Coronavirus - worldwide spread and control

[Trish]

Moderator note: Some posts discussing the possibility of power cuts and how to cope have been moved to this thread:
Cooking with Corona - coping with power cuts

 

[lunarainbows]

A minister in the UK health department is self isolating, has had meetings with the Health Secretary and been at the same event as the Prime Minister. I suspect they might be taking it a little more seriously now......
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-51827356

Yes - she started feeling ill on Thursday.

The MP first showed symptoms on Thursday - the same day she attended a Downing Street event hosted by Boris Johnson to mark International Women's Day, according to a health department spokesman.

The 62-year-old also met people at a constituency surgery in Bedfordshire on Saturday.

https://news.sky.com/story/nadine-dorries-health-minister-tests-positive-for-coronavirus-11954928

There’s a big issue here - the fact she started to feel ill and still continued going into work and in fact meeting constituents face to face. Because in the UK, you are still being told you are only at risk of having coronavirus if you’ve travelled from China (despite China now reporting fewer new cases per day than the UK), or Iran or Italy or a “hotspot” country, or been in contact with a confirmed case.

On social media I’ve seen people saying they’ve been refused tests because of it (edited to say, that this includes people I know, one person I know very well, and also videos of people including one man who came on the Victoria Derbyshire show). From news statements, the way they were worded seemed that At least two of people who died had been in hospital being treated for other conditions and then they also tested them for coronavirus. Sorry if this seems alarmist but it seems to me it is almost certainly circulating in the population - but if people aren’t being tested for it, how do we know how many really have it, and to what extent it is community level spread now?

 

[Trish]

Sorry if this seems alarmist but it seems to me it is almost certainly circulating in the population - but if people aren’t being tested for it, how do we know how many really have it, and to what extent it is community level spread now?

The number of tests they can do in the UK is being greatly expanded from 1500 to 10,000 per day, with hospital path labs being able to do the tests as well as government labs. This should help signifcantly, I think.
BBC news: Coronavirus : NHS to ramp up testing capacity

 

[lunarainbows]

The number of tests they can do in the UK is being greatly expanded from 1500 to 10,000 per day, with hospital path labs being able to do the tests as well as government labs. This should help signifcantly, I think.
BBC news: Coronavirus : NHS to ramp up testing capacity

Regardless of the number of tests, the criteria for testing is still only - if you have been in contact with a confirmed case, or come back from one of those countries. If that’s not going to be updated, then we still won’t know how many people really have it. I am waiting to see what comes out of the cobra meeting.

South Korea did not wait - they started testing the community. That’s how they picked up so many cases.

 

[lunarainbows]

Other than what I’ve seen a lot of on social media (edited to say, this includes people I know), I also know personally of one person close to me (who I am currently in contact with by digital communication), who had all the symptoms of Covid-19, together with fever, and they called 111 in March, but was told that they did not need a test because they did not fulfil the criteria.

In today’s Cobra meeting, we need to see a change to the testing criteria, as well as some very serious social distancing measures.

 

[ladycatlover]

It’s just really hitting me how selfish people are / can be, that since it’s “only” those with underlying conditions or elderly people it’s just “hype” to them, and it’s really painful to cope with that thought.

Coronavirus hits ill and disabled people hardest, so why is society writing us off?
By Frances Ryan

It won’t come for you. This is the general message about coronavirus, as the UK prepares for the outbreak to possibly worsen. Read the many media reports and a common line comes out: “Most people recover, and fatalities are largely only among those with underlying health conditions.” It is a sentiment I have heard constantly in recent days, supposedly as a form of reassurance. It’s understandable: facts are vital to establish in a climate where myths can spread as quickly as the virus, and the World Health Organization has made it clear that younger and healthy people are much less vulnerable to serious harm. But it does raise the question: what about the rest of us?

Oh, and to really cheer everyone up, according to The Grauniad NHS 111 has been giving wrong advice.

 

[Hutan]

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As coronavirus threads have been keeping moderators busy, notification of edits to, or deletion of, your posts in these threads will generally be done via your alerts rather than individual personal messages.

Other threads on this topic:

Coronavirus: Advice from ME organisations

Cooking with Corona - coping with power cuts

Chloroquine phosphate has shown apparent efficacy in treatment of COVID-19 associated pneumonia in clinical studies, 2020, Gao et al.

 

[Invisible Woman]

Regardless of the number of tests, the criteria for testing is still only - if you have been in contact with a confirmed case, or come back from one of those countries.

I agree the limitations on testing and the advice isn't great. However those criteria for testing might have been so narrow because they wanted the test for those most likely to have been exposed as there weren't enough to go around. hopefully with tests becoming more freely available things will change.

 

[Invisible Woman]

This lunacy of it only effects older or people with underlying health conditions is absurd.

Both those groups make up a significant number of our workforce.

Many younger and supposedly less vulnerable people may have older or ill friends and relatives. They may not realize that some people they rely on like childminders, school staff, cleaners, taxi drivers, delivery drivers and NHS staff may have underlying health issues. So if they go about infecting those they'll soon see how much they may take for granted.

That's what our society is - interconnectedness and mutual dependency.

 

[lunarainbows]

Just to be clear, although I mentioned I’ve seen many on social media - I also personally know one person very closely who this has happened to, I do have email evidence but obviously this is someone I know and don’t really want to share screenshots of the email on this forum.

Other than that, the social media stories I was referring to are also including people that I know, although not as closely.
In addition, I was also referring to videos of people I have seen, one of which has been shown on reputable shows such as the Victoria Derbyshire show. I will search for the link once I’m back from hospital and feel well enough to to do so.

The fact the test criteria are narrow is well known.

 

[Invisible Woman]

And a brief look on the brighter side.....

A lady on my local Nextdoor forum posted she is fit and healthy and prepared to assist those who are elderly or unwell and who need some extra support be it shopping or dog walking or whatever.

Now our local group and the next village along are setting up a team of volunteers and at least one other local group is joining them.

While situations like this brings out the worst in some it can also bring out the best in others.

 

[ladycatlover]

article from The Lancet is here.

Governments will not be able to minimise both deaths from coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) and the economic impact of viral spread. Keeping mortality as low as possible will be the highest priority for individuals; hence governments must put in place measures to ameliorate the inevitable economic downturn. In our view, COVID-19 has developed into a pandemic, with small chains of transmission in many countries and large chains resulting in extensive spread in a few countries, such as Italy, Iran, South Korea, and Japan.
1
Most countries are likely to have spread of COVID-19, at least in the early stages, before any mitigation measures have an impact.

 

[Jonathan Edwards]

I do not think it is too late to deal with this crisis. Some countries in the east are doing very well. The rate of new cases in the UK has flattened in the last few days and it may be that the great majority are people coming back from Italy directly or indirectly. That may at least tail off. There is clearly some community spread but there is a suggestion that it is quite quirky and local. Maybe airports are a big problem. Maybe political handshakers are a big problem. Maybe jet setters going to three countries in a week are a problem.

If people keep themselves to themselves I don't see why this should not be sortable. We might have thought that other countries would lag behind and keep leaking cases into the system but if anything it looks as if it is us that is doing that.

 

[Sasha]

@Jonathan Edwards, when you say 'sortable', what do you mean? I'm a bit confused by the situation. In China, for instance, the rate of new cases is now pretty low but if restrictions on people's movements are lifted, is there anything to stop the spread resuming? Our populations have no immunity so is it just a question of rate of spread, rather than eventual scale of spread?

Or is the idea to slow things down so that lots of people still won't have been infected by the time we get a vaccine (at least a year, think).

 

[Jonathan Edwards]

@Jonathan Edwards, when you say 'sortable', what do you mean?

What I mean roughly is that it ought to be possible to limit infection to perhaps a total of twice the current number of cases - say 1000 people in the UK. That would be one in 60,000 of the population - rarer than most really rare diseases.

I think the situation in Wuhan is something like one person in a thousand affected. We tend to think they've all got it but absolutely not And it seems spread is almost brought to a halt. The sparser the cases the easier to halt. It just needs commitment. SARS was halted. Ebola was halted.

 

[Sasha]

What I mean roughly is that it ought to be possible to limit infection to perhaps a total of twice the current number of cases - say 1000 people in the UK. That would be one in 60,000 of the population - rarer than most really rare diseases.

But as long as it's in the population at all, won't it keep spreading and multiplying the number of cases, unless we take ongoing extreme measures? I thought it was very easy to transmit and that each case was infecting about four people on average.

 

[Jonathan Edwards]

But as long as it's in the population at all, won't it keep spreading and multiplying the number of cases, unless we take ongoing extreme measures? I thought it was very easy to transmit and that each case was infecting about four people on average.

I don't think the evidence points t that. As far as I know even the cluster of cases that came from the French chalet were all traced and the spread stopped. It is not that difficult to stop spread in most cases it seems. The problem comes with certain individuals who for some reason spread widely without knowing they infected but they are probably less than one in ten of cases - maybe much less. I am working on the basis of not catching this by being careful - even if there comes a point where 20% of people have it at one point in time.

If the mortality rate was 50% the spread of Covid-19 would have been stopped long ago - just like ebola - it is just a matter of commitment.

 

[Trish]

It would be interesting to find out how many the UK government minister spread the virus to, given that she did not self isolate until a couple of days after symptoms started and was in close proximity to a lot of people in that time.

 

[Jonathan Edwards]

Some time back I suggested cleaning your hands with meths.
Now you can discover the opinions of my much more famous nephew Al - at least on mixing meths (surgical spirit) with aloe vera. I think he is toeing the party line here though.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/science-and-disease/watch-make-hand-sanitiser-shouldnt/

 

[Kitty]

Now you can discover the opinions of my much more famous nephew Al - at least on mixing meths (surgical spirit) with aloe vera.

I don't even use the pre-made stuff, as it (along with everything else that's not made for eczema sufferers) will begin to split the skin on my hands within 24 hours of starting using it. Probably somewhat counterproductive when it comes to excluding bugs...