Coronavirus (COVID-19) Pandemic

[stui magpie]

Apparently the NT has no (known) active cases as of today.

[K]

Why do rich countries have such high coronavirus death tolls?

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-05-21/why-do-rich-countries-have-such-high-coronavirus-death-rates/12264610

"No 'one size fits all' explanation ...

But perhaps the most stark is the fact that the US, UK, Italy, France and Spain currently account for a shocking 70 per cent of all deaths.

Each of them is rich, with a sophisticated health system. And while their deadly curves are being ironed out, there is a lethal legacy already, with the threat of future waves to come.
...

The deadly impact of international travel ...

The lower levels of travel to low to middle-income countries could help explain why they were able to escape the virus, at least in the early days of the pandemic.

According to Professor Tony Blakely, an epidemiologist and public health specialist at the University of Melbourne, this gave them "time to prepare and do some form of physical distancing".
...

So did the West get complacent? ...

She also says the WHO proclaimed a public health emergency of international concern on January 30, so "none of those 194 countries could possibly suggest that they did not know".

"Everyone had a heads up," she said.

"So for those countries that may try to say they didn't have enough time to prepare, it's disingenuous.

"They did not need to wait until March 11, until WHO called a pandemic — that was an academic exercise."
...

The world is only at the beginning of its coronavirus journey ...

We really are in the dense fog of this long, painful war. Only hindsight will reveal the complex cat's cradle of cause, reaction and effect.

But from the vantage point of the here and now, the images of shattered doctors and nurses, and ambulances waiting for hours on emergency department ramps, speak clearly of failure in the very countries that should have been best prepared."

[stui magpie]

Rich Countries?

Brazil just said "hold my Beer" (or Mojito)

[K]

The article does mention countries like Brazil and Russia.

But anyway their point doesn't rely on poor countries "succeeding": the rich countries have no excuses (but some would say poor countries do, e.g. the state of their health systems, their living conditions, etc.).

[K]

Social distancing a week earlier could have saved 36,000 American lives, study says

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/05/21/columbia-study-coronavirus-deaths/

"New research* from Columbia University epidemiologists offered one possible answer on Wednesday. If the same kind of social distancing had been in place seven days earlier, their study found, the United States could have prevented 36,000 deaths through early May — about 40 percent of fatalities reported to date.
...

The researchers examined transmissions within each county, movement between counties and deaths to chart how the virus spread — and killed — over the course of seven weeks.
...

Unlike some of the forecasts that have made headlines in recent weeks, their model does not attempt to predict how certain policies — say, another month of shutdowns, or partial reopening measures — might affect the virus’s spread. It simply shifts the timeline for the country’s response.

Move it back even further, and the results are more dramatic. If the United States had mustered the same kind of political and public will against the virus on March 1, the researchers found, 54,000 fewer Americans would have lost their lives to the illness. By Thursday, the nationwide death toll had surpassed 92,000.
...

“You could sit there and point the finger at whoever you wanted to,” Shaman said. “In truth, each of us is going to draw his or her own conclusions about where blame may be assigned.”

It is more productive, he said, to take the study’s lessons and apply them to the future, particularly as large swaths of the country move to partially reopen ahead of Memorial Day weekend."


* https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.15.20103655v1.full.pdf

[K]

NY Times article on same study:

Lockdown Delays Cost at Least 36,000 Lives, Data Show

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/20/us/coronavirus-distancing-deaths.html

"If the United States had begun imposing social distancing measures one week earlier than it did in March, about 36,000 fewer people would have died in the coronavirus outbreak, according to new estimates from Columbia University disease modelers.

And if the country had begun locking down cities and limiting social contact on March 1, two weeks earlier than most people started staying home, the vast majority of the nation’s deaths — about 83 percent — would have been avoided, the researchers estimated.

Under that scenario, about 54,000 fewer people would have died by early May.

The enormous cost of waiting to take action reflects the unforgiving dynamics of the outbreak that swept through American cities in early March. Even small differences in timing would have prevented the worst exponential growth, which by April had subsumed New York City, New Orleans and other major cities, the researchers found."

[K]

Coronavirus in South Africa: Two-day-old baby dies

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-52752334

""Sadly we have recorded the first neonatal mortality related to Covid-19. The baby was two days old and was born prematurely," South Africa's Health Minister Dr Zweli Mkhize said.

"The baby had lung difficulties which required ventilation support immediately after birth."
...

Other young victims of coronavirus, include a three-day-old who died on 5 May in the UK. In that case the mother and baby tested positive for coronavirus after she gave birth.

The baby was born with a low heart rate and the coroner listed the primary cause of death as severe hypoxic ischaemic encephalopathy, meaning the brain was starved of blood and oxygen, while maternal Covid-19 was listed as a secondary cause.
...

South Africa has had some of the strictest lockdown measures in the world, including a ban on cigarettes and alcohol, but is now easing some restrictions."

[Jezza]

Latest numbers

Confirmed (Deaths) - Recoveries

USA = 1,597,130 (95,118) - 371,077
Russia = 317,554 (3,099) - 92,681
Brazil = 294,152 (19,038) - 116,683
UK = 250,908 (36,042) - Unknown
Spain = 232,555 (27,888) - 150,376
Italy = 227,364 (32,330) - 132,282
France = 181,575 (28,132) - 63,354
Germany = 178,545 (8,281) - 155,726
Turkey = 152,587 (4,222) - 113,987
Iran = 129,341 (7,249) - 100,564
...........................................................
Australia = 7,081 (100) - 6,472

5,081,488 confirmed cases
330,958 deaths
2,003,830 recoveries

Australia:
- Confirmed cases = 7,081
---- New South Wales = 3,082
---- Victoria = 1,581
---- Queensland = 1,058
---- Western Australia = 557
---- South Australia = 439
---- Tasmania = 228
---- ACT = 107
---- NT = 29
- Deaths = 100
- Recoveries = 6,472
- Case fatality rate = 1.41%

Active Cases = 2,746,700
- USA = 1,130,935
- Russia = 221,774
- UK = 214,866 (maximum)
- Brazil = 158,431
- France = 90,089
- India = 64,944
- Italy = 62,752
- Peru = 59,028
- Spain = 54,291
- Netherlands = 38,925 (maximum)
............................................
- Australia = 509

**(Maximum) = Recovery numbers are not counted, so only subtracts the number of deaths from the total number of confirmed cases.

[Jezza]

AUSTRALIA

Date = Confirmed Cases (New Cases) = Percentage of new cases

14/05/2020 = 6,989 (14) = 0.2%
15/05/2020 = 7,020 (31) = 0.4%
16/05/2020 = 7,036 (16) = 0.2%
17/05/2020 = 7,045 (9) = 0.1%
18/05/2020 = 7,060 (15) = 0.2%
19/05/2020 = 7,068 (8] = 0.1%
20/05/2020 = 7,079 (11) = 0.2%
21/05/2020 = 7,081 (2) = 0.03%

6,472 recovered, 100 deaths.

Cases doubling every 54 days.

603 cases of community transmission nationwide.

509 active cases.

South Australia, ACT and NT have no active cases.

Lowest daily number of new cases since February 29.

VICTORIA

Date = Confirmed Cases (New Cases) = Percentage of new cases

14/05/2020 = 1,520 (8] = 0.3%
15/05/2020 = 1,540 (20) = 1.3%
16/05/2020 = 1,551 (11) = 0.7%
17/05/2020 = 1,558 (7) = 0.5%
18/05/2020 = 1,567 (9) = 0.6%
19/05/2020 = 1,573 (6) = 0.4%
20/05/2020 = 1,580 (7) = 0.4%
21/05/2020 = 1,581 (1) = 0.1%

1,473 recovered, 18 deaths.

Cases doubling every 52 days in Victoria.

168 cases of community transmission in Victoria.

90 active cases.

No deaths in Victoria since April 29.

Lowest daily number of new cases in Victoria since April 27.

[K]

Young adults are also affected by Kawasaki-like disease linked to coronavirus, doctors say

https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2020/05/21/misc-c-kawasaki-coronavirus-young-adults/

"A 20-year-old is being treated at Rady Children’s Hospital in San Diego; a 25-year-old has been diagnosed at Northwell Health’s Long Island Jewish Medical Center; and several patients in their early 20s are hospitalized with the syndrome at NYU Langone in New York City.

Jennifer Lighter, a pediatric infectious diseases doctor at NYU Langone, said younger children with the condition seem to have symptoms that look more like traditional Kawasaki, which is characterized by inflammation of the blood vessels. But teens and young adults have more of an “overwhelming” response involving the heart and multiple organs.
...

Physician Jane Burns, who runs the Kawasaki disease research center at UC San Diego, worries the condition may be underdiagnosed in adults.

The challenge, she said, is that many doctors who treat adults have “never seen Kawasaki disease before because that’s a disease of children.” Moreover, it’s trickier to get a quick look at adults’ hearts, because their chest walls are so thick and ultrasounds may be more difficult to interpret.
...

Doctors note the distinction between a child and an adult is a legal one, rather than a biological one. ...

People in their 20s are at their physiological peak in terms of their lung capacity, reproductive system and strength. So in this way, young adults may be more similar to children than to people in their 30s — some of whom may be starting to experience the slow, gradual declines of aging.

Many other viruses — chickenpox and measles are classic examples — appear very differently in children than adults, and it’s unknown exactly why.
...

James Schneider, a pediatric critical care doctor at Northwell Health, emphasized this illness is not something that can be treated at home. Patients with the syndrome have needed blood pressure medications, steroids, anticoagulants, immunoglobulin and sometimes ventilators to get better. A few have gone into cardiac arrest and had to be revived through CPR or cardiopulmonary resuscitation."

[K]

Sweden is still nowhere near 'herd immunity,' even though it didn't go into lockdown

https://edition.cnn.com/2020/05/21/health/sweden-herd-immunity-coronavirus-intl/index.html

"... only 7.3% of people in Stockholm had developed the antibodies needed to fight the disease by late April.

The figure, which Sweden's Public Health Authority confirmed to CNN, is roughly similar to other countries that have data and well below the 70-90% needed to create "herd immunity" in a population.
...

Sweden's percentage of people with antibodies is not far off that of other countries that did enforce lockdowns. In Spain, 5% of people had developed coronavirus antibodies by May 14, according to preliminary results of an epidemiological study by the government.

According to Martin Kuba, an official Jihocesky region in the Czech Republic who spearheaded a randomly selected mass testing for coronavirus among the general public and frontline workers, the initial results showed that the proportion of people who have had the disease stood at "single digit percent" rather than "fraction of a percent".

Michael Osterholm, the director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, estimated earlier this month on CNN Tonight with Don Lemon that between 5% and 15% of people in the US have been infected.
...

On April 24, chief epidemiologist Tegnell told BBC radio that the authorities believed Stockholm had "an immunity level... somewhere between 15 and 20% of the population.""

............................................

Elsewhere on CNN:

5% of antibody tests in the UK are positive, Health Secretary says

"According to Hancock, the UK government’s antibody surveillance study has also shown that the percentage that tested positive for coronavirus antibodies in London is higher at 17%."

Links to: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/government-begins-large-scale-virus-infection-and-antibody-test-study


............................................

[So the Swedish government is wrong yet again...]

[K]

"Only four of the 434 children tested by the Royal Children's Hospital in Melbourne at the height of the coronavirus pandemic between March 21 and April 19 were diagnosed with COVID-19, researchers at the Murdoch Children's Research Institute have found.
...

Three of the four children with COVID-19 had recently travelled overseas, significantly increasing their risk.

The fourth infected child had not been overseas but was a close contact of a person infected with the virus.

Only one child infected with the virus presented with fever, while the other three children had mild symptoms including a headache, sore throat and runny nose. Three out of the four children who tested positive for COVID-19 were girls.
...

Paediatric infectious diseases expert Professor Robert Booy said while the study was reassuring for parents, it only examined a very small number of children infected with coronavirus.

"It's been done in the context of a very low prevalence of COVID-19 and very low incidence of transmission," he said.

"You can conclude that in that period, COVID-19 was not causing much paediatric disease in that community, but you can't conclude much about the cases or the risk of hospitalisation because there were so few cases.""

https://www.theage.com.au/national/australia-first-study-finds-low-transmission-of-covid-19-in-children-20200521-p54v4d.html

[K]

WaPo:

U.S. coronavirus deaths could double in two months as lockdowns are relaxed, influential British model says

"The report*, published Thursday by Imperial College London’s WHO Collaborating Center, estimated 24 U.S. states still have a reproduction number — also known as an “R number,” ... — above the critical threshold of one.

The researchers found higher reproduction numbers were geographically clustered in the South and the Midwest, suggesting epidemics may be just starting in some states. Among those most likely to have an R number higher than one were Texas, Arizona, Illinois, Colorado and Ohio."


* https://www.imperial.ac.uk/mrc-global-infectious-disease-analysis/covid-19/report-23-united-states/

"We model the epidemics in the US at the state-level, using publicly available death data within a Bayesian hierarchical semi-mechanistic framework. For each state, we estimate the time-varying reproduction number (the average number of secondary infections caused by an infected person), the number of individuals that have been infected and the number of individuals that are currently infectious. We use changes in mobility as a proxy for the impact that NPIs and other behaviour changes have on the rate of transmission of SARS-CoV-2. We project the impact of future increases in mobility, assuming that the relationship between mobility and disease transmission remains constant. We do not address the potential effect of additional behavioural changes or interventions, such as increased mask-wearing or testing and tracing strategies."

[K]

[Jezza]