Coronavirus Sars-CoV-2/Covid-19 Megathread

[mongers]

We're fucked. Absolutely boned. This virus has a two week incubation period.

Hopefully this is Tim in full taint mode and his warnings of the apocalypse turn to dust.

[Legbiter]

We're fucked. Absolutely boned. This virus has a two week incubation period.

https://www.theguardian.com/science/live/2020/jan/26/coronavirus-outbreak-death-toll-rises-to-54-as-canada-confirms-first-case

45m ago
08:18
China's national health minister Ma Xiaowei said the new coronavirus is also infectious during incubation, which is different from Sars.

He said authorities' knowledge of the new virus was limited and they are unclear on the risks posed by mutations of the virus.

The press conference ended with a promise to live up to "the expectations of the people" and to increase transparency. To that end, they said there would be a press conference every morning.

And the Chinese New Year had hundreds of millions of people on the move.

#JUSTIN HK confirmed a 6th imported case of #nCov2019, concerning a 47yo HK man working on the mainland. He was in Wuchang District, Wuhan from Jan 16 to 23. He took high speed train G1035 from Xianning to Shenzhen on Jan 23, and then G407 to West Kowloon Terminus.

If accurate there goes the temperature screening at airports for instance. Time to pull a Madagascar?

[mongers]

Well a possible silver lining is it happened in an authoritarian state willing to take drastic action to curtain this virus.

I'm not sure the UKs response to this happening here would have been as dramatic?

[viper37]

We're fucked. Absolutely boned.

We've just solved global warming.  Cheers, be happy, don't worry.

[viper37]

Well a possible silver lining is it happened in an authoritarian state willing to take drastic action to curtain this virus.

I'm not sure the UKs response to this happening here would have been as dramatic?

The British media would be still talking first about Megxit.

[jimmy olsen]

My question is, what does severe mean here? On a ventilator/respirator? Because if so, won't the number of severe cases quickly outstrip the supply and then all of them will die without aid?

https://twitter.com/HelenBranswell/status/1221592101445668865

The #2019nCoV update for Jan. 27 is out from China's National Health Committee. Big jumps, big numbers:

- 2744 cases (including Hong Kong, Taiwan & Macau)

- 80 deaths

- nearly 5800 suspect cases (suspect cases mean something here)

- 461 severe cases. http://www.nhc.gov.cn/yjb/s7860/202001/3882fdcdbfdc4b4fa4e3a829b62d518e.shtml ...

[KRonn]

Well a possible silver lining is it happened in an authoritarian state willing to take drastic action to curtain this virus.

I'm not sure the UKs response to this happening here would have been as dramatic?

Right, China quarantined the city of Wuhan! The problem is though, that the virus had already spread or had origins in multiple place. I don't know if they yet have a good idea of the reason or where the virus started.

[jimmy olsen]

Well a possible silver lining is it happened in an authoritarian state willing to take drastic action to curtain this virus.

I'm not sure the UKs response to this happening here would have been as dramatic?

Right, China quarantined the city of Wuhan! The problem is though, that the virus had already spread or had origins in multiple place. I don't know if they yet have a good idea of the reason or where the virus started.

It started at the wildlife market in Wuhan. Probably a bat virus that leaped the species gap.

[mongers]

Monday morning news from China:

Coronavirus: Death toll rises to 80 as China extends holiday

27 January 2020 

The number of people killed in China by the coronavirus has risen to 80, with almost 3,000 confirmed ill.

The national new year holiday has been extended by three days to Sunday, in an attempt to contain the outbreak.

Wuhan in Hubei, the source of the outbreak, is in lockdown and several cities have imposed travel bans.

Health commission officials said on Monday that the number of deaths in Hubei province had climbed from 56 to 76, with four deaths elsewhere.

The overall number of confirmed cases in China is 2,744. State media say more than 300 are critically ill.
......

Full item here:
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-51259649

[mongers]

Items from the Reuters news feed:

Mongolia shuts universities, border crossings to halt virus spread

Mongolia has closed from Monday until Mar. 2 all universities and educational institutes to contain the spread of a deadly coronavirus sweeping China, state media Montsame said, citing a cabinet meeting.

Officials confirm five U.S. cases of coronavirus after China travel

Five people in the United States, all of whom recently traveled from Wuhan, China, have been diagnosed with the new coronavirus, officials of the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said on Sunday.

China virus deaths rise to 80 as Hong Kong bans visitors from worst-hit province

The death toll from China's new coronavirus grew to 80 on Monday as residents of Hubei province, where the disease originated, were banned from entering Hong Kong amid global efforts to halt the rapid spread of the outbreak.

[Admiral Yi]

The market opened today with a pretty strong virus correction, but has been pulling away from that correction all day.  The message I'm getting is business as usual, except for companies with a lot of China exposure.

[Zanza]

China's finance ministry and National Health Commission have extended 60.33 billion yuan ($8.74 billion) to help contain a spreading virus, according to a statement on the ministry's website.

The death toll from the coronavirus outbreak rose to 81 on Monday, as the government extended the Lunar New Year holiday and more big businesses shut down or told staff to work from home in an effort to curb the spread.

9 billion is a lot of money for 3000 cases...

A friend of mine works in Shanghai. He flew to Vietnam for CNY and was now told not to come back for one more week, so the second part of the article is definitely happening.

[jimmy olsen]

This seems suboptimal

https://www.aljazeera.com/amp/news/2020/01/hubei-cities-fearful-china-virus-medical-supplies-run-200126034425456.html

In Xiangyang, the third-largest city in Hubei and home to more than five million people, there were zero confirmed cases as of January 25, but that has not brought any relief.

"There are no hospitals in Xiangyang that have the diagnostic kit and can provide diagnosis," Yixin Yu, a resident of Xiangyang told Al Jazeera. "The most likely diagnosis you get is viral pneumonia and will be asked to go back home to exercise self-quarantine."

"It can't be that there are no infected people - it's only that no case is being confirmed," Yu added. Xiangyang is about 300 kilometres (186 miles) northwest of Wuhan.

[jimmy olsen]

Out of Wuhan's 2,714 cases they have had 100 deaths, and currently 563 cases are serious and 127 critical. That's 3.68% dead, 20.74% serious, 4.68% critical.

If it infects 15 million in the US, as would not be uncommon for a flu outbreak, that's 552k dead.

https://twitter.com/BNODesk/status/1221959266682265602

BREAKING: Epicenter of coronavirus outbreak reports 1,291 new cases and 24 new deaths, raising death toll to 106

[mongers]

Short detour to look at the UK's response:

So far no firm plan to bring back the couple of hundred Brits in Hebei province, unlike say the US or France.

The health minister said yesterday that since Jan 10th some 1,500 people have returned from Wuhan, he didn't say if they were all UK residents or included students studying here.

Time for a bit of back of the envelope 'calculation' Take the recent Imperial college estimate that up to 190,000 cases may be in Wuhan by Nonday 4th, I've also seen this expressed as 100,000 cases now at the upper limit.

Take this ratio of 1% in Wuhan being infected and cut it by three quarters*, apply that to the 1500 returnees, which would suggest 3 or four of them are possibly infected, with a high estimate of 15 individuals.

The governments advice to the returnees has been that they should 'self-exclude themselves' for several days, not visiting crowded areas/events etc.   I wonder how many will actually do that? 


** that's my guess as I've not heard of what the study's low estimate was