Patient zero in NY. The attorney from New Rochelle. Has been released from the hospital and now is back home.
Engineering firms have said that the UK may not have enough ventilators when coronavirus cases reach their peak, the BBC reports.
The UK has just over 8,000 ventilators, but it is estimated the country will need 30,000 during the peak of the crisis, which is expected in two weeks’ time. Manufacturers have said they will be unable to meet that deadline.
Dutch GPs are phoning elderly and at-risk patients to check if they are willing to take the risk of dying at home in case they get Covid-19, so that their hospital bed can be taken up by someone with better survival chances, the Volkskrant newspaper reported.
In the Dutch healthcare system such conversations are normally carried out face to face.
Bianca Buurman, professor of acute elderly care at Amsterdam UMC, emphasised in an article published with three other colleagues the importance for healthcare providers to contact elderly people to ask what their wishes would be if they were affected by the virus.
“Proximity is important for such tough topics, but going by is not an option now,” Buurman said. “We don’t really know whether such a conversation will further fuel fear.”
Guardian
Unfortunately, I don’t think my D has the luxury of doing that. The Benacquisto doesn’t allow for a gap year, and I’m fairly certain her other scholarships don’t allow for that either. She would basically be throwing away all her hard work to earn full scholarships/full rides to minimize her debt for college. No easy answers.
Might be the first confirmed case but I doubt he was the first real Patient Zero. I have no doubts there were many vectors of infection in NY.
Glad the guy has recovered and is at home.
Even dog walking is a political and public health football.
Serbia has banned all outdoor dog walking. Angering millions.
Italian mayors are angered by the excessive dog walking in their cities.
This is really uncharted territory.
Politicians who are in power everywhere want all the glories but none of the blames. They all wish all the problems under their watch would just go away. Bringing bad news to their constituents isn’t natural to them, unless they can blame it on someone else.
Thank you, @romanigypsyeyes . Didn’t imagine when I started this thread that I’d have so many so close. Be safe with that baby!
‘We are naked against the virus’: tales of despair from Spain’s hospital frontline
The Observer
As patients lie on floors, and nurses make gowns from rubbish bags, health workers vent their fury at a government fatally slow to react
Ashifa Kassam in Madrid
With its lush indoor gardens, ornate pavilions and red carpet area, Madrid’s Ifema convention centre was the impressive backdrop Spain showed the world last December, when the country took on last-minute hosting duties for the Cop25 climate summit.
Last week the spotlight was on it once again, but for a far grimmer reason. As Spain becomes an increasingly worrying hotspot of the global pandemic, the Ifema centre has been turned, with help from the military, into one of the country’s largest hospitals. Inside are thousands of beds, in row after precisely spaced row.
Spain’s Covid-19 death toll last week surpassed that of China, and is now second only to Italy’s. Yesterday the number of deaths surged to a new record for the country, with 832 people dying in 24 hours. The virus has so far claimed 5,690 lives.
The figures last night prompted the prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, to tighten its lockdown and order all non-essential workers to stay at home for the next two weeks. In a televised address he said “extraordinarily tough” measures were needed as the county intensified its efforts to contain the pandemic.
One who died was Yolanda Cumia’s father, Juan. Her last conversation with him was on 16 March, after the 87-year-old said he had hurt his foot after a fall at the care home where he lived. Hours later, at 2am, her phone rang again: it was a staff member telling her that her father had died.
Days earlier, two people linked to the home had tested positive for Covid-19, and the invisible killer stampeded through the centre. “She told me: ‘Yolanda, we’re overwhelmed. From what I know, we have 15 people dead.’” The care home did not reply to a request for comment.
Cumia joined others in going public with the news as deaths at the 130-room home climbed to at least 17. Others chimed in with stories from across the country, painting a hazy picture of a contagion that had steadily preyed on the country’s elderly, with ill-equipped staff the only line of defence.
The Spanish government turned to the military for help in disinfecting the residences. What they discovered horrified the country. “The army has seen some totally abandoned elderly people – even some who were dead in their beds,” the country’s defence minister, Margarita Robles, told broadcaster Telecinco.
The revelation was a blow to a country that has long prided itself on good treatment of its elders. “This is the generation that lived through a horrendous civil war and post-war era,” said Cumia. “And now they’re dying alone.”
As the country enters its third week of near-total lockdown, the number of confirmed cases has rocketed to 72,248. The actual figure is likely to be much higher, as people with mild symptoms have been told to self-isolate rather than seek testing.
In some cities the surge in cases has left the country’s healthcare system – ranked among the top 20 in the world – on the edge of collapse, its defences already weakened by austerity measures that shaved billions from its budget.
“Mine is supposed to be a 265-bed hospital, and today it has 700 patients,” said doctor Ana Giménez of Madrid’s Infanta Leonor hospital. “Hundreds of people are sitting in chairs or lying on the floor… all of the hospitals in Madrid are absolutely overwhelmed.”
The situation is exacerbated by a lack of protective gear. “We don’t have anything. We don’t have masks, we don’t have gloves, we don’t have waterproof gowns. We have nothing,” she said. “We are naked against the coronavirus.”
While Spaniards take nightly to their windows and balconies to applaud the efforts of healthcare workers, the government still promises that supplies are on the way. In the meantime, DIY solutions have proliferated, with healthcare workers sharing photos of rubbish bags fashioned into protective gowns.
It is little wonder, said Giménez, that healthcare workers in Spain account for 9,444 of the country’s infected. Those killed by the virus include a nurse and two doctors. Many wonder if they are unwittingly acting as vectors for the virus. “I’m not sure if I’m infecting my family, if I’m infecting my colleagues,” said Giménez, who suffered flu symptoms some 10 days ago.
She has yet to access a test, but her superiors – scrambling to meet the needs of a groaning system – have ordered people with mild symptoms to keep working, she said. “This is not only an epidemic of illness, it’s an epidemic of really bad government.”
The Spanish government had come under fire for being slow to react, allowing political rallies, football games and concerts even as neighbouring France banned large public gatherings.
A delay in rolling out the lockdown allowed Madrileños to leave the city en masse, spreading the virus to coasts and rural areas, while others packed into supermarkets to lay in supplies.
The consequences of these decisions have fallen on healthcare workers, forcing them into some of the toughest choices of their careers, said Giménez, recounting stories of doctors weighing patients’ probability of survival in allocating ventilators. “Most of us, every day we finish our shift and come back home crying.”
Earlier this month Giménez’s union, Amyts, which represents doctors in Madrid, began offering free therapy to healthcare workers. “Every single day,” said Giménez, “one of my colleagues says, ‘my mother died yesterday; my brother died yesterday’.”
In Igualada, near Barcelona, officials are frantically battling one of the world’s deadliest outbreaks, their struggle compounded by steady reports of friends and family affected in the tight-knit community.
In one area, the daily death rate has hovered around 63.1 per 100,000 inhabitants – outstripping Madrid’s 27.9 and that of northern Italy’s Lombardy, Catalan authorities said.
The area went into lockdown days before the rest of Spain, with police stopping residents from leaving home except for essential work. “There is not any other territory that is locked down the way we are,” said Mayor Marc Castells.
A cluster of cases in the local hospital forced staff into quarantine and strained the already-stretched system. Of the area’s 508 cases, 140 are healthcare workers. With help from charity Doctors without Borders, officials are working to transform a sports centre into a 100-bed field hospital.
It’s a situation Castells never thought he or his city would find themselves in as he watched the virus begin its deadly rampage in Asia late last year. “It’s a lot to handle, but we can’t give in,” he said. “As I like to say, we’re not in a well. We’re in a tunnel. We may not be able to see the exit right now, but there will be a light at the end.”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/29/coronavirus-madrid-doctor-hospital-desperate-supplies
I am wondering about the choice to send people home who have Covid verses the Chinese response to send them to what looked like gymnasiums with hundreds of beds.
At least in the Chinese scenario, there are doctors on site. What can I do alone in a room
In comparison, Mayor deBlasio tweeted to New York residents to ‘go on with their lives’ and ‘get out on the town’ on March 2, with suggestions of movies/plays to see.
I’ve been getting public health reminders from Notify NYC. This is today’s:
They are answering calls, chats and texts 24/7. Translators available for more than 200 languages and video relay for the deaf. I’m really glad people have somewhere to turn. We need this in other areas, and for healthcare workers.
Interesting statistics about NON Covid-19 flu:
https://time.com/5610878/2018-2019-flu-season/
In total, the CDC estimates that up to 42.9 million people got sick during the 2018-2019 flu season, 647,000 people were hospitalized and 61,200 died. That’s fairly on par with a typical season, and well below the CDC’s 2017-2018 estimates of 48.8 million illnesses, 959,000 hospitalizations and 79,400 deaths.
I also hope when this subsides other (and not to diminish the importance of covid receiving our full attention) but other health and mental illness crisis priorities also deserve our full attention and mobilization.
Over 500,000 predominantly young people have died of opioid overdose in the USA since the turn of the century alone. Most in the past few years.
It’s an ongoing crisis that seems to have no end in sight.
Maybe this will get us all on the same page to look at life as important - no matter if they are elderly or vulnerable or mentally ill, depressed or addicted and poor.
My recovery thread barely had any posts.
Drink water and rest. It is no different from what you do when you have a bad cold or a flu. It’s a virus. It has to run its course unless you develop the secondary symptoms and you get really sick. BTW they say it is best to put some sugar and salt in your water. Helps body with absorbing water.
Patients in the UK dying now were infected around a month ago, weeks before the country started social distancing, an expert has warned.
Professor James Naismith, director of the Rosalind Franklin Institute at the University of Oxford, spoke out after a further 209 people died after testing positive for coronavirus in the UK.
Although this is a lower number than the 260 deaths the previous day, he warned it is too early to draw conclusions, underlining that “daily numbers can be lower (or higher) than expected due to random factors”.
Prof Naismnith said: “I am confident that provided we follow social distancing the increase in deaths will stop and this will be followed by a decrease in the daily numbers.
“It can take up to two weeks from infection to onset of symptoms. For over 80% of people these symptoms are mild, for the much smaller number who develop the most serious illness, intensive care is needed around 10 days later.
“For those who do not recover but die, data from China suggests this takes around another four days. The tragic deaths today will be from people infected roughly a month ago. It is inevitable that there will be more tragedies for families ahead.
“We can reduce the final death toll only by following current Government advice. We must expect and welcome changes in Government advice as science, medicine and social science work together to learn more.”
Egyptian banks have been ordered to apply temporary caps on daily withdrawals and deposits, a policy that some analysts see as an attempt to control inflation and hoarding in the midst of the pandemic.
The daily limit for individuals would be 10,000 Egyptian pounds and 50,000 pounds for companies, according to Reuters.
This follows Zimbabwe legalising the use of foreign currency in domestic transactions in preparation for the country’s 21-day lockdown.
There’s been an update on the Zaandam cruise ship, where four people have died.
The Port of Everglades has said a Covid-19-stricken cruise ship has not yet been given approval to dock in Florida after it was granted passage to pass through the Panama canal and travel towards Fort Lauderdale.
Four people have died on the Zaandam cruise liner and dozens are ill with flu-like symptoms after it became stranded at sea when Latin American countries closed their ports in response to the global pandemic.
On Saturday, Panamanian authorities reversed a decision to stop the Zaandam in the canal to travel to port in Fort Lauderdale. Hundreds of symptomless passengers have been transferred to its sister ship, the Rotterdam, during the weekend.
On Sunday, the Panama canal indicated that both ships would be allowed to travel together although there has been no official confirmation from the Panamanian government.
In a statement to the Guardian, Port Everglades said it would take about three days for the ship to reach south Florida, and that Holland American, the boats’ owners, must then submit a plan before arrival to enter the port that meets “a long list of Unified Command requirements”.
The ships’ owners, Holland America Line, have not responded to requests for updates on the health of passengers onboard or the current travel plans.
Fort Lauderdale’s mayor, Dean Trantalis, is reluctant to have the ship dock at Port Everglades, saying in a statement: “Our healthcare system could be extremely burdened by the time the ship arrives.”
He called on the Trump administration to develop a plan of action and for “stringent separation procedures” if the ship does dock
Guardian
TODAY: COVID-19: U.S. at a Glance†
Total cases: 122,653
Total deaths: 2,112
Cases of COVID-19 Reported in the US, by Source of Exposure†
Cases of COVID-19 Reported in the US, by Source of Exposure
Travel-related
712
Close contact
1,326
Under investigation
83,318
Total cases
85,356
- Data include both confirmed and presumptive positive cases of COVID-19 reported to CDC or tested at CDC since January 21, 2020, with the exception of testing results for persons repatriated to the United States from Wuhan, China and Japan. State and local public health departments are now testing and publicly reporting their cases. In the event of a discrepancy between CDC cases and cases reported by state and local public health officials, data reported by states should be considered the most up to date.
More on Liberty University and its decision to bring students back…
https://www.nytimes.com./2020/03/29/us/politics/coronavirus-liberty-university-falwell.html
At least 650 NYC inmates have been released due to coronavirus concerns
From CNN’s Laura Ly
As of Saturday night, 650 New York City inmates have been released due to coronavirus concerns, Mayor Bill de Blasio said Sunday.
De Blasio has previously said that NYC’s inmate population was approximately 5,000 inmates. CNN has previously reported that those eligible for release are city inmates convicted of misdemeanors and nonviolent felonies, all with less than one year left on their sentence.
There are some inmates within that category with domestic violence or sexual offense charges that the city has determined they will not release at this time, according to de Blasio.
There has been a “significant reduction” in the city’s juvenile inmate population as well, de Blasio said.
President Trump touts ‘air bridge’ initiative to bring supplies to New York
From CNN’s Nicky Robertson
President Donald Trump announced a new initiative Sunday called an “air bridge” to help bring supplies to New York.
The President said that a flight arrived this morning at New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport with 2 million masks and gowns, more than 10 million gloves and 70,000 thermometers. He said that currently they are expecting 51 flights with supplies from other countries, though there will be “intercountry things” as well.
Georgia to start enforcing social distancing at parks and lakes
From CNN’s Hollie Silverman
The Georgia Department of Natural Resources will start enforcing the executive order limiting large gatherings in state parks and lakes across the state, a joint statement from Gov. Brian Kemp and DNR Commissioner Mark Williams said Sunday.
DNR employees will be patrolling bodies of water and campgrounds to enforce social distancing guidelines. If people are found gathering they will approach them and demand compliance, sometimes with bullhorns, the release said.
The move comes after school and business closures along with stay-at-home orders have resulted in people heading to vacation homes, lakes, hiking trail and campgrounds throughout the state, according to the release.
Gatherings of more than 10 people are banned unless people are 6 feet apart. That order applies to all 159 counties in the state, the release said.
Idiots. It would be one thing if they were only harming themselves but that isn’t the case here.
Yep, the Chinese government doesn’t trust its citizens to self quarantined. Sending them home means risking them infecting other people. Same for most Asian countries. The US has the inherit trust on its people to do the right thing. Freedom has a price.