Coronavirus - worldwide spread and control

A caution about assuming mortality this early - many of the articles I read on the Diamond Princess were meant to show lower mortality than expected, but I have sadly noticed that since I read those articles there have been 4 additional deaths (from 7 to 11) and there are still critically ill patients almost a month later.

https://www.sciencenews.org/article/coronavirus-outbreak-diamond-princess-cruise-ship-death-rate

I just noticed this on the world meters site that everyone is surely reading, so it may have happened even weeks after many articles like this were written.

 

Is there some reason why a lot of the graphs show only the positive results and don't show the negatives or total number of tests done?

Here's one website that breaks down test results for the US - it has both positive and negative results:

https://covidtracking.com/data/us-daily/
https://covidtracking.com/data

Our local paper's website has a page for Oregon ("Coronavirus at a glance") and it has always shown both positive and negative results:

https://projects.oregonlive.com/coronavirus/

Just wondering.

 

https://metro.co.uk/2020/03/31/testing-kits-heading-uk-contaminated-coronavirus-12481933/

The report claims that Eurofins has warned laboratories in the UK that a delivery of parts referred to as ‘probes and primers’ had been contaminated. Eurofins said that the issue can be resolved by ‘proper cleaning’ but admitted the discovery would result in a delay. A drive through coronavirus testing station has been set up at Chessington World of Adventures (Reuters) Health Secretary Matt Hancock has revealed the Government has ordered 3.5 million test kits (PA) A spokesperson for Eurofins told the Telegraph: ‘In rare occasions, delays in some orders may occur if based on Eurofins Genomics stringent quality and environmental control procedures, manufacturing of a product may not meet the quality or purity criteria set by Eurofins Genomics. ‘We are aware that contaminations of the nature you mentioned have been observed by several primers and probes manufacturers around the world after they produced SARS-COV2 positive controls.


Read more: https://metro.co.uk/2020/03/31/test...ontaminated-coronavirus-12481933/?ito=cbshare

Twitter: https://twitter.com/MetroUK | Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MetroUK/

 

Editorial in the NZ Medical Journal outlining how NZ's response to covid-19 started with dusting off the pandemic influenza plan - essentially a mitigation strategy since nobody believes influenza can be eliminated - before turning comparatively quickly to an elimination strategy when it became clear that the new corona virus was sufficiently different from influenza to make elimination a realistic, albeit difficult to achieve, possibility.

The authors then discuss what's needed to achieve elimination, border control, quarantine, physical distancing, hand washing, etc. etc. - nothing surprising in there.

Finally, while our government tells us that there is no plan B - it's elimination or elimination or elimination - the authors briefly reflect on the options should plan A fail. "Safe haven" sounds kind of nice but I really, really prefer the elimination approach and have the whole country become a "safe haven".

https://www.nzma.org.nz/journal-art...pandemic-and-what-is-required-to-make-it-work

 

This article compares the timing and strictness of lockdowns in a number of countries we don't hear much about, like Estonia and Paraguay, and how they're faring. So far the evidence points towards locking down early and hard as the least bad approach.

https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/he...he-numbers-behind-new-zealands-quick-lockdown

 

Further on lockdown effectiveness, unsurprisingly Google is keeping track of it. You can download a pdf country report which gives whole country figures as well as regional breakdowns of how much people frequent certain places (work, shops, parks, home, etc) before and after lockdowns.

Though I don't understand how the figures add up. For NZ the 5 locations outside the home all drop by 54-91% but home only increases by 22%. Where are all the people if they're neither not at home nor at home? I'm sure there's a sensible explanation but it escapes me.

https://www.google.com/covid19/mobility/

 

Fiona Godlee, fighting the good fight, as always...
"Protect our healthcare workers" - https://www.bmj.com/content/369/bmj.m1324

 

It looks like Australia is choosing the same approach.

 

Do we have any references to the earliest credible warnings, and subsequent timeline of further credible warnings, that were given to the government and their advisers?

 

NHS developing app to trace close contacts of coronavirus carriers

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news...-trace-close-contacts-of-coronavirus-carriers

 

Do we have any references to the earliest credible warnings, and subsequent timeline of further credible warnings, that were given to the government and their advisers?

ETA: Actually I realise the link in Jonathan's post is very pertinent:

 

Yes, exactly that. I think is an extremely helpful article which would benefit from being widely circulated. So here’s the link again (please all share!):

https://www.theguardian.com/comment...herd-immunity-community-surveillance-covid-19

 

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...s-plead-for-help-as-virus-blazes-deadly-trail

They're leaving us to die': Ecuadorians' plead for help as virus blazes deadly trail

Edit: I thought I heard that some of the richer countries were going to help poorer and/or developing countries. Is this happening?

 

I wonder if the police will investigate the psychiatrist who told the BBC that he didn’t need to self-isolate when his wife had confirmed Covid-19 – the one that the BBC had to prevent coming to their studios, against his wishes.

I wonder if he was still seeing patients during that time.

Do we know if he has contracted Covid-19?

Also, do we know when and where Dr Gerada was tested? My recollection is that she said she picked it up in NY. Do we know if she had symptoms or was tested in NY? If so, did she travel back to the UK with confirmed or suspected Covid-19?

[Edited to add: Just found some answers in this article: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/...-Gerada-describes-experience-coronavirus.html She didn’t get symptoms until she returned from US, and she was tested in the UK.

Interestingly, she writes: “I rang my husband, Simon, he came home from work and we kept a safe distance from each other. He slept in the spare room, I put all my crockery in the dishwasher and we didn't share towels. So far he hasn't been ill, though he has stayed in the house. A neighbour has been walking our dog.”

This seems to contradict what Nick Robinson said on the Today Programme – ie that SW wanted to come to the studios – and what SW said himself, which was that he didn’t think he needed to stay at home because he didn’t have any symptoms.]

 

Very good questions.

 

Even if they don’t test enough, we can still track symptoms as a “positive”, and track and trace and self-isolate..

https://twitter.com/user/status/1246330829988679680


https://twitter.com/user/status/1246332382438973441


https://twitter.com/user/status/1246332385496567809

 

This could be really helpful, didn’t they do something similar in China and South Korea? The problem I can see is with people not engaging with the app because of data protection concerns and privacy concerns, differences in way public views this level of interference and tracking and information gathering, different views of community, etc which is talked about in the article.

And I don’t think this app can be relied on, just by itself. Because say 20% of the infected people didn’t engage with the app, or even 10 or 5%, that’s probably enough just to cause a major outbreak and spread to so many people. If just one person didn’t cooperate even. So everyone would need to cooperate. Also how will the app by itself trace everyone? Wouldn’t other things be needed too, as in below article, they used camera footage, card details etc in S Korea. In China mobile phones were tracked extensively - one man who broke quarantine was called immediately by police and ordered to go back home within the hour.

In South Korea I’ve also read that the public have a high level of trust in their government, there is also a level of “community spirit” and also it’s enshrined in their laws that when it comes to matters of public health (like epidemics) these sort of things will need to be done.

I think this sort of app and tracking could be helpful but definitely not enough by itself.

“It was during this traumatic time that the South Korean public came to accept the costs to their privacy in return for the gains in government transparency — and thus, public safety. The revisions to public health law in the aftermath of MERS reflectthis compromise. Today, under the amended Infectious Disease Control and Prevention Act (IDCPA), the minister of health exercises expansive power to collect private data of confirmed and potential patients. At the same time, the law grants the public a “right to know,” requiring the minister to “promptly disclose information” — including the movement paths, transportation means, and contacts of patients — to the public. This bargain was crucial to legitimizing the government’s track-and-trace strategy and mobilizing the public’s cooperation in their fight against COVID-19.

Testing was followed by extensive tracking and tracing. Once a case was confirmed, the authorities tracked down the movement histories of the patient and traced the people they had contacted. The authorities worked with local governments to survey security camera footage, smartphone data, and credit card records to chart — down to the minute — the patients’ previous travels and contacts. The government also mandated and encouraged innovative ways of sharing this information. It used a GPS-tracking app to oversee and publicize patients’ movements in real time and penalize those that broke quarantine. Further, it invited companies to develop apps that visualized the patients’ anonymized location data and made them more accessible to the public. One such app — called the “Corona 100m” — alerted users when they came within 100 meters of the recent whereabouts of a coronavirus patient.

Simultaneously, the patients were categorized by risk — asymptomatic, mild, severe, or critical — and treated accordingly. Higher-risk patients, including the elderly and seriously ill, were hospitalized. By contrast, lower-risk patients, such as the young and those showing moderate to no symptoms, were sent to dormitories borrowed from companies like Samsung and LG.”

https://thediplomat.com/2020/03/a-democratic-response-to-coronavirus-lessons-from-south-korea/