On Topic Discussion 2019 Coronavirus (COVID-19/SARS-CoV-2)

[rareboy]

Re: Coronavirus. Are you buying the hype?

The curve seems to be flattening out again in China....lower rate of increase in new reported cases and deaths....

 

[KaraBulut]

Re: Coronavirus. Are you buying the hype?

16-Feb-2020:

COVID-19 stats:
Cases reported: 69,267 (up from 67,097 yesterday)
Cases reported in the US - 15
Cases reported in Canada - 7
Deaths: 1,670 (up from 1,527 yesterday)

 

[justaguy]

Re: Coronavirus. Are you buying the hype?

Maybe the best day for World vs Virus yet. New cases in China have fallen to just over 2000 and there was only 3 more confirmed cases in the rest of the world.

 

[KaraBulut]

Re: Coronavirus. Are you buying the hype?

17-Feb-2020:

COVID-19 stats:
Cases reported: 71,811 (up from 69,267 yesterday)
Cases reported in the US - 15
Cases reported in Canada - 8 (up from 7 yesterday)
Deaths: 1,775 (up from 1,670 yesterday)

The US cases doesn't include 14 people who were evacuated from the Japanese cruise ship who tested positive. Those passengers are currently being quarantined at an Air Force base in California.

 

[opinterph]

Moderator Message Re: 2019 Coronavirus (COVID-19)

This thread is now designated “On-Topic.”

 

[KaraBulut]

Re: 2019 Coronavirus (COVID-19)

18-Feb-2020:

COVID-19 stats:
Cases reported: 73,337 (up from 71,811 yesterday)
Cases reported in the US - 15
Cases reported in Canada - 8
Deaths: 1,875 (up from 1,775 yesterday)

Over the weekend, 400 Americans were evacuated from a cruise ship in Japan tested positive for the virus. At first, NIH reported that 14 evacuees had tested positive for the virus. Overnight, the 14 reported cases increased to 40 cases (which are not counted in the 15 "US cases"). The ship has over 3,000 passengers and crew; 412 have tested positive for the virus.

 

[KaraBulut]

Re: Coronavirus. Are you buying the hype?

The Wuhan virus has been confirmed to pass from human to human and it seems to have a higher transmission factor which is why it's showing up in so many areas of east Asia, Europe and North America. That's a significant difference. It also puts healthcare workers in the high risk pool

.

...And yet Kara explained above that the real danger here is having health care systems overwhelmed and effectively paralyzed by treating people infected with the virus....in this case, on top of the crippling year we are already experiencing from the flu season.

Last week, China admitted that over 1,700 healthcare workers had contracted coronavirus. Seven workers have died.

Yesterday, a hospital administrator in Wuhan died from the virus.

Wuhan hospital director dies after contracting virus [The Hill]

The director of the leading hospital in Wuhan, China, where the rapidly spreading coronavirus originated, reportedly died of the infection he contracted while treating patients.

The Wuchang Hospital director, Liu Zhiming, became infected with coronavirus and died despite “all-out” attempts to save him, The Associated Press reported on Tuesday, citing an announcement from Wuhan’s health bureau.

Liu is the seventh health worker to die of coronavirus, or COVID-19, infection, and more than 1,700 doctors and nurses have become sick, according to the AP.

 

[rareboy]

Re: 2019 Coronavirus (COVID-19)

Just wondering again about who thought the best approach would be to keep all the passengers on the Princess cooped up together?

454 cases would seem to suggest that some may now have contracted the virus in the time that they have been docked?

 

[KaraBulut]

Re: 2019 Coronavirus (COVID-19)

Just wondering again about who thought the best approach would be to keep all the passengers on the Princess cooped up together?

454 cases would seem to suggest that some may now have contracted the virus in the time that they have been docked?

There's a big discussion going on about this.

Normally, when there's a epidemic, public health officials take two steps:

• Quarantine those who have been exposed or are at high risk of exposure
• Isolate those who are known to have active infection

For COVID-19, the quarantine period is 14 days and they must be fever-free with negative nasal swabs at the end of quarantine. To come out of isolation, the patient has to have 4 virus-free nasal swabs (usually 2 per day for 2 consecutive days).

The concerns around the cruise ship quarantines center around what is unknown about how the virus is transmitted. The early assumptions about COVID-19 was that transmission was primarily respiratory via droplets from coughs/sneezes and aerosolization of virus in respiratory secretions. There's evidence that the virus can be spread by inanimate objects. There's also a documented case where occupants of an apartment building contracted the virus via a defective plumbing system (i.e. fecal contamination).

The cruise ship occupants remained in their rooms for 23 hours per day. Their meals and other supplies were brought to their rooms by cruise ship personnel. Public health officials questioned whether this "quarantine" was able to control spread of the virus on the ship since cruise ship personnel are not really prepared to institute quarantine measures that involve respiratory and contact controls.

Those in favor of the quarantine pointed out that with over 3,000 people on the ship, where would the people have been housed in Japan and who would have paid for it? Keeping them on the ship- where there was food, housing and a means to control their behavior was probably the best option.

 

[Telstra]

Re: 2019 Coronavirus (COVID-19)

Health care workers used masks, gloves ... etc but still get the virus and died?
Meaning the virus can stay in the air quite a long time?

 

[KaraBulut]

Re: 2019 Coronavirus (COVID-19)

19-Feb-2020:

COVID-19 stats:
Cases reported: 75,282 (up from 73,337 yesterday)
Cases reported in the US - 29 (up from 15 yesterday)*
Cases reported in Canada - 8
Deaths: 2,012 (up from 1,875 yesterday

*In the US, 14 evacuees from the Japan cruise ship have been quarantined at US military bases. These cases have been added to the US number of cases. In addition, one of the evacuees from Wuhan who has been in quarantine since 7-Feb at Lackland AFB has tested positive and is in a local hospital in San Antonio.

The number of case on the Japanese cruise ship Diamond Princess has increased to 500 cases. An additional 88 cases were found yesterday.

 

[rareboy]

Re: 2019 Coronavirus (COVID-19)

I do see that this morning, they are reporting 15,030 recovered cases for a resolved total of 17,042 so the current mortality rate remains above 10%.

When you consider the Herculean efforts being made in the care of severe cases, this is still frighteningly high.

 

[KaraBulut]

Re: 2019 Coronavirus (COVID-19)

I do see that this morning, they are reporting 15,030 recovered cases for a resolved total of 17,042 so the current mortality rate remains above 10%.

When you consider the Herculean efforts being made in the care of severe cases, this is still frighteningly high.

One of the interesting things that we're discovering from the constant monitoring of quarantined evacuees is that many of the people testing positive have only mild symptoms- basically a cold. The estimates are that maybe up to 80% of the people who test positive may have mild symptoms.

That's the good news. The bad news is that this also means that there may be asymptomatic carriers who are spreading the virus to people who are more susceptible. It also means that fever is of little value for screening purposes. All of the "fever" screening that is being done at the borders, in customs and on the streets of Wuhan province may be worthless as a tool for preventing the spread of the virus.

Meanwhile, flu season continues with millions of people infected and thousands dead. And the public seems to be be less concerned.

 

[justaguy]

Re: 2019 Coronavirus (COVID-19)

One of the interesting things that we're discovering from the constant monitoring of quarantined evacuees is that many of the people testing positive have only mild symptoms- basically a cold. The estimates are that maybe up to 80% of the people who test positive may have mild symptoms.

That's the good news. The bad news is that this also means that there may be asymptomatic carriers who are spreading the virus to people who are more susceptible. It also means that fever is of little value for screening purposes. All of the "fever" screening that is being done at the borders, in customs and on the streets of Wuhan province may be worthless as a tool for preventing the spread of the virus.

Meanwhile, flu season continues with millions of people infected and thousands dead. And the public seems to be be less concerned.

To be fair though, the number of people with covid 19 is still relatively small but has the potential to be much bigger. If we allow it to spread like a normal flu there'll be millions dead, not just thousands. I think it's good that everyone is concerned because it might allow us to contain it. Agree with you about the problem with possible asymptomatic carriers.

 

[KaraBulut]

Re: 2019 Coronavirus (COVID-19)

To be fair though, the number of people with covid 19 is still relatively small but has the potential to be much bigger. If we allow it to spread like a normal flu there'll be millions dead, not just thousands. I think it's good that everyone is concerned because it might allow us to contain it. Agree with you about the problem with possible asymptomatic carriers.

My concern is not so much with COVID-19. For years, we were taught that there are 4 coronaviruses that cause common cold in humans and that they were harmless. As such, they weren't studied.

With SARS, MERS and now COVID-19, we're realizing that coronaviruses aren't as harmless or as "common" as we were told. So, there's a big rush to study these viruses and develop vaccines for them. The mortality rate for COVID-19 is about 2-3% (so far). SARS was about 10-15%. MERS was over 30%.

COVID-19 is very contagious. MERS was not particularly contagious. Imagine what would happen if the next coronavirus epidemic is a strain with high communicability and high mortality? That's why we should concerned and why we should be studying coronaviruses.

 

[KaraBulut]

Re: 2019 Coronavirus (COVID-19)

20-Feb-2020:

COVID-19 stats:
Cases reported: 75,752 (up slightly from 75,282 yesterday)
Cases reported in the US - 29 (includes 14 cases evacuated from cruise ships)
Cases reported in Canada - 8
Deaths: 2,130 (up slightly from 2,012 yesterday

 

[rareboy]

Re: 2019 Coronavirus (COVID-19)

omg.....is it possible that China is soon on a downward curve?

I know that cases in South Korea were sharply up, but this is hopefully great news.

 

[rareboy]

Re: 2019 Coronavirus (COVID-19)

One of the interesting things that we're discovering from the constant monitoring of quarantined evacuees is that many of the people testing positive have only mild symptoms- basically a cold. The estimates are that maybe up to 80% of the people who test positive may have mild symptoms.

That's the good news. The bad news is that this also means that there may be asymptomatic carriers who are spreading the virus to people who are more susceptible. It also means that fever is of little value for screening purposes. All of the "fever" screening that is being done at the borders, in customs and on the streets of Wuhan province may be worthless as a tool for preventing the spread of the virus.

Meanwhile, flu season continues with millions of people infected and thousands dead. And the public seems to be be less concerned.

I think that because our typical flu season tends to take out the elderly or immuno-compromised...it becomes a more personal and intimate tragedy....it only starts to catch the attention of the generally healthy population once there is a strain that is much more virulent and indiscriminate in who it harvests....it still angers me this year when I hear people bragging that they didn't get their flu shot or pneumonia shot 'because they never work'.

 

[justaguy]

Re: 2019 Coronavirus (COVID-19)

omg.....is it possible that China is soon on a downward curve?

I know that cases in South Korea were sharply up, but this is hopefully great news.

Seems that China has just reported only 6 new cases in the last 24 hours. If it's true it's great news, but is it believable?

 

[justaguy]

Re: 2019 Coronavirus (COVID-19)

I'm annoyed by the New Zealand coverage. Most of it centres around people moaning about the economic impact.