Coronavirus Sars-CoV-2/Covid-19 Megathread

[mongers]

This seems like a sensible move:

Berlin planning new hospital for up to 1,000 coronavirus patients report

The Berlin city government has agreed to build a new hospital for up to 1,000 coronavirus patients with the help of the military and other partners, German daily Tagesspiegel on Tuesday cited the capital's health minister as saying.

Maybe London should be planning to put something similar in Hyde Park, Hampstead Heath or one of the south London parks?
Source -Reuters.

[alfred russel]

This seems like a sensible move:

Berlin planning new hospital for up to 1,000 coronavirus patients report

The Berlin city government has agreed to build a new hospital for up to 1,000 coronavirus patients with the help of the military and other partners, German daily Tagesspiegel on Tuesday cited the capital's health minister as saying.

Maybe London should be planning to put something similar in Hyde Park, Hampstead Heath or one of the south London parks?
Source -Reuters.

Again anecdotal--but an ER doctor I know in South Carolina said her hospital has closed the cafeteria and waiting rooms and is in the process of converting them to excess bed space.

Georgia is building structures outside of Atlanta to house patients that can't self quarantine. It is also preparing areas for additional hospital space.

I'm not sure why you need to build new structures - we do have vacant buildings. For example, I read a projection that there will be 70-80% vacancy in San Francisco area hotels. Those seem like good hospital rooms. Gyms can also be used as excess space. Paying to rent those spaces out can also keep the businesses afloat in obviously trying times.

[Iormlund]

I'm not sure why you need to build new structures - we do have vacant buildings. For example, I read a projection that there will be 70-80% vacancy in San Francisco area hotels. Those seem like good hospital rooms. Gyms can also be used as excess space. Paying to rent those spaces out can also keep the businesses afloat in obviously trying times.

How many of those will have Oxygen lines? I'd imagine most patients will need that, since they could otherwise stay at home. You could probably install those fairly easily on modern or open spaces (such as gyms) but I'm not sure about older hotels. Also, you need to strip everything from inside the rooms and store it somewhere. Or perhaps they plan of doing both, like the Chinese.

[garbon]

Just finishing my hopefully last public transport journey in some time. London Bridge was freaky quiet both times I passed through it.

Good for you, because confined public spaces like buses and tubes seem like a threat.

So Gabby do you want to buy a bike instead? 

Given my bike riding skills and plan to stay home, I'll pass.

[Sheilbh]

I'm not sure why you need to build new structures - we do have vacant buildings. For example, I read a projection that there will be 70-80% vacancy in San Francisco area hotels. Those seem like good hospital rooms. Gyms can also be used as excess space. Paying to rent those spaces out can also keep the businesses afloat in obviously trying times.

How many of those will have Oxygen lines? I'd imagine most patients will need that, since they could otherwise stay at home. You could probably install those fairly easily on modern or open spaces (such as gyms) but I'm not sure about older hotels. Also, you need to strip everything from inside the rooms and store it somewhere. Or perhaps they plan of doing both, like the Chinese.

There's talk here about hotels being requisitioned, a few hotel chains are already in talks with the government.

But I wonder if we'll actually be using lots of portable oxygen tanks/ventilators. Apparently in addition to the ventilator storage (which is partly why non-essential surgery is being cancelled - so the operating theatre ventilators can be used) most hospitals aren't able to handle all the ventilators being on. The oxygen lines aren't set up to be in use at basically at every bed in every ward.

[Sheilbh]

UK up to about 2,000 cases with an increase of over 400 which is definitely the highest in a day.

Death figures to come out later

On the other hand testing up again - up to just over 6,000 yesterday. So we're approaching the current 8-10,000 a day target but hopefully more coming online.

[Syt]

Austria is up over 200 cases to 1332. Relatively few severe cases so far, because most there's few confirmed cases in the elderly demographic. That might still change of course.

[Camerus]

Public transit in Edmonton switched to a Saturday level of service. Only problem is that this is the government capital and civil servants and certainother workers have not been given permission to work from home. Thus the bus was absolutely jammed this morning.

[celedhring]

Yeah, cutting down on public transport seems to run counter to the idea of keeping safe distance...

[Sheilbh]

Yeah, cutting down on public transport seems to run counter to the idea of keeping safe distance...

Especially for key workers like the healthcare sector who also use public transport 

NHS has postponed all elective, non-urgent surgery from 15 April for at least 3 months which is expected to free up 12-3,000 hospital beds (I thnk it's 90% of surgery).

Head of NHS England giving evidence:
He says there are 98,000 general and acute beds in the NHS
Current occupancy is 90% and falling (the NHS are already very reluctant to admit people and once you're better get you gone in my experience, I imagine that's happening at an even faster pace now)
There are 3,700 critical care beds
At the minute there are 6,699 adult mechanical ventilators operational, 750 pediatric ventilators, 691 in the private sector and 35 in the MoD
3,799 coming on line in next few weeks taking to 12,000

Which will be nowhere near what we need

Edit: Looks like there's loads of measures coming down through NHS today. They're also writing to all medics who've retired in the last 3 years asking if they are willing to return to service and help in some capacity. Apparently they're aiming to free up 30,000+ beds in the next few weeks through combination of cancelling ops, speeding up discharges and farming out less risky patients to the private sector.

[celedhring]

Italy banning layoffs for 60 days. This sounds desperate. 

[Tamas]

I am starting to wonder if my parents in Hungary would not have more chances of survival if they caught this crap now, when there are actual empty ICU beds. Hungarian healthcare is in such terrible shape that they'll have no trouble replicating the mess in Italy.

[Tamas]

Very nice story from Budapest:

Since AirBnB is as good as dead right now, around a 100 of owners, on own initiative, organised a closed Facebook group where they rent their flats out for free to healthcare workers who are worried about bringing the virus back home to their families. Nurses with sickly husbands/kids, etc.

[Richard Hakluyt]

#notallhungariansarelikeOrban

[Josquius]

Relevant

https://youtu.be/RN0ixdOsrY0