Urban75 Home About Offline BrixtonBuzz Contact

Coronavirus - worldwide breaking news, discussion, stats, updates and more

I suspect it would be a bad idea to let my Japan comment hang there with no further detail, so here is what I am on about:

"The route of infection has disappeared"

On the other hand, regarding the situation of infected people in various places in various places, "There are a number of situations where the path of infection that had been seen so far has become invisible as a phase. We recognize that the situation has changed." Said.

Then, on the evening of the 16th, the "New Coronavirus Infectious Disease Experts' Meeting" will be held at the Prime Minister's Office to discuss guidelines and other guidelines for the public to seek medical attention in preparation for future spread of infection. Was shown.

machine translated from 新型ウイルス 加藤厚労相 「感染経路見えなくなってきた」 | NHKニュース

If you look at a translated version of that page, beware that the likes of google translate do a terrible job with Japanese dates. Gets all the months wrong, eg much of the article is talking about the boat and there is junk in the translation incorrectly referring to June and March. And I know from the Fukushima nuclear accident that the meaning of statements is easily mangled or obscured. So I'm off to look for stuff relating to this statement that doesnt require any machine translation.
 
Well I for one am very glad that the cases so far in the UK seem to have petered out. Here is hoping it never gets a foothold outside of China.

I saw maps recently that suggested Shenzen is as affected as Hubei now which is bad news for the Chinese containment strategy. And Shenzen iirc is where Foxconn is located where they were hoping to start iPhone etc production again shortly, albeit with a part of their normal compliment of workers. Foxconn is also trying to produce masks in some volumes, perhaps it is necessary that they get at least that part of their factory going.
 
Yes I didnt mean to ignore China, and I think we have now entered the period where experts would be hoping to start to see some positive signs that containment had some effect. But as with most other topics I am reliant on other people to make these observations and tell us about them, and its probably a bit too soon for much of that yet.

Its also possible we will get a slightly different picture out of China over the next few weeks because the WHO team is finally starting work there. I have no real expectations either way on this, it might be extremely mundane (the WHO often is for reasons I discussed in the past and wont bore on about now) or an important new picture might be revealed to us.
 
I saw maps recently that suggested Shenzen is as affected as Hubei now which is bad news for the Chinese containment strategy.

No time to post much but as of official figures on 15 Feb. Hubei's largest city Wuhan has unresolved 48,128 confirmed cases and 1,123 deaths. Shenzhen is bad and going to work as normal will make it worse, but it has 291 unresolved confirmed cases and no deaths.
Shenzhen's official population is over a million more than Wuhan at around 13 million.
I can't really trust the stats though.
 
Ok here is the background to the Japan stuff, this is from a couple of days ago:


TOKYO -- Japan's first domestic coronavirus victim and three patients newly confirmed Thursday had no direct connections to China, raising concerns that a stealth outbreak is already under way in the country.

The Japanese government said Thursday that a Kanagawa Prefecture woman in her 80s died from the coronavirus. Her son-in-law also tested positive for the disease. Additionally, a doctor in Wakayama Prefecture and a man in Chiba Prefecture are confirmed to have the virus. None of them traveled to China recently or had contact with people who visited Hubei Province, the epicenter of the outbreak.

Kato added that "there is no epidemiological data suggesting a domestic [coronavirus] epidemic."

There are lots more details in the article, plenty of which are a cause for concern.

It isnt much fun thinking that community outbreaks can occur for quite some time before they are detected, but thats been a possibility in many places for some time now. And signs of this either happening, or not, were a huge part of the reason I expected to know a lot more about how this is going to pan out by the end of Feb. When in a less than optimistic mood, I expected to hear the sort of thing we are now hearing from Japan before now. And its still too early to read too much into these Japanese cases, but its a warning sign for sure. And when in a more optimistic mood, and before the new messages from Singapore and Japan, I though that if we got to the end of Feb without any of this stuff emerging, it would be a positive sign for chances of containment working. If there is no further news of this sort from Singapore or Japan or anywhere else this month then I will still think that, that containment is not quite a lost cause yet.
 
elbows

Given that the virus can remain virile for 9 days on surfaces, it is possible the Japanese who went to Hawaii got it from the airport or some such public space?
 
elbows

Given that the virus can remain virile for 9 days on surfaces, it is possible the Japanese who went to Hawaii got it from the airport or some such public space?

I doubt it could be ruled out, so its a possibility, yes. I'd want to know more about what you are suggesting though, because in a bunch of cases I'm not really sure what difference this possibility would make. For example when it comes to timing, the sort of possible incubation and symptom free periods we've heard about already make timescales rather broad when considering the who, where and whens of transmission. And if a surface is contaminated then someone contaminated it, so an infected person was there, and could also pass to others there without any need for surface involvement. Is there something weird about the Hawaii timing or other aspects of that case that makes you look in the direction of surfaces?
 
Article that
I suspect it would be a bad idea to let my Japan comment hang there with no further detail, so here is what I am on about:

machine translated from 新型ウイルス 加藤厚労相 「感染経路見えなくなってきた」 | NHKニュース

A story that covers some of the same ground but that requires no dodgy machine translation:

Health authorities are working quickly to come up with effective measures to contain the spread after they found it hard to track down the infection routes of some cases.

Health Minister Katsunobu Kato said: "Japan seems to have entered a new phase where the infection route of several new cases is unclear."

Kato said the government will convene a panel of specialists in epidemics on Sunday to discuss ways to contain the spread.

 
It seems that they have been piloting a scheme for several weeks where the taking of samples for testing is done at peoples homes rather than having it done at a hospital. They started it at the end of January with the North West London NHS Trust, and its now expanded to University College London Hospital, St George's University Hospital, and Guys and St Thomas'.

The home testing initiative was started by Laurence John from the infectious diseases department at Northwick Park Hospital. He told The BMJ that the need for community testing became clear after 25 London ambulances had to be taken out of service in one afternoon to be decontaminated after carrying potential cases to hospital for testing. Decontamination can take an ambulance out of service for up to eight hours.

 
Some more good news...


This was an odd one, as it was wildly reported that they had visited Worthing hospital on the 2nd Feb., whereas the infected doctor did his two shifts on the 4th & 5th, I guess it must have just been sloppy reporting.
 
I've taken a look at the December and January timeline before, I dont have the energy to do it again properly now. But it is reasonable to say that by some stage in December they new it was a big deal, and that the last days of December and the first weeks of January would have been a time of rapidly expanding clues as to the disease and community spread. It would be useful to know exactly what date 'before January 12th' relates to, but it does fit what we already know. The way the number of cases turning up at hospital in Wuhan was doubling quickly, the first signs of healthcare workers getting infected, these things started to be come clear no later than early January, and I dont think they were hidden from central authorities, so Beijing being on alert on or before January 12th fits.

When it comes to lag, there are certainly periods where knowledge and detection of the outbreak would lag 1-3 weeks behind. And there are certainly signs of a separate, man-made 1-3 week lag between what the authorities knew/suspected and what was publicly said in January. The extent of these lags has shifted over time, and its actually easier for me to take a fair stab at estimating how this stuff went in December and up to January 20th than since then.

Another indicator that is consistent with this:

In another development Chinese state media published a speech from earlier this month in which Chinese President Xi Jinping said he said he had given instructions on 7 January on containing the outbreak.

At the time, local officials in the city of Wuhan were downplaying the severity of the epidemic.

This would suggest senior leaders were aware of the potential dangers of the virus before the information was made public.

With the government facing criticism for its handling of the outbreak, analysts suggest the disclosure is an attempt to show the party leadership acted decisively from the start.


Perhaps revealing this is a risky strategy, even though it was already possible to deduce a rough idea of when they knew, as per my previous waffle about this stuff.
 
A lot more restrictions reported on R4 news for people living in Hubei province. Everyone is to stay at home, one person is allowed out to shop for food every 3 days, housing estates can be blocked off with only one guarded entrance to permit residents in / out. And the use of private cars has been banned.

Oh and only food shops and chemists are permitted to remain open.
 

Hospitals have been ordered to take new measures to stop the coronavirus in the UK as experts said there is a “distinct possibility” that up to 50% of Britons could be affected.

Health officials plan to use 24 NHS hospitals to treat patients in the event of a surge in infections. They may also expand NHS 111 services to cope with a rise in calls.


I think the NHS will very quickly be overpowered,
 
Coronavirus has now hit Tianjin where my inlaws live :( It's been traced to a department store in Baodi district. They've been telling my wife that they've been to that department store but I think they mean in the past because it's pretty out of town and they've been staying indoors since it first hit.

Meanwhile a colleague of mine is worried because of the Lewisham hospital case because he had a procedure (endoscopy) there nearly two weeks ago. Not sure the virus does time travel yet. That would be an unlikely mutation.

Meanwhile my wife is worried that her cold/flu is corona virus because word on the Chinese Internet is that it only affects Chinese people. I have assured her that this is not possible but I'm not sure she trusts me.
 
Well I for one am very glad that the cases so far in the UK seem to have petered out. Here is hoping it never gets a foothold outside of China.

I saw maps recently that suggested Shenzen is as affected as Hubei now which is bad news for the Chinese containment strategy. And Shenzen iirc is where Foxconn is located where they were hoping to start iPhone etc production again shortly, albeit with a part of their normal compliment of workers. Foxconn is also trying to produce masks in some volumes, perhaps it is necessary that they get at least that part of their factory going.

Guangdong is somewhere between Spain and South Korea in terms of global economies (by gdp). Shenzhen alone is somewhere around Israel/Ireland. So... goes a bit further than iphones. And I’m guessing the shareholders aren’t discussing covering wages. Probably one for the Xi thread that though.
 
Back
Top Bottom