So what we are seeing now, at least at the hospital ER where my kid works, in the Seattle vicinity, is people with mild symptoms showing up at urgent care clinics and small ERs, demanding to be tested. But these facilities don’t have that capacity–only a few hospitals do right now.
For those unfamiliar with it, Harborview Medical Center is a jewel in the Pacific Northwest. Designated trauma center for some of the nearby states including Alaska. Years ago, they rescued from the edge of death and largely restored a friend that was a recent medical school graduate that made an ill advised parachuting attempt off the Columbia tower in Seattle, only to have a problem with the parachute deployment (he’s been a productive pediatric cancer doc in that years that followed). They have excellent ID faculty and treat the largest population of AIDS infected persons in Washington state.
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What you say sounds reasonable but doesn’t mesh with what I have read in about 5 news stories now. In Hawaii doctors wanted to get 8 patients (remember early on someone or two people on tour in Hawaii later developed symptoms and tested positive-so we knew there was likely some spreading there), and the CDC refused the doctors’ requests to test patients. The man in Brooklyn returned from Japan and the CDC refused to allow the NYC doctors to test him because he didn’t fit the narrow guidelines of who to test since he went to Japan and not China. Even when the guidelines expanded, the hospital couldn’t get CDC approval to test because he ‘wasn’t sick enough’ or ‘wasn’t hospitalized’. The woman in California, we know her doctors tried to test her for days before they got approval. This interview with this NYC doctor shows the doctor clearly saying he has to fight to get approval to test people. He doesn’t get to decide. So, I do think that the CDC refused to test people based on all these news stories. There was more that I read that showed the same thing all around the country. Maybe some were local officials deciding but it also seems the CDC denied testing.
Are you saying the California case isn’t true?
https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/484903-cdc-declined-to-test-new-coronavirus-patient-for-days-california-hospital
‘The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) initially declined to test a California patient for coronavirus because of narrow testing criteria, delaying the identification of a new possibly pivotal case, according to officials at the hospital treating the patient.’
‘“Since the patient did not fit the existing CDC criteria for COVID-19, a test was not immediately administered,” the statement added. “UC Davis Health does not control the testing process.”’
Is UC Davis wrong?
I don’t know what rules doctors are working under but I trust doctors are telling the truth when they are quoted as saying the CDC won’t let them test patients they feel should be tested. For many doctors up to now they didn’t have access to kits, so the CDC controlled who got tested, and they had very narrow guidelines that allowed only people who had been to China or in very close contact with someone who got sick after being in China to be tested, leaving out a huge number of potential cases. If doctors had test kits and used them, could they have been fired? Could states hospitals lose federal funds? I have no idea. I don’t think doctors were following these guidelines even though they felt they were inadequate because they felt it was the right thing to do but because they felt they had no choice. Why did they feel they had no choice? How do you know what you claim is true is true? Maybe you are right but you didn’t post anything showing that is so.
Yes. They know how to deal with the scariest stuff.
Lol, I like you. 
CDC’s current numbers indicate 0.056% mortality for flu in the US this season thus far. After flu B early in the season, H1N1 picked up in January, so mortality may edge up.
Another reason we need to push out a message at a national level on protocols.
Wow, that’s a serious problem because they can be spreading it, but if they don’t test and have to work, they can spread it that way, too. I think testing is urgently needed there!! That’s a situation where I’d want everyone possible walking around in masks since there has to be a lot of undiagnosed people for that many deaths to have taken place recently and the 6 week gap in the related strain, etc.
SPAIN - 1st death - The man died nearly three weeks ago and tests now show he was killed by the virus, the regional health chief Ana Barcelo has told a press conference.
3 weeks ago was well before Spain confirmed its first case.
This has been discussed here. My guess is we’ll see more like this and the latest WA death - going back and checking patients who have died and now realizing that Covid-19 was in our midst all along in some areas. The scary thing is health care workers being exposed without awareness, their own health and passing it along unknowingly.
This is what we’d call NOT being prepared. Our health services and CDC should have had PLANS on how to deal with this and to tell people what to do. Phone numbers, locations, etc. Not only was/is the testing a failure, but the process is not working. We can’t have our hospitals inundated with people who should be home.
ITALY - "The Italian government is about to release a series of recommendations to try to halt the coronavirus outbreak. The tips are contained in a document issued by the the country’s scientific committee that will be released within the next few hours.
They include:
Social distancing: remaining away from crowded environments and maintaining a distance of two meters from other people; especially within enclosed spaces.
Greetings: avoiding kisses and hugs when greeting people.
Elderly population: people older than 75 years with underlying health conditions are advised to remain at home and avoid social events.
(Guardian)
The CDC has issued a Level 3 Travel Health Notice for Italy but we have friends traveling from Milan to NY who said on their arrival their temperatures weren’t taken and they had no restrictions whatsoever. Trump administration put restrictions on visitors from China early on but nothing from Italy. Italy is the third-most affected country worldwide and has seen the most infections in Europe especially in the Lombardy and Milan areas.
Yesterday, my H visited a friend in the local hospital and he was able to walk throughout the wards, no questions asked.
CHILE- 1st case confirmed, a 33-year-old doctor who traveled to various southeastern countries for one month. The patient spent time in Singapore, the statement added.
US health official lays out how researchers are working on a coronavirus vaccine
"Dr. Anthony Fauci, the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said the process to get a potential coronavirus vaccine is expected to take a year to a year and a half.
He made the remarks at the White House following a briefing and tour of the National Institutes of Health in Maryland with President Trump and Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar.
Fauci noted that researchers would follow standard testing protocols and that the first trial vaccines would be given to healthy patients — to ensure there would not be any unintended side effects. “I don’t want to over promise, I said a month and a half the other day, it may be a month or so. And then very soon we’ll be sticking the first person with the vaccine. But I want to caution everybody, that’s only the first stage of the development of the vaccine,” he said.
Fauci added that researchers must be confident that the vaccine works before distributing it widely and said he conveyed that to the President.
He said a phase one trial could start in about a month, and a phase two trial wouldn’t start for three to four months after that.
The CDC’s website says all vaccine trials go through three testing phases before potential approval, including first administering the trial vaccine to small groups of people. The second phase clinical study is then expanded and the trial vaccine is given to people who have characteristics such as age and physical health similar to those for whom the new vaccine is intended.
In phase three, the vaccine is given to thousands of people and tested for efficacy and safety." (CNN)
Who are these healthy people who offer to be guinea pigs? I mean, I know it is an important step but I’m not sure I’d raise my hand for that.
Just a note. The current tests are very laborious. If you ever taken a mol bio lab, you would know. The samples need to be handled in a BSL-2 facility (hood), and strict protocols need to be followed so that the facility is not contaminated - not with the virus but rather the short copies of a piece of its genetic code that are generated in the process and that, if inadvertently released, can contaminate the lab and lead to false positives.
Clinics can collect samples, but clinics will not be able to test on the spot no matter how many test kits become available. Don’t blame the medics and scientists - ask VCs why they shy away from funding development of automated, on demand systems that can be run on the spot (like an immuno test).
Ok I’m new to this thread but there’s a situation at my school that is making me mad…
Basically a bunch of people who went to Italy for February Break (my state is the only state with February Break last week) in neighboring schools are required by their schools to stay home for 14 days in case of the virus; my school is the largest public school in the state and there are quite a few students and teacher who went to Italy, but they don’t have to stay home. One of my good friends went to Rome, Florence, Turin, and Milan, all areas with many cases, and went on a lot of public transportation. Yet they won’t let him stop coming to school. And just yesterday, the first case of corona was announced in our state, from someone who went to Italy.
I talked to the assistant principal about it today and she said that they are just following the CDC guidelines and that only people who’ve been to China have to stay home, and that we just have to trust that everyone is doing their best to keep the virus out of the community. How is “trust” going to work??
Your fellow Americans who are willing to take on a small risk for the greater good.
The majority of us here will not qualify for the initial stage, anyway. I think the cutoff age is 55.
I just wonder how we haven’t figured that out in 7 weeks, when we are the most ‘advanced country in the world’ and are ‘very prepared’ according to government press conferences. I won’t belabor the point anymore about testing. My point was more about workflow and process - this could have been all planned out and communicated to hospitals and clinics - how to triage low risk patients without spreading the disease within the hospital walls. Doctors/nurses available online would be a great first step. Set locations for ‘drive through’ swabbing and ability to communicate with patients online with test results and recommendations.
WHO says coronavirus death rate is 3.4% globally, higher than previously thought:
KEY POINTS
World health officials say the case fatality rate for COVID-19 is 3.4% globally, higher than previous estimates of about 2%.
“Globally, about 3.4% of reported COVID-19 cases have died,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said during a press briefing at the agency’s headquarters in Geneva.
Who is going to pay for all of this? In the countries that implemented such systems, guess who pays for all of these drive through clinics etc.
You’re in NH. The State Dept of Education, the federal government and the CDC have not imposed mandatory self-quarantines for that part of Italy (only the red zones) so what your school is telling you is correct.
C’mon now. Think of all the costs there will be if this thing isn’t controlled. It will greatly outweigh the cost of some testing through drive-in clinics. Our health care workers would be more protected and there is costs in that. Lots of hidden costs in things that never seem to get factored into the equation.
The impact on our economy, losses in the stock market, etc. etc.