Written by rjs, MarketWatch 666
The news posted last week for the Wuhan coronavirus, COVID-19, has been surveyed and some important articles are summarized here. Although there are indications the spread of the disease may be slowing in China, there are concerns that hotspots developing in other countries – Japan, South Korea, Iran, and Italy topping that list at present – may be the cause of another widespread explosion of the disease globally. News items about economic affects of the virus are reported separately in a companion article.
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Coronavirus kills 2nd man in Washington state, officials say – A second coronavirus death has been confirmed in Washington state, officials said Sunday. The Seattle & King County officials said four additional cases of COVID-19 have been confirmed among people living in King County, including one new death, bringing the total number of confirmed cases to 10. The confirmed second death is a man in his seventies who had underlying health conditions. He was hospitalized at EvergreenHealth and died Saturday, the officials said. The man lived at LifeCare, the nursing facility in Kirkland that was previously identified to have two associated cases. The King County Executive’s Office will join local and state public health officials on Monday to discuss further details of the latest cases, and the county’s own response to this outbreak. Washington state was home of the nation’s first confirmed infection, a man who had visited China, where the virus first emerged. A man in his fifties died Saturday. Several recent cases in the U.S. have had no known connections to travelers. Also Sunday, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo confirmed the first coronavirus case in his state, involving a woman who was isolating herself in her home. The woman lived in Manhattan, a state official told The Wall Street Journal.
Coronavirus: Washington State and Florida Declare Public Health Emergencies; Faulty Test Kits from CDC Under Investigation – Pam Martens – On Saturday, the Governor of Washington State declared a State of Emergency after a man there died from the virus after community transmission, and 50 residents and staff at a skilled nursing facility, the Life Care Center of Kirkland, are showing virus-like symptoms and being tested. The facility has approximately 108 residents and 180 staff members. Following the Washington State announcement of the State of Emergency, a second man in the state died from the virus on Sunday. As of Sunday evening, health officials had reported a total of 13 people testing positive for the virus in Washington State – 10 in King County and three others in Snohomish County. Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida declared a public health emergency in response to two presumptive positive cases of coronavirus in the state. The Florida State Department of Health said that the two individuals were adults – one living in Manatee County and the other in Hillsborough County. The two counties border each other on the West Coast of Florida. Health officials said that the Hillsborough patient had a history of traveling to Italy while the Manatee County patient had not traveled to any of the restricted countries, meaning it could be yet another case of community spread of the virus. The Florida Department of Health said it is engaged in contacting, isolating and monitoring people who came into contact with the two patients. There was growing debate over the weekend about the CDC’s flawed efforts at providing an adequate number of functioning test kits to states after the first case was reported in the U.S. in January. While other countries have been testing thousands of people per day, as of last week the U.S. had tested only 459 people over the entire prior month because the CDC had sent out a limited amount of test kits, many of which were initially faulty. Governor Gavin Newsom of California rattled the stock market last Thursday when he held a press conference and announced that the CDC has provided his state with only 200 test kits. California has a population of 40 million people. As a result of pressure from state health officials and governors, the CDC over the weekend said it is now allowing state labs to conduct their own tests and lowered the restrictions on who could be tested. Previously, it was allowing only testing of people who had traveled to China in the past 14 days or had come in contact with someone who had and were showing symptoms of the virus.
New coronavirus cases jump sharply in Europe, with Italy worst hit — New coronavirus infections spiked dramatically across Europe on Sunday, with Italy reporting hundreds of new cases and five more deaths. The number of confirmed cases also jumped in France, Germany and the UK, and the Czech Republic reported its first case. As the disease continued its rapid spread and governments introduced emergency measures to halt the progress of the escalating epidemic, outbreaks worsened in Iran and South Korea. The US also reported two new infections, one in Chicago and another in Rhode Island, marking the eastern state’s first case. Italy said confirmed infections had risen 40% in 24 hours to 1,576, with the death toll now at 34. In Germany the number of people infected had almost doubled to 129 on Sunday, while France’s total stood at 100 – up from 38 on Friday – nine of them in a serious condition. Iran meanwhile raised its death toll from 43 to 54 as its number of confirmed infections rose by more than half to 978, amid continuing concerns that official figures still do not reflect the full scale of the outbreak there. Iran’s health ministry spokesman, Kianoush Jahanpour, said new cases confirmed in a number of cities, including Mashhad, home to Iran’s most important Shia shrine, which has remained open despite calls to close. The escalating figures came as the head of the World Health Organization, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, warned individuals in higher-risk groups to avoid crowds and other places of elevated infection risk. He tweeted: “If you are 60+, or have an underlying condition like cardiovascular disease, a respiratory condition or diabetes, you have a higher risk of developing severe #COVID19. Try to avoid crowded areas, or places where you might interact with people who are sick.” And among a growing number of sites and events to fall victim to coronavirus fears was the Louvre museum in Paris, which shut on Sunday afternoon, reportedly after about 300 staff met in the morning and voted “almost unanimously” not to open. Louvre management later confirmed the museum was closed for the entire day, and said it would refund ticketholders..
COVID-19 toll passes 3,000, more countries affected: Live updates – Iran announced 11 more deaths from coronavirus bringing its death toll to 54, the most outside China.The number infected in Italy – the centre of the outbreak in Europe – jumped to 1,694, while the number in France increased to 130. With the outbreak deepening, the staff at the Louvre in Paris voted to close the hugely popular museum.The Czech Republic, Scotland and the Dominican Republic have all confirmed their first cases. The government in Kazakhstan has announced it will bar Iranian nationals from the country from March 5, as part of a range of measures to tackle the coronavirus.It is also reducing the number of flights to and from Azerbaijan, which borders Iran, according to Reuters, and will no longer issue work permits to people from countries hit by the virus.Officials in Seoul are accusing the church at the epicentre of South Korea’s growing coronavirus outbreak of murder. A case has been filed with prosecutors, claiming the leaders of Shincheonji – the Christian church where the first cases were reported – are liable for the outbreak because they didn’t cooperate with efforts to stop the disease. The state of Washington on the west coast of Seattle has reported its second death from coronavirus.Ian Morse, who is reporting from the area for Al Jazeera, says the person who died was a resident in the same nursing home where two cases of the virus were previously reported. The man was in his 70s, according to Reuters, citing local health officials.The Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says four people died overnight and 476 new cases of the virus were confirmed.In total, 22 people have now died from COVID-19 in South Korea with 4,212 people infected. China has announced its latest data on the coronavirus outbreak, reporting 42 new deaths. That takes the death toll in China to 2,912, and worldwide to more than 3,000.
WHO says new coronavirus cases outside China are 9 times higher than inside over last 24 hours – The number of new coronavirus cases outside China was almost 9 times higher than that inside the country over the last 24 hours, World Health Organization officials said Monday. As epidemics spread across other continents, new cases in China are falling, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said during a press briefing at the agency’s headquarters in Geneva. It reported just 206 new cases of the coronavirus, COVID-19, on Sunday, the lowest number of new cases in that country since Jan. 22, he said. Outside China, the total number of cases now tops 8,739 across 61 countries, including 127 deaths, Tedros said. About 81% of cases outside China are from four countries, he added. “The epidemics in the Republic of Korea, Italy, Iran and Japan are our greatest concern,” Tedros said, adding that world health officials arrived in Iran on Monday to deliver supplies and support. “This is a unique virus, with unique features. This virus is not influenza. We are in uncharted territory.” Of the other 57 affected countries, 38 have reported 10 cases or fewer, Tedros said. Nineteen countries have reported only one case, and some countries have contained the virus and haven’t reported in the last two weeks, he said. Tedros said health officials would not “hesitate” to declare the outbreak a pandemic if “that’s what the evidence suggests.” On Friday at a press briefing, he said that most cases of COVID-19 can still be traced to known contacts or clusters of cases and there isn’t any “evidence as yet that the virus is spreading freely in communities.” That’s one reason why WHO hasn’t declared the outbreak a pandemic, Tedros said Friday.
Seattle-area officials report new coronavirus deaths, bringing US total to 6 – At least four more patients have died from COVID-19 in Washington state, bringing the total number of deaths in the U.S. to at least six as the coronavirus spreads throughout local communities around Seattle, local health officials said Monday. Public health officials near Seattle reported the nation’s first two deaths in a nearby suburb and several new cases over the weekend. On Saturday, local health officials said about 50 residents and employees of a nursing care facility outside of Seattle were ill with “respiratory symptoms or hospitalized with pneumonia or other respiratory conditions of unknown cause” and were being tested for the coronavirus that’s infected more than 89,000 and killed at least 3,040 across the globe since Dec. 31. The outbreak there worsened on Monday after local health officials reported that at least three residents of Life Care Center, a skilled nursing facility in Kirkland, Washington, were among the deceased. The virus has also spread to a woman in her 40s who works at the facility and is currently in the hospital, officials said. “Unfortunately, we are starting to find more COVID-19 cases here in Washington that appear to be acquired locally here in Washington,” Dr. Kathy Lofy, Washington’s state health officer, told reporters at a news conference. “We now know that the virus is actively spreading in some communities.”
Coronavirus live updates: Seattle reports new deaths, CDC released woman who tested positive – Seattle-area officials said that at least four more people have died from COVID-19, bringing the total number of deaths in the U.S. to at least six. Five of the deaths are in King County with another fatality in Snohomish County, local officials said. CDC released a woman in Texas who tested positive for the coronavirus: ‘ The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention mistakenly released a woman from quarantine in Texas who tested positive for COVID-19, San Antonio officials said. The woman was among the 91 Americans evacuated from Wuhan and placed in federal, 14-day quarantine at Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland. The woman tested negative twice for the new coronavirus and was released on Saturday, San Antonio mayor Ron Nirenberg said. “Unfortunately after the person’s release, the CDC received the results of another test that showed a weakly positive confirmation of the virus that causes COVID-19,” Nirenberg said at a news briefing. The County of Santa Clara Public Health department confirmed two new cases of COVID-19, bringing the county’s total number of cases to nine. Both cases are adult men who appeared to have direct contact with previously confirmed cases and are under home isolation. Health officials said the increase in new cases is expected and that they are in the process of identifying anyone who was in contact with the individuals. Consumers are shopping for more foods with long shelf lives and packaged items as the number of coronavirus cases in the U.S. rises, according to the latest Nielsen data. At U.S. stores, sales of fruit snacks were up by nearly 13%, dried beans were up 10% and pretzels were up 9% in the week that ended Feb. 22, according to Nielsen data that compared the period to the same time a year earlier. Sales of energy drinks, pet medicine, vitamin supplements and first aid kits also saw sales spike. On the other hand, sales of fresh fruit and vegetables have dropped. Mandarins were down 4% and celery was down 16% in the week that ended Feb. 22.
Coronavirus and influenza, a question — Monday brought the news that coronavirus has claimed its sixth victim in Washington state. Via the FT’s live blog: Four patients in the Seattle area have died, bringing the total number of coronavirus-linked deaths in the US to six – all in the state of Washington.King County health officials on Monday confirmed four new cases of the virus, including two patients who have died. Another patient who was previously diagnosed with coronavirus also died. King County has seen 14 total cases.Media reports indicated that one person in a neighbouring county has died, with the total number of cases in Washington rising to 18.Several of the Seattle-area patients are residents of LifeCare, a long-term nursing facility in Kirkland, Washington, that has experienced an outbreak. If you’ve followed the outbreak of Covid-19, you’ll know the expected death rate of the disease is around 2 per cent, depending on factors such as age, sex and general health. So a death rate in Washington of 33 per cent suggests that either a) the victims have been largely weighted towards the more vulnerable end of the population or b) there are far more infected than have been diagnosed. Washington state, like the rest of the US, posts weekly influenza data during flu season to keep the public informed about the disease, and to help health officials identify any potential outbreaks. Common influenza has many of the same symptoms as Covid-19, according to Lisa Maragakis of John Hopkin’s School of Medicine. Which is why a chart from Washington State’s influenza update for the period between 16-22 February is of note So while influenza diagnoses are below the seasonal baseline (the black line is below the blue line in Figure 9), the number of people with an influenza-like-illness who have visited reporting healthcare providers has, for several successive weeks, been above the epidemic threshold (Figure 10). Now an epidemic is only considered when both measures are above the threshold, so one has yet to be declared. We should also add as well that there are likely other factors at play here which we are not party to.
CDC hasn’t revealed information to doctors that would help coronavirus patients -As new cases of coronavirus arise daily in the United States — including several announced over the weekend and one death — the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has failed to release crucial information physicians say could help save the lives of Americans diagnosed with the novel coronavirus.Several US patients have recovered from coronavirus, but so far, the CDC has shared detailed clinical information about only one of those patients. That information includes what treatments the patients received and how they fared.The CDC is the federal agency that communicates with physicians about how to handle outbreaks. Whether it’sSARS, Ebola or last year’s measles outbreak, the agency uses information from cases around the world — and in particular the United States — to advise doctors on how to diagnose, evaluate and treat diseases.The federal agency possesses such information about several US coronavirus patients, but has not released it. That means doctors who now unexpectedly find themselves treating new coronavirus patients aren’t able to benefit from the findings of doctors who preceded them.”It’s a medical truism that it’s absolutely essential that physicians with experience with a particular condition disseminate information to others,” said Dr. Irwin Redlener, director of the National Center for Disaster Preparedness at Columbia University. Not sharing such information is “is inexplicable and inappropriate,” Redlener added. The CDC did not respond to CNN’s requests for comment.
U.S. Coronavirus Death Toll Climbs to Six as Virus Spreads World-Wide – WSJ – Washington state emerged as the U.S. center of a spreading coronavirus fight Monday, as state health officials reported four additional deaths there and 18 confirmed cases and multiple schools closed for disinfection.The deaths – three women in their 70s or 80s linked to an outbreak at the Life Care Center nursing facility in Kirkland, Wash., and one man in his 40s from neighboring Snohomish County – brought the U.S. death toll to six. The viral infection has now claimed more than 3,000 lives around the world.The nursing home was the site of four of the nation’s deaths and has four other confirmed cases, including one woman in her 80s who is in critical condition, according to King County’s public health department.New cases were also reported in California, Massachusetts, Oregon, New Hampshire and Illinois on Monday as state officials attempted to quell fears. At least 50 people have been diagnosed with the novel infection within the U.S., not including repatriated Americans.President Trump met Monday with executives from pharmaceutical companies who said various vaccines were being worked on. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases director Dr. Anthony Fauci stressed that it would take at least a year to a year and a half to develop a vaccine. Therapeutic treatments could be available sooner. The onset of local testing and expansion of testing criteria helped lead to the identification of new cases of Covid-19 in recent days in the U.S., stoking concerns over a wider spread of the virus and prompting governors and state health officials to take extra measures to prevent further transmission.
Scoop: Lab for coronavirus test kits may have been contaminated – A top federal scientist sounded the alarm about what he feared was contamination in an Atlanta lab where the government made test kits for the coronavirus, according to sources familiar with the situation in Atlanta. The Trump administration has ordered an independent investigation of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention lab, and manufacturing of the virus test kits has been moved, the sources said. At the time the administration is under scrutiny for its early preparations for the virus, the potential problems at the lab became a top internal priority for some officials. But the Trump administration did not talk publicly about the Food and Drug Administration’s specific concerns about the Atlanta lab. Senior officials are still not saying exactly what the FDA regulator found at the Atlanta lab. The CDC lab in Atlanta developed the testing formula for the coronavirus test – which the government says works – and was manufacturing relatively small amounts of testing kits for laboratories around the country. This is where the lab ran into problems, per sources familiar with the situation. FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn said, in a statement to Axios, that government agencies have already worked together to resolve the problems with the coronavirus tests. “Upon learning about the test issue from CDC, FDA worked with CDC to determine that problems with certain test components were due to a manufacturing issue,” he said. “We worked hand in hand with CDC to resolve the issues with manufacturing. FDA has confidence in the design and current manufacturing of the test that already have and are continuing to be distributed. These tests have passed extensive quality control procedures and will provide the high-level of diagnostic accuracy we need during this coronavirus outbreak.”The FDA says it now has full confidence in the coronavirus diagnostic kit, but a slew of new cases announced over the weekend suggest the virus has spread throughout the country while the U.S. government tested only a narrow subset of the population for it. The big question: It was not immediately clear if or how possible contamination in the Atlanta lab played a role in delays or problems with testing. Nor was it clear how significant or systemic the contamination concerns may be; whether it was a one-time issue that’s easily resolved, or a broader concern involving protocols, safeguards or leadership..
This Ain’t No Fooling’ Around –Kunstler -The shadow of Corona virus creeps ever-darker across the scene like a cosmic messenger from Karma Central telling mankind to stop and assess. We’re about to find out what we’ve wrought with the wonders and marvels of globalism. Is there anything you can think of over at the Wal Mart or the Walgreens that isn’t made in China? I mean, everything from a dustpan to a lint brush? I can’t say for sure, because I’m not over in China, but the place is apparently not open for business these days. One must surmise that a lot of activities in the USA may not be open for business much longer, either.The action in my local supermarket yesterday had an undercurrent of stealth desperation; no overt panic buying, no fighting in the aisles, but an edge of suspense. Personally, I cleaned out an entire product-line of cat food, loaded up on cooking oil, rice, dry beans, and evaporated milk – and I wasn’t the only one checking out with the sixteen-roll bindle of toilet paper. Obviously, many products were still there on the shelves to get (minus that cat food). Is the time perhaps at hand when a lot of stuff won’t be? Just sayin’.The message is getting out – though not from US authorities yet – that everybody may soon be spending a lot of time home alone. That’s exactly what has happened in China and a region of northern Italy. France banned events with more than 5,000 people (why that number, exactly?). Japan has canceled school for the time being – duration unknown for now. So a USA lockdown is not merely hypothetical. These, then, are two fundamental conditions the world faces for a while: nobody moves and nothing gets produced.Are we taking this thing too seriously (some might ask)? I don’t pretend to know the answer, except, again, to point to China and think that they can’t possibly just be fooling around with all those zombified cities and shuttered factories. The next question might be: will the global economy return at some point to “normal” operating conditions, that is, the fabulously complex network of supply lines, markets, and payment arrangements as they worked up until January 2020? I am for sure not sure about that. Once a gigantic and fantastically precise mechanism breaks, I doubt it comes back together neatly and quickly. In the physical universe, the power of emergence is like the cue ball on a billiard table, and it appears that all the rest of the colored balls will be bouncing off the bumpers and sinking into pockets for while … and eventually the global table will look a lot different.
Firefighters in Isolation After Responding to Nursing Home With Virus Outbreak – WSJ –Firefighter Jessica Brassfield donned gloves as she entered the Life Care Center of Kirkland, a nursing home in Kirkland, Wash., not long after midnight Wednesday. But she didn’t wear a mask. The Life Care Center, health authorities later discovered, was harboring the new coronavirus. Now, Ms. Brassfield and 18 other Kirkland firefighters who responded to health-related calls at the facility in recent weeks are under isolation by public-health officials. Eight more are quarantined, according to a union official. The nursing home has emerged as an epicenter in the U.S. for coronavirus infections. Eight of its elderly residents have tested positive, the Seattle and King County public-health department said. Four have died. Officials at the nursing home have said 27 residents and 25 staff were experiencing coronavirus-like symptoms. Ms. Brassfield wasn’t told at the time. She is frustrated, she said: “I could have taken extra precaution.” Authorities in Seattle and surrounding King County are now scrambling to catch up with the fast-moving virus, which they had been anxiously anticipating without knowing it already was in their midst. In addition to quarantining people who set foot in the nursing home, the city and county announced plans Monday to buy a motel where coronavirus patients could safely recover in isolation and redeploy 14 modular homes meant for the homeless. Meantime, schools around Seattle closed for a deep cleaning Monday. At Frank Love Elementary School in Bothell, Wash., officials said they learned Sunday evening a staffer had come down with flulike symptoms and was being tested for the virus.
CDC Accidentally Releases ‘Diamond Princess’ Evacuee Who Tested Positive For The Virus – This doesn’t exactly inspire confidence in the federal government’s virus response, and certainly doesn’t bode well for American officials’ ability to suppress the virus.Early Monday, the CDC admitted that it had mistakenly released an infected coronavirus patient from the San Antonio Texas Center for Infectious Disease the day prior after the patient twice tested negative for the virus. At that time the patient had no symptoms and technically met the criteria for release, and so was allowed to leave, ABC 7 reports.However, the patient was soon returned to isolation after a subsequent lab test came back positive for the novel coronavirus, the virus that causes COVID-19. So the CDC decided to bring them back to quarantine “out of an abundance of caution.” According to CNN, the patient was one of the evacuees from Wuhan, who was evacuated to Texas’s Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio , been kept in quarantine on military bases in California, Texas and Nebraska.So, why was the patient released if they still had a lab pending? The agency didn’t offer any kind of explanation.”The fact that the CDC allowed the public to be exposed to a patient with a positive COVID-19 reading is unacceptable,” said San Antonio Mayor Ron Nirenberg said. The CDC said the individual, who is currently being retested, had some “limited contact” with healthy individuals on the outside. The CDC said this wasn’t the first time a patient has seen back-to-back tests go from negative to positive. The agency is going to need to tighten its ‘criteria’ for what constitutes a ‘cured’ case. Hopefully they will before they really drop the ball, if it’s not already too late.
Coronavirus may have spread undetected for weeks in U.S. -The coronavirus has been circulating undetected and has possibly infected scores of people over the past six weeks in Washington state, according to a genetic analysis of virus samples. The virus may have been spreading in parts of Washington state among people who didn’t realize they were infected by it – they may have thought they had a cold or the flu. If the number of confirmed cases climbs dramatically in the next few days, it could reflect expanded detection efforts rather than a sudden increase in the rate at which the virus is spreading. “Once we start testing more broadly this week, we are almost certain to learn that there has been community transmission for a while in many places,” said Andy Pavia, chief of the Division of Pediatric Infectious Diseases at the University of Utah health system. He called the Washington state research on the genetics of the virus “very important.”
U.S. Coronavirus Infections Rise as Cases Outside China Pass 10,000 – WSJ – New cases of the novel coronavirus in New York, Arizona and Georgia raised the number of infected people in the U.S. to over 100 Tuesday, as concern over the infection’s potential effect on the economy pushed the Federal Reserve to make its first unscheduled rate cut since the 2008 financial crisis. On Tuesday, New York confirmed its second case of the novel coronavirus. The patient, a 50-year-old attorney who lives in New Rochelle, N.Y., hadn’t traveled to affected countries, Gov. Andrew Cuomo said.The man is hospitalized in New York City in serious condition, according to New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio. His diagnosis led to the closure of a Bronx private school attended by one of the patient’s children.In Arizona, state officials said a Maricopa County man in his 20s tested positive for the virus and is recovering at home. The man was a known contact of another coronavirus patient outside Arizona who had traveled to a community where the virus was spreading. Two members of an Atlanta-area household also have tested positive for the virus, Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp said at a Monday night press briefing. One had recently been to Italy, which has reported thousands of infections. Both have shown only mild symptoms and are being isolated at home with other relatives while officials trace the patients’ contacts, according to state health officials. More than 60 people have been diagnosed with the novel coronavirus within the U.S., excluding those repatriated from China and Japan. Cases have been reported in 12 states, and six people have died after contracting Covid-19, the respiratory disease caused by the coronavirus. The number of confirmed cases of the illness in the U.S. is expected to rise in coming days as local health officials ramp up testing, which then await further confirmation from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Globally, the new coronavirus has infected 90,926 people since it was first identified in the central Chinese city of Wuhan in late 2019, but 53% of those patients have recovered, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University. A total of 3,117 coronavirus patients have died.
Coronavirus Live Updates (Tuesday): Fed Cuts Rate in Emergency Response; Iran on War Footing Against Virus – Shockwaves from the coronavirus epidemic continued spreading around the globe. The U.S. Federal Reserve made an emergency rate cut of half a percentage point Tuesday morning to shore up the economy as the threat widens. The move followed a volatile week in which U.S. stocks suffered their worst losses since the 2008 crash. The outbreak sickened 102 people in the U.S. and killed six as of Monday. Concerns mounted that the spread of the disease could cause broader disruptions to social and economic activities. A rising number of cases reported among people without recent overseas travel history further sparked fears of community spread in the U.S. In Iran, one of the hotspots of the outbreak outside China, leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei put the country on a war footing against the epidemic by ordering the armed forces to assist health officials in combating the outbreak. The country’s total of Covid-19 infections reached 2,336 as of noon Tuesday, up 835 from the previous day. The death toll rose to 77, the second-highest number after China. Iranian media reported that at least 23 of the country’s 290-member parliament might have been infected because of contact with constituents across the country. The head of Iran’s emergency medical services, Pir-Hossein Kolivand, was also infected with virus, local media reported. South Korea is also grappling with explosive growth of infections. Total cases rose to 5,186 as of Tuesday afternoon, adding 851 in 24 hours. Deaths totaled 29 and recoveries, 34. In other coronavirus-related news:
- Despite signs of the epidemic ebbing in China, officials at the epicenter Hubei said strict disease control measures will remain in place. Yang Yunyan, a deputy governor,said Tuesday that the central China province still faces a tough challenge to take care for the more than 20,000 hospitalized patients while preventing new infections. There are still “uncertainties” in the province’s disease control efforts, Yang said.
- Singapore will bar visitors who traveled to Iran, northern Italy or the Republic of Korea in the last 14 days, including transits. The measures will take effect March 4.
- Mei Zhongming, an ophthalmologist who worked at the same Wuhan hospital as deceased whistleblower doctor Li Wenliang, died Tuesday (link in Chinese) from the disease, according to the hospital. Mei is the third doctor working at the Central Hospital of Wuhan to die from Covid-19. Li died on Feb. 7 and another doctor Jiang Xueqing died Sunday (link in Chinese). Over 200 of the hospital’s staff are currently infected, Caixin has learned.
- Beijing has tightened its quarantine rules. If their destination is Beijing, visitors who enter the Chinese capital from South Korea, Italy, Iran and Japan are required to carry out a 14-day quarantine, regardless of nationality, the Beijing municipal governmentsaid (link in Chinese) on Tuesday.
WHO warns of global shortage of medical equipment to fight coronavirus – (Reuters) – The World Health Organization (WHO) on Tuesday warned of a global shortage and price gouging for protective equipment to fight the fast-spreading coronavirus and asked companies and governments to increase production by 40% as the death toll from the respiratory illness mounted. Meanwhile, the U.S. Federal Reserve cut interest rates on Tuesday in an emergency move to try to prevent a global recession and the World Bank announced $12 billion to help countries fight the coronavirus, which has taken a heavy toll on air travel, tourism and other industries, threatening global economic growth prospects. The virus continued to spread in South Korea, Japan, Europe, Iran and the United States, and several countries reported their first confirmed cases, taking the total to some 80 nations hit with the flu-like illness that can lead to pneumonia. Despite the Fed’s attempt to stem the economic fallout from the coronavirus, U.S. stock indexes closed down about 3%, safe-haven gold rose 3% and analysts and investors questioned whether the rate cut will be enough if the virus continues to spread. U.S. lawmakers were considering spending as much as $9 billion to contain local spread of the virus. In Iran, doctors and nurses lack supplies and 77 people have died, one of the highest numbers outside China. The United Arab Emirates announced it was closing all schools for four weeks. The death toll in Italy, Europe’s hardest-hit country, jumped to 79 on Tuesday and Italian officials are considering expanding the area under quarantine. France reported its fourth coronavirus death, while Indonesia, Ukraine, Argentina and Chile reported their first coronavirus cases. About 3.4% of confirmed cases of COVID-19 have died, far above seasonal flu’s fatality rate of under 1%, but the virus can be contained, the WHO chief said on Tuesday.
Coronavirus updates: COVID-19 kills 9 people in Washington state -The number of coronavirus deaths in the U.S. rose to nine on Tuesday, according to health officials. All of the deaths occurred in Washington state. There were more than 100 cases in 15 states as of Tuesday night, with New Hampshire, Georgia and North Carolina being the most recent to join the battle against the virus. The number of coronavirus deaths in the U.S. rose to nine on Tuesday, according to health officials. All of the deaths occurred in Washington state. There were more than 100 cases in 15 states as of Tuesday night, with New Hampshire, Georgia and North Carolina being the most recent to join the battle against the virus.As the head of the World Health Organization announced new estimates suggesting the disease was far more lethal overall than previously suspected – but also less transmissible – schools and hospitals across the U.S. stepped up preparations for a potential pandemic. Both the Trump administration and the World Health Organization continue to say the virus poses a manageable threat. Globally, outbreaks in South Korea, Italy, Iran and Japan have continued growing fast, but draconian control measures in epicenter country China appeared to be paying off. On Tuesday night, the World Health Organization announced that more than 90,000 people worldwide have been diagnosed with the disease. South Korea reported 516 new cases of coronavirus on Wednesday, bringing the country’s total number of cases to at least 5,328, Reuters reports. At least 28 people have died of the disease in the country, which is currently facing the worst outbreak outside of China.The 516 new cases vastly outpaced China’s new reported cases for the day. In China, the epicenter of the worldwide outbreak, only 119 new cases were reported. Chinese officials on Wednesday announced 119 new cases and 38 new deaths from coronavirus. That brings the total number of cases in the country to at least 80,270, and the total number of deaths in the country to at least 2,981.
Coronavirus Has Reached ‘Community Spread’ Within United States- Dr. Anthony Fauci— Dr. Anthony Fauci – the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (who Joe Biden falsely claimed was being ‘muzzled’), said on Sunday that “community spread” of the new coronavirus in which cases cannot be directly traced to anyone are becoming more common throughout the United States. As Fox News notes, the term “community spread” is defined as an infection with an unknown origin, or ‘index case,’ as opposed to most of the early coronavirus cases which could be clearly traced from travel or contact with known patients.According to Fauci, this comes as no surprise.”This was something that was entirely expected when you have diffuse infections throughout the world – as you’ve just mentioned, South Korea, Iran, Italy, in places like that – sooner or later there are going to be cases in your country that you can’t directly trace to anyone,” he said in an Sunday interview with Fox & Friends Weekend. “That becomes much more challenging about identifying the source.”Cases such as those in Washington state and Oregon (which may be far more widespread than we know) require officials to do “much more intensive contact tracing in addition to the isolation,” he added. Fauci, who is also director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, went on to address whether it is appropriate to compare the coronavirus with the seasonal flu.“Yes and no,” Fauci said, cautioning that the comparison is suitable in some respects, but not in others.“It clearly is much more lethal, if you want to call it that, than the typical seasonal flu,” he said. –Fox News
Coronavirus appears to have spread undetected in the US for six weeks, study – The coronavirus appears to have spread undetected in the U.S. for about six weeks, according to an analysis by researchers in Washington state. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced the first confirmed case of coronavirus in Washington on Jan. 20. A second case was confirmed Friday. Researchers who examined the genomes of both infections said the second case likely descended from the first, The New York Times reported.. The individuals in the two cases did not have any known contact. The second case occurred weeks after the first, suggesting it spread through other individuals in the area. The first patient, a man in his 30s who returned from Wuhan, China, the epicenter of the outbreak, recovered after being treated at a hospital. The second patient, a teenager with no known travel exposure, was able to recover at home. “This strongly suggests that there has been cryptic transmission in Washington State for the past 6 weeks,” Trevor Bedford, an associate professor at the the University of Washington, tweeted. “I believe we’re facing an already substantial outbreak in Washington State that was not detected until now due to narrow case definition requiring direct travel to China.” Bedford told The Times that only two of 59 sample sequences from China had the genetic variation found in both cases. Scientists have analyzed more than 125 genomes from samples around the world. If true, as many as 1,500 people may have been infected over a period of weeks, lead researcher Dr. Mike Famulare of the Institute for Disease Modeling, told The Times. Famulare said the most likely number was between 300 and 500 cases who “have either been infected and recovered or currently are infected now.”
Washington State risks seeing explosion in coronavirus cases without dramatic action, new analysis says – The coronavirus outbreak in the Seattle area is at a critical juncture and could see explosive growth in cases much like Wuhan, China, if public officials don’t take immediate, forceful measures, according to a new analysis of genetic data. The author of the analysis, a computational biologist named Trevor Bedford, said there are likely already at least 500 to 600 cases of Covid-19 in the greater Seattle area. He urged health authorities and the public to immediately begin adopting non-pharmaceutical interventions – imposing “social distancing” measures, telling the sick to isolate themselves, and limiting attendance at large gatherings. “Now would be the time to act,” Bedford, who is at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, told STAT. The genetic sequences of patients in the Seattle-King County region suggest the virus has been circulating there since about mid-January, when the first U.S. patient – a man who returned from Wuhan – was diagnosed, Bedford wrote in the analysis, published online.The spread of the virus has gone undetected in part because many infected people experience only mild infections that could be confused for a cold or the flu, and in part because of stumbles in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s effort to develop test kits for state and local public health laboratories, which has meant very little testing has been done in the country until the past few days.On Capitol Hill, Washington Sen. Patty Murray (D) expressed deep frustration with the situation.”The failure to develop and distribute working test kits to public health agencies has really cost us valuable time. I am hearing from people personally across our state who are frustrated,” Murray said. “They believe they have been exposed, they are sick, they want to get tested, they have nowhere to go,”
‘Perfect Storm’: Washington virus deaths highlight risk at nursing homes (Reuters) – Less than a year after Constantine Valhouli moved his 85-year-old father into a Massachusetts elder-care facility, he is considering bringing his dad back home, his confidence rattled by a deadly coronavirus outbreak at a Washington state nursing home. The deaths of four residents at the LifeCare long-term care facility in Kirkland has stoked Valhouli’s fears that the virus could spread quickly and quietly in facilities such as the home where his father resides after a series of strokes. “You’ve got this perfect storm of conditions – the density of residents, the age of residents and the health concerns,” said Valhouli, a Boston resident who works in real estate analytics. “The terrifying part of it is that you can worry about it from a distance, but the minute you’ve got a case, it’s almost too late.” Virus outbreaks are especially problematic in nursing homes because residents live in close quarters, so infections can spread easily. Older residents also tend to have weaker immune systems and underlying health conditions, making illnesses easier to catch and more dangerous if contracted. As COVID-19 cases begin to spread across the United States, the Washington deaths have highlighted the vulnerability of older people in general. The elderly are considered the most at risk of dying from the virus, with deaths in China disproportionately affecting people over the age of 80.
Seattle Cases Jump; WHO Chides Nations on Effort: Virus Update – M4 – The number of coronavirus cases in the Seattle area surged by 20, and 11 more New York state residents were confirmed to have the infection. New Jersey reported its first two cases, one a health-care worker. The Trump administration won’t be able to meet its goal to have a million coronavirus tests available by the end of the week, senators said. The U.K. and Switzerland reported their first fatalities. The head of the World Health Organization threatened to name countries that aren’t doing enough to fight the outbreak. Fatalities moderated in China, and cases appeared to slow in South Korea. Infections surged in Iran. Key Developments:
- Global cases 97,426; death toll 3,345
- Italy pledges 7.5 billion euros; cases surge to 3,858
- Southwest Air warning shows even U.S. travel at risk
- U.S. mortgage rates sink to record low on virus fears
A coronavirus patient in Fort Lee, New Jersey, is a health-care worker with a residence in Manhattan, according to a person familiar with the matter. The infection of health-care workers is of particular concern for two reasons: They could have contracted the disease from a patient, or they could have been around vulnerable people while sick. The patient, who hadn’t traveled internationally, fell ill March 2 after attending a conference in New York City, the person said. The patient sought care at a walk-in clinic in Bergen County, then was sent to Hackensack University Medical Center and placed in isolation, state Health Commissioner Judith Persichilli said at a news briefing. She also confirmed a second case in the state. Neither of the two latest cases of coronavirus in New York City has traveled to a country with the disease or has a direct connection to an infected person, raising the possibility of community spread, Mayor Bill de Blasio said. Disease detectives are tracing the each patient’s contacts, and the city has asked federal authorities for aid. One of the patients is a man in his 40s, and the other is a woman in her 80s, he said. “When you have community-spread dynamic, we have to assume it could be anywhere in the city,” de Blasio said. “We have a public health-care apparatus that’s the best in the world, but we are sober right now about what the future might bring.”The head of the World Health Organization said the spread of the coronavirus could become a pandemic if countries don’t fight it aggressively, and he threatened to name names.”It’s a long list,” Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said at a daily press briefing in Geneva Thursday. “It’s a significant number of countries who are not mobilizing the whole government, and I can give you the list next time.”
Schools Shut in Seattle Area as Coronavirus Spread Grows – WSJ – Seattle-area companies and schools began implementing contingency plans Thursday to help contain the new coronavirus in the region, where the number of confirmed cases jumped to 70 from 39 a day earlier. New coronavirus cases continued to climb globally, and some health officials warned it would be impossible to fully contain the pathogen now that infections are spreading within many communities. Washington, the hardest-hit U.S. state and where all but one of the country’s 11 deaths have occurred, took more aggressive measures to combat the virus’s spread Thursday. “We are attempting to do everything humanly possible to slow the spread of this virus,” Mr. Inslee said. “We need to accept medical reality here: this disease, this virus, is going to spread across county lines,” he added. Northshore School District, which includes parts of both King and Snohomish counties, said it would close its 33 campuses for up to 14 days and that its more than 23,500 students would continue their lessons online. The decision, which officials said came after a parent at an elementary school tested positive for the virus, mirrors the actions of schools in Hong Kong, mainland China and Italy, among other affected countries.
Officials Resist Disruptive And Costly School Closures Over Coronavirus – While nearly 300 million students across 22 countries out of school due to the coronavirus, officials in Washington state are resisting calls to follow suit amid the nation’s hardest-hit outbreak of the deadly disease. Microsoft employee Andrew Davidoff tells Reuters that while he’s been told to work from home to slow the spread of the virus, his daughter and other children in the Lake Washington School District (LWSD) should also be sent home after 12 people have died of COVID-19 in the state. “LWSD is doing everything they can to get me sick,” said the 59-year-old Davidoff – one of more than 20,000 people who have signed an online petition demanding school closures.The district, however – much like schools in New York and Los Angeles – has resisted calls to send students home.”School closures can be disruptive and costly for families,” said LWSD in a statement, recommending that schools remain open unless there were specific COVID-19 risks.The dilemma over whether to close schools has rolled into the United States as U.S. coronavirus cases top 200. The outbreak has had an unprecedented impact on schools worldwide, the education of over 290 million students affected in 13 countries, according to the United Nations.Closures have long been a U.S. response to influenza, a dangerous and highly contagious disease for students. But health authorities are rethinking their approach for coronavirus, shown to have limited effects on children. –Reuters“Do we really want to close schools or do we want to keep schools open so faculty can continue to come in and serve children?” said Seattle and King County health officer, Jeffrey Duchin. Still, some of Seattle’s schools have closed – including the Northshore School District, which shut its doors on Thursday after a staff member was possibly exposed to COVID-19 and a student absentee rate of around 20%. It said that the students would receive online instructions.
Coronavirus: Kids About as Likely as Adults to Become Infected; What Happens When School Closures Become Widespread? – Yves Smith – Early on, I repeated an assumption about coronavirus that proved to be incorrect, that children weren’t very susceptible to becoming infected and hence weren’t prime transmitters the way they were for seasonal flus.A preprint of a paper based on a study of coronavirus incidence and transmission in Shezen found that children do contract coronavirus, albeit typically getting mild cases, and can transmit it. We’ve embedded the full article at the end of this post. The sample size is large, 391 cases, and the contact tracking looks to be good.Key sections: Attack rates were similar across infectee age categories (Table 3), though there is some indication of elevated attack rates in older age groups (Figure 1). Notably, the rate of infection inchildren under 10 (7.4%) was similar to the population average (7.9%). There was no significant association between probability of infection and age of the index case. We’ve had confirmation in the US. The Mayor of White Plains put out a press release yesterday stating that three children has tested positive for coronavirus and their school will be closed until at least March 16: According to the Westchester County Department of Health there are now up to 18 confirmed cases of Coronavirus in Westchester County. As has been widely reported, there are three confirmed cases associated with a private school in White Plains, Westchester Torah Academy. The three students who tested positive are the children of the man who is a friend of and spent time with the original patient. Westchester Torah Academy has been closed until March 16 and the NY State Department of Health has required all students, faculty, and staff to isolate themselves at home through that date. Those who get sick are sick for a while: Based on 228 cases with known outcomes, we estimate that the median time to recovery is 32 days (95% CI 31,33) in 50-59 year olds, and is estimated to be significantly shorter in younger adults (e.g., 27 days in 20-29 year olds), and significantly longer in older groups (e.g., 36 days in those aged 70 or older). In multiple regression models including sex, age, baseline severity and method of detection, in addition to age, baseline severity was associated with time to recovery. Compared to those with mild symptoms, those with moderate symptoms were associated with a 19% (95% CI, 17%,22%) increase in time to recovery, and severe symptoms were associated with a 58% (95% CI, 55%, 61%) increase. Thus far, only three have died.These occurred 35-44 days from symptom onset and 27-33 days from confirmation.
Doctor who treated first US coronavirus patient says it’s been ‘circulating unchecked’ for weeks – Dr. Amy Compton-Phillips recalled the day the first U.S. patient infected with COVID-19, a 35-year-old man from Snohomish County in Washington State, had taken a “turn for the worse.” At first, the patient only had common cold-like symptoms, Compton-Phillips said. But very quickly he began to have shortness of breath and a cough, she said. His x-ray also showed viral pneumonia. He needed supplemental oxygen and had to be put on an experimental antiviral treatment. Since he landed at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport on Jan. 15 from the outbreak’s epicenter in Wuhan, China, the virus has spread to at least 75 other people in Washington state, killing 14 in the U.S. so far – 13 in Washington and one in California, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University. At least five of those deaths have been traced back to skilled nursing facility Life Care Center in nearby Kirkland, according to Washington state and local health officials. On Saturday, King County health officials said about 50 residents and employees of the nursing care facility outside of Seattle were ill with “respiratory symptoms or hospitalized with pneumonia or other respiratory conditions of unknown cause” and were being tested for COVID-19. Public health officials have identified at least 233 cases in the U.S. so, a fraction of the more than 100,600 infections across the world. But epidemiologists and state officials say the actual number of COVID-19 patients in the U.S. is likely in the thousands, maybe even tens of thousands, since testing here has been limited by a lack of kits and stringent criteria set by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.Compton-Phillips said the doctors, nurses and other front-line workers watching the outbreak in real-time are all saying “this is coming.” “It’s not if, it’s when. And we better get ready now,” she said.
Coronavirus cases surge across U.S. as Americans face looming outbreak – (Reuters) – The coronavirus outbreak radiated across the United States on Thursday, surfacing in at least four new states and San Francisco as Congress quickly approved more than $8 billion to fight the outbreak. The death toll from the respiratory illness rose to 12 in the United States, with the latest fatality recorded in King County, Washington, where six people have died in an outbreak at a nursing facility in the Seattle suburb of Kirkland. “President Trump wanted me to be here today to make it crystal clear that we are with you. We are here to help,” Vice President Mike Pence said during a visit to the Seattle area, where he met with Governor Jay Inslee and other state officials. At least 57 new cases of coronavirus were confirmed nationwide on Thursday as the virus struck for the first time in Colorado, Maryland, Tennessee and Texas, as well as the city of San Francisco. At least several people suffering from the virus are said to be gravely ill. A helicopter flew testing kits to a cruise liner idled off the coast of California and barred from docking in San Francisco after at least 35 people developed flu-like symptoms aboard the ship, which has been linked to two other confirmed cases of COVID-19. Twenty new cases were confirmed in King County, which is home to Seattle and has been the site so far of the greatest concentration of coronavirus cases in the country, bringing the total in the county to 51 with 11 deaths. One death has been recorded in California. “This is a critical moment in the growing outbreak of COVID-19 in King County,” the county said in a statement. “All King County residents should follow public health recommendations. Together, we may potentially impact the spread of the disease in our community.”
Coronavirus live updates: Cases top 100,000, Seattle Seahawks stadium staffer tests positive – Seattle-area officials announced late Thursday an employee of a 72,000-seat stadium in the city tested positive for COVID-19. CenturyLink Field is home to the NFL’s Seattle Seahawks, Major League Soccer’s Seattle Sounders FC and the XFL football league’s Seattle Dragons. Local officials said the employee worked a Seattle Dragons XFL game on Feb. 22, which 22,060 people attended, according to the Seattle Times. “Public Health has worked with the employee and the operator of the stadium, First and Goal, to evaluate potential exposures” at the Dragons game, King County said in a release, adding that the risk of infection to attendees was low. The University of Washington is moving all of its in-person classes and exams online, starting Monday, as the state deals with a large uptick in COVID-19 cases. It is among the first U.S. public university to do so due to the flu-like virus. The Seattle-located school plans to resume in-person classes on March 30. Campus services will remain open, including dining services, resident halls, and recreation facilities according to the memo, and athletic events will be held as scheduled. OVID-19 cases surpassed 100,000 worldwide as the flu-like virus continues to spread outside of China, the epicenter of the outbreak. The total number of cases now stands at 100,055 as of 8 a.m. ET on Friday, according to data compiled by John Hopkins. The majority of the cases are in mainland China, followed by South Korea, Iran and Italy. Deaths in the U.S. climbed to 14, the data shows. On Thursday, the World Health Organization called on all nations to “pull out all the stops” to fight the COVID-19 coronavirus as it continues to spread outside of China.
Coronavirus cases in New York state doubled overnight, as Gov. Cuomo confirms 11 new infections – The number of COVID-19 cases in New York doubled overnight to 22 as the state ramps up its testing, and at least four of those patients are hospitalized, Gov. Andrew Cuomo said Thursday.At least eight of the new cases are connected to a lawyer from Westchester, who was the second confirmed case in the state. Two of the new cases are in New York City and one is in Long Island, he said.”I’m worried about nursing homes, senior care facilities,” Cuomo said. “That is something we worry about. My own mother is elderly.” The state is currently testing between 100 and 200 people for COVID-19 every day, Cuomo said.”The number will continue to go up,” Cuomo told reporters at a news briefing. “It must because we are continuing to test.” The Westchester lawyer, who worked in Manhattan, is in critical condition at New York Presbyterian Hospital, Cuomo said. The lawyer’s case, which was the second in the state, was confirmed on Tuesday. On Wednesday morning, Cuomo said his family and a neighbor all contracted the virus. Cuomo announced later that day that the lawyer also passed the virus on to a friend who passed it on to the rest of his family.Cuomo tried the tamp down public anxiety, saying 80% of the people who become infected may not even know they have it, “just like the flu.” New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio confirmed the two cases in New York City earlier Thursday. He said the patients had no known connection to other people recently diagnosed with the virus or travel history to known sites of an outbreak. That indicates that the virus could be spreading undetected throughout the city.
How the Coronavirus Spread From One Patient to 1,000 Now Quarantined in New York – WSJ – Religious schools have been shut. Some festivities for the Jewish holiday of Purim are up in the air. And officials in Westchester County, N.Y., estimate 1,000 people are quarantined at home after a well-attended bat mitzvah and funeral. The case of a seriously ill father with deep roots in a modern Orthodox community shows how quickly coronavirus can spread in circles that live, go to school and attend services together. As of Thursday, officials said 18 people in Westchester had been diagnosed with Covid-19, and all those cases were tied to contact with that man. Rabbis said the connectedness of their community is a great strength, but when a contagious illness strikes, the vast network of links among families can make it especially hard to control infection. “When you’re in a tightknit kind of society, there’s lots of opportunities for interaction,” “When people are told to step back from that interaction, that’s harder than it would be in communities where individuals keep more to themselves.” Rabbis throughout the New York City area are adjusting the customs of a traditional Jewish culture as they tried to halt the escalation of illness. They sent congregations a range of warnings: Please don’t kiss the Torah or mezuzah. Please don’t come to services or ritual baths if you feel any symptoms. And please don’t reach out to shake hands lest someone feel obliged to reciprocate. A Westchester attorney became the second person in New York to test positive for the novel coronavirus on Tuesday. His wife, son and daughter were diagnosed with it as well, state officials said. Only the attorney is hospitalized in serious condition. His family is in quarantine at home in New Rochelle. A neighbor and friends – five people in a local family – also tested positive for the virus, officials said. As of Thursday, a total of 22 people in New York had the virus, according to state officials.
NYC ER doctor: I have to ‘plead to test people’ for coronavirus – CNBC video
Coronavirus Spreads in California, New York as U.S. Death Toll Rises to 11 – WSJ – The U.S. death toll from the new coronavirus grew to 11 Wednesday, with California announcing its first fatality linked to the viral infection and Washington state reporting its 10th death. New cases were also reported across both coasts, as local and federal governments moved to calm fears, provide resources and make recommendations to vulnerable populations and employees to help combat the spread. The deceased in California was an elderly patient with underlying health conditions, said health officials in Placer County near Sacramento. The patient likely was exposed to the virus while aboard a Princess Cruises ship that sailed between San Francisco and Ensenada, Mexico, last month, the officials said. Fifteen first responders and medical personnel who treated the person at Kaiser Permanente hospital in Roseville, Calif., have been put in quarantine, but so far aren’t exhibiting symptoms, local health officials said. Health officials said other passengers on the ship, the Grand Princess, may have been exposed and they are working to contact them. Princess Cruises’ owner, Carnival Corp., said it is working closely with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and following its recommendations. It also is canceling the ship’s current voyage to Ensenada and Hawaii, returning the Grand Princess early to San Francisco, where passengers will be screened. All passengers on the previous voyage have been informed of the situation, Carnival said. Princess Cruises officials said in a letter to passengers Wednesday that the CDC had notified them it was investigating “a small cluster” of cases of Covid-19, the disease caused by the virus, in Northern California tied to the ship’s voyage last month.
Another Princess Cruise Ship Is Caught Up in Coronavirus Outbreak – Another Carnival Corp. cruise ship has become embroiled in an outbreak of Covid-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus – this time in a West Coast-based liner called the Grand Princess where health officials say at least one former passenger has died after a recent cruise. The ship, on a voyage to Hawaii with a stop in Mexico, has been ordered to return to port in San Francisco. The vessel has a capacity of 2,600 guests and 1,150 crew. Officials of Carnival’s Princess Cruises said in a letter early Wednesday to passengers that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had notified them it was investigating “a small cluster” of Covid-19 cases in Northern California tied to the ship’s voyage in February between San Francisco and Mexico. The company, the world’s biggest cruise operator, also operates the Diamond Princess, where dozens of passengers became infected with Covid-19 when it docked in Japan in January. That ship was quarantined for two weeks. An elderly passenger from the Feb. 11-to-Feb. 21 Mexico cruise became the first person in California to die from the illness, after being hospitalized in Placer County, Calif., following likely exposure on the trip, health officials said Wednesday. Placer County officials said other cruise passengers may also have been exposed, and that they were working with the CDC to find and alert them. On Princess Cruises’s website, Chief Medical Officer Grant Tarling advised guests on the February cruise to immediately seek medical attention if they have experienced any symptoms of the virus, including fever, chills or cough since returning home. Dr. Tarling said in an open letter that the Grand Princess, until today en route to Ensenada, Mexico, about 100 miles south of the U.S.-Mexican border, would turn around and return to San Francisco for further investigation.
California declares emergency over coronavirus as death toll rises in U.S. – (Reuters) – The U.S. death toll from coronavirus infections rose to 11 on Wednesday as new cases emerged around New York City and Los Angeles, while Seattle-area health officials discouraged social gatherings amid the nation’s largest outbreak. The first California death from the virus was an elderly person in Placer County, near Sacramento, health officials said. The person had underlying health problems and likely had been exposed on a cruise ship voyage between San Francisco and Mexico last month. It was the first coronavirus fatality in the United States outside of Washington state, where 10 people have died in a cluster of at least 39 infections that have emerged through community transmission of the virus in two Seattle-area counties. Although the Placer County patient who died was not believed to have contracted the virus locally, that case and a previous one from the San Francisco Bay Area linked to the same ocean liner have led health authorities to seek other cruise passengers who may have had close contact with those two individuals. Hours after the person’s death was announced, California Governor Gavin Newsom declared a statewide emergency in response to the coronavirus, which he said has resulted in 53 cases across the nation’s most populous state. Newsom said the cruise ship, named the Grand Princess, had later sailed on to Hawaii and was returning to San Francisco, but would not be allowed into port until passengers had been tested for the virus. “We are holding that ship off the coast,” Newsom said.
21 people on Grand Princess cruise ship test positive for coronavirus, Pence says – Vice President Mike Pence said Friday that 21 people aboard a cruise ship that’s being held off the coast of California have tested positive for the coronavirus. The Coast Guard had delivered 46 tests to the Grand Princess, which has been held off the California coast since Wednesday. Of the 46 passengers tested, Pence said 21 people, 19 employees and two passengers, had tested positive. All passengers will be brought into port in the U.S. over the weekend and tested, Pence said. The vice president is leading the administration’s response to the outbreak.
As Coronavirus Infections Rise, CDC Is Criticized –The World Health Organization has now declared that the fatality rate of the COVID-19 coronavirus is higher than the flu. After several missteps and the deaths of nine Americans, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is now saying that it will lift restrictions on testing and will fast-track people who fear they may have been exposed to the virus, according to The New York Times. The CDC’s first attempt to screen for COVID-19 hit a snag when they “botched its first attempt to mass produce a diagnostic test kit, a discovery made only after officials had shipped hundreds of kits to state laboratories,” as The New York Times reported.The faulty tests took weeks to replace. Still, the replacements did not allow state and local laboratories to make a final diagnosis. “The incompetence has really exceeded what anyone would expect with the C.D.C.,” Dr. Michael Mina, an epidemiologist at Harvard University, said to The New York Times. “This is not a difficult problem to solve in the world of viruses.” . “But this delay has really been costly in terms of our ability to identify and control the disease.” The CDC’s response is slightly shocking for an advanced nation, considering that South Korea tested 10,000 people on Friday alone and has established drive-thru COVID-19 screening locations, as Business Insider reported. The CDC is also taking flak for the narrow and stringent testing criteria it set-up, ensuring that very few Americans would actually be tested for COVID-19. As the New York Times pointed out, “the persistent drumbeat of positive test results has raised critical questions about the government’s initial management of the outbreak. Until last week, the CDC only called for testing people who had recently traveled to China and come in contact with someone who had a diagnosed case of COVID-19. That strict criteria meant that a patient in California, who tested positive for the coronavirus, went untested for several days at two area hospitals, according to Business Insider. Last week, the CDC changed the guideline to include people whose symptoms were so severe that they required hospitalization. However, it still did not offer tests for people who had traveled to Iran or Italy, both spots of severe outbreaks, as Business Insider reported. The case in California was alarming since the patient did not travel to China nor did the patient have direct contact with someone known to have the virus. Furthermore, doctors had to plead with officials to test the patient and to persist in asking before the CDC went ahead and tested the patient, according to CNN.
The US government has completed fewer than 6,000 coronavirus tests as more states report new cases and deaths – The United States government has conducted 5,861 tests for the novel coronavirus as of Friday at 6 p.m., US Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Stephen Hahn said on Saturday at an off-camera press briefing, CNN reported.The report comes amid a rise in US cases as the virus continues to spread across the country. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo declared a state of emergency in his state after announcing 21 new cases on Saturday, joining a handful of other states that have declared public emergencies as a result of people testing positive for COVID-19.There have been at least 19 deaths in the US from the virus that has killed nearly 3,500 globally so far. Most fatalities have occurred in China. As CNN reported, the number does not mean 5,861 people have been tested for the virus, as those who are tested for typically have two swabs taken and tested: one nose swab and one throat swab. The number also does not account for tests at private labs.Saturday marked the first time the US government released official numbers on coronavirus tests.The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which conducts coronavirus testing, has faced backlash over its handling of US cases. While other countries affected by outbreaks of the virus, which is believed to have originated in China at the end of last year, have tested millions of patients for potential coronavirus, the US has tested just thousands, according to a report from MIT Technology Review. Part of the issue, the report said, is faulty COVID-19 testing kits issued to states by the CDC in early February. The kits were found to have “faulty negative controls,” meaning the results of some test kits were inaccurate, and states had to continue sending test samples to the CDC for testing.FDA policy prohibited states and private entities from developing their own test kits, meaning they only had access to the faulty FDA kits. The agency lifted that regulation on February 29, allowing states and commercial labs to create their own coronavirus testing kits. As Business Insider previously reported, Vice President Mike Pence – the Trump-appointed head of the US coronavirus task force – admitted that the country was not able to meet up with the demand for the test kits.
U.S. Coronavirus Death Toll Rises To 17 As Virus Prompts Cancellations, Closures – As more cases of coronavirus are confirmed daily around the globe, the death toll in the U.S. rose to at least 17 late Friday, with two new deaths reported in Florida. There have been at least 14 reported deaths from COVID-19, the disease caused by the new coronavirus, in Washington state, with many of these connected to an outbreak at a nursing home in the Seattle area. There was one death confirmed in California earlier this week. A cruise ship with over 3,000 people is now being held off the coast of San Francisco after it was confirmed that the 71-year-old man who died had been on a previous trip on the ship in mid-February. Vice President Mike Pence said in a news briefing Friday that 21 people on the Grand Princess cruise ship tested positive for COVID-19, including 19 crew members and two passengers. Pence said they will be testing everyone onboard and quarantining people “as necessary.” A previously announced COVID-19 patient in Santa Rosa County and another in Lee County, both in Florida, have died, the Florida Health Department reported Friday. Both became ill after an international trip, according to the Herald-Tribune. Across the U.S., there have been over 160 confirmed cases of the virus, according to the Centers for Disease Control. Reported cases so far span more than 20 states. The number of cases are growing daily around the world, reaching nearly 100,000 reported cases across at least 85 countries, per the World Health Organization. More than 3,000 people have died.
Two more succumb to coronavirus in U.S., New York declares state of emergency – (Reuters) – Two more people succumbed to the novel coronavirus in Washington state, officials said on Saturday, bringing the nationwide toll to 19, while the number of confirmed cases in New York jumped by 21 overnight and a cruise ship with infected passengers remained stranded outside San Francisco. More than half of all U.S. states have reported cases of the coronavirus, which originated in China last year and causes the sometimes deadly respiratory illness COVID-19. As the outbreak takes root, daily life has become increasingly disrupted, with concerts and conferences canceled and universities telling students to stay home and take classes online. The two latest deaths were in Washington’s King County, the hardest hit area in the United States after the virus spread among residents at a nursing facility in the Seattle suburb of Kirkland. A team of health workers from the U.S. Public Health Service arrived at the beleaguered LifeCare nursing home on Saturday. The first deaths on the East Coast were announced on Friday, with two people succumbing in Florida. Out in the international waters off California, passengers on a cruise ship that was barred from docking in San Francisco after some aboard tested positive for the novel coronavirus did not know on Saturday when they might be able to step ashore. President Donald Trump said on Friday he would prefer the Grand Princess’s 2,400 passengers and 1,100 crew remain out at sea, but that he would let others decide where she should dock. After 19 crew and two passengers out of 46 tested on the Grand Princess were found to have the virus, Vice President Mike Pence said the ocean liner will be taken to an unspecified non-commercial port where everyone on board will be tested again, and that those “who need to be quarantined will be quarantined” and those who need medical care will receive it.
U.S. Hospitals Say They’re Ready for Coronavirus. Their Infection Control Violations Say Otherwise. In early February, Royal Caribbean’s Anthem of the Seas docked in Bayonne, New Jersey, in need of a hospital. The cruise ship was carrying patients who had traveled from China, where an outbreak of COVID-19 had taken root. Four passengers needed to go somewhere for further medical observation.The obvious next step was University Hospital in Newark, a major academic medical center equipped with isolation rooms. “The hospital is following proper infection control protocols while evaluating these individuals,” Gov. Phil Murphy said in a statement. The patients tested negative, but the governor was clear. The state’s first coronavirus cases would go to University.That’s a hospital that has struggled in recent years with a critical skill essential to battling COVID-19: controlling the spread of infection. Less than two years ago, a deadly bacteria made its way through the facility. Three babies in the neonatal intensive care unit got infected and died. Government inspectors cited the hospital for being short of staff; failing to maintain a sanitary environment, including improper hand hygiene and sterilization; and inadequately isolating patients with respiratory conditions. They determined the hospital had put patients in “immediate jeopardy.” Infection control has been a recurring problem at some of the very hospitals that would likely be called upon to treat COVID-19 patients, a ProPublica review of hundreds of hospital inspection reports found. This raises concerns that they could become hotbeds for disease, putting patients at risk and rendering infected workers unable to care for others. ProPublica analyzed five years of federal hospital inspection reports for these facilities and found violations for infection control failures or other factors that could hamper the response to an outbreak at more than half of them. About 1 in 5 of the facilities had four or more violations; the analysis found more than a hundred overall. It’s not clear by looking at the reports how many of the violations led to patient infections. Problems that get cited on the inspection reports are required to be corrected as part of the regulation process. But it’s also true that inspections only flag a small number of the actual problems in hospitals. American hospitals, overall, are so bad at preventing infections that hospital-acquired infections are considered a leading cause of death in the United States. The hope would be that the sites designated as specialized infection-control centers would do better.
Why State Efforts to Mandate Coronavirus Testing Will Fall Short – To cope with incipient coronavirus outbreaks, Washington and New York have announced emergency directives requiring insurers to cover COVID-19 testing without cost-sharing. The states recognize that the high deductibles and other out-of-pocket payments discourage people from getting tested, which in turn threatens public health.Both states have acted pursuant to laws governing the regulation of insurance. In Washington, for example, the state insurance commissioner is empowered to issue orders addressing “medical coverage to ensure access to care” when the governor declares an emergency. Similarly, New York’s Superintendent of Financial Services says that it will issue an “emergency regulation” to require insurers to cover testing without cost-sharing (though the precise authority to issue that regulation is a little vague).But the directives are more limited in scope than they appear, and will provide no help at all to theapproximately 100 million people nationwide who receive coverage through self-insured employers. As with so many problems that arise in health law, the reason is the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA).When Congress adopted ERISA, it wasn’t thinking very hard about health insurance. It was thinking about pension plans, which many employers had chronically underfunded, leaving retired employees high and dry. So Congress adopted ERISA to offer some basic protections for employees. In exchange, Congresspreempted any state laws that “relate to” employee benefit plans.Congress carved out an exception to ERISA’s broad preemptive scope for laws regulating insurance. That’s a domain that’s traditionally been left to the states. Washington and New York can thus tell private insurers – including those that offer employer-sponsored coverage – to abide by their emergency rules.But most people don’t work at firms that actually buy insurance for their employees. Instead, larger firms usually “self-insure,” meaning that they pay for their employees’ health expenses themselves. (Odds are that, if you’re employed, you work at a self-insured firm – 61% of people with employer-sponsored coverage do.) And ERISA clarifies that employers, when they self-insure, aren’t to be treated as insurers.The upshot of this convoluted scheme is that the states can’t regulate self-funded employer plans. They’re regulated, instead, by the U.S. Department of Labor under ERISA. But because Congress didn’t think of ERISA as a regulation of health insurance, it didn’t authorize the kind of emergency health regulations that Washington and New York are now drawing on. That’s one reason the federal government has looked so feckless when it’s tried to say that it will guarantee access to testing. Vice President Pence, for example, said yesterday that testing is an “‘essential health benefit,’ which means the test will be covered by health insurance plans, Medicare and Medicaid.” But the EHB rules don’t apply at all to large employers or to Medicare. Even if they did, insurers can (and do!) impose cost-sharing for EHBs, and could do so for a COVID-19 test. It’s a completely meaningless statement.
Why America is so vulnerable to coronavirus – All over the world, governments are scrambling to defend their citizenry from COVID-19, the disease caused by the outbreak of novel coronavirus. So far it seems levels of success have varied; countries like Italy and Iran have struggled so far, while Vietnam and Taiwan have seemingly put forth an efficient and effective response.The United States, where a major outbreak is clearly developing, however, is in a class by itself. America’s atrociously inadequate welfare state makes it by far the most vulnerable rich country to a viral pandemic, and the vicious, right-wing ideology of the Republican Party has wrecked the government’s ability to manage crises of any kind.The national health care system is of course the most important tool for any country trying to fight off an epidemic – all citizens need to be able to get tested, receive treatment, or be quarantined if necessary. If and when a vaccine is developed, the system needs to distribute it to everyone as fast as possible. That means handing it out for free in locations across the country, and perhaps making it mandatory if uptake is insufficient.The American health care system fails at every one of these tasks. Nearly30 million Americans are uninsured, and a further 44 million are underinsured – meaning they will likely hesitate to go to the doctor if they start developing COVID-19 symptoms. This problem is seriously exacerbated by the rampant predatory profiteering that infects every corner of the health care system. Indeed, responsible citizens who have gone in for tests have already started getting slammed with multi-thousand dollar bills. A father and daughter who were evacuated from China and then forcibly quarantined for several days (luckily they were not infected) went home to find $3,918 in bills. If you are working-class person with a $10,000 deductible (not at all uncommon), going to the doctor simply because you have flu-like symptoms (which is how most cases of COVID-19 are experienced) could very easily send you into bankruptcy. If infected, millions of Americans are likely going to take their chances – and keep spreading the virus. Indeed, U.S. health care is not only by far the worst system among rich countries, it is much worse than that of many middle-income or poorer countries when it comes to confronting a fast-moving epidemic. Distributing a vaccine is not that difficult of a task – World Health Organization workers managed it with smallpox even in desperately poor African countries in the 1970s. You just round up everyone, and give out the shot. But that will be a heavy lift indeed with a health care system geared above all to price-gouge sick people out of as much money as possible. While in theory the government could stand up a one-time free (or cheap) vaccination program, the administration has already ruled that out. “We can’t control that price because we need the private sector to invest,” said HHS Secretary Alex Azar. That very likely means an eyewateringly-expensive vaccine that tens of millions can’t get – we’ve seen what rapacious pharma companies do with insulin.
Why is customs STILL NOT screening passengers from coronavirus hot-spots Italy, Iran and South Korea who arrive at major airports, including JFK, LAX, Atlanta and Chicago’s O’Hare? – Customs agencies are still not properly screening travelers arriving in the US from coronavirus hot-spot countries Italy, Iran and South Korea, with scores of passengers saying they’re able to saunter through major airports like JFK and LAX. On March 1, President Trump vowed that anyone returning from ‘high risk countries’ would be screened both before they boarded planes and once they had returned to the US. On Monday, Vice President Pence said: ‘Anyone traveling on a direct flight to the United States of America receives multiple screenings at all airports in Italy and South Korea.’ But the CDC is only insisting on screening passengers who arrive in the country from China and Iran. As the death toll in the US reached 14 on Friday, many travelers took to Twitter to share stories about returning to America from the high risk countries with minimal to no screening. Many said the only question they were asked was if they had traveled recently to China. In addition to fears over how flights are being screened, there is growing criticism of the federal government’s response to testing. The FDA is yet to approve a test that would be able to tell a person if they had the virus or not within 15 minutes. It is a US test that has been developed by a private company and is already being used in Japan, but is yet to pass grade here.
One slide in a leaked presentation for US hospitals reveals that they’re preparing for millions of hospitalizations as the outbreak unfolds – Hospitals are bracing for millions of Americans to be hospitalized as part of the novel coronavirus outbreak. The American Hospital Association, which represents thousands of hospitals and health systems, hosted a webinar in February with its member hospitals and health systems. Business Insider obtained acopy of the slides presented. The presentation, titled “What healthcare leaders need to know: Preparing for the COVID-19” happened February 26, with representatives from the National Ebola Training and Education Center. As part of the presentation to hospitals, Dr. James Lawler, a professor at the University of Nebraska Medical Center gave his “best guess” estimates of how much the virus might spread in the US.Lawler’s estimates include:
- 4.8 million hospitalizations associated with the novel coronavirus
- 96 million cases overall in the US
- 480,000 deaths
- Overall, the slide points out that hospitals should prepare for an impact to the system that’s 10 times a severe flu season.
Here’s the slide:
Can We Get a Vaccine Early? How the Rich Are Preparing for Coronavirus – One investor may fly to Idaho with or without family. A doctor in a Colorado ski town is soothing wealthy clients who want a cure. And one New Yorker called up the hospital with his name on it. Like everyone across the U.S., the rich are bracing for a deadly coronavirus outbreak. Ken Langone, the co-founder of Home Depot Inc., watched President Donald Trump’s press conference and wondered if the media was overplaying the risk — but he also made two well-placed phone calls from his winter outpost in North Palm Beach. One was to a top executive of NYU Langone Health, and the other was to a top scientist there. Both were reassuring. “What I’ve been told by people who are smarter than me in disease is, ‘As of right now it’s a bad flu,'” said Langone, an 84-year-old who loves capitalism so much that he wrote a book called “I Love Capitalism!” He plans to come back to New York this month for an appointment. If he happens to feel sick, he will go to NYU Langone, and said he’d expect no special treatment. Some billionaires, bankers and other members of the U.S. elite are calm, others are getting anxious and everyone is washing their hands. But the rich can afford to prepare for a pandemic with perquisites, like private plane rides out of town, calls with world-leading experts and access to luxurious medical care. Tim Kruse, a doctor who makes house calls in Aspen, Colorado, said “the wealthy aren’t going to necessarily have access to things that the common person is not going to have access to.” But that hasn’t stopped them from asking if they can get their hands on a coronavirus vaccine. “The answer is no. They just want to know.”
Coronavirus Porn Is Going Viral on Pornhub – In a video titled “Bodycam Footage (CDC Agent) Investigates Deserted Wuhan,” you’re watching from the first-person point of view of “Jerry,” a healthcare worker in a hazmat suit, stumbling around in the dark remnants of a medical facility. He breathes hard and his heart pounds, and a voice coming from his walkie talkie tries and fails to get him to respond. There’s a sudden, brief scuffle, and a woman in a hospital gown jumps him, pulls his erect penis from a hole in his clean suit, and wordlessly fucks him. Globally, the novel coronavirus, or COVID-19, has killed more than 3,000 people and infected 90,000. The “Deserted Wuhan” video, by a couple who goes by Spicy x Rice, contains a grain of truth: the Chinese city where coronavirus started does actually seem deserted, with public transit halted and residents’ movement being restricted for over a month now. Another of their videos, “TSA AGENT DETAINS WOMAN SUSPECTED OF CORONAVIRUS,” could be a plausible news headline. If it’s true that art imitates life, right now life is pretty shitty for a lot of people around the world. And if there’s any form that can turn a fucked-up situation into escape and entertainment, it’s porn. So yes, of course coronavirus porn exists. A search for coronavirus on Pornhub returns 112 videos with titles like “MILF In Coronavirus Quarantine Gets Hard Fucked for Medicine” and “Coronavirus patients fuck in quarantine room.” On xHamster, there are only four within that search term, and at least one is an older reposted video of people doing nurse roleplay with face masks. But according to xHamster spokesperson Alex Hawkins, following an offer last month to provide free premium accounts to regions severely affected by coronavirus, the overwhelming surge in signups outpaced xHamster’s ability to approve new accounts. “We personally know people actually stuck in Wuhan and made it with them in mind.” “I think people are attracted to COVID-19 themed porn the same way people who are scared of their shadow are attached to horror movies: We are all searching for things that make us come alive,” Spicy, the male half of the Spicy x Rice duo, told me. “COVID-19 is something that brings fear and mystery to pretty much everyone in the world right now… You need to be able to feel something, and what better way to make you feel something than the global crisis we are all in right now.”
Coping with the Costs of Treating Coronavirus – The coronavirus isn’t the apocalypse, but it’s bad, with effects that are plausibly on the order of an awful year of seasonal flu and a small risk of something like the 1918 flu.Comparing COVID-19 to annual flu might not sound terrible until you remember that flu kills between 12,000 and 61,000 people every year. Plus, we’ve designed our medical infrastructure to cope with the flu. Insurance premiums reflect the risk of flu. Likewise, ICUs have been built and ventilators purchased to accommodate annual surges in patients. We’ve trained the workforce in flu-specific infection control protocols to prevent spread and to protect health-care workers.What we can’t manage is flu plus coronavirus. The combination will place an enormous demand shock on a system that can’t quickly adapt. And throwing money at the supply side of the problem – building temporary acute-care hospitals in urban areas, training new people, paying for new therapies that come on-line – will be especially hard if the world slides into a recession.A demand shock plus supply constraints mean that we will inevitably ration care. That’s what we saw in Wuhan, that’s what we’ll see here. And we will probably do so haphazardly and unjustly. An urgent priority is to come up with ways to ration rationally and fairly.Which brings me back to the rough cost model that David States, Bill Gardner, and I posted on Tuesday. An antiviral, if one is developed, could possibly cost us $40 billion or more, at an estimated price tag of $20,000 per course of treatment. But we assumed that 19% of the U.S. population becomes infected and that only the very sick are treated. Either assumption could low-ball actual need. Regardless, these aren’t manageable costs for employers and private insurers. Reinsurers will groan under the expense. Medicaid, too, will struggle. The states can’t deficit spend like the federal government can, meaning that any dollar spent on an antiviral is a dollar less spent on something else. As they did with the new Hep C antivirals, states may have little choice but to adopt unlawful barriers to care to spread the costs over multiple years.
According to the WHO, Coronavirus Is WORSE Than the Spanish Flu … Which Killed Tens of Millions of People – The World Health Organization (WHO) says that the mortality rate from the Wuhan Coronavirus (formally known as 2019 nCoV) is 3.4% globally.The Spanish Flu of 1918 – which killed between tens of millions of people – had a lower mortality rate, estimated by the WHO as between 2 and 3%. But surely, you say, the Coronavirus is not as contagious as the Spanish Flu … Unfortunately, it’s more contagious. The Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy notes: The novel coronavirus has an R0 of 2.2, meaning each case patient could infect more than 2 other people. If accurate, this makes the 2019 nCoV more infectious than the 1918 influenza pandemic virus, which had an R0 of Based on calculations, the authors of the larger study estimate the novel coronavirus has an R0 of 2.2, meaning each case patient could infect more than 2 other people. If accurate, this makes the 2019 nCoV more infectious than the 1918 influenza pandemic virus, which had an R0 of 1.80 … .WHO says that the R0 of Coronavirus in China was initially between 2 and 2.5.< But scientists from the Los Alamos National Laboratory said that the R0 for the Coronavirus is actually between 4.7 to 6.6 (although that number drops to between 2.3 and 3 after quarantines and social distancing are implemented).According to the Director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and others, Coronavirus can be spread even when people have no symptoms. On the one hand, this is bad news, as it is very hard to screen and locate carriers when they are symptom-free or have only mild, cold or flu-like symptoms.On the other hand, this means that the real R0 might be much higher than WHO estimates … which would make the mortality rate lower.If the number of people with Coronavirus is a lot higher than is being reported, that means the mortality is a lot lower … i.e. a smaller percentage of the larger population of people infected have died. Indeed, China only tests a portion of those who are really sick, and the United States has tested less than 500 people total for Coronavirus (American doctors have to beg to get their sick patients tested).
Coronavirus kills at more than 20 times the rate of seasonal flu – The World Health Organization (WHO) announced on Tuesday that the mortality rate for reported cases of COVID-19 has risen to 3.4 percent, based on the ratio of the current number of deaths caused by the virus to the confirmed infections. At the time of the announcement, those figures stood at 3,254 and 95,184, respectively. The coronavirus fatality rate is more than 20 times the death rate of the seasonal flu, according to data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) – a stark measure of the dangers the novel coronavirus poses to the world’s population. This number is an increase over early estimates of the mortality rate by the WHO at just above 2 percent. It reflects the spread of the coronavirus to 83 countries and territories outside of China. The fatality ratio has stayed relatively constant since February 25, even as new cases and new deaths have been confirmed. It is unclear whether the current mortality rate will hold or change in the coming days. One of the many causes of the spread of COVID-19 is the fact that workers are unable to take sick days, even when exhibiting symptoms of the infection. Chipotle workers in New York City yesterday held a protest against the fast food chain demanding that the company stop forcing workers to work while sick, especially in light of the spread of the coronavirus in the state. They exposed retaliation by the company against workers who stayed home to recover and prevent the spread of the disease in spite of orders by management. Questions are also being raised as to whether a vaccine will reduce the impact of the disease, especially if it is not distributed freely. Asked at a congressional hearing last week to guarantee that once a vaccine against the virus is developed it will be available to all, US Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar, a former pharmaceutical executive, refused. “We would want to ensure that we worked to make it affordable,” he said, “but we can’t control that price because we need the private sector to invest. Price controls won’t get us there.” As the spread of the coronavirus continues, the WHO is very concerned that the medical supplies necessary to combat the disease could run out. A statement issued by the organization on March 3 warned that “supplies are rapidly depleting.” It said the medical industry had to increase manufacturing by 40 percent if the demands placed upon the world’s health care infrastructure by the pandemic were to be met. In raw numbers, the world needs 89 million medical masks, 76 million examination gloves, 30 million gowns, 1.6 million goggles and 2.9 million liters of hand sanitizer each month until the pandemic is contained. The WHO has also called for “the rational and appropriate use of personal protective equipment in healthcare settings, and the effective management of supply chains,” after prices for gowns doubled, respirators tripled and surgical masks increased six-fold.
What Doctors Treating Covid-19 in Wuhan Say About Coronavirus – As the new coronavirus epidemic spreads across the globe, experts are turning to findings from China, where it originated, to better understand the disease. Since January, doctors at the outbreak’s epicenter in Wuhan have been studying the virus whose effects are mostly mild but can occasionally turn deadly.Medical professionals who have been treating and studying Covid-19 patients in Wuhan shared their insights with reporters in Beijing on Wednesday. Here are three observations from the doctors.Anecdotal reports that the novel coronavirus may have a long incubation have stoked fears that carriers can go undetected and unknowingly infect others. Local authorities in another city in Hubei — the same province that Wuhan belongs to — reported on Feb. 22 that a 70-year-old man was infected by the virus but only showed symptoms 27 days later.”From most of the publications right now the median incubation period is five to seven days, with the longest incubation period as 14 days,” said Du Bin, a member of China’s team of experts overseeing coronavirus treatment. “There’s no data showing that an incubation period longer than 14 days ever existed.” In some patients, the onset of the virus happened very slowly with only a mild fever before their conditions deteriorated rapidly 10 days later, according to Li Haichao, deputy director of the respiratory department at the First Hospital of Peking University. There’s also no evidence so far that people who have recovered and later test positive again for the virus can pass it on to others, according to Du, who is also the director of intensive care unit for internal medicine at Peking Union Medical College Hospital. On Thursday, Chinese media The Paper reported that a man in Wuhan who had recovered from Covid-19 and tested negative for the virus died less than a week later from the infection. The report was later removed from the internet.
Coronavirus latest: global infections pass 90,000 – The number of people worldwide who have been infected with the coronavirus has passed 90,000. More than 3,000 have died since the outbreak began in December. The vast majority of cases – more than 80,000 – have occurred in China, but around 60 other countries are now also dealing with outbreaks. Many nations are preparing for a global pandemic, as reports of cases caused by spread within communities – rather than being imported from China – rise. South Korea, Italy and Iran are fighting the largest outbreaks outside China. At a press briefing on 29 February, the World Health Organization (WHO) announced that it had raised the global alert for COVID-19 to the highest possible level, short of calling it a pandemic. The virus has now spread to some 60 locations outside China, with new cases detected in Ireland, Monaco, Azerbaijan, Qatar and Ecuador.The global alert for the spread and impact of the coronavirus outbreak increased from ‘high’ to ‘very high’. The alert remains ‘very high’ in China.The global change was based on an assessment by WHO epidemiologists, which took into account the continued increase in the number of cases and affected locations, and the difficulties that some regions, including Iran and Italy, are facing in containing the spread of the coronavirus.Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of the WHO, said at the briefing that most cases were linked and could still be traced to known contacts or clusters, with no evidence of the virus spreading freely in communities. “As long as that is the case, we still have a chance of containing this virus, if robust action is taken to detect cases early, isolate and care for patients and trace contacts,” said Tedros.The organization therefore once again resisted declaring the outbreak a pandemic. Mike Ryan, director of the WHO’s emergencies programme, said that such a decision would mean that efforts to contain and slow down the spread of the virus have failed, which has proved to be untrue in China, Singapore and other regions.
South Korea virus total nears 6,000 – South Korea’s total number of novel coronavirus cases — the largest outside China, where the disease first emerged — approached 6,000 on Thursday as authorities announced a ban on face mask exports. Total infections stood at 5,766, the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said, up 145, with 35 deaths. Australia announced Thursday it would impose an entry ban on foreigners who have recently been in South Korea, joining 36 countries and regions that have taken similar measures so far according to the foreign ministry in Seoul. Prime Minister Chung Sye-kyun said face mask exports would be banned from Friday. Masks have become standard wear throughout South Korea and demand has surged, with long queues forming as authorities struggle to ensure a sufficient supply. “Most people are spending hours queueing,” Chung told a meeting in Daegu, the centre of the epidemic in South Korea, where he is leading the government response. Nearly 90 percent of South Korea’s cases are in Daegu — with more than 4,300 cases confirmed there — and the neighbouring North Gyeongsang province. President Moon Jae-in announced a 30-trillion-won ($25-billion) package earlier this week to address the “grave” situation brought on by the outbreak in the world’s 12th-largest economy. Scores of events — from K-pop concerts to sports seasons — have been cancelled or postponed over the contagion, with school and kindergarten breaks extended by three weeks nationwide.
China is recording so few new coronavirus infections that South Korea looks like the new center of the epidemic – The number of daily coronavirus cases reported by China has largely been in decline for about a week – and it means South Korea now appears to be the new center of the epidemic.South Korea reported 760 new cases on Thursday, compared withChina’s 139 new cases.Though China still has the most active cases of the novel coronavirus of any country, the pace of its spread has slowed sharply, while the number of recoveries has soared.At the same time, South Korea has become the second-most-infected country, experiencing a spread far more rapid than in China, where the virus first appeared late last year.South Korea’s first virus case was on January 20. As of Thursday, it had 6,088 cases and 37 deaths.People in line to buy face masks in front of a store at Dongseongro shopping district in Daegu on February 27. In absolute terms, China is still by far the most affected country,with 80,409 confirmed cases of COVID-19 and a death toll of 3,012. On Thursday its number of new cases went up slightly, with 139 additional infections compared to 130 on Wednesday.Overall, the gap between China and other countries continues to narrow.Elsewhere, Italy and Iran have the highest number of deaths outside China, with 107 and 92 deaths respectively.Italy has recorded 3,090 cases, and Iran 2,922.But case numbers and death toll in Iran are subject to some doubtafter apparent efforts by authorities there to hide the scale of the outbreak. Globally, more than 95,000 people have been infected and nearly 3,300 have died.
Coronavirus live updates: South Korea cases cross 6,700, Facebook temporarily bans face mask ads – South Korea reported 483 new cases, bringing its total to 6,767 cases. There were two more deaths, bringing the total number of deaths to 44. China’s National Health Commission reported 99 new confirmed cases as of March 6, and 28 more deaths. Of the new cases, 74 were from the epicenter of Hubei, and all 28 of the deaths were from that province. That brings the country’s total to 80,651 confirmed cases, and 3,070 deaths.
- Global cases: At least 102,169, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University.
- Global deaths: At least 3,491, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University.
Facebook is temporarily banning ads and commerce listings selling medical face masks. The social media giant said it will begin to enforce the temporary ban on these type of ads “over the next few days.” The policy change comes one day after a company spokesman told CNBC that Facebook will remove political ads posted on its service if they contain misinformation related to the new coronavirus. The Florida Department of Health said two residents have died. One person was a new presumptive positive case in Lee County, the department said. The other person was a previously announced presumptive positive case from Santa Rosa County. The number of coronavirus cases in New York state has quadrupled over the last 48 hours to 44, Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced Friday. “The number will continue to go up because it’s mathematics,” Cuomo said at a news briefing. “The more you test, the more you will find.” Cuomo used Twitter to revise the state’s case count from 33 released earlier Friday to 44. The state reported 11 cases Wednesday evening, 22 on Thursday, 33 Friday afternoon and 44 Friday evening – a fourfold increase over the previous 48 hours. There are roughly 2,700 people in New York City under ‘precautionary quarantine’ with more than 1,000 others also in voluntary isolation across the state, Cuomo said. Vice President Mike Pence on Friday said 21 people on the Grand Princess cruise ship off the coast of California have tested positive for coronavirus. The ship will be brought to a non-commercial port, Pence said, and everyone aboard the ship will be tested. He did not say which port the ship will go toward or when it is expected to arrive.Of the 21 people who tested positive, he added, 19 are crew members and two are passengers. Pence said health officials tested only 46 people aboard the ship.The ship, which was on a two-week voyage to Hawaii, was ordered to return early to San Francisco, California Gov. Gavin Newsom said Thursday, adding that passengers and crew have developed symptoms. A spokesman for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said that three passengers who were previously on the ship have tested positive, including one who has died.
Silver Linings Playbook- 119 People Quarantined In A Brothel In Spain – Of all the places to be quarantined, a brothel in Valencia, Spain, might not be the worst. You’ve got booze, you’ve likely got a small buffet of fried foods and you’ve got entertainment. But in all seriousness, that was exactly the case a day ago when authorities found that a woman working at the “La Selva Negra” brothel had tested positive for coronavirus. The findings forced authorities to quarantine the premises and the 86 customers that were inside. The employee, who is now in the hospital, had “slept with several clients that same night,” according to a translated blog post on the story. In addition to the customers, the club’s owners, waitresses, security and cleaning crew were also quarantined. When added to the total of 86 customers, it makes 119 people under quarantine. They have been asked to “keep calm” and to just “live a normal life” inside the premises.
Italy coronavirus death toll to 107, 3,089 cases: Live updates –Governments around the world are scrambling to contain the spread of COVID-19, which is growing globally even as transmission in China, where the virus originated at the end of last year, continues to show signs of slowing within the country. There are more than 93,000 cases around the world – the overwhelming majority in China – but as deaths are reported in Italy, Iran and the United States, authorities are considering new quarantine zones and travel restrictions. As the number of deaths rose in Iran and Italy, Poland, Morocco, Andorra, Armenia and Argentina all confirmed their first cases of the virus in the past 24 hours.Professional football matches and other big sporting events will take place without fans present until April 3 said Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte. The preventive measure is part of a new decree issued by the government hoping to prevent a further spread of the virus which has caused 3,089 infected cases and 107 fatalities in the country. Conte posted a five-minute video on his Facebook page, reassuring viewers and saying that the decree was a way of assuring “responsible behaviour.”He said banning crowds at sporting events would help “prevent further opportunities of infection.”
Italy Shuts All Schools to Stem Spread of Coronavirus – WSJ – Italy’s government ordered all schools in the country to close until March 15, as part of an escalating effort to contain the worst coronavirus outbreak outside Asia. The closure, announced Wednesday, expands a school suspension already in place in northern Italy and will force some 8.4 million students across the country to stay at home. Teachers are encouraged to give lessons remotely. Universities are closing too. The government also unveiled other measures that include spectator-free soccer matches and other bans on public gatherings across the country, including in cinemas and theaters, until April 3. Officials have even appealed to Italians not to hug and kiss when they meet. Senior citizens are encouraged to stay at home. “We’re focused on adopting all measures to contain or slow down the virus, because we have a health-care system that, however good and efficient it may be, risks being overloaded,” Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte said. Italy’s mounting shutdowns and restrictions reflect growing concern that the country is so far failing to slow the spread of the new coronavirus. Italian authorities said Wednesday the number of infected people had risen to 3,089, up 23% from 2,502 on Tuesday. Of those, 107 had died by Wednesday, up from a total of 79 deaths by Tuesday, while 276 people had fully recovered. Only China, South Korea and Iran have more confirmed infections. Italian authorities had already imposed restrictions in swaths of the country’s north, closing schools, universities, museums and churches while banning public gatherings such as at soccer matches and fashion shows. Clusters of towns at the heart of the outbreak were sealed off by police and army roadblocks, especially in a rural area south of Milan. But the measures, imposed after Italy discovered the outbreak on Feb. 20, haven’t stopped infections from spreading around the country and into the rest of Europe. Health experts say the only way to contain the outbreak is to limit social interactions as much as possible.
Death toll from coronavirus in Italy rises to 148: Live updates — Italy reported 41 new deaths from coronavirus on Thursday, bringing the death toll to 148, the second highest outside of China, where just over 3,000 people have died since the outbreak began in December. The virus has reached all 22 regions of Italy, and prompted Rome to take unprecedented measures, including suspending all schools and universities and unveiling an $8.4-billion rescue plan. Meanwhile, the United Kingdom reported its first death from coronavirus on Thursday, an elderly person with underlying health conditions, while Bosnia and Herzegovina, Slovenia and South Africa reported their first cases. In the United States, Congress has voted for a $8.3bn emergency funding package to fight the coronavirus as the death toll rose to 11. Globally, more than 95,000 people have been diagnosed with COVID-19, the vast majority in China. The Palestinian government confirmed the number of coronavirus cases in the occupied West Bank had risen to seven and declared a two-week ban on tourists visiting cities and sites including Bethlehem’s Church of the Nativity. The health ministry said the cases had been confirmed in the Bethlehem area south of Jerusalem. Three more people have died from coronavirus infection in France on Thursday, taking the total to seven, while the number of confirmed infections rose by 138 to 423, a health official said.A total of 23 people are in a very serious condition, health a gency director Jerome Salomon said at a daily briefing about the virus. Saudi Arabia denounced Iran for granting Saudi citizens entry amid the coronavirus outbreak and urged it to reveal the identities of all Saudi nationals who had visited since the start of February, a government statement said. The statement, which cited an unnamed official, urged Saudi citizens who are currently in Iran or have returned recently to report their travel, promising if they did so in 48 hours they would not be subjected to a law forbidding travel to Iran, according to Reuters news agency.
Italy coronavirus deaths near 200 after biggest daily jump –(Reuters) – The death toll from an outbreak of coronavirus in Italy has risen by 49 to 197, the Civil Protection Agency said on Friday, the largest daily increase in fatalities since the contagion was uncovered two weeks ago. Italy is currently reporting more deaths per day from the virus than any other country in the world and the government this week ordered the closure of schools, universities, cinemas and theaters around the country to try to stem the infections. The cumulative number of cases in the country, which has been the hardest hit in Europe by the epidemic, totaled 4,636 compared with 3,858 on Thursday. China, where the outbreak began, had 80,711 confirmed cases and 3,045 cumulative cases, 30 of them reported on Friday by the World Health Organisation. The Vatican, an independent state that sits in the heart of Rome, registered its first case on Friday. The national health institute said the average age of those who had died so far was 81, with the vast majority suffering underlying health problems. Just 28% were women. The fatality rate from the illness in Italy, which has one of the oldest populations in the world, is running at 4.25%, higher than in most other countries. In a worrying sign for hard-pressed hospitals, the number of patients in intensive care rose more than 30% on Friday to 462. On a more positive note, some 523 people have fully recovered, authorities said, an increase of 26% on the previous tally. Analysts say the crisis will push Italy’s fragile economy into its fourth recession in 12 years. Credit ratings agency Moody’s on Friday cut its growth forecast for the country to -0.5% in 2020, from a previous +0.5% estimate.
Italy set to lock down Lombardy after coronavirus jump – (Reuters) – Italy is set to lock down its wealthiest and most populous region, which includes the financial capital Milan, as part of tough new measures expected to be approved on Saturday to try to contain the coronavirus outbreak. The new rules include telling people not to enter or leave Lombardy, which is home to some 10 million people, as well as 11 provinces in four of Italy’s 19 other regions, according to a draft decree seen by Reuters. All museums, gyms, cultural centers, ski resorts and swimming pools will be shut in the targeted areas, according to the decree, which is due to come into force from Sunday. The legislation is expected to be approved later on Saturday, the head of the civil protection agency said earlier, after the number of coronavirus infections jumped by more than 1,200 in the past 24 hours. Leave will be canceled for all healthcare workers, weddings, funerals and sports events suspended, and home working should be adopted as much as possible, the draft said. The 11 provinces affected are those around Modena, Parma, Piacenza, Reggio Emilia and Rimini in the region of Emilia-Romagna – Venice, Padua and Treviso in the region of Veneto – Asti and Alessandria in Piedmont – and the province of Pesaro and Urbino in the central region of Marche. All schools and universities will be closed in Lombardy and the listed provinces until at least April 3. This week, the government announced schools all over the country would be closed until March 15.
German coronavirus cases jump, economic nervousness rises – (Reuters) – The number of coronavirus patients in Germany jumped to 684 on Saturday, with concern growing at the economic impact of the spreading epidemic on one of the world’s most trade-dependent economies. The number of patients recorded by the Robert Koch Institute had risen by 45, with large clusters in the west and south, where one initial outbreak centered on a car supplier with a unit in Wuhan, where the infection was first detected. The total is more than 10 times larger than it was a week ago. There were 66 cases in Feb. 29. Western Europe’s most populous country, Germany has the second largest number of registered cases on the continent after Italy. So far, no deaths have been reported, though the RND newspaper group reported that a transplant patient with a depressed immune system and who had contracted coronavirus was in a critical condition. With concern growing at the vulnerability of long international supply chains to such an epidemic, Ola Kallenius, chief executive of Mercedes maker Daimler, warned against a return to economic nationalism. “These events show how fragile global supply chains are,” he told Der Spiegel magazine. “But a world without global work sharing would be less successful … We should protect (that success) while checking for vulnerabilities where we can bring more security into the supply chain.” “We can’t yet say what the impact will be, but it is clear that both production and sales will be affected,” he added. Lufthansa, Europe’s largest airline group by fleet size, on Friday announced that it was slashing by half the number of flights it would operate in coming weeks as a result of the sudden slackening in demand.
Coronavirus: Iran temporarily frees 54,000 prisoners to combat spread Iran has temporarily released more than 54,000 prisoners in an effort to combat the spread of the new coronavirus disease in crowded jails. Judiciary spokesman Gholamhossein Esmaili told reporters the inmates were allowed out of prison after testing negative for Covid-19 and posting bail. “Security prisoners” sentenced to more than five years will not be let out. The jailed British-Iranian charity worker Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe may be freed soon, according to a British MP. Tulip Siddiq cited the Iranian ambassador to the UK as saying that Ms Zaghari-Ratcliffe “may be released on furlough today or tomorrow”. Her husband said on Saturday that he believed she had contracted Covid-19 at Tehran’s Evin prison and that authorities were refusing to test her. But Mr Esmaili insisted on Monday that Ms Zaghari-Ratcliffe had subsequently been in contact with her family and “told them about her good health”. Ms Zaghari-Ratcliffe was jailed for five years in 2016 after being convicted of espionage charges that she has denied. The UK has also insisted she is innocent. A Foreign Office spokesman said: “We call on the Iranian government to immediately allow health professionals into Evin prison to assess the situation of British-Iranian dual nationals there.”
Iran reports 2,336 cases of the new coronavirus, at least 77 dead; MPs hit hard – Iran on Tuesday announced new measures to slow the spread of the new coronavirus and reported that the country has seen 2,336 cases and 77 deaths since the outbreak. An Iranian lawmaker reportedly has told colleagues to stop their contact with public as there are 23 cases of the new coronavirus among parliament members. That’s according to lawmaker Abdolreza Mesri, who was quoted by Iranian state television’s Young Journalists Club program. Iran’s supreme leader earlier on Tuesday ordered the Islamic Republic’s armed forces to assist its Health Ministry in combating the spread of the new coronavirus.The decision by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei comes as Iran has seen the highest death toll from the new virus and the COVID-19 illness it causes outside of China, the epicenter of the virus. After downplaying the coronavirus as recently as last week, Iranian authorities now say they have plans to potentially mobilize 300,000 soldiers and volunteers to confront the virus. Concern over the outbreak now stretches to Iran’s top leadership – some of whom have fallen ill from the virus.
8% of Iran’s parliament has tested positive for coronavirus, official says – Twenty-three members of Iran’s 290-member “Majlis” or parliament have tested positive for the novel coronavirus, according to Iran’s Deputy Parliament Speaker Abdul Reza Misri. That’s about about 8% of all members of parliament. Misri made the announcement while speaking to reporters in Tehran today, citing an open letter to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei from Iran’s Parliament Speaker Ali Larijani. In the letter, MPs were also called on to halt contact with the public to avoid further spread of the disease. Larijani also advocated for a continuance of the suspension of open sessions in parliament in his open letter to Khamenei, which was enacted last week amid Iran’s growing outbreak.
Virus ravaging Iran kills confidant of its supreme leader(AP) – A member of a council that advises Iran’s supreme leader died Monday from the new coronavirus, becoming the highest-ranking official within the Islamic Republic’s Shiite theocracy to be killed by the illness ravaging the country. The death of Expediency Council member Mohammad Mirmohammadi came as Iran announced the virus had killed at least 66 people among 1,501 confirmed cases. There are now 1,700 cases of the new coronavirus across the Mideast. Of those outside Iran, most link back to the Islamic Republic, which after China has the highest death toll from the COVID-19 illness caused by the virus. After downplaying the coronavirus as recently as last week, Iranian authorities now say they have plans to potentially mobilize 300,000 soldiers and volunteers to confront the virus. Yet experts still worry Iran’s percentage of deaths to infections, now around 4.4%, is much higher than other countries, suggesting the number of infections in Iran may be much higher than current figures show. Saudi Arabia and Jordan meanwhile announced their first cases of the virus Monday. Mirmohammadi, 71, died at a north Tehran hospital of the virus, state media said. His mother had reportedly died of the coronavirus in recent days as well. Mirmohammadi, though not particularly well-known to the Iranian public, served as a top official in the presidencies of Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani and Ali Khamenei, now the country’s supreme leader. The state-run IRNA news agency described Mirmohammadi, whose father also once served on the Expediency Council, as having a close relationship to Khamenei. The Expediency Council advises the supreme leader, as well as settles disputes between parliament and the Guardian Council, Iran’s constitutional watchdog that also oversees the country’s elections. The 45-member Expediency Council, which also includes former hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and officials close to Khamenei, last met in February with Mirmohammadi on hand.
Coronavirus: Iran limits travel and urges banknote avoidance – Iran is limiting travel between its major cities as it tries to halt the spread of the coronavirus, which has killed at least 107 people there. The country has already shut schools until April, and Health Minister Saeed Namaki said people should not use the break as an opportunity to travel. He also urged Iranians to reduce the use of paper banknotes. The measures come as the World Health Organization warned some countries were not doing enough to stop the virus. But WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus insisted containment was still possible, adding: “This is not a time to give up.” Iran is one of the worst-hit countries outside China, where the Covid-19 virus – which causes the coronavirus disease – originated. The country’s official death toll on Thursday rose by 15 to 107, and the number of confirmed cases increased by 591 to 3,513. But state news agency Irna said the number of dead could be higher, citing data from medical universities. The data did not include statistics from the capital Tehran and Gilan province – two of the hardest-hit areas. The toll there was listed as “unknown”, Irna said. Last month sources in the country’s health system told BBC Persian the death toll was at least 210, with most victims in Tehran and the holy city of Qom. Mr Namaki said checkpoints would go up to limit travel between major cities. Worldwide, authorities have confirmed more than 92,000 cases of the virus, of which more than 80,000 are in China. More than 3,000 people have died globally, the vast majority of them in China.
Iran minister accuses ‘some countries’ of not declaring their coronavirus cases – Iran’s oil minister has hit out at other countries for not declaring confirmed cases of the coronavirus.The accuracy of the Islamic Republic’s data on the outbreak has been called into question, with 3,513 cases and 107 deaths confirmed by the country so far.But Bijan Namdar Zangeneh told reporters ahead of Friday’s OPEC meeting in Vienna: “I believe that we are announcing and declaring our situation and some countries don’t say anything about their situation.”While it is not clear which specific countries he was referring to, both Turkey and North Korea have been under scrutiny for claiming they have no diagnosed cases.Zanganeh also criticized the U.S., claiming broader sanctions on Iranian goods and services were preventing the country from accessing vital food and medicine for its citizens.He said Iran has not “received any important assistance from any country” and accused U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo of “lying.” Pompeo told the House Foreign Affairs Committee last week that the U.S. had made offers of humanitarian assistance to help Iran contain the outbreak.”Food, oil, oil products, petrochemicals, iron, copper – all are under the sanction. With which money can we buy food and drugs for the Iranian people?” Zanganeh said on Friday.In 2018, U.S. President Donald Trump unilaterally withdrew from a 2015 nuclear deal which had lifted crippling economic sanctions on Iran, in exchange for curbs to Iranian nuclear infrastructure. The U.S. has since imposed a raft of further sanctions on Iranian exports as it seeks to rein in Iranian nuclear development and alleged regional acts of aggression.
Coronavirus: Iran holy-shrine-lickers face prison – Two men in Iran who defied coronavirus health warnings could be jailed and flogged after videos circulated of them licking holy shrines. In one of the videos, viewed more than a million times on Instagram, a man is seen at the Masumeh shrine in Qom, saying, “I’m not scared of coronavirus”, before licking and kissing the gates. In another video at a shrine in Mashhad a man is filmed saying he is there to lick the shrine, “so the disease can go inside my body and others can visit it with no anxiety”.MP Hasan Nowrozi said: “Those doing such unconventional acts are publishing fake and superstitious news against the officials in the country.”Such people would face two months to two years [in] jail and up to 74 lashes as punishment.”The arrests come after videos of the men were shared on social media by Iranian journalist and activist Masih Alinejad.”Arresting these two people is not enough as the religious centres are still open in Qom and other cities where people are suffering from coronavirus” she told the BBC.Iran has recorded one of the highest numbers of coronavirus cases outside China.While some measures have been taken to protect visitors – such as disinfecting holy shrines – there hasn’t been an outright closure of the sites. Some religious clerics believe the shrines, including the Masumeh shrine in Qom, have divine powers that can cure diseases.
Coronavirus deaths rise to 145 in Iran, infections near 6,000: ministry – (Reuters) – Iran’s death toll from coronavirus reached 145 on Saturday after another 21 people were confirmed to have died during the last day, among them a conservative lawmaker from Tehran, officials and local news agencies said. Announcing the latest deaths from the virus, a health ministry official said in a televised briefing that the tally of confirmed infections had increased by more than 1,000 during the last 24 hours, totaling 5,823 by Saturday. Lawmaker Fatehmeh Rahbar was among those who died on Friday, the semi-official Tasnim news agency reported, in another sign that the disease is spreading within state institutions. On March 2, Tasnim reported the death of Mohammad Mirmohammadi. He was a member of the Expediency Council, an entity that resolves disputes between parliament and the Guardian Council – a hardline body responsible for vetting electoral candidates. Deputy Health Minister Iraj Harirchi and another member of parliament, Mahmoud Sadeghi, have said they have also contracted the virus. As authorities work to contain the outbreak, Iran’s Mosque Authority postponed all gatherings and celebrations until further notice, the Mehr news agency said. Iran is the epicenter of the outbreak in the Middle East as most of the cases reported in the region are either people who were in Iran or who caught the virus from people who had visited the country.
Unparalleled Disruption – 290 Million Students Around The World Face Weeks At Home – Nearly 300 million students worldwide are enjoying an unexpected vacation as they face weeks at home, with Italy the latest country to shut schools over the deadly new coronavirus. According to Unesco, 290.5 million children in 13 countries were affected, while a further nine nations have implemented localised closures, the SCMP reported. “The global scale and speed of the current educational disruption is unparalleled and, if prolonged, could threaten the right to education.” Unesco chief Audrey Azoulay said. On Wednesday, Italy ordered schools and universities closed until March 15, ramping up its response as the national death toll rose to 107, the deadliest outbreak outside China. South Korea – the country with the largest number of cases outside China with nearly 6,000 – has postponed the start of the current term until March 23. In Hong Kong schools are closed until at least April 20, while in Japan nearly all schools are closed after Prime Minister Shinzo Abe called for classes to be cancelled through March and spring break, slated for late March through early April. Some 120 schools closed in France this week in areas with the largest numbers of infections. In Germany, the health minister said the outbreak was now a “global pandemic” – a term the World Health Organisation has stopped short of using – meaning the virus is spreading in several regions through local transmission.
Shanghai tightens airport checks as imported virus infections in China jump – (Reuters) – Shanghai increased airport screening on Saturday as imported coronavirus infections from countries such as Italy and Iran emerge as the biggest source of new cases in China outside Hubei, the province where the outbreak originated. Mainland China had 99 new confirmed cases on Friday, according to official data. Of the 25 that were outside Hubei, 24 came from outside China. Shanghai, which had three new cases that originated from abroad on Friday, said it would step up control measures at the border, which had become “the main battlefield”. At a news conference, Shanghai Customs officials said they city would check all passengers from seriously affected countries for the virus, among other airport measures. Shanghai already requires passengers flying in from such countries, regardless of nationality, to be quarantined for 14 days. They will now be escorted home in vehicles provided by the government. Tighter screening has greatly lengthened waiting times at Shanghai’s Pudong International Airport – some passengers say they have had to wait as long as seven hours. The Shanghai government vowed on Saturday to severely punish passengers who concealed infections. Beijing police said on Saturday they would work with other departments to prevent imported infections. They said some members of a Chinese family flying in from Italy on March 4 had failed to fill in health declarations accurately, and later tested positive for the virus.
Seoul furious as Tokyo quarantines Korean visitors — Tokyo’s Covid-19 countermeasures have sparked anger and a diplomatic dispute with Seoul.Even a global health scare is not enough to keep one of Asia’s most virulent enmities quiet for long, as, on Friday, a diplomatic dispute flared up between South Korea and Japan after Japan said that it would quarantine arriving Chinese and South Korean travelers.Tokyo’s plan triggered an angry response from South Korea on Friday, with comments from both the Foreign Ministry and the National Security Council warning that Seoul might take “corresponding measures.”Prime Minister Shinzo Abe called, before a cabinet-level task force late Thursday, for visitors from the two countries to undergo a two-week quarantine. According to Japanese media, the measures – which also include restricting flights from the two countries to just two airports nationwide and suspended visas issues to Chinese and South Korean nationals – take effect from March 9 to March 31.On Friday, Foreign Minister Kang Kyung-wha summoned Japanese Ambassador to Korea Tomita Koji.It is “extremely regrettable” that Tokyo had “enforced the measures without prior notice,” Kang said, according to a press release from her ministry. “These measures are unfriendly and unscientific,” she said. Kang also said that if Japan did not withdraw the measures, Korea would be forced to “come up with necessary countermeasures, including reciprocal measures.” China and South Korea are leading the world in numbers of identified Covid-19 cases. As of Friday, China reported 80,555 while Korea saw 6,593 cases. Japan, meanwhile, reports just 360, according to the interactive virus map collated by John Hopkins University.
Japanese Official Says Olympics Can Be Postponed As Virus Fears Surge – A week after Japan started canceling sport and cultural events amid the broadening of the Covid-19 outbreak, Seiko Hashitomo, Japan’s Olympic minister, raised the very real prospect of postponing The Olympic Games. With deaths and cases soaring in Japan (now at almost 300 cases – ex Diamond Princess – and 12 deaths, though the numbers are widely questioned), Fox News reports that Hashimoto told the upper house of parliament: “The IOC has the right to cancel the Games only if they are not held during 2020,” she said. “This can be interpreted to mean the games can be postponed as long as they are held during the calendar year.” Asked whether she believed the Games would be held if the coronavirus outbreak worsened, she replied:“We are making the utmost effort so that we don’t have to face that situation.”
China’s coronavirus recovery is ‘all fake,’ whistleblowers and residents claim – China’s claims of how it’s handling coronavirus recovery should be taken with more than a few grains of salt. Even before COVID-19 became a global crisis, Chinese leaders had been criticized for their handling of the situation and lack of transparency about the disease’s progression. Things now look like they’re on the upswing, and businesses even appear to be headed back to work – but whistleblowers and local officials tell Caixan that’s just a carefully crafted ruse. Beijing has spent much of the outbreak pushing districts to carry on business as usual, with some local governments subsidizing electricity costs and even installing mandatory productivity quotas. Zhejiang, a province east of the epicenter city of Wuhan, claimed as of Feb. 24 it had restored 98.6 percent of its pre-coronavirus work capacity. But civil servants tell Caixan that businesses are actually faking these numbers. Beijing had started checking Zhejiang businesses’ electricity consumption levels, so district officials ordered the companies to start leaving their lights and machinery on all day to drive the numbers up, one civil servant said. Businesses have reportedly falsified staff attendance logs as well – they “would rather waste a small amount of money on power than irritate local officials,” Caixan writes. In Wuhan, officials have tried to make it appear that recovery efforts are going smoothly. But when “central leaders” personally survey disinfecting regimens and food delivery, local officials “make a special effort” for them and them alone, one resident told Caixan. And in a video circulating on social media, residents can be seen shouting at visiting leaders from the apartments where they’re being quarantined – “Fake, it’s all fake.”
World Health Organization warns of need for urgent response as coronavirus cases surpass 100,000 – The number of cases caused by the Covid-19 pandemic have now surpassed 100,000, while the death toll has increased to nearly 3,500. It is now at least 12 times as infectious and has killed more than four times as many people as the 2002-2003 SARS outbreak and is continuing to spread at an alarming rate.”This is not a drill,” said Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director general of the World Health Organization, in a press conference Thursday. “This is not a time for excuses. This is a time for pulling out all the stops.” Dr. Ghebreyesus’s remarks came as new cases in mainland China reached new lows while new cases outside the country continued to spike. There have been fewer than 200 new cases in Wuhan, the origin of the epidemic, for the past five days, while there have been more than 2,000 new cases each day since March 2. If the current trends continue, the total number of cases outside China will surge past the number of cases within China by the end of the month.The spread of the virus has now reached 97 countries, prompting many major social and cultural events to shut down. Germany’s second largest book fair, held in Leipzig, has been canceled because of coronavirus fears. The annual tech, music and film festival SXSW in Austin will also not be held this year, which will cost the city hundreds of millions in tourism, ticket sales and other revenue. The American Physical Society last week canceled its annual meeting with only 34 hours of notice, leaving a large section of its 10,000 members, including many graduate students, with the costs of a wasted plane ticket. It has also caused several doctors to work themselves to exhaustion and even death. The Los Angeles Times reported that, as of Monday, there have been 18 deaths among medical workers caring for Covid-19 patients. This includes some who have died directly from the virus and others, such as 28-year-old pharmacist Song Yingjie, who worked at a highway stop for 10 consecutive days and then died from cardiac arrest induced by exhaustion. In another incident, Dr. Xu Hui laid down “and never got up” after caring for patients for 18 days straight. Three thousand medical staff in China have been infected so far and dozens more in other countries.
Covid-19 Infection Rates – The graph shows the number of cases of Covid-19 as a fraction of national population, for some countries of interest. The data are from the World Health Organization, except for the US data which is from the NYT. The data may not all be reliable (eg both the BBC and the Washington Post have reported that Iranian hospitals have far more cases than is officially reported, and US testing and reporting still appears to be shambolic). The data suggest that China has its outbreak well under control. However, this took extreme measures with huge economic impact: for example, there has been a 90% collapse in the rate of property sales. Korea also seems to be gaining control, and the growth rate of the Italian outbreak is declining. Both these countries and Iran have more cases, proportionally, than China.The US curve is accelerating as testing becomes more widespread. The current growth rate of known cases is about 10x per week. The dashed line is an eyeball extrapolation, which suggests the US is one to two weeks from the level at which other countries have started taking measures like closing all their schools, quarantining cities, etc.
WHO- Coronavirus Is More Deadly Than Originally Thought – The World Health Organization has announced that the death rate for those who contract the coronavirus is higher than originally thought. Even though getting the coronavirus only comes with a 3.4% mortality rate, the virus’ rapid spread could bump that number even higher. Originally, WHO assumed the death rate from those who get infected with the COVID-19 virus, was only 2%. That has been revised upwards to 3.4%.“Globally, about 3.4% of reported COVID-19 cases have died,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said during a press briefing at the agency’s headquarters in Geneva. In comparison, the seasonal flu generally kills far fewer than 1% of those infected, he said.Again, it’s not like this is a huge jump considering the number of people who have been infected, yet as this virus lingers, it has the unintended consequence of killing more than previously thought.Additionally, a Harvard scientist claimed that the coronavirus could infect 70% of the population. That means 5.3 billion people could catch it and if the mortality rate is now 3.4%, almost 180 million people globally could die. Prepping supplies are selling out, face masks that will actually help are selling out, and people are panicking over the stock market. Unless you’ve prepared in a dvance, you are also likely feeling some anxiety. World “authorities” admit they don’t know much about this virus, yet are hopeful it can be contained. Dr. Mike Ryan, executive director of WHO’s health emergencies program, said Monday that the coronavirus isn’t transmitting the same exact way as the flu and health officials have been given a “glimmer, a chink of light” that the virus could be contained. “Here we have a disease for which we have no vaccine, no treatment, we don’t fully understand transmission, we don’t fully understand case mortality, but what we have been genuinely heartened by is that unlike influenza, where countries have fought back, where they’ve put in place strong measures, we’ve remarkably seen that the virus is suppressed,” Ryan said, according to CNBC.
Scientists Discover More Aggressive Strain Of Coronavirus Responsible For 70% Of Current Infections -Chinese scientists studying the new coronavirus have found two new primary strains of the disease – one of which appears to be far more aggressive. The researchers, from Peking University’s School of Life Sciences, discovered a milder “S-type” strain, and an “L-type” which is highly infectious and currently accounts for around 70% of cases, according to The Telegraph. The researchers cautioned that their preliminary findings looked at a limited number of cases (103), and that follow-up studies with larger data sets are needed to better understand the virus’s evolution. A genetic analysis of the coronavirus found in a man who tested positive in the United States on January 21 also showed that it’s possible to be infected with both strains. Coronavirus, which was first detected in December 2018 in Wuhan, China, has infected at least 94,000 people – officially, and killed more than 3,200 as of this writing. And while there are now two major strains identified, scientist Trevor Bedford of Nextstrain has been tracking 161 strains of SARS-CoV-2 (the virus that causes COVID-19) in patients across the globe. Bedford writes in a March 2 blog post that “The novel coronavirus which is responsible for the emerging COVID-19 pandemic mutates at an average of about two mutations per month.”
The Worst Is Yet To Come – Nomura Now Sees As Many As 1.5 Million Covid Cases By June — That’s the self-explanatory title of Nomura’s latest analysis assessing the consequences from the coronavirus pandemic, and which comes just two weeks after the Japanese bank issued its first preliminary assessment on the fallout from the global pandemic, which as readers will recall we found unduly optimistic. Well, a lot has happened since then, and as the report’s title suggests, the outlook has deteriorated sharply. In the bank’s new base case, it revises down further its Q1 2020 GDP growth forecast for China to 0% y-o-y, and for the world to 0.9%. While Nomura still envisages a V-shaped global recovery in Q2 in its new base case, it now has a “U” in its new “bad scenario” and a downright depressionary “L” (non) recovery in the new severe scenario. Below are the details on how in just two short weeks, the situation went from bad to downright catastrophic, in the bank’s own words:
- The positive news is the marked decline in the number of new daily confirmed COVID-19 cases in China, but it has also demonstrated the challenging trade-off other governments now face between public health security controls – ranging from adequate resources of health services to containment and mitigation measures – and economic growth.
- China imposed draconian controls, sealing off Hubei’s nearly 60m inhabitants, blocking transport and locking down dozens of cities. China’s authoritarian state may have won the battle against the virus but at a huge short-run cost to economic growth. Our new base case assumes that China’s lockdowns end late this month, which will be too late to avoid our forecast of GDP growth slowing to 0% y-o-y this quarter, which translates to -4.4% q-o-q.
- This contraction in China’s economy will have major negative spillover effects on the rest of the world, particularly in the rest of Asia – and this is only just starting to show up in the economic data. However, what has really spooked financial markets is the rapid contagion of COVID-19 outside China to 76 countries (and counting), with a handful of hotspots – South Korea, Italy and Iran. These hotspots are now experiencing the same severe simultaneous demand (public fear factor) and supply (business disruption) shocks as China in addition to the negative spillover effects from China’s contracting economy.
- While COVID-19 has not been as deadly as SARS (the case fatality outside China and Iran is 1.5% vs 10% for SARs), what is now clear is that it spreads much more easily. As COVID-19 spreads, governments will need to weigh the trade-off between health security and economic growth and it remains to be seen whether they have the resources and wherewithal to increase their health security controls – and the public’s willingness to follow them – to the same force and effectiveness as China has done. If not, the rest of the world could, in the not too distant future, lose control in trying to contain COVID-19.
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