are numbers mounting? OR nothing to see here

Current cases over 73,000, deaths approaching 1,900. systems.jhu.edu/

WHO Coronavirus disease (COVID-2019) press briefings (audio only, daily since Feb 7th)

Watch live: World Health Organization provides update on COVID-19 coronavirus
Feb 18, 2020

From China's CDC: a published paper with the most data provided to date.
The Epidemiological Characteristics of an Outbreak of 2019 Novel Coronavirus Diseases (COVID-19) - China, 2020
February 17, 2020
Shared via @HelenBranswell , Feb 17

Based on what I read below (bold emphasis mine), and in light of people who have escaped hospitals or left cruise ships and traveled to other countries (including the U.S.), I'm becoming more worried this will become a serious pandemic. The nucleic acid (DNA/RNA) test for the virus wasn't accurate, and people who were infected, and infectious, thought they were negative for the virus so they likely weren't taking proper precautions to quarantine themselves. Take extra care using proper hygiene and disinfecting practices and you'll protect yourself fairly well.

While the U.S. has stockpiled supplies, China is, for all intents and purposes, shut down - manufacturing and shipping. Doctors in China are running out of PPE (personal protective equipment - face masks and shoe covers, for example) and jury-rigging with plastic grocery bags. The head of the Wuchang Hospital in Wuhan has now died of the corona virus, along with the whistleblower doctor and 4 others, over 1,700 medical workers are infected.

RACGP @RACGP Feb 13 (Royal Australian College of General Practictioners)
New research suggests #coronavirus could remain active on surfaces for up to nine days, emphasising the importance of hygiene and disinfectant. Link

Sui-Lee Wee 黄瑞黎 @suilee Feb 12, 2020

1. There's a lot of buzz on the astronomical jump in cases from Hubei on Wednesday -- 14,840 new confirmed cases, almost 10 x compared to a day earlier. New deaths rose to 242, more than double fr day b4. The govt has changed the diagnostic criteria used to confirm cases. More ..

2. Effectively, this means the govt is giving doctors greater discretion to clinically diagnose patients. Previously, they could only confirm cases with the nucleic acid test kits. But a govt expert said recently these were only 30-40 percent accurate.

3. More crucially, we were interviewing patients, who were showing all the symptoms of the new coronavirus, who said they were tested four to five times before they got a positive result. Li Wenliang, the whistleblower doctor, was one of them.

4. Chinese health experts say this is why there's a change: they now realize that there's a group of patients who only test positive very late with the nucleic acid testing. Because of how transmissible the disease is, they want to include these people as confirmed cases.

5. The point is to isolate these patients quickly and treat them. Doctors are now clinically diagnosing these people with CT scans. The advantage of these scans are they are immediate. Previously, patients had to wait at least two days for their results.

6. Samples had to be transported for hours to the province's relatively few labs. The nucleic acid tests are also dependent on the people sampling these patients. There's room for error. But the disadvantage of using CT scans is that they might not catch people w mild symptoms.

As Deaths Mount, China Tries to Speed Up Coronavirus Testing


Sui-Lee Wee 黄瑞黎 @suilee Feb 16, 2020

1. An American woman who left a cruise ship in Cambodia last week and flew to M'sia has tested positive for the coronavirus. Hundreds of passengers from the ship have already departed for several countries. Health experts say they are alarmed. w @RCPaddock

2. Eyal Leshem, a public health expert from Israel, called the disclosures “extremely concerning” and said the passengers’ travel onward from Kuala Lumpur increased the risk of a pandemic. “We may end up with 3 or 4 countries with sustained transmission of the virus.”

3. More than 140 other passengers from the ship had flown from Cambodia to the airport in Kuala Lumpur. All but eight were allowed to continue to their destinations, including airports in Australia, the Netherlands and the United States.

6. Dr. Peter Rabinowitz at the University of Washington said the episode would test the limits of contact tracing, the method used to track down people exposed to infection.

“It’s really daunting to control a situation like this now that people have gone all over the world."

Coronavirus Infection Found After Cruise Ship Passengers Disperse

New Images of Novel Coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 Now Available
Feb 13, 2020
NIAID’s Rocky Mountain Laboratories (RML) in Hamilton, Montana, produced images of the novel coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2, previously known as 2019-nCoV) on its scanning and transmission electron microscopes on Tuesday, Feb. 11, 2020.

These images are available to the public for free high-resolution download on the NIAID Flickr page. NIAID asks all who use the images to please credit NIAID-RML.

This scanning electron microscope image shows SARS-CoV-2 (yellow)—also known as 2019-nCoV, the virus that causes COVID-19—isolated from a patient in the U.S., emerging from the surface of cells (blue/pink) cultured in the lab.

Credit: NIAID-RML

This scanning electron microscope image shows SARS-CoV-2 (yellow)—also known as 2019-nCoV, the virus that causes COVID-19—isolated from a patient in the U.S., emerging from the surface of cells (pink) cultured in the lab. Credit: NIAID-RML


This transmission electron microscope image shows SARS-CoV-2—also known as 2019-nCoV, the virus that causes COVID-19—isolated from a patient in the U.S. Virus particles are shown emerging from the surface of cells cultured in the lab. The spikes on the outer edge of the virus particles give coronaviruses their name, crown-like. Credit: NIAID-RML

WHO Situation Report February 23, 2020

Gotta love when politicians overrule scientists and doctors.

Coronavirus-infected Americans flown home against CDC’s advice
By Lena H. Sun, Lenny Bernstein, Shibani Mahtani and Joel Achenbach, The Washington Post | Feb. 20, 2020

During one call, the CDC’s principal deputy director, Anne Schuchat, argued against taking the infected Americans on the plane, according to two participants. She noted the U.S. government had already told passengers they would not be evacuated with anyone who was infected or who showed symptoms. She was also concerned about infection control.

Anthony Fauci, head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, who was also on the calls, recalled saying her points were valid and should be considered.

But Robert Kadlec, assistant secretary for preparedness and response for the Department of Health and Human Services and a member of the coronavirus task force, pushed back: Officials had already prepared the plane to handle passengers who might develop symptoms on the long flight, he argued. The two Boeing 747s had 18 seats cordoned off with 10-foot-high plastic on all four sides. Infectious disease doctors would also be onboard.

Mendizabal, the retired nurse, said she learned about the infections only when she landed at Travis Air Force Base in California and talked to one of her five children, who had seen a news report.

“We were upset that people were knowingly put on the plane who were positive,” she said Wednesday in an interview from the military base. She said she and her husband had already completed 12 days of quarantine on the ship and both were healthy.

“I think those people should not have been allowed on the plane,” Mendizabal said. “They should have been transferred to medical facilities in Japan. We feel we were re-exposed. We were very upset about that.”