Oh, good. I knew it had the ski area (that’s why we went - to ski), but didn’t know/remember they had a hospital. Some of those areas in the far corners of AZ, NM, UT, NV, TX, WA, OR and CO (and I’m sure other places, those are just the ones I have spent time in so think of) are just soooooo remote.
Spanish health official says the country is “reaching the peak of the curve”
From CNN’s Tim Lister in Spain
Spanish health officials have expressed cautious optimism that the peak of the coronavirus epidemic in the country is in sight.
“We are approaching, we do not know exactly when we will have confirmation, but we are reaching the peak of the curve,” the director of Spain’s Center for Health Emergencies Fernando Simón said at a news conference in Madrid.
Simón pointed to figures showing slight declines in the percentage increase of fatalities, even as the actual number continues to rise.
“Unfortunately, there is still an increase in deaths. But it is true that the evolution over time remains more or less in what has been observed in recent days,” he said. “According to various indicators, the disease is stabilizing. Although they are preliminary data, in some areas of the country the peak may have been reached, although at the national level we cannot confirm anything.”
Simón warned that the pressure on intensive care units would worsen. Patients infected today, he said, may need an ICU bed within the next seven to ten days. The peak need may come in the next week, he said.
By the numbers: At the same briefing, Patricia Lacruz, a senior official in Spain’s National Health and Pharmacy System, said that more than 1.5 million masks would be distributed this weekend. Over the last two days, several flights have arrived in Spain carrying personal protective equipment for health service workers.
On trials for the treatment of coronavirus, María Jesús Lamas Díaz, director of the Spanish Agency for Medicines and Health Products, said 4,000 people would participate in authorized trials over the next few weeks.
Thousands of migrant workers in India, left jobless and penniless by the full shutdown of the country, are walking long distances back to their home villages after all transport was stopped except for essential services, AFP reports.
Huge numbers had crammed onto trains and buses before the country of 1.3 billion people ground to a halt for three weeks, but many others were left stranded.
“Rather than die hungry, we decided to walk,” said Dilipji Thakor, who worked at a now-shuttered shopping mall in Ahmedabad in Gujarat state, as he trudged along a road. (Guardian)
The first official train to disembark passengers in Wuhan since it was put under lockdown arrived in the Chinese city on Saturday, as it began to reopen after more than two months of almost total isolation, Peter Beaumont reports.
The easing of the quarantine, allowing people to enter the city of 11 million and the global ground zero of the coronavirus outbreak, comes as China plans measures to kickstart its pandemic-battered economy. Trains have been fully booked for over a week in advance.
Chinese state media on Saturday showed crowds of passengers arriving at Wuhan station, many wheeling suitcases. Some people had managed to slip back into the city a day earlier on rail services that were stopping in the city, but had nominally banned passengers from disembarking.
The first official train to disembark passengers in Wuhan since it was put under lockdown arrived in the Chinese city on Saturday, as it began to reopen after more than two months of almost total isolation, Peter Beaumont reports.
The easing of the quarantine, allowing people to enter the city of 11 million and the global ground zero of the coronavirus outbreak, comes as China plans measures to kickstart its pandemic-battered economy. Trains have been fully booked for over a week in advance.
Chinese state media on Saturday showed crowds of passengers arriving at Wuhan station, many wheeling suitcases. Some people had managed to slip back into the city a day earlier on rail services that were stopping in the city, but had nominally banned passengers from disembarking.
Guardian
The nurse who died had a serious case of asthma. Perhaps health care personnel who have underlying conditions or are over 65 should not be working. Yes, we need all hands on deck now, but the risk for them in particular seems too great.
Police enforcing the coronavirus lockdown in South Africa fired rubber bullets at shoppers queuing outside a supermarket in Johannesburg, according to an Agence France-Presse photographer.
The agency said about 10 police vehicles had arrived in Yeoville, a poor part of the city’s central business district, where several hundred people who had gathered outside a Shoprite supermarket were failing to observe physical distancing rules.
Startled shoppers trampled on each other and a woman with a baby on her back fell to the ground, the report said. Police later used whips to get the shoppers into line.
South Africa, which has 1,170 confirmed coronavirus cases, recorded its first death from the virus on Friday.
The country’s president, Cyril Ramaphosa, has ordered the population of 57 million to stay at home for 21 days, and has deployed the security forces to enforce the lockdown. (Guardian)
Moody’s downgrades South Africa’s credit rating to “junk”
Moody’s downgraded South Africa’s sovereign credit rating to “junk” status on Friday, heaping more pain on an economy already in recession and now staring down the barrel of a steep contraction over the global coronavirus pandemic.
The ratings firm downgraded the rating one notch to ‘Ba1’ from ‘Baa3’ and maintained a negative outlook, meaning another downgrade could follow if the economy performs worse or government debt rises faster than expected.
An annual budget in February showed a worsening of the fiscal picture, and the country entered a 21-day nationwide lockdown on Friday that will dent output as workers have been told to stay at home to prevent the spread of the coronavirus.
The local Eye Witness News channel reported that homeless people living in the city of Durban said they had been taken to a reception centre against their will.
EWN Reporter
@ewnreporter
As the country marked its first day of #LockdownSA - chaotic scenes were observed in EThekwini @ the Durban Exhibition Centre, the city’s temporary reception Centre for homeless people. These homeless ppl say they were taken without their consent and then denied food. @NkoRaphael
South Africa’s finance ministry said the downgrade would add to prevailing financial market stress.
Moody’s said the main driver behind the downgrade was “the continuing deterioration in fiscal strength and structurally very weak growth”.
“The rapid spread of the coronavirus outbreak will exacerbate South Africa’s economic and fiscal challenges and will complicate the emergence of effective policy responses,” it added.
Finance Minister Tito Mboweni said the government was not “trembling in our boots” and was committed to reforms to address weak growth and ailing state-owned companies.
The agency is the last of the big three agencies to downgrade Africa’s most industrialised economy to sub-investment grade, after S&P Global and Fitch moved there in 2017.
Moody’s left South Africa on the brink of junk in November after it revised the outlook on its rating to negative following a bleak mid-term budget. (Guardian)
A good summary of where we are with Remdesivir (should see more data in the coming weeks), as well as some insight on viruses, and the drug development process.
@Mwfan1921 Well, that doesn’t sound particularly promising for putting an end to social distancing even in the best case scenario.
Agreed.
Hopefully there will be some positive data in the mild/moderate patients, but because Remdesivir is only available as an IV administered drug that will likely limit its usefulness. For example, we could not really use an IV drug for broad based prophylaxis (if data even showed effectiveness as such), at least quickly.
Here’s to hoping the virus doesn’t mutate much, curves start to flatten, antibody tests become widely available, recovered patients can go back to work, and baby steps toward normalcy start happening. And I know hope is not a strategy, but combinations of some of these types of things might ultimately help.
In other news…
The sun came up this AM
330mm residents and citizens of the USA do not or have not had Coronavirus yet.
USA testing more than anyone.
Our death rates are remarkably lower so far. Although time will tell.
We are moving massive amount of equipment and material across a distance of several western Europe’s.
Factories being turnaround.
An unprecedented. stimulus bill passes and or promises incredible protections and help for many Americans.
Scientists are fast tracking research and clinical trials.
Private citizens and companies are stepping up.
Imperial college disaster modeler says they perhaps totals were overstated compared to now.
China is not the hero here. Period.
We have a free and wonderful country.
I think we could have done things earlier, but who did and where. These are tough decisions. But I’m personally ok with leadership efforts to date. I’ll defer until things have passed and try to help in the meantime.
Sun is predicted to rise tomorrow.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/detroit-coronavirus-hotspot_n_5e7e7e2ac5b6cb9dc1a05f33
With about one-third of all of its residents and nearly half of its children living in poverty, Detroit ranks as the nation’s poorest big city. It’s also an emerging hotspot for COVID-19 cases, with 1,075 as of Friday afternoon.
That’s about 15 cases for every 10,000 residents in the city of nearly 700,000 ― a city where the average rate of chronic medical conditions such as diabetes, obesity, hypertension and asthma far exceed those of the state of Michigan and nation. Additionally, tens of thousands of residents live without health insurance or easy access to healthcare, clean water, transportation and secure housing.
Detroit’s deep poverty makes it especially vulnerable to the coronavirus outbreak and the economic damage it has already inflicted, presenting the city’s public health system with a daunting challenge in slowing the pandemic.
“Where you have generations of concentrated poverty and social determinants of health, when you have pandemics like this, it is going to hit those places harder,” Michigan’s Chief Medical Executive Dr. Joneigh Khaldun said at a Thursday press conference.
The number of confirmed cases of COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, has increased faster here than they did earlier in epicenters like New York City and Seattle. And Wayne County, which encompasses Detroit and nearby suburbs, has the seventh-highest total of confirmed cases in the country, just behind Seattle’s King County. Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D) last week issued a shelter-in-place order through April 13 as the disease rapidly spread.
…
The city’s rate of 3.2 deaths per 100,000 residents as of Friday afternoon is among the highest in the nation’s largest cities.
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Hospitals Already At Or Near Capacity
The sum of the issues creates a situation in which hospitals in Detroit’s metro area face an influx of serious cases, with some within the Beaumont and Henry Ford Health systems already at capacity. Beaumont converted some of its emergency and operating rooms to house COVID-19 patients, and it’s temporarily sending some patients who aren’t suffering from the disease to other Michigan health systems.
The Henry Ford hospitals are also converting surgical facilities to handle new patients, chief clinical officer Dr. Adnan Munkarah said at a Friday press conference. The health system circulated a memo outlining guidelines to be followed for making life and death decisions about treating patients as hospital resources become scarce.
If NYC had no testing, it would still be in crisis. Tested or not, sick people who can’t breath and need to be on ventilators would still be flocking to hospitals. Medical staff might not have the positive test in hand, but large numbers of sick people would still need to be treated.
In other communities where less testing is happening, if thousands of people needed medical care for respiratory problems we would know about it – because they would be seeking medical attention. They would be filling ERs to capacity and straining hospital resources.
Having the tests is nice. It would have been really nice to have had testing 4-6 weeks ago, when we could have done something with the information.
But all this complaining that NY is hogging all the tests seems irrelevant to me. Public health officials have to act as if the virus is everywhere, because it probably is.
https://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/wireStory/day-music-died-coronavirus-tests-orleans-69847711
[T]he city is one of the nation’s hot spots for coronavirus. As of Friday, New Orleans and neighboring Jefferson Parish had recorded more than 80 of the state’s 119 COVID-19 deaths and more than 1,700 of the state’s 2,700-plus known cases. The numbers have been climbing fast, in part because increased testing is revealing more people to have the disease.
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Gov. John Bel Edwards has repeatedly warned that the state’s health care system could be overwhelmed by early April. Louisiana is preparing for 2,000 to 4,000 patients above normal for this time of year, said Joseph Kanter, an assistant state health officer.
Morial Convention Center, which sheltered Katrina refugees in sweltering squalor, is about to become an emergency hospital for a potential overflow of virus patients, which will once again test emergency preparedness in a city where rescue efforts were widely viewed as inadequate in 2005. The rush is on to corral protective masks and gowns for medical personnel and to gather lifesaving ventilators.
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2020/03/coronavirus-pandemic-coming-new-orleans/608821/
The city of New Orleans—and, potentially, all of Louisiana—is going to become the next front in the fight against the pandemic. Even as national attention is justifiably focused on the aggressive outbreak in Washington State and the mounting pressures on New York City’s hospitals, the virus’s advance in Louisiana has shaken local officials and doctors, and the state is already approaching a similar burden of infections and deaths as the crises to the north. There’s good reason to believe that this southern outbreak will be even more difficult to contain, and is perhaps a better harbinger of what’s to come as the pandemic spreads across the country.
The numbers already indicate that Louisiana is a global epicenter of the pandemic. Just over 1 percent of the U.S. population lives in Louisiana. But according to the COVID Tracking Project, 7 percent of all COVID-19 deaths, 7 percent of all hospitalizations, and 3 percent of all positive tests have been in the state. New York has suffered about two deaths per 100,000 residents. Louisiana is at 1.8.
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To put the numbers into perspective, if Louisiana were a country, its death count would put it in the top 15 globally. The burden appears to be increasing so quickly that all of these statistics will become quickly out of date.
Plus, NY was one of the first states to ramp up creating its own tests. NY was pushing on the FDA back in February to get approval to do so.
I can understand it could be extremely useful to test medical staff, but beyond that? Grocery and other essential workers?
Cardinal Fang posted about NYC running out of space for bodies, and I’ve since been following that story online.
Maybe waaaaay down the road we test folks before they return to work?
Cuomo just said that they will be starting to do antibody testing on people who may have had the virus.
Numbers for Maryland broken down further:
These numbers from Governor Hogan’s daughter Jaymi’s Facebook page today,l.
COVID-19 Statistics in Maryland (as of 10 AM, Saturday, March 28)
Number of Confirmed Cases: 992
Number of negative test results: 11,516
Number of Deaths: 5
Hospitalizations: 226 ever hospitalized
Released From Isolation: 32
Cases by County:
Anne Arundel 88
Baltimore City 112
Baltimore County 141
Calvert 8
Caroline 1
Carroll 10
Cecil 13
Charles 21
Frederick 22
Garrett 3
Harford 21
Howard 73
Kent 2
Montgomery 255
Prince George’s 196
Queen Anne’s 1
St. Mary’s 8
Somerset 1
Talbot 2
Washington 6
Wicomico 6
Worcester 2
Cases by Age Range and Gender:
0-9 5
10-19 15
20-29 138
30-39 174
40-49 204
50-59 195
60-69 143
70-79 91
80+ 27
Female: 487, Male: 505
Health care workers and other first responders: police, EMT, fire departments…
^yes, of course, absolutely
I read something that said asthma in itself is not one of the conditions that puts a person at higher risk but rather other lung conditions (COPD, lung damage and other conditions). To me it would seem like asthma would predispose a person to higher risk. I don’t remember where I read this but it was a doctor or medical organization that said that.
one of the most unconscionable things happening right now - and shows a big lack of leadership - is the fact that states in the United States of America are competing with each other to buy PPE, ventilators, etc from private industry. Bidding up the prices vs EACH state (Arizona vs Illinois vs Texas, etc. ) That is insane. This is where the federal government should have stepped in to buy all the materials at a reasonable price and allocate them (sell them) as needed to the states. This is a failure. The states (who have no money) are paying double/triple the price. But I’m sure that will be forgiven by those that will ALWAYS forgive our government’s lack of leadership. This is not mistakes from a month ago or ‘the beginning’. These are mistakes happening right now.
Asthma is just going to make any resp issue worse. It is going to make a pt difficult to mange on a vent, people die of asthma on ventilators with no virus. It isn’t even that having asthma predisposes you to coronavirus, but it predisposes you to a much worse outcome if you have a bad case.