开始研制不到一个月前才被发现的病毒的疫苗，这是“非凡的”。他将这归功于中国的研究人员，因为他们迅速地对病毒的基因组进行了排序并公布了结果。他说：“当时的SARS，我们花了将近一年的时间来识别和绘制完整的基因序列。现在我们只用了几周的时间。”

2. 新型冠状病毒，你需要知道些啥

——英国《卫报》

This isan outbreak of disease that started in Wuhan, one of the central Chinese cities.It’s caused by a novel corona virus that means it’s brand-new. So new thatactually it doesn’t have a name yet.

这次疾病爆发始于武汉，中国的一个中部城市。它是由新型冠状病毒引起的，这意味着它是全新的，新到实际上还没来得及给它起名。

What are the symptoms?

It’s froma family called the corona viruses. The symptoms of this illness are prettymundane (平凡的)on the face of it: it’s a dry cough fever and then breathing problems. It seemsquite mild in lots of people, and probably those people don’t end up inhospital at all.

症状是哪些?

它来自冠状病毒科。从表面看，这种疾病症状相当普通：干咳、发烧和呼吸困难。对很多人来说，症状轻微，这些人甚至可能都不用住院。

We onlyknow about the more severe cases, which is where people have gone on to developviral pneumonia, and those people obviously end up in hospital, and all thedeaths have been amongst those people.

我们只知道那些更严重的病例，即继续发展成病毒性肺炎的病例，那些人显然最终要住院，而所有死亡的人都在这些人里。

Where have cases beenconfirmed so far?

Thisbrand-new corona virus came from animals, and it’s believed that the source wasactually a seafood market in Wuhan, which also sells wild animals. So far asfar as we know all the cases have come out of Wuhan. So some of these peopleare in places like Thailand and Japan, but they haven’t picked it up there.They actually got it in Wuhan and then they traveled.

目前病例确认在哪里?

这种全新的冠状病毒来自动物，据信来源于一个武汉的海鲜市场，这个市场也出售野生动物。据我们所知，目前所有的病例都来自武汉。其中一些人在泰国和日本，但他们并不是在那里感染上病毒的。实际上他们在武汉感染上病毒，然后旅行。

… andthose who have died tend actually to have underlying conditions as they say,that they’re frail, they may have heart disease or cancer already, and sothey’re vulnerable. Basically their immune systems are not very robust, andthey’re gong to find it very hard to fight off a virus.

……而那些死亡的人往往都患有基础病：他们虚弱，他们也许已患有心脏疾病或者癌症，因此很脆弱。基本上来说，他们的免疫系统不是很强壮，所以会发现他们很难抵抗病毒。

How is this virustransmitted?

We’veonly just discovered that the new corona virus is actually transmitted from oneperson to another. It was hoped at first actually that it just came fromanimals as all corona viruses do. But now it looks as though it is actuallypassed from one human being to another. So we’ve got people to peopletransmission, because the market has been closed for sometime, and there arecases in people who’ve never been near it.

这种病毒是如何传染的?

我们刚刚发现新型冠状病毒实际上是人传人。最初希望它实际上来自动物，就像所有冠状病毒那样。但是现在看来它是人传人。所以有人传人的感染，因为那家市场已关闭一段时间，而有些患者从未靠近过那里。

What treatment isavailable?

Sothere actually isn’t any treatment at the moment at all, because this is avirus. Antibiotics (抗生素) won’t work. They onlywork against bacteria not viruses. So really you want to know antiviraltreatment but none of the flu drugs that we got, and we have got a couple of thosewill work on this. A corona virus is differentfrom a flu virus, so there actually isn’t any treatment at the moment at all.

有无现成治疗方法?

实际上，目前没有任何治疗方法，因为这是病毒，抗生素无效，他们只对细菌有效，而不是病毒。所以要了解抗病毒治疗，但我们手头的流感药物，我们有的几种药物，没有一个对它起作用。冠状病毒不同于流感病毒，因此，目前没有任何治疗方法。

How serious is thisoutbreak compared to others in the past?

This oneis scary because it is a brand-new virus so we don’t know how it’s going tobehave. But I have to say, we perhaps ought to put it in the context of some ofthe other things. I went to Sierra Leone to cover the West Africa outbreak ofEbola (埃博拉)and that was killing more than half of all those people who were infected. SARSwhich was a novel corona virus just like this one back in 2002, did end upcausing a global panic.

和过去相比，这次爆发有多严重?

它很可怕，因为这是种全新的病毒，所以我们不知道它会如何变化。但是我得说，我们也许应和其他一些情况一起考虑。我去过西非塞拉利昂报道过埃博拉疫情，这种疾病使得一半的感染者死亡。2002年的SARS和这次一样，也是冠状病毒，最终导致全球恐慌。

And thatwas largely because nobody had ever seen it before, but also the death rate wasat around 10%. And here so far we’re talking about a death rate of 2%, which isa lot less and it does look as if many of those people actually have hadunderlying health problems, which would make it more likely that they woulddie. They could equally have died of flu, so you have to put it into that context,I think.

主要的原因是从未有人见过这种病毒，并且死亡率也在10%左右。到目前，新型冠状病毒的死亡率是2%，小的多，并且看起来死亡的人中许多实际上有其他健康基础病，这使他们更有可能死亡。他们同样可能死于流感，所以必须考虑这些情况。

“新冠状病毒肺炎”中考各学科相关考点汇总（