Category: Health & Medicine

So How Deadly is Coronavirus? You’re Most Likely to Die if You’re a Man, Elderly and Have an Underlying Heart Condition, Stats Suggest

Men are 65 per cent more likely than women to die from coronavirus, according to statistics.

Figures from the World Health Organization and Chinese scientists have revealed that 1.7 per cent of women who catch the virus will die compared to 2.8 per cent of men, even though neither sex is more likely to catch it.

More than 98,000 people around the world have now been diagnosed with the virus, which causes a disease called COVID-19, and at least 3,383 have died.

Some experts have put the higher risk among men down to higher smoking and drinking rates – both habits weaken the immune system, making people more likely to get ill.

The elderly and infirm have also been found to more at risk of coronavirus, with 10.5 per cent of heart disease patients expected to die if they catch the deadly virus.

Death rates among people with diabetes – of which there are four million in the UK and 34m in the US – are expected to be around 7.3 per cent, while six per cent of patients who have high blood pressure might die if infected.

Some 5.6 per cent of cancer sufferers infected with the coronavirus would be expected to die along with 6.3 per cent of people with long-term lung diseases.

In the US, at least 233 people have now been confirmed to have the coronavirus, and 12 have died from it, while in the UK there has been one death among 116 cases.

Figures from the World Health Organization and Chinese scientists has revealed that 1.7 per cent of woman who catch the virus will die compared to 2.8 per cent of men (pictured, a graphic showing those most likely at risk from the virus)

Coronavirus Updates: SXSW Canceled; 21 Aboard Princess Cruise Ship Infected; 7 More States Report Cases

A second medical screener who checks travelers at Los Angeles International Airport has been confirmed to have the coronavirus, one of two new cases reported in Los Angeles County Friday.

The screener is linked to another medical screener who worked in the same quarantine station and was confirmed to have the virus earlier this week, Barbara Ferrer, director of the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health, said at a press conference Friday.

A second new case was a traveler in a group of people who visited Italy, several of whom were earlier confirmed to have the virus. The county has confirmed 13 cases of the virus, and one has been “resolved,” Ferrer said.

Coronavirus Cases Near 100,000 as Countries Struggle to Contain Spread: In the U.S., there have been 233 confirmed cases and 12 deaths, mostly in the state of Washington.

The number of confirmed coronavirus cases globally neared 100,000 on Friday, as infections outside of China continued to mount and many countries and cities struggled to get the epidemic under control.

There were 98,698 confirmed cases of the virus world-wide, more than a fifth of which were in countries other than China, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University. South Korea, the second worst-hit country, reported another jump in infections, bringing its tally to 6,593. The novel coronavirus is now in around 90 countries, less than three months after it was first identified in the central Chinese city of Wuhan in December.

Chinese health authorities on Friday reported 143 new infections, but said that for the first time there were no new cases in the wider Hubei province outside of its capital of Wuhan in the previous day. The vast majority of China’s 80,555 cases have been in Hubei province, and authorities in late January locked down Wuhan and neighboring cities to help contain the disease’s spread.

Globally, 3,383 individuals have died from the illness known as Covid-19 and 55,444 have recovered. In the U.S., there have been 233 confirmed cases and 12 deaths, mostly in the state of Washington, where some schools in the Seattle area will be closed for two weeks and companies have told employees to work from home.
On Friday, a top Hong Kong university released research that surmised the “fatality risk” for symptomatic Covid-19 patients was 1.4%, based on data its researchers analyzed from the city of Wuhan.

That is lower than the 3.4% mortality rate cited earlier this week by the World Health Organization, which was calculated from the number of deaths relative to the total number of confirmed infections.

Italy shutters all schools, universities as COVID-19 death toll reaches 107.

March 4 (UPI) — Italian education officials closed all schools and universities Wednesday in reaction to a coronavirus outbreak that has killed 107 people in the country.

Education Minister Lucia Azzolina made the announcement with Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte during a news conference at Palazzo Chigi, Conte’s residence in Rome…………

Italy’s Civil Protection Agency said that in addition to the deaths, there were 2,706 confirmed cases of the COVID-19 disease in the country as of Wednesday. Most were centered in the Lombardy region, with smaller clusters in Emilia-Romagna, Veneto, Piedmont, the Marche, Campania, Liguria, Tuscany, Lazio, Friuli Venezia Giulia, Sicily, Puglia, Abruzzo, Trento, Molise, Umbria, Bolzano, Calabria, Sardinia and Basilicata.

Some 276 people have recovered from the disease.

Iran’s coronavirus response: Pride, paranoia, secrecy, chaos

Nearly three dozen Iranian government officials and members of parliament are infected, and a senior adviser to the supreme leader has died.

The Health Ministry has proposed sending 300,000 militia members door to door on a desperate mission to sanitize homes. The top prosecutor has warned that anyone hoarding face masks and other public health equipment risks the death penalty.

Iran’s leaders confidently predicted just two weeks ago that the coronavirus contagion ravaging China would not be a problem in their country. They even bragged of exporting face masks to their Chinese trading partners.

Now Iran is battered by coronavirus infections that have killed 77 people, among the most outside of China, officials said Tuesday. But instead of receiving government help, overwhelmed doctors and nurses say they have been warned by security forces to keep quiet. And some officials say Tehran’s hierarchy is understating the true extent of the outbreak — probably, experts contend, because it will be viewed as a failure that enemies will exploit.

As the world wrestles with the spread of the coronavirus, the epidemic in Iran is a lesson in what happens when a secretive state with limited resources tries to play down an outbreak and then finds it very difficult to contain.

Feds sending health experts to a Washington hospital as state’s death toll from coronavirus reaches nine

This bug gets loose in another nursing home and we’ll see the same thing.

Two more residents of King County, Washington, have died from the coronavirus, bringing the state’s total to nine, as a top health official tells US senators he is deploying more personnel to a Kirkland hospital where most of the patients died.

The two additional victims actually died before the previously reported deaths, on February 26. They were identified as a woman in her 80s who died at her family home and man in his 50s who died at Harborview Medical Center in Seattle, county health officials said in a statement.

Both were residents of Life Care Center, a chain of long-term nursing facilities that is linked to many of the fatal cases, officials said.

The state has had at least 21 cases. Eight of those who died were from King County, and one was from Snohomish County, county officials said. At least six of the patients died at EvergreenHealth in Kirkland, where the federal health experts are being sent.

Dr. Robert Kadlec, the assistant secretary of preparedness and response for the US Department of Health and Human Services, described to a US Senate committee the type of experts he was hoping to send across the country.

“We’re looking to employ and deploy some of our national disaster medical system personnel as well as other federal health care personnel to assist at the Evergreen long-term treatment facility,” he said.

At the Life Care Center that county officials say was home to at least nine of the patients who came down with coronavirus, more than 50 residents and staff members were experiencing symptoms and were tested for the virus, King County health officer Jeffrey Duchin said Monday.

“Current residents and associates continue to be monitored closely, specifically for an elevated temperature, cough and/or shortness of breath,” officials said in a statement on the Life Care website. “Any resident displaying these symptoms is placed in isolation. Associates are screened prior to beginning work and upon leaving.”

A US Department of Homeland Security facility in King County was shut down Tuesday after officials learned an employee had visited a relative at Life Care, acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf said during a House hearing.

GA governor confirms 2 cases of COVID-19 in Fulton County.

Well, Delta airlines does have that hub in Atlanta. What should we expect?

ATLANTA, Ga. (WATE) — Georgia governor Brian Kemp and state public health officials confirmed Monday night the state’s first two COVID-19 coronavirus cases.

According to a news release from the Georgia Department of Public Health, the two cases involve residents of the same household in Fulton County. Both people have mild symptoms and they were being isolated at home with other relatives to keep the illness from spreading.

One of the patients had recently returned from Italy, the release stated.

Earlier Monday evening, Gov. Kemp spoke with U.S. Vice President Mike Pence about the two confirmed coronavirus cases, the news release stated, and the Governor’s Coronavirus Task Force was briefed via conference call at roughly 9:30 p.m. Monday.

We knew that Georgia would likely have confirmed cases of COVID-19, and we planned for it. The immediate risk of COVID-19 to the general public, however, remains low at this time,” said Kathleen E. Toomey, M.D., M.P.H, DPH commissioner. “I cannot emphasize enough the need for all Georgians to follow the simple precautions that DPH always urges to prevent the spread of respiratory viruses.”

Coronavirus in Washington state: 6 dead, 12 others infected

‘The elderly and ill’ were already on the list of those most susceptible to this bug. That it caused these deaths isn’t surprising. That it got loose as has is thought as it indicates someone was slacking off on precautions for a facility like this.

SEATTLE – Six people have now died from the coronavirus in the Puget Sound area and at least 12 others have been infected, health officials said Monday, as King County’s top executive issued an emergency declaration in response to the outbreak.

The newest victims in King County include:

– A man in his 70s, a resident of LifeCare who was hospitalized at EvergreenHealth. The man had underlying health conditions and died Sunday.

A woman in her 70s, a resident of LifeCare, was hospitalized at EvergreenHealth. She had underlying health conditions and died Sunday.

– A woman in her 80s, who was hospitalized at EvergreenHealth and was one of the earlier reported infected and died Sunday.

And a Snohomish County man in his 40s at EvergreenHealth has also died. He had been a previously-announced infection.

Overall, five deaths are King County residents and one death a Snohomish County resident. Of the 12 other reported, confirmed infections, 10 are King County residents and two are from Snohomish County.

Researchers at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and the University of Washington on Sunday said they had evidence the virus may have been circulating in the state for up to six weeks undetected — a finding that, if true, could mean hundreds of undiagnosed cases in the area.

In Kirkland, city officials announced that now 27 of their firefighters and two of their police officers are in quarantine as they had been responding to the Kirkland LifeCare Center over the past week.

U.S. Coronavirus Outbreak Widens: Rhode Island confirms its first case of the virus, while number of cases in King County, Wash., rises to six.

New cases of the novel coronavirus in Washington, California and Rhode Island on Sunday raised fears of a wider spread of the disease in U.S. communities, prompting federal officials to ramp up efforts to test for and fight the widening outbreak.

Health officials are focused on a cluster of confirmed cases in Washington state where some patients had no clear path to exposure, including the first death from the virus in the U.S. Those cases, and several others in Oregon and California signal that there might be wider spread of the virus in some American communities with many cases still undiagnosed.

Washington state declares emergency after first patient dies from coronavirus in US

Washington state declared a state of emergency Saturday only hours after a man in his 50s with underlying health problems was identified as the first person in the U.S. to die from the coronavirus outbreak.

Washington state public health officials said two additional confirmed cases of the virus are associated with a longterm care facility in the state. Officials said 27 patients and 25 staff members at the Life Care Center of Kirkland had reported symptoms similar to the coronavirus. The facility has 108 residents and 180 employees.

The two additional cases include a facility staff worker in their 40s, who was in satisfactory condition, and a facility resident in their 70s, who was in serious condition.

The patient who died was identified by state and county health officials as a man in his 50s. The patient was being treated at EvergreenHealth Medical Center in Kirkland, Washington, with serious respiratory issues, according to hospital spokesperson Julia Irwin.

Coronavirus spreads to Washington nursing home

One of the patients, a woman in her 70s, is in serious condition, said Jeff Duchin, Seattle and King County health officer. The other patient is a woman in her 40s who is health care worker at the facility, Life Care Center of Kirkland…………

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is sending a team of experts to help local officials investigate the cases. Officials have already found that 27 of 108 residents at the nursing home report some symptoms of respiratory illness, Duchin said, and 25 of the 180 staff do, too. Health officials are investigating these cases but they don’t yet know if the people are sick with coronavirus.

Person dies from coronavirus in Washington state, first in the US, health officials say

Sources in Washington state had heard of this report last night, but as it was unconfirmed at the time, I didn’t post it. Not that this should have been an unexpected thing.

Health officials in Washington confirmed Saturday that one person has died from coronavirus, marking the first disease-related death in the U.S.

Seattle and King County Public Health officials issued a vague media advisory announcing the first COVID-19 death in the U.S., adding that there was an undisclosed number of new cases as well.

News of the death comes on the heels of three new cases in California, Oregon and Washington in which the patients were infected by unknown means. They had not recently traveled overseas or had come into contact with anyone who had.

President Donald Trump said during a press conference Saturday that 22 people in the U.S. have been stricken by the new coronavirus and that additional cases are “likely.”

“Unfortunately, one person passed away overnight,” Trump said.

“She was a wonderful woman a medically high-risk patient in her late 50s. Four others are very ill. Thankfully 15 are either recovered fully or they’re well on their way to recovery. And in all cases, they’ve been let go in their home.

2 new coronavirus cases emerge in Washington, in King and Snohomish counties

Here you go Bob.

SHORELINE — Two new COVID-19 cases have been confirmed in Washington, in a King County woman and a Snohomish County teenager, state and local officials said Friday night.

The woman had recently been to South Korea, a country affected by the outbreak. But the Snohomish County patient, a high school student, did not recently travel to any countries affected by SARS-CoV-2, the official name of the novel coronavirus, said Snohomish Health District officer Dr. Chris Spitters.

“It’s concerning that this individual did not travel, since this individual acquired it in the community,” Washington state health officer Dr. Kathy Lofy told reporters Friday at a news conference at the Department of Health Shoreline. “We really believe now that the risk is increasing.”

Both cases are considered “presumptive positive,” as test results were confirmed at the Shoreline site Friday, but are also being sent to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) for confirmation. A case awaiting confirmation by the CDC was also reported Friday in Oregon.

The case in Oregon, two in California and the new Snohomish County case do not appear linked to travel to a country affected by the outbreak.

The Snohomish County student, who attends Henry M. Jackson High School in Mill Creek, became ill Monday with a fever, body aches and a headache, and visited two clinics in the county this week, Spitters said.

Because he was feeling better, he returned to school Friday morning, but after his tests came back positive, he went home before attending class…………

The King County patient is a woman in her 50s, said Dr. Jeffrey Duchin, health officer at Public Health – Seattle & King County. She returned to Washington from South Korea on Feb. 23 and worked for one day before developing symptoms, Duchin said. Her husband then called county health officials to report her symptoms and travel history.

She did not interact with the public during her workday, Duchin said, and is recovering at home “without complications.” A workplace investigation is underway.

Her husband has not shown any symptoms. He is also under home quarantine………

The 35-year-old Snohomish County man who was the United States’ first patient confirmed to have the virus is considered fully recovered. He had recently visited Wuhan, China, where the global outbreak began in December.

Two New Community-Spread Coronavirus Cases Found In Northern California, Oregon

That second case I posted the article about earlier? Now there’s a third.

On Friday evening, authorities confirmed that two people – a woman from Santa Clara County, California, and a patient from Washington County, Oregon – had contracted coronavirus from unknown sources within the community.

According to The Washington Post, the woman from Santa Clara County, in Northern California, is 65-years-old and has not recently traveled outside the country. The patient tested positive for coronavirus on Friday, according to “people familiar with the case.”

The second case, which has occurred in an unknown individual from Washington County, Oregon, was confirmed by state health authorities, reports the news agency. The patient, who is an adult and currently at Westside Medical Center in Hillsboro, Oregon, didn’t have contact with other people known to have the coronavirus, and had not recently traveled outside the country.

The two cases confirmed Friday night represent the second and third community spread cases that have been found in the United States. The first case, a person from Solano County, California, was the first confirmed instance of community-spread coronavirus in the United States, and the patient is currently at the UC Davis Medical Center in Sacramento, California.

The two California cases have occurred within 100 miles of Travis Air Force Base in Northern California, where some of the 400 U.S. citizens aboard the Diamond Princess Cruise Ship were for quarantine. As of Thursday evening, six passengers from the cruise ship out of the 3,711 people on board have died, including five Japanese citizens and a British citizen, reports Forbes.

The Coronavirus Outbreak: How Democratic Taiwan Outperformed Authoritarian China.
Taiwan’s example proves that the free flow of information is the best treatment for the coronavirus outbreak.

The novel strain of coronavirus (officially dubbed COVID-19) that originated in Wuhan, China has spread to almost 30 countries, including regional neighbors like South Korea, Japan, and Taiwan, and countries as far away as the United States, Canada, and Brazil. As of February 26, more than 81,000 cases have been confirmed worldwide, and the death toll has surpassed 2,700, mostly in China. The epicenter of the virus crisis, China, has been suffering socially and economically not only on account of the virus, but also because of the Chinese government’s problematic policies.

The Chinese government has been working to tackle the coronavirus outbreak by using multiple measures to contain the spread of the virus as well as information about the outbreak. Most famously, the government imposed an extreme quarantine in Wuhan on January 23, which is still in place over a month later. Many cities in Hubei province and elsewhere in China have also implemented lockdowns or restrictions while cases of infection continue to increase.

Besides these measures in the physical world, the Chinese government has attempted to quarantine discussion of the epidemic in the realm of public opinion. From the first appearance of the new virus last December to the lockdown of massive cities in mid-January, the Chinese authorities chose to restrict public access to the information about the epidemic by silencing people, most famously the whistleblower Doctor Li Wenliang. In the early stages of the outbreak, the Chinese government issued a statement asserting that “the disease is preventable and controllable,” and announcements sent by Chinese officials to World Health Organization (WHO) office in Beijing claimed that there was no evidence of the disease being transmitted between humans.

But the Chinese scientists writing in The Lancet medical journal later revealed that the first patient known to have contracted the novel coronavirus had no link to the Wuhan seafood market that the Chinese government pointed to as the source of the outbreak. This would suggest that the virus all along was spreading via human-to-human transmission – and that the government was lying to the public from the very beginning of this catastrophe.

Chinese news outlet Caixin covered the story of Dr. Li Wenliang, who became famous after being detained for posting about the new virus online. Li later died of the coronavirus himself, inspiring rare public anger against China’s censorship system. “There should be more than one voice in a healthy society,” Li told Caixin. When his death was reported, Chinese social media platforms were flooded with netizens’ anger and calls for freedom of speech. It seemed for a moment that the Chinese media and civil society had won more space for free speech, granted by the Chinese government as a safety valve for the pressure building from the bottom up.

But in fact, the central government began tightening its media and online controls soon, after a short period of tolerance. In February 2020, two Chinese citizen journalists disappeared after continuously reporting stories about the outbreak and posted them online. The Chinese government then expelled three Wall Street Journal reporters, taking advantage of accusations of racism over an editorial headline. In the meantime, China’s top cyber regulator required online technology companies to “create a good online atmosphere” for fighting the virus, and many social media apps and accounts were removed because of their posts of so-called harmful content. The Chinese propaganda department guided the domestic media to cover only positive stories on the coronavirus crisis relief work being done by Chinese authorities. The central government even dispatched journalists to the center of outbreak to accomplish this mission.

Whether China is stepping up propaganda or strengthening media and cyber controls, its primary goal is to maintain regime stability and social control, not to contain the virus outbreak.

On the contrary, Taiwan, a country that has been excluded from the WHO for decades thanks to China’s political pressure, has demonstrated that the better way to contain the coronavirus is not to quarantine news about epidemic, but to make it easier and more convenient for people to access relevant information………..

Coronavirus infects woman in Japan for the second time, a first in the country

Okay, this is either 1, when the woman was tested clear, it was a ‘false negative’, or 2, she was reinfected by someone, or 3, the bug has ‘crypto’ capability, the ability to hide within the body, then spring forth anew.

A woman in Japan tested positive for the coronavirus for the second time on Wednesday, as the country grips with 190 cases separate from the Diamond Princess cruise ship outbreak, according to multiple reports.

The tour bus guide in her 40s first tested positive in late January and was released from the hospital after recovering. She was readmitted after having a sore throat and chest pains, according to the local government.

It’s a first known case of a second positive test in Japan, which prompted Health Minister Katsunobu Kato to inform Japan’s central government of the need to review previous patient lists and monitor the condition of those previously discharged, according to Reuters.

“Once you have the infection, it could remain dormant and with minimal symptoms, and then you can get an exacerbation if it finds its way into the lungs,” said Philip Tierno Jr., professor of microbiology and pathology at NYU School of Medicine, according to the news organization.

The virus can reportedly spread without symptoms showing up, which forces officials to play catch up and makes it far more difficult to manage.

Health officials analyzed the implications of a patient testing positive after having an initial recovery. Second positive tests have been reported in China.

“I’m not certain that this is not bi-phasic, like anthrax,” Tierno Jr. said in regards to the disease being able to go away before reappearing.

In case you missed it.

Trump Says Coronavirus Vaccine Coming Along ‘Rapidly, ‘ Appoints Pence to Head Task Force

As fears spread of a possible coronavirus outbreak in the U.S, President Trump addressed the nation in a Wednesday evening news conference at the White House to discuss how his administration was handling the virus threat — saying that a vaccine is being developed “rapidly” and “coming along very well.”

However, Anthony Fauci, who heads the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said later at the press conference that a vaccine would not be applicable to the epidemic for a “year to a year and a half,” due to delays from testing, development, production and distribution.

Northern California Confirms 1st Coronavirus Case of Unknown Origin

The nation’s first coronavirus case of unknown origin has been confirmed in Northern California, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) confirmed Wednesday.

“It is a confirmed case. There is one in Northern California,” CDC spokesman Scott Pauley told the Sacramento Bee.

The new case brings the number of infected in the United States to 60, which includes people who’ve been repatriated to the U.S. The CDC said the person contracted the virus without traveling outside the U.S. or coming into close contact with another infected patient, The Washington Post reported.