Coronavirus Sars-CoV-2/Covid-19 Megathread

[mongers]

793 new deaths today in Italy, total now 4,825.

6,557 new cases today, total now 53,578.

Yes, dreadful. 

[merithyn]

450 two days ago
650 yesterday
800 today

God, this is dire. Pedrito, please be safe.  Cel, you, too.

[Sheilbh]

NHS has done a deal with the private sector - 20,000 private staff will be working for the NHS on Monday. Basically the entire private sector capacity is being re-allocated to the NHS - so about 8,000 beds and 1,200 ventilators.

Apparently deal will be "at cost" with external auditors to check.

Edit: Really bad UK death figures again

[viper37]

There's a few anecdotes of reinfections but there could be a few explanations -

1) they never really cleared the infection in the first place and had a biphasic sickness.
2) they didn't actually have COVID-19 the first or second time and had a different respiratory illness - these tests have an uncomfortable high false positive rate, especially when on the bleeding edge of deployment.
3) they're an aberration due to something about their underlying physiology which clearly hasn't played out in the population at large because the anecdotes of reinfection can be counted on one hand.

I don't think it should be a concern for the average person.

thank you very much, that is clearer now.

[viper37]

Just a random thought that occurred to me - and God willing it doesn't happen - but it's a lovely sunny day today.

This social isolation/distancing phase is going to last for at least 3 months. Would any of our states have the capacity to deal with another crisis? Say if there was a heatwave, or flooding, or wildfires - or would it all just fall over?

The Quebec Security minister has already said that we won't be able to offer shelters for flooding victims this spring.

There was a lot of bitching last summer when Quebec released its new map of areas subject to flooding and decreed there would be no future public help for these zones.  They might be quiet this summer...

[Fate]

FAA putting a stop on all departures from NYC airports due to "staffing issues."

[viper37]

Coronavirus testing strategy shift

For affected areas (California and New York, at least), the US will now only tests health care people and essential personal due to a lack of resources.

Health officials in New York, California and other hard-hit parts of the country are restricting coronavirus testing to health care workers and people who are hospitalized, saying the battle to contain the virus is lost and the country is moving into a new phase of the pandemic response.

As cases spike sharply in those places, they are hunkering down for an onslaught, and directing scarce resources where they are needed most to save people's lives. Instead of encouraging broad testing of the public, they're focused on conserving masks, ventilators, intensive care beds — and on getting still-limited tests to health care workers and the most vulnerable. The shift is further evidence that rising levels of infection and illness have begun to overwhelm the health care system.

Health officials are struggling with a complicated message — more people can get tested, but those with mild symptoms should stay home and practice social distancing. Some go so far as to warn that widespread testing at this point could threaten the U.S. response by burning through precious supplies just as a tidal wave of sick people descend on the system — a message at odds with administration announcements that millions of test kits are finally becoming available.

"In a universe where masks and gowns are starting to become scarce, every time we test someone who doesn't need one, we're taking that mask and gown away from someone in the intensive care unit," said Demetre Daskalakis, deputy commissioner for the Division of Disease Control of the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene.
[...]

[viper37]

Hospitals warn of shortages, closures without emergency aid

U.S. hospitals are warning that they are so strapped for cash that without some financial relief, they will be unable to meet their payrolls in a matter of weeks and some could be forced to close just as coronavirus cases are surging.

The American Hospital Association and three hospital chief executives spanning the country said in a conference call Saturday that a federal directive this week to cancel elective procedures — to conserve scarce resources for patients with covid19 — is halting the type of services that produce the most revenue.

And their ability to buy critically needed supplies — from protective gear to more hospital beds — is being stymied by the fact that private vendors are requiring hospitals to pay cash upon delivery, which they say they lack the money to do.

This stark portrait of the ground-level reality for hospitals, in communities where the pandemic has penetrated and those where it has not yet seriously struck, comes as hospitals and other cornerstones of the U.S. health-care system are pleading with Congress to provide large-scale financial relief.

The American Hospital Association, the American Medical Association and the American Nurses Association are jointly urging Congress to provide hospitals and health systems $100 million in emergency aid. The Federation of American Hospitals, the trade group for for-profit hospitals, issued a call Friday night for at least $225 million in aid.

On Saturday's conference call, J. Scott Graham, the chief executive of Three Rivers and North Valley hospitals in rural Washington State communities where the pandemic has not yet surged, said the cancellation of elective procedures means that "there are no patients coming. ... As a result, all of the revenue that typically comes in to cover the cost of operating has dried up."

Graham said that the hospital projects it will be able to meet its payroll for the next three or four weeks. But he said it has stopped paying its vendors and has been urging its local bank to extend its credit limit — unsuccessfully so far.

"If we don't get some assistance in the next two weeks, we will have to start having conversations with doctors and nurses and our community" about the need to close, he said. "We are concerned we will not be able to be around, because of the financial hit we are taking, by the time the surge hits us."

A hospital executive in a very different environment, LaRay Brown of One Brooklyn Health System, which serves mainly low-income patients in that New York City borough, said, "we have less than two weeks cash on hand."

That system of three hospitals, nursing homes and community health centers anticipates extra costs of more than $30 million per month, she said. It is racing to set up tents for testing and screening, has hired additional staff as others are isolated or home caring for children, and needs somehow to fulfill a new order by New York Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo (D) to increase hospital bed capacity by 50 percent.

"We literally need to buy the beds," Brown said. But with vendors insisting on being paid at the time they are delivered, she said, "we can't buy the equipment ... if we don't have the immediate cash."

<sigh> This will never end    Be safe everyone.

[Pedrito]

450 two days ago
650 yesterday
800 today

God, this is dire. Pedrito, please be safe.  Cel, you, too.

Thank you Meri 

The numbers are, indeed, terrifying, but the real strain for the majority of population is a psychological one.
I don't know the word in english, but when I see the numbers it's like I have a lump in the throat that does not go up or down 

L.

[viper37]

450 two days ago
650 yesterday
800 today

God, this is dire. Pedrito, please be safe.  Cel, you, too.

Thank you Meri 

The numbers are, indeed, terrifying, but the real strain for the majority of population is a psychological one.
I don't know the word in english, but when I see the numbers it's like I have a lump in the throat that does not go up or down 

L.

It ain't my country, I haven't even set foot there, yet, I feel the pain, the psychological pain too, and I fear for my country equally as well.

[viper37]

Quebec:
181 cases today, up 42. 5 deceased, 1 cured.
Among the 5 deceased, 4 lived in the same elderly home.  There are still people there who refuse to stay confined.   
The government has tasked the provincial police force with constraining those who do not follow the public health directives. The order targets the identified cases who have already been warned of staying home, confined.

Government has asked everyone to mostly stay home, work from home if possible.

It also seems that many potentially infected people have travelled freely across many public sites in the cities of Granby and Bromont, infecting other people.
I have a lot of (semi-distant, my dad's uncle/aunts and cousins that I've frequently met over the years) family in Granby...    I hope they're allright.

[viper37]

Mike Pence and his wife are in isolation, awaiting testing.  One of Pence's aide tested positive for the virus.

[grumbler]

Obesity doesn't just mean overweight.

Obesity is by definition a chronic medical condition.  There is by definition no such thing as a heathy obese person.

I think that what we have here s a classic "two peoples separated by a common language" thing.  In the US, the CDC notes that

At an individual level, BMI can be used as a screening tool but is not diagnostic of the body fatness or the health of an individual.

https://www.cdc.gov/obesity/adult/defining.html while in British Colombia (or maybe just CC's neighborhood or even household) it may be, "by definition," a medical condition (which thus can only be positively identified by trained medical personnel).

So both sides may be right, depending on what jurisdiction's definition they are referring to.

[Fate]

Reports from Bergamo is that the mortality rate is 5x elevated over baseline, and only 1/4th of that is from "confirmed" COVID-19 cases. There are likely a lot of undiagnosed COVD-19 deaths in isolation/nursing homes as well as preventable deaths caused by all other sources because the medical system is overwhelmed. When we look back a year from now the death toll thus far into the outbreak will be higher than we initially though.

[viper37]

Quebec predicts 18 000 infected by April 21st.  By April 5th, 1900 should be hospitalized and around 100 in intensive care.
jours = days