Not all surgeries involve intubation. My OR does not intubate, even for 8 hour face lifts. It’s not real clear from what I read what kind of case this was.
If every single person involved with this patient was infected, that suggest it’s pretty contagious to me. Will need to learn more.
Also, if every single one of the people who interfaced with this patient became infected, it should at the very least give a pretty good picture of incubation period.
Certain things can only happen in China:
As mentioned earlier, China has put Wuhan (a city of 11 million population) into quarantine, which is probably unimaginable in another country.
Neighboring provinces have set up road blocks to prevent cars with Wuhan license plates from entering their territories.
At a wedding where the bride was coming from Wuhan but showed no sickness syndromes, the couple were quarantined into a room by themselves with the wedding ceremony being performed and broadcasted real time to the guests who continue to party in the original wedding venue.
It will not be surprising if the Chinese government decides to extend the official Chinese New Year one week holiday break by another week or so to reduce the movement of the population and control the spread of the outbreak.
Hmmm. Wondering if I should be concerned about my son’s stepmother? She’s Chinese and has been back in China for several weeks caring for her ailing father (not this…just very old). She is scheduled to fly back 2/4. There hasn’t been a lot of talk about the virus around here.
Fascinating reading, appreciate comments from medical types. Please keep them coming. @BunsenBurner your comment about vaccinations really struck home. This is how fearful people were of MANY diseases not that long ago.
I think a lot can transpire between now and 2/4 for better or worse so best to take a wait and see approach, IMO. The good news is China learned from SARS and is taking unprecedented precautions to limit the spread.
From WSJ:
“The Wuhan Health Commission said it would requisition 24 general hospitals and turn them into designated hospitals for coronavirus patients, adding 6,000 more beds by the end of the month. Two other hospitals are now being built in hopes of adding thousands of beds to Wuhan’s health system in a matter of days.”
What I wonder about is the stat on the JHU site that currently lists 42 deaths and only 39 recoveries. Is it because the recoveries aren’t being reported with as much alacrity as the confirmed cases and deaths, or have people with the virus not had sufficient time to recover? Or could it be that there’s a real split between a large number of mild cases which end up unreported because they mimic a cold, and a smaller number of more severe cases which have a much higher death rate? According to all report this current corona virus is less deadly than SARS or MERS.
Really hard to say at this point. Presumably any contact of patients who comes down with a cold would be tested. But it is possible (or I should say probable) that the real death rate is lower, both because of unrecognized cases and because as awareness of the disease spreads, treatment improves. There has been some discussion of using antivirals to treat this, but it’s too early to know the outcomes.
“early estimation of epidemiological parameters and epidemic predictions”
Yikes…
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.01.23.20018549v1
“We estimate the basic reproductive number of the infection (Ro) to be significantly greater than one. We estimate it to be between 3.6 and 4.0, indicating that 72-75% of transmissions must be prevented by control measures for infections to stop increasing”.
I tried to post this earlier, as a PDF, but that didn’t work here. If you want to see the PDF, click on “preview PDF” in the central/right part of the link.
The Ro for this coronavirus is significantly higher than it was for SARS. They predict more than 190,000 infections by February 4 in Wuhan.
Not mentioned in this article, but this disease may have started with people eating bats. SARS began with bats too but I don’t remember hearing that anyone was eating them.
When we think about the relative danger of this new coronavirus and influenza, there’s just no comparison,” said Dr. William Schaffner, a professor of preventive medicine and health policy at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, Tennessee. “Coronavirus will be a blip on the horizon in comparison. The risk is trivial.”
That’s a career-risk type of statement to make. Does he know enough at this point to make a statement like that?
It’s true that general influenza kills more people every year, but the death rate due to regular flu is much lower.
Yeah, was noticing the high rate of change of cases, up 50% in 24 hours. This is very different from SARS, and if the estimated R0 is right, more contagious than flu.
I heard on the radio (so no link) that group tours in and out of China are cancelled. The Forbidden City is closed.
It appears all tourist spots and public gathering areas are closed across China, including sections of the Great Wall, Shanghai Disneyland, museums, theaters, cinemas, public parks…
In the city of Wuhan, even vehicles without special permits are banned.
All US and Chinese airlines and some hotels now allow free changes or cancellations of prior reservations.
Yes, in Wuhan, only medical and emergency vehicles are being allowed. Sounds like this coronavirus is definitely affecting China in a big way.
My relative is teaching English there—can’t remember the city. I hope she stays safe and healthy.
The recoveries stat was only added to that site yesterday, to my knowledge. I would imagine stuff is moving so quickly and so much focus is being divided in a gazillion directions that I personally wouldn’t expect lots of accuracy to any reported numbers right now.
I read elsewhere this morning (link in post 117) that the RO was lower than that and lower than what SARS was but, again, I think it might be too early to really know with certainty.
"Scientists have now revealed each infected person is passing the virus on to between 1.4 and 2.5 people.
This figure is called the virus’ basic reproduction number - anything higher than 1 means it’s self-sustaining.
We now know this is not a virus that will burn out on its own and disappear."
Looks like the source of the 1.4 to 2.5 RO is WHO.
"The WHO said the current estimate of the reproductive rate of the virus—the number of people, on average, that each infected person infects—is between 1.4 and 2.5. To stop an outbreak, the reproduction number has to be brought below one.
“That gives me no comfort at all that anything that’s happening right now is going to bring this under control any time soon,” Michael Osterholm, director of the University of Minnesota’s Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy, said of the data the WHO released."
But of course things can morph with additional generations so who knows? I really get the sense that the world medical/epidemiological community is still trying to get a sense of this virus.
Wesleyan (CT) student being evaluated.
My viral illness is not too severe. Very sore throat and some body aches, minor nasal congestion and runny nose (also minor). No fever whatsoever.
Just a cold I imagine. There are many many viruses in circulation right now.