Coronavirus live update

Currently, the rules vary depending on the Province and city. Beijing is placing all arrivals into designated quarantine facilities.
For Suzhou, Jiangsu Province, unless one's been in the so called 'red zones' (Italy, France, Spain etc) self isolation at home for 2 weeks is fine.

Most foreign universities have been holding online classes and they're considering whether to recall staff or finish the semester online.
Foreign students are outright banned from returning until the universities are officially open - some who returned recently lost their financial aid.

They definitely have it and the narrative under more control than the west though.
https://www.wsj.com/video/china-deploys-drones-citizens-and-big-data-to-tackle-coronavirus/40590C07-FB56-46CE-8C25-72471A5ECD39.html

 

The problem is not the number of deaths itself, the problem is the hospitals being flooded with people needing intensive care.

 

https://www.motorsport.com/f1/news/pirelli-member-positive-coronavirus-australia/4756466/

 

We got our first COVID-19 positive patient my hospital. Last week I saw the CT scan and test is now positive. Probably a matter of time until I get it, but hopefully I don't have much symptoms.

 

I saw an early paper out of China - may have been Japan - that a CT scan was a quick and reliable test for COVID19 in relation to the PCR test.

This is the paper. Chinese group.

https://pubs.rsna.org/doi/full/10.1148/radiol.2020200432

Stay safe!

T

 

Thanks! Will try to avoid this as much as I can. We don't have home workstations (double edged sword) so I have to come in for the time being to read the studies rather than from home.

Unfortunately CT scan is not really specific at all, it is sensitive as the RSNA article you mention said, but a lot of atypical infections look identical to that dropping its sensitivity. Another scan we had on the weekend looked similar and the test was negative. Of the CTs I read today thankfully none looked like that and just normal ED stuff.

Here are the current American College of Radiology recommendations in case anyone here gets a scan in the coming months. The link may update randomly so I'm quoting recommendations at the time of this post.

https://www.acr.org/Advocacy-and-Economics/ACR-Position-Statements/Recommendations-for-Chest-Radiography-and-CT-for-Suspected-COVID19-Infection

 

Thanks for sharing your knowledge. Much appreciated...T

 

Stay healthy @BMW.SauberF1Team!

I’ve also been reading that chloroquine might be an effective stop-gap for c19-pneumonic patients until a working vaccine becomes available.

 

Saw that too. Interestingly, the phosphate not the sulfate, which I thought was the more common salt...T

 

Here is a live update of the COVID-19.

https://www.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/bda7594740fd40299423467b48e9ecf6

 

A UK Economic emergency now, billions getting thrown at businesses to help out ect, 71 died about 2K infected a rise of 26 %..its a nightmare..frenzied panic buying, jobs going down the pan...
Hell watching the news is so depressing...it really is hard to try to and stay positive, but that is what we must do.. stay safe folks.

 

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-03-17/covid-19-patient-helps-scientists-map-virus-immune-response?srnd=premium

A Covid-19 patient in Melbourne underwent a barrage of tests to map her broad range of immune responses to the coronavirus, providing clues about the body’s ability to battle the pneumonia-causing pathogen.

Blood samples tested at four different time points showed the 47-year-old woman produced white blood cells that targeted virus-infected cells and spurred the production of antibodies that drove her recovery 10 days after developing a mild-to-moderate illness that required hospitalization.

Her case, reported Monday in the journal Nature Medicine, and a handful of others studied by researchers at Melbourne’s Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity are helping to identify immune-system patterns that might help doctors detect the one-in-five patients likely to develop a severe or critical form of Covid-19.

What You Need to Know About the Coronavirus Pandemic: QuickTake

Katherine Kedzierska, a professor of microbiology and immunology at the University of Melbourne who co-authored the paper. “But it is possible that,having all the data, we might find immune markers predicting recovery, which would be really important to know which patients are at risk of severe Covid-19 disease when they get admitted to the hospital.”


Blood tests on the patient, who had traveled from the central Chinese city of Wuhan before becoming ill in Melbourne, indicated she produced some inflammation in response to the novel coronavirus, but not the potentially lethal, out-of-control form that can destroy healthy tissues.

Coronavirus Nears Fatal ‘Tipping Point’ When Lungs Inflamed (1)

“Her immune responses did a great job,” said Kedzierska, who has been studying the immune response to viral infections for the past 20 years, in a phone interview. The patient’s controlled inflammation avoided high levels of so-called cytokines and chemokines -- proteins that indicate inflammation is flaring out of control.

Kedzierska and colleagues detected antibodies against the Covid-19 virus in the patient’s blood before her symptoms resolved. The researchers are now working to understand the “immunological memory” of the infection. That will offer clues about whether the patient’s antibody response is sufficient to protect her against a subsequent infection, and if so, for how long.

The findings will also inform methods to appraise the development of protective vaccine candidates, the researchers said.

 

The tropical question vs Coronavirus - https://www.marketwatch.com/story/this-stunning-chart-shows-the-coronavirus-spreading-slowly-in-tropical-countries-2020-03-17?mod=home-page

 

With Euro 2020 now cancelled, it would be a miracle if any F1 happens this year.

Football is bigger and more important than motorsport

 

Via BBC -
11:25
Italy death toll jumps, but rate of infections slows

The latest figures from Italy, Europe's worst-hit country, report a further 345 deaths in the past 24 hours. It's an increase of 16%.

The virus has now killed 2,503 people there - 2,060 people are in intensive care, from among a total of 31,506 cases, up from 27,980. However, this was the slowest rate of increase since Italy identified the presence of the virus.

 

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-03-17/europe-s-doctors-getting-sick-like-in-wuhan-chinese-doctors-say

As Europe’s daily new cases of the coronavirus now eclipse China’s at the peak of its epidemic, doctors in Wuhan -- the city in central China where the pathogen first emerged -- are seeing worrying signs of similar mistakes unfolding.

Key among them is inadequate protection for medical workers, leading to a high infection rate among doctors and nurses. In Wuhan, a lack of understanding of the disease and a shortage of protective equipment in the early weeks of the outbreak in January led to thousands of health-care workers being infected while treating patients. At least 46 have died.

“Our European colleagues are contracting the disease in their daily practice, and the proportion is quite similar to the earlier situation in Wuhan,” said Wu Dong, a gastro-enterology professor at the Peking Union Medical College Hospital. Wu spoke from Wuhan with journalists in Beijing on Monday, alongside three other top Chinese doctors. “We need to protect our medical staff.”

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What Doctors Treating Covid-19 in Wuhan Say About The Virus

The toll on medical workers is an emerging crisis faced by major western countries where the virus has now taken hold. From Italy to the U.S., countries are reporting a shortage of protective medical supplies like masks in hospitals, while the rapidly growing patient load is overwhelming doctors and nurses. The highly-contagious nature of the virus means that it has shown signs of being transmitted in unusual ways, like through the eyes.


In Wuhan, ear, nose and throat (ENT) and eye doctors were infected at higher rates than colleagues in the same hospitals, Du Bin, director of the intensive care unit at Peking Union Medical College Hospital, said at the same briefing.


“My personal interpretation is these doctors have very close contact with the patients, that’s the major reason that they got easily infected,” he said. “It’s important to get doctors educated and trained on how to protect themselves.”

The epidemic has now sickened over 170,000 globally and killed over 7,000. While it’s slowed in China -- only 21 new domestic case of infection were reported on Tuesday -- it’s accelerating in Europe and the U.S., cutting a particularly deadly swathe in countries like Italy, where the reported mortality rate is currently almost twice that of China’s.

In China, where the population is cautiously resuming their daily activities, the death of prominent doctors during the course of the crisis has been a lightning rod for public anger over the government’s handling of the outbreak. The death of Li Wenliang, a 34-year-old doctor who was one of the first whistle-blowers about the disease in December and was sanctioned by local authorities, ignited a wave of rare public fury against the Communist Party.

The Chinese doctors at Monday’s briefing had other insights into treating the disease:

Prioritize Testing
Unlike previous pandemics like the 2003 one caused by SARS, the coronavirus causes only mild or even no symptoms in some infected people at first, which means they’re unknowingly spreading the virus to others. Administering nucleic acid tests, which identify the virus’ genetic sequence in patient samples, is essential, said the doctors.

“Test, test, test,” said Du. “Apart from testing, I just have no idea how you can identify the suspected cases, and how to quarantine the close contacts.”

Virus-Test Divide Exposes Government Successes -- and Failures

Testing has become a barometer of competence for the world’s governments and health-care systems. The U.S. government is facing widespread public anger for the slow roll-out of tests, while nations from Indonesia to India are being criticized for not testing much at all. South Korea, which had the second-biggest number of cases in Asia, has gotten its epidemic under control largely through testing tens of thousands of people daily.

Adults, Kids
While the population most at risk is over 60, children can be infected by Covid-19 and some cases have been fatal, the head of the World Health Organization said at a briefing Monday.


Adults are 2.7 times more likely to get the disease than children, according to a study published in the Nature Medicine journal on Monday of 745 children and 3,174 adults. Most of the infected kids had close contact with confirmed patients or were part of family clusters.

Du said the majority of children infected have only mild symptoms, and all have survived so far. In the Journal of the American Medical Association, another study showed that among nine infants, none required intensive care or had severe complications.

Traditional Chinese Medicine
While no drugs have yet been approved to treat the virus, there’s been a lot of attention within China on the use of Traditional Chinese medicine, or TCM, by patients. The herb-based treatments are being used in some 87% of cases in the country, the official Xinhua News Agency reported on Feb. 17.

“TCM works quite well in patients with mild diseases, and in those who have recovered from their critical illness,” said Du. But it’s hard to judge the efficacy of the treatment from a western medical point of view. The evaluation system for the TCM could be “futile or invalid”, because it has a different philosophy or evaluation system for efficacy from western medicine, he added.

China’s Approach
The doctors said that it seemed to them that China’s domestic outbreak has come to an end, but that the country still needs to be vigilant.

“Even in Wuhan, we should remain alert, we should prepare for future sporadic cases and future imported cases,” said Du.

China is now providing assistance to other affected countries. Last week, a Chinese plane carrying medical professionals and about 30 tons of medical supplies landed in Italy.

“Every nation has its own COVID-19 situation. We are not saying this is China’s example and you should follow, we totally respect that you take your own actions,” said Wu, “But everyone of us should take it seriously, take necessary actions, change your behavior, and be responsible.”

 

There should be a lot more cases next week not because of just spread, but also testing will improve. I spoke with our infectious disease team today and apparently it is a 3-6 day turnaround still for almost all hospitals to get results. Lab Corp and Quest spoke with CDC regarding the test's sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value, and negative predictive value to see how good it really is (still not finalized). Early next week we (meaning all hospitals in at least our state) hope to get testing that can provide results in a couple hours rather than days. Otherwise patients sit in rooms in isolation awaiting results for disposition.

 

No, F1 is very different.

The national football/soccer leaques need to completed first before the new season can start in june/july 2020. The football calander is very busy with club football like the national leaques and the Champions/Europa leaque and nations football like the Euro 2020 and the World cup qualifiers. The Euro 2020 can easily be postponed.

The F1 teams do not have other commitments

 

It is spreading like wildfire in the west simply because of something as stupid as people aversion to wear mask and wanting others to show their faces,

Not sure it is a cultural thing or a genetic predisposition for Caucasians to want to show their faces.

Everyone wear masks in asia. It is basic etiquette now. It is common sense. This is why Asia have been able to stem it.

I think millions have it now in the west now. Just not testing for it. This revelation will drive the 2nd leg of crash in the markets.

oh, btw, the virus did not arise in China. The bat eating chinaman is a racist myth pushed by the media. The strains in Japan and Iran is genetically distinct from the strains in China. Isn’t it a serendipitous coincidence that all of America stated enemies are suffering the most from it and this virus have a much higher death rate for Asians and Iranians.

I think whoever started this underestimated the resilience and effective response of the Chinese. The fact that we can trace the evolutionary history through accumulation of mutations now will allow us to find the culprit at some point.

 

Xi Jinping welcome to Fchat, we are not commies here but all may speak

 

Read about some diagnostic tests last week.

https://www.fiercebiotech.com/medtech/roche-begins-shipping-400-000-coronavirus-test-kits-per-week-u-s

"The company estimates the fully automated test can deliver 384 results per eight-hour shift on its cobas 6800 system, and 960 on its larger cobas 8800. Results are available in about three-and-a-half hours after the test begins."

T

 

From a friend whose daughter is a biologist: https://www.lshtm.ac.uk/newsevents/expert-opinion/100-questions-peter-piot-lshtm-director

 

LONDON—The scientist behind a bombshell coronavirus study that reportedly shocked Washington and London out of their light-touch response to the pandemic has gone into self-isolation after experiencing symptoms of COVID-19.

Prof. Neil Ferguson, whose terrifying Imperial College report has been cited by the White House and Downing Street, said this morning that he had come down with the classic symptoms of a persistent dry cough and fever.

He was present at a press conference with Prime Minister Boris Johnson at No. 10 just 24 hours before his symptoms first appeared.

Ferguson was the lead scientist on a report published Monday that said 2.2 million Americans and more than half a million Brits would be killed by the COVID-19 disease unless draconian steps were taken to halt the spread of the virus.

In the days since the report was published, tens of thousands of bars, restaurants, schools, and theaters have been shuttered across the U.S. and Britain, while the authors of the report have become cult social-media heroes.

While word of his analysis was racing around the world, Ferguson began to retreat from public life. He said he felt the first signs of a cough on Tuesday morning during an interview with the Today Show on BBC Radio 4, just hours after Johnson had radically altered the British government’s coronavirus response after reading his report.

“I got a slight cough, actually while I was being interviewed by you yesterday,” he said after calling in to the show again on Wednesday morning.

“In the abundance of caution, I self-isolated then so I’m stuck in my flat on my own for seven days in central London. Then at 4 o’clock in the morning I got a high fever, which is somewhat better now but I still feel fairly grotty.”

Ferguson is one of the top coronavirus advisers to the British government, which means he has been in countless meetings with the officials battling the pandemic over the past two weeks, including the prime minister himself.

“I’ve been in so many meetings in the last few weeks, and a number of my colleagues from other universities who have been advising the government in those meetings have also developed symptoms,” he told the BBC.

Before the report was published on March 16, Britain’s only official response to the virus was urging people to wash their hands.

No. 10 insists there was no policy U-turn, explaining that it had always said there would be a gradual ratcheting up of counter-viral measures. The stark change of approach suggests otherwise, and the Imperial College report suggested there had been a miscalculation of the required capacity of intensive-care beds.

 

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