Health officials in New Zealand, a country that has a strict 14-day quarantine in place for arriving travelers, released a case study on Friday that details the risks of traveling on long-haul flights during the coronavirus pandemic — even if negative coronavirus tests are required before the flight.
The report details a coronavirus outbreak linked through DNA analysis to one passenger on an 18-hour flight from Dubai to New Zealand in September. The traveler, who tested negative for the coronavirus with a polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test within 48 hours of the flight, was contagious but pre-symptomatic onboard the plane, and infected at least four other passengers.
In total there were seven cases linked to the flight, which had 86 passengers onboard.
After 23 consecutive days of no new cases, the Victorian Premier is expected to announce a further lifting of restrictions in the Australian state of Victoria. These will largely be increasing patron caps at various businesses, restaurants, etc.
The hard lockdown in the state of South Australia is expected to relax tonight, after a spate of new cases relating to workers from a quarantine hotel. There have been no new cases over the last couple of days, it looks like.
Most of the rest of Australia has no new cases stemming from local infection; there have been some new cases in international arrivals in quarantine.
That’s great news, galen; thanks for the update. I hope Australia can keep a lid on it all.
I’m pretty pleased, yes. It’s been a pain for me personally, and has required much greater work and sacrifice by others, but I think the results are worth it.
Anyway, here’s the Premier’s statement., with the first section below.
Three months ago, Victoria had 4293 active cases. Today we have one.
It’s an incredible achievement. And the clearest evidence there is of our determination to not only get on top of this virus – but to squash it.
Back then, the goal – the hope – was something a little more ‘normal’ for Christmas.
Today, because of the efforts of every Victorian, that’s exactly what we’ve been able to achieve.
I’m certainly not going to tout the US numbers as anything positive, but I don’t think this is likely to be a fair comparison. India has, to date, administered fewer total tests than the US, and has about 1/5 the number of tests per million population, according to Worldometers.com. I think we would probably have to compare excess deaths for a fair comparison.
No; we don’t. I wasn’t making an argument.
They had to call in the National Guard.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/11/21/us/el-paso-national-guard-morgue-coronavirus-trnd/index.html
58,494,754 total cases
1,386,570 dead
40,467,900 recovered
In the US:
12,450,666 total cases
261,790 dead
7,403,847 recovered
Yesterday’s numbers for comparison:
Who said you were making an argument?
Just FYI, according to Johns Hopkins, of the 20 countries most affected by COVID, the US is 8th in deaths per 100,000 population (both confirmed cases and healthy people). India is 20th.
Per “observed case fatality ratio,” the US drops to 14th, and India moves up one slot, to 19th.
That’s still based on what’s reported. The numbers look sketchy though.
Thanks for the illuminating article. Your earlier comment made me curious. I was merely posting the best answer I found. I have to laugh at myself for not considering that if it were that simple, you’d have already done it. 
Well, the entire continent of Africa is doing better than the USA numbers wise. While there’s likely a bunch of testing/reporting problems, studies by the WHO seem to show they are indeed doing better. Nobody talks about replicating African policies though.
Oh, not at all. Snoboarder_Bo’s comparison made me curious, and after checking worldometers, it looked to me like there was reason to think that the counted cases were off by a bigger factor there than here,* so the numbers would not really be comparable. I posted about the worldometers numbers. Later, I looked for an excess death number, but it looks like they aren’t making the data available for researchers to calculate that. Your info is part of the picture, too.
*We know it’s off here, too. There’s ongoing research to try to figure out how many total cases each positive test result represents. It seems like it’s likely to be a much bigger number in India because there are so few tests.
A doctor in Arizona just arrived on shit and tweets that he was told there are NO MORE ICU BEDS in the entire state.
I hope that was meant to be “on shift.” (Not to make light of the situation, which is not good in the slightest.)
But, but, but…according to our elected leaders and most of the people out here, COVID is a hoax and masks don’t work.
I know, all of those patients were bused in from other states, right?
My mother cannot live alone anymore. She is flying out here tomorrow. We have been quarantining, as has she. She will be using a mask and shield on the plane and will wipe all surfaces down before she sits down. The only other options for getting her here from Idaho are not good either. I know that she shouldn’t be traveling, but her only other plan if she stays in Idaho is to go into assisted living which is pretty much a death sentence.
I am beyond worried about this.
That was probably a typo, she probably meant “A doctor in Arizona just arrived in shit.” cause that’s the storm those folks are dealing with.
oops?
Shanghai Pudong Airport starts testing all staff after COVID-19 cases discovered
Shanghai Pudong Airport started on Sunday night testing all staff after the airport found several cargo handlers and close contacts tested positive for the coronavirus over the past several days.
Meanwhile, flights into Shanghai were largely cancelled on Sunday night. As of 11pm, 277 flights had been cancelled, according to figures compiled by airline data tracker VariFlight app. A video posted online shows the road to the airport was severely congested.