South Korea isn’t the only country with a large testing capability. Nor have I heard issues with their quality control. I’m beginning to think that is just an excuse that the Pence team is hiding behind.
I didn’t mean to say that I thought there were quality control issues in South Korea – my point was simply that it shouldn’t be a barrier to testing in an urgent situation such as this. If testing capability is ramped up then people can be retested in appropriate circumstances to compensate with issues tied to whatever the frequency of false positive / false negatives may be.
Air Canada failing to inform us of true exposure to Covid-19, employees claim
As fears grow that flight attendants are at higher risk than previously thought, some workers claim airline is not doing enough
On at least one occasion, Air Canada unknowingly carried an infected passenger. Once advised by health authorities of the situation, the company’s policy is to inform passengers seated three rows behind and three rows ahead of the infected person – and tell staff working in their section.
Flight attendants were told that privacy regulations prevented Air Canada from informing all passengers onboard the flight, according to internal communications seen by the Guardian.
“In Canada, it is not the airline but the Public Health Agency of Canada that contacts passengers,” Air Canada told the Guardian. “This is a clearly delineated public process. It is not the role of the airline.
The company also emphasized that it denies boarding to any passenger exhibiting potentially dangerous symptoms.
Meanwhile WestJet, the company’s main Canadian competitor, has publicly announced the flight numbers and seat assignments of Covid-19 infected passengers in recent days, in an effort prevent further transmission of the virus.
Covid-19 has sent the airline industry into a tailspin as more jurisdictions roll out travel restrictions. The International Air Transport Association said airlines could lose at least $113bn this year due to the virus. A number of airlines have laid off huge numbers of workers, and more layoffs are expected.
In a bid to quell travellers’ panic and to reduce financial losses, some airlines have tried to mitigate the crisis by detailing their preventative cleaning procedures in email newsletters, installing thermal imaging cameras at airport gates and shutting down certain facilities. Many other airlines have laid off thousands of workers, and more layoffs are expected.
While the threat of coronavirus has been widely reported for several months, some Air Canada staff say it has done little to prepare for what the World Health Organization last week determined is a pandemic.
Employees, speaking on condition of anonymity, said their concerns arose at the start of the coronavirus outbreak.
Working in conjunction with the International Air Transport Association, the WHO has set out guidelines for airlines to follow as they combat the coronavirus. Among numerous requirements for extensive cleaning and disinfection of the aircraft, cabin crew are expected to have appropriate personal protective equipment.
But Wesley Lesosky, who represents Air Canada employees within Canada’s public workers’ union (CUPE) told the Guardian that staff lack proper gloves, masks, face shields and disinfectant materials while on the job. “Flight attendants come into contact with a lot of things,” he said. “And they need sufficient protection.”
One employee said that the airline is doing more cleaning on some flights – “but not every flight, as they’re telling the public. A lot of stations don’t have the manpower. They’re just not going to have 30 different people waiting to come and groom every single flight.”
The employee said that at some airports, the extra cleaning is only carried out on request, an allegation also made by commenters on a private Facebook group used by flight attendants and seen by the Guardian. The employee said the airline has not planned for longer turnaround times between landings and takeoffs to allow for a deep-enough cleaning.
Frustrations over sanitizing schedules comes amid a growing body of research that suggests the coronavirus is far more tenacious than previously thought.
Air Canada denied staff lacked access to proper equipment and stated that it uses “hospital-grade disinfectants” for routine surface cleaning and sanitization.
Both on its website and in a written answer to the Guardian, Air Canada says all planes receive sanitization for frequently touched areas – including lavatories, galleys and tray tables – at the end of a trip, before beginning a new leg. Planes parked overnight receive a full sanitization, including a focus on hard surfaces.
In recent days, Canada’s government has called on anyone entering from the country to self-isolate for two weeks.
But Air Canada’s senior management told cabin crew that they were exempt, in a 13 March intenal memo. The company said staff were “well trained and prepared to protect yourselves, spend less times [sic] in the countries being visited and have access to and use protective measures on board including hand sanitizers, masks and gloves when and as appropriate”.
In a previous internal chat on 23 February, the company’s chief medical officer, Dr Jim Chung, said: “In general, cabin crew are not considered to be at risk for transmission.”
Comments on the private Facebook group suggest that staff are growing increasingly frustrated.
“We are at the HIGHEST risk of getting sick in those airplanes,” one employee wrote. “Anyone that thinks differently needs to walk a mile in our shoes.”
Another flight attendant said they refused what they called “dangerous work” for the first time in their long career with the company. Others in the group expressed shock at what they describe as management’s failure to acknowledge the risk.
Air Canada is one of the 20 largest airlines in the world. Globally, it has more than 30,000 employees.
Over the weekend, a Canadian Air Canada flight attendant became Maui’s first confirmed case of Covid-19, according to local news in Hawaii. The employee was initially infected in Germany. Three more employees, based out of Calgary, have also tested positive.
Flight attendants who worked aboard flights with infected co-workers are being offered self-quarantine with pay, but are also allowed to continue working, an employee told the Guardian.
“There is a very well established, non-punitive process in place for employees who feel unwell for any reason to stay home,” said Air Canada, adding they encouraged this behaviour. The airline also made clear that rules on self-isolation are set by public health authorities – not the company – and that they “meet or exceed these guidelines”.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/18/air-canada-coronavirus-staff-risks
I wonder how many factories will shut down now that the Big 3 automakers are? I’d think there would be residual shutdowns from supplier plants in automotive states, but what about everyone in the other non-essential factories? All this talk of social distancing, but crickets about all the Americans standing together on a line.
Getting food is becoming harder and only going to get worse over time. I’m reading that some food stores are only letting so many people in at a time and giving them a time limit. I have yet to personally experience how that works. Do you take a number and sit in your car until it’s your turn?
Not to be apocalyptic, but it’s not hard to see this getting out of control fairly quickly.
we are under a shelter in place (California) and I had to go to the store…there was plenty of food! And no one was there! I think everyone just rushed out the day that they announced the shelter in place plan.
I have to say that things are not too bad (yet) at the grocery stores in suburban Palm Beach County (Florida). I have gone every day to Publix for the past 4 or 5 days, and sometimes to Whole Foods as well. Fresh produce is still around, meat is fairly scarce. Bread is hit or miss most days, although there is always some (yesterday bought two packs of bagels, day before two big packs of tortillas, etc.) Obviously, toilet paper and cleaning supplies are missing. Decently crowded, but everyone seems pretty cheerful and friendly still. All the cashiers were smiling.
Costco is a different story… what a zoo!
The American Thoracic Society today just canceled it’s annual meeting that normally draws 12,000-18,000 of the world’s greatest lung docs and researchers. It was scheduled for mid-May in Philadelphia.
They are working to figure out alternatives.
Second congressman tests positive - Rep Ben McAdams from Utah.
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Guess who makes the cotton swabs? Your first guess - China - doesn’t count. Second guess? Italy. I couldn’t make this up if I wanted to.
Many shelves are bare in our SoCal community. No milk, bread, frozen food, canned soups/vegetables, pb&J, and of course, no TP. Been that way since late last week. Had doctor’s appt on Monday morning and stopped at four stores on the way home looking for a loaf of sandwich bread. Nada.
Line at Costco wraps around the building to get in.
Agreed. Lots of talk from the top about don’t panic buy but when people walk into stores where shelves remain stripped or have this ^ happen which would have been a good system for those who are in high risk categories, of course it affects one’s psyche. Hard to believe leadership when other things have proven to be lip service.
I think everyone just stopped going out after the shelter in place (although I haven’t tried Costco…that might still be emptied out). However, Safeway up here has been somewhat replenished and they were cancelling orders a few days ago. CVS also had a lot of milk–I had to stop at the pharmacy.
From Wired-
With the world descending deeper and deeper into coronavirus chaos, we all face unnerving unknowns: how long we’ll have to remain in isolation, when the pandemic will peak, the depths to which the stock market will tumble. But what’s abundantly clear is that this novel disease is most deadly for the elderly. The young may not present any symptoms at all, and this is especially dangerous to their elders, because they can pass the virus on to them without realizing it.
Italy has been hit particularly hard, with some 2,000 deaths thus far. Overwhelmed hospital staffers have had to make devastating decisions about who to treat and who they must let perish. The reason why Italy is suffering so badly, write University of Oxford researchers in a new paper in the journal Demographic Science, may be twofold: The country has the second-oldest population on earth, and its young tend to mingle more often with the elderly, like their grandparents. Such demographic research will be critical in facing down the threat elsewhere, as more countries grapple with a deadly pandemic that’s just getting started and we learn more about how the virus is transmitted within families and communities.
In Italy, 23 percent of the population is over age 65, compared to the US, where that population is 16 percent. “Extended longevity has played some role in changing the population structure,” says University of Oxford demographer and epidemiologist Jennifer Beam Dowd, lead author of the new paper. “But it actually has most to do with how rapid the decline in fertility has been in a population.” That is, it’s affected more by Italians having having fewer children than it is by them living longer.
At the same time, young Italians tend to interact a lot with their elders. Dowd’s Italian coauthors note that young folks might live with their parents and grandparents in rural areas but commute to work in cities like Milan. Data on the composition of Italian households bears out this familial arrangement too.
The study’s authors argue that this frequent travel between cities and family homes may have exacerbated the “silent” spread of the novel coronavirus. Young people working and socializing in urban areas interact with large crowds, where they may pick up the disease and take it home. If they have no symptoms, they’ll have no clue that they’re infecting their elders, the most vulnerable population.
An aging population doesn’t have to mean a devastating Covid-19 outbreak. In Japan, where over 28 percent of the population is over age 65, by March 16 there had been only 814 confirmed cases and 24 deaths, compared with Italy’s 24,747 cases and 1,809 deaths, according to WHO figures. Japan, along with neighbors including Hong Kong and Singapore, had rapidly ramped up testing in the early days of the outbreak and instituted strict travel controls.
A family member lives in the Charleston SC area in a neighborhood that is gentrifying. She says the grocery stores in the ritzier part of town are somewhat cleaned out but the grocers in the less gentrified part of town are stocked pretty well. We talked about how many people can’t buy 2 weeks of groceries and afford to hoard.
It’s definately a regional thing. The supply chain will adjust. In SE New England. all of the stores we visit like stop and shop and a local grocer, cvs etc are pretty normal full and crowds are average. Walmart is super busy. Plenty of pasta and sauces soups fruit veggies hummus cheese water. Not sure of bread and milk. Not big bread purchasers and hard to believe we still have a milkman and they bring us local eggs.
If you have any local farms like we do despite being in northeast. They put out eggs in an honor system every morning too.
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Oh come on. Each individual system can run this many tests (470 or 960 or whatever). Now multiply by the number of installed systems. A hospital or lab set up to run Abbott’s tests has one or more systems. Mystery solved.
BTW, we are close to 10,000 per day based on what I am seeing. WA manages 3,000 per day even without the fancy HTS.
Maryland reports first coronavirus death
From CNN’s Liz Turrell and Rebekah Riess
Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan announced Wednesday the state’s first death due to novel coronavirus.
According to a statement from the governor, the patient was a Prince George’s County resident in his 60s, who suffered from an underlying medical condition.
At least 85 cases of coronavirus have been reported in Maryland.
New York City mayor slams Trump’s handling of the coronavirus outbreak
From CNN’s Rob Frehse
New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio criticized President Donald Trump’s response to the coronavirus pandemic Wednesday night, telling CNN “there’s a massive national crisis going on and he’s consistently late and very marginal in what he does.”
De Blasio said the federal government is absent in the discussion right now and noted the President is “the Herbert Hoover of his generation.”
“He’s taking actions that are far, far behind the curve and aren’t addressing the core concerns and talking about a massive number of new cases we expect of coronavirus, we’re almost to 2,000 cases right now in New York City alone,” de Blasio told CNN.
“That’s going to cause a surge into our hospitals, they’re going to be using up their supplies rapidly in an unprecedented manor.”
He added that the President “has not done anything to maximize the amount of medical supplies being produced and to ensure they are being distributed where they are needed most in the United States."
{spot on]
President Trump signs coronavirus relief package into law
From CNN’s Clare Foran and Ted Barrett
President Trump signed into law a coronavirus relief package that includes provisions for free testing for COVID-19 and paid emergency leave.
The Senate had earlier Wednesday approved the House-passed bill. The move allowed the upper chamber to devote its full attention to passing the next relief package in response to the coronavirus crisis.
According to the White House, the “Families First Coronavirus Response Act” will provide “supplemental appropriations related to the COVID-19 public health emergency, as well as waivers and modifications of Federal nutrition programs, employment-related protections and benefits, health programs and insurance coverage requirements, and related tax credits during the COVID-19 public health emergency.”