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Day 44: COVID-19 “In the Wild”
The current count of countries and territories reporting COVID-19 cases stands at 82. South Korea, Iran, and Italy remain the only countries with counts in four figures (outside of China). Of these Iran is experiencing the greatest number of deaths, followed by Italy and South Korea. There may be some lessons there regarding the relative health systems of those countries.
The US count stands at 128 with 4 more cases added yesterday. One case is in my county here in California — the first not tied to the State Department returnees from Wuhan/Diamond Princess. The US deaths all occurred in the Seattle, Washington area.
@omegapaladin has brought to my attention a list of disinfectants that are believed to be effective in killing the COVID-19 virus on surfaces. “RTU” stands for “ready to use,” which refers to spray bottles that you typically have for dispensing disinfectants for home and office use.
The EPA published guidance back on January 29 for qualifying disinfectant manufacturers to “include an efficacy statement in technical literature distributed to health care facilities, physicians, nurses, public health officials, non-label-related websites, consumer information services, and social media sites.” My reading of this was green-lighting a marketing campaign to educate users on the efficacy of these disinfectants (and their uses) with respect to COVID-19.
[Note: Links to all my COVID-19 posts can be found here.]
Published in GeneralMarch 4 (GMT):
1st case in the Faroe Islands: a man who had been at a conference in Paris and returned on Feb. 24. [source]
- 15 new cases in the Netherlands [source]
- 5 new cases in San Marino, bringing the total to 15, of which 3 (aged 81, 80, and 76 years old) are in critical condition [source]
- 2 new cases in Hong Kong: [source]
– a 43-year-old man, who is the “master” of a Buddhist worship hall in North Point, where 16 people were infected previously.
– a 57-year-old female domestic helper of two previously confirmed patients, who lived in southern Hong Kong Island.- 28 new cases in Spain, bringing the total to 193 cases, of which 190 active and 3 closed (2 discharges and 1 death). [source]
- 10 new cases in Belgium, 9 of which returned from a trip to northern Italy and are now isolated at home after developing an upper respiratory infection with a relatively mild flu-like condition. 1 patient, who had not traveled but is a contact of a previous case who had traveled to Venice, developed a more severe respiratory infection and was therefore admitted to the Saint-Pierre hospital in Brussels. [source]
The European Defense Agency (EDA) in Brussels has confirmed that one of its employees has tested positive after returning last week from a trip to Italy, where the official had a meeting with around 30 officials from other EU institutions. EDA has canceled all scheduled meetings at its premises until March 13. [source]- 1 new case in Portugal: a 44-year-old man who came from Italy and is hospitalized at the São João Hospital, in Porto in stable condition. [source]
- 1 new case in Greece: the husband of the previously confirmed case. [source]
- 10 new cases in Switzerland [source]
- 2 new cases in Belarus, briging the total to 6: 4 in Minsk and 2 in the Vitebsk Region. More than 5,000 tests have been carried out [source]
- 2 new cases in Iceland: a male and a female in their 60s who returned from Verona, Italythrough Munich, German. “They have what can be called traditional flu symptoms, not very sick”[source] 4 additional cases [source] are pending official confirmation.
- 5 new cases in Sweden. in the Värmland region, the Västra Götaland region and the Skåne region. [source] The risk of an outbreak in Sweden is judged as “moderate.” All cases in Sweden are linked to recent travel abroad (‘import case’) or contact with a confirmed import case. [source]Sweden’s Public Health Agency expands its list of regions in Italy where recent travelers are advised to be vigilant about possible symptoms to include Aosta Valley, Liguria, Trentino-Alto Adige, Friuli Venezia Giulia and Tuscany. [source]
- 2 new cases in Scotland (UK) [source]
- 3 new cases in Austria [source]
- 37 new cases in Germany [source]
- 20 new cases in Japan [source] [source] [source] [source] [source] [source]
- 14 new cases in Malaysia, all associated with a local cluster linked to case #26. So far, 21 out of the 50 cases have been linked to this cluster: 16 close contacts and 5 secondary contacts. [source]
- 3 new cases in Israel: one of the patients returned from Italy on Feb. 29 and all three have been quarantined.
- 4 new cases in the United States (California):
1 in Los Angeles County [source]
2 in Orange County in Southern California: a man in his 60s and a woman in her 30s who had recently traveled to countries that have widespread reports of COVID-19, officials said. [source]
1 in Contra Costa County in Northern California [source] .- 21 new cases in India, including a group of 15 Italian tourists [source] [source]
- 3 new cases in Australia:
– 1 in Victoria [source]
– 1 in South Australia [source]
– 1 in Queensland: a 26-year old man from Logan who had recently traveled to Iran. [source]- 119 new cases, 38 new deaths (37 in Hubei) and 2,652 new discharges occurred in China on March 3, as reported by the National Health Commission (NHC) of China. [source]
- 435 new cases and 2 deaths in South Korea, including a 86 years old woman who had tested positive on Feb. 26. [source] [source] [source] [source]
- 3 new cases in Canada (British Columbia) [source]
When all of this subsides, I certainly hope that the actual origin of this novel pathogen is determined. It neither helps nor hinders the personal or governmental responses to the virus, but right now I don’t believe any of the explanations.
This is why getting in front of the infection is so important.
Thousands wait for hospital beds in South Korea as coronavirus cases surge
If it escaped from the Wuhan lab we will never know. The Chinese will never allow themselves to take the blame for this.
I suppose Mrs R is right. Now is not a good time to fly to Southern California to visit my cousins.
Well, we have traveled a number of times recently to Utah to visit family. The planes to SLC from Chicago and the hotel in Provo used to be filled with Chinese tourists…they would spend one night in Provo and get on a bus to see the natural wonders of Utah on the way to the Grand Canyon. No Chinese on the plane or the hotel this time.
Face masks are not used properly by the general public. Seems right to me that those on the front lines get best access to what helps them help us.
I read a book a few years ago called Five Days at Memorial. It was about the medical care decision-making that happened over the first five days of Hurricane Katrina in a hospital in the middle of the New Orleans flooding. The book should be on every city and town planner’s desk as a cautionary tale for what happens in the absence of true worst-case disaster planning.
In some ways I like the American attitude of “What are you gonna do but make good jokes?” But I am frustrated with the obvious holes in our preparedness systems.
I’m hoping that the military and other agencies have hidden “bunny suits” and masks. I was thinking that we could raid the dental offices and cosmetic surgery offices. :-)
Another cruise ship COVID-19 death; different cruise ship. The first California death from COVID-19 has been recorded in Roseville. The patient was elderly and had underlying health issues that made his disease life-taking. And there is this:
Note this was not the Diamond Princess tied up in Yokohama, Japan.
This morning my wife was at the nail salon (which is also a hair salon). An elderly woman came in after coughing vigorously outside the door. She had just returned from a cruise and was feeling unwell. Her primary care physician told her to go to Urgent Care to be assessed. But she had a hair appointment and she wanted to stop by and make sure it was OK not to make her appointment. The people at the salon assured her it was perfectly fine to miss the appointment and encouraged her to leave and go to Urgent Care.
Don’t know, but I am guessing that this woman may have been on the same ship with the man from Roseville (as both would find San Francisco a natural starting point).
It will be interesting to see what happens next in China, as the government is slowing allowing workers to return to factories (at least outside the province in which Wuhan is located). If that can be done without a resurgence in virus cases that’s a good thing to know.
OMG, use the phone! We need the Jello generation to be smarter about these things.
?
I believe the reference was to the aged — as in finding jello an easy to eat, easy to digest, almost food.
Oh.
“South Korea, Iran, and Italy remain the only countries with counts in four figures”
South Korea, Iran and Italy had major inoculations early in the course of this epidemic and remain loci of spread elsewhere. This is after two months of international spread and Keystone-Kop attempts to isolate cases.
https://news.yahoo.com/hampshire-coronavirus-patient-breaks-quarantine-190256729.html
Putting aside that this fool ought to be imprisoned, I think what we are learning is that this virus is not as easily acquired, nor as lethal, as last month’s data would suggest. Chinese Corona Virus is regressing to the mean. Most things regress to the mean.
Take reasonable precautions. But don’t shut down the world. Don’t shut down your life. This too shall pass. Life goes on.
Obla-di, Obla-da
OK. Ask people to not buy masks so that they are available for health care workers, people like me.
Don’t lie and say they don’t work, or are terribly complicated to learn how to put on and take of appropriately .
One theory I have seen is that a bat had a modified virus that was being manipulated to study the virus effects on the bat, then a lab employee sold the bat to the “live” market in Wuhan to be eaten.
It was aliens.
I don’t know that that is true, but what makes it credible is human/organizational behaviors. Think of any large organization of which you know. Then think through the ways in which it could be wrecked reputationally, financially, or otherwise without a criminal mastermind and you will likely hit on an underpaid, undertrained low level worker who is given more access to whatever than is prudent.
“Putting aside that this fool ought to be imprisoned, I think what we are learning is that this virus is not as easily acquired, nor as lethal, as last month’s data would suggest. Chinese Corona Virus is regressing to the mean. Most things regress to the mean.”
Chinese Corona Virus is regressing to the mean? Ya Right. That would mean you have to believe the Chinese Govenment’s data, in an export driven economy where shipping is down 90%, coal usage for power generation is down over 40%, the industrial Indication PMI is at a deep depression level 29.5, and by the way cremations are way,way up; they have to send people back to work or there will be a revolution and that means telling the Chinese People it’s okay to go back to work when it isn’t.
In the US, we have no reliable data; we haven’t sufficiently tested enough people. As of a few days ago we have only tested 644, when South Korea had tested 30,000 and is now testing 10,000 a day with over 2300 people waiting for a hospital bed. Dr Scott Gottlieb has promised a million test kits by the end of the week – let us hope they come close to that number.
“Don’t shut down your life. This too shall pass. Life goes on. ” The only way “this will pass’ in a positive way is if we get testing ,treatment, protection of our hospital staff, and a huge number of hospital beds ready for this pandemic damn quick. No one is going to complain if we did too much. Otherwise, “this may pass’ like the Black Plague of the Fourteenth Century where between 50-70% of both Europe and China died.
This has already happened here in Japan, and in a very sneaky way. The Japanese news reported this morning that the owner of one clinic found that someone had removed about 120 boxes of masks from a few cases stored behind a divider wall in her office. She has no idea when it happened since the cardboard box cases appeared to be untouched until she went to pull out a box. The masks were the only thing missing, so whoever did it was very cunning, leading me to think that it could be an inside job.
I agree. I mistrust what is coming out of the mouths of “authorities.”
This article by Daniel Goldman (“Spengler”) in the Asia Times explains some of the things China did regarding containment which can’t be done here. They can track individual cellphones and establish location and contact trails for suspected cases and react accordingly. And by sealing off Wuhan they were willing to have people die (because of a shortage of medical assistance) in order to protect the rest of the country.
I have been wondering about this from the start, whether the quarantine made things worse. I really love the Chinese people, but I despise the Communists. They did this just because they could:
Anyone else starting to see the effects of the reduction in pharmaceutical imports from China? Yesterday my mom’s opthamologist had to prescribe her an alternate antibiotic steroid eye cream because the original ointment he’d prescribed was “on back order with an unknown date for restocking.” Pepcid AC 20 mg has all but disappeared from grocery shelves in our area and Amazon says it’s out of stock for 1-2 weeks too. I also heard from a clerk at Walgreens that customers taking Metformin have been unable to get refills this week.
Oh it’s way more then that. They welded entire apartment buildings shut. They dragged entire families out of their homes for quarantine.
They instituted a pass system where only 1 family member could be outside every couple of days to shop.
Well, India just banned a number of pharmaceutical precursor chemicals from export, saving it all for India.
So China and India supply almost all of our drugs or drug precursor chemicals. And both are apparently out.
David is very impressed by China and what it has accomplished. I think his enthusiasm has caused me to take his accounts with a bit of salt.
Do a search for “hand sanitizer” on Amazon. Outrageous prices, our-of-stock or delivery dates next month. My local CVS stores are out.
It is not a real complex product. Maybe I should start making my own and having kids sell black-market hand sanitizer bottles at key corners downtown. “Wanna be protected against the virus, mister?” Cha-ching, baby!
Sounds like that old grasshopper fable, you know the one…