Virus

Police in Central China's Wuhan arrested 8 people spreading rumors about local outbreak of unidentifiable #pneumonia. Previous online posts said it was SARS. https://t.co/oVpk4EIYM7 pic.twitter.com/JXbK9pmq8v

— Global Times (@globaltimesnews) January 1, 2020

China said on Saturday that it would suspend all tour groups and the sale of flight and hotel packages for its citizens headed overseas, starting on Monday.
...
The Beijing city government also announced on Saturday that it would suspend all inter-province buses from Sunday, effectively limiting road travel into the capital.
...
Wuhan also tightened its restrictions further on Saturday with a ban on vehicle traffic in the city center, to begin at midnight.

The local government said some vehicles would be exempted, including shuttle buses and trucks moving supplies. Residents responded with frustration on social media. One woman, who said she was pregnant and near her due date, asked if she was supposed to walk to her gynecologist’s office.

AZ-5 wrote:a da se ovo desilo oko 1500te godine umrlo bi svih pola milijarde stanovnika sveta. otkrivate toplu vodu.

https://twitter.com/MeyerBjoern/status/1221155534281330689

Björn Meyer
@MeyerBjoern

Some thoughts on the #2019_nCov situation: it is clear now the virus is spreading fast. We are now in 5+ generations of human to human transmission. It becomes apparent that the virus is adapted well enough to sustain such a spread in an efficient way 1/n

The virus appears to preferentially infect the power respiratory tract. This is interesting and relevant because of virus loads for potential droplet transmission. The bigger report is that only around 40% develop fever, while it was around 99% for SARS 2/n

This is important because current screening methods focus on fever, thus miss 6 out of 10 people. At the same time the numbers reported, spread and timing don't add up, so that there is either a lot of underreporting (very likely) or that there is a large proportion of 3/n

Asymptomatic/subclinical cases (rather my bet). If so, the big question is: how infectious are these asymptomatic cases? We don't know. Early estimates suggest, the R0, the number each case infects more people on average is somewhere between 2-3. 4/n

Another point to figure out is SARS cases were only infectious after symptoms. For this virus we don't know yet, but a potential large number of asymptomatic cases and the speed of spread might suggest otherwise. I'm happy to be wrong on this one 5/n

The virus spreads fast through China, Asia but now to the US and Europe as well. What now? Can we stop it? - don't think so. The world is just too connected. Which means cases will appear almost anywhere favorably. Which is where? Places that allow for close human contact 6/n

This pretty much sounds like anywhere anyways. So what to do? Guess this is the big question but a complicated one. The diagnosis of cases seems to work well using qRT-PCR methods. So, this might cover maybe the 40% of cases developing fever.  7/n

Since the R0 is around 3, you want to pick up 3/4 or more of cases to limit cases. For me the important questions to figure out are: how long is the incubation period? How many cases are asymptomatic? Are only symptomatic cases infectious? How do you detect majority of cases? 8/n

I think this will be key. At the same time what can we do about symptomatic cases. Isolation and supportive treatment seems to be a good start. The most severe cases seem to have underlying health issues in many cases. Many cases seem to be older, i.e. 48yr +. 9/n

Also, something we saw for SARS. Is this something that can be addressed at the clinic? Not sure, maybe. There are no specific licensed drugs or vaccines out to treat. It already made the news that Moderna starts to look into a RNA-based vaccine. But let's be honest 10/n

Such vaccines take a long time I believe this will be too late for peak infections. What about antivirals? There is nothing licensed specifically.  There is a report out that the Chinese were able to successfully treat someone. Was it with an antiviral? We don't know yet 11/n

There are some candidates tested in early stages, some look promising. Time will tell. Until then the SARS approach might be promising - combination therapy with drugs such as nucleoside analogs, which drive the virus into generating detrimental mutations combined with 12/n

Immune stimulation, such as IFN. Overall, this might improve serious infections in many cases. Other than this, it's the simple improve your hygiene by washing your hands often, cover your nose/mouth when sneezing/coughing. Avoid confined places with many people 13/

Finally, I don't think panicking will help. But now it is a more rational approach that will help to reduce infections by a clear infection control approach which each country should communicate clearly and simply to their citizens. The rest needs figuring out. 14/end

#1 trending movie on @PrimeVideo right now is #Contagion from 2011. Wonder why... #coronavirus
pic.twitter.com/G9nOEGxnTX

— Josh Breslow (@JoshBreslowWKRN) January 25, 2020

Gargantua wrote:i stvarno, nagradno pitanje: šta će biti kad korona spiči neki afrički megapolis?

kapetanm wrote:Kondo idi dok možeš na ostrvo tvoje da ostane neki Srbin

#Breaking: First 'presumptive case' of coronavirus in Toronto. Patient is a man in his 50s who had visited Wuhan. Now at Sunnybrook hospital, health officials say. https://t.co/j3Lani9b1w

— Toronto Star (@TorontoStar) January 25, 2020