I missed posting yesterday’s numbers due to the maintenance and to my own need for sleep; sorry.
Today tho:
78,766 confirmed infected
There have also been some news developments:
Judge halts plan to move virus patients to California city
A federal judge issued a temporary restraining order late Friday to halt the transportation of anyone who has tested positive for the new coronavirus to Costa Mesa, a city of 110,000 in the heart of Orange County. U.S. District Judge Josephine L. Stanton scheduled a hearing on the issue Monday.
City officials quickly sought court intervention after learning from the California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services that U.S. officials planned to start moving patients to a state-owned facility in Costa Mesa as early as Sunday.
They said in court documents that local officials were not included in the planning effort and wanted to know why the Fairview Developmental Center was considered a suitable quarantine site and what kind of safeguards were in place to prevent the possible transmission of the virus that has spread worldwide.
Trump Regime Overruled CDC, Flew Coronavirus-Infected Americans on Plane With Healthy People: Report
One of the U.S. State Department’s evacuation planes was loaded with 328 Americans on Monday when new lab results came back showing that 14 of the passengers had tested positive for the coronavirus. The CDC’s principal deputy director, Anne Schuchat, recommended that the 14 passengers be taken off the plane and receive medical attention in Japan. But Trump officials like Robert Kadlec, assistant secretary for preparedness and response at HHS, disagreed with the CDC, according to the Washington Post.
Kadlec, who previously worked as a special assistant to President George W. Bush and serves as a member of the Trump regime’s coronavirus task force, reportedly argued that the planes that had been chartered by the government contained seats which could be cordoned off for any infected passengers. This news wasn’t shared with the other healthy passengers on the flight, many of whom only learned about flying with infected passengers after they landed in the U.S. and saw news reports.
South Korea & Italy continue to see a rapid escalation of infections .
South Korea reported an eight-fold jump in viral infections Saturday with more than 400 cases mostly linked to a church and a hospital, while the death toll in Iran climbed to six and a dozen towns in Italy effectively went into lockdowns as health officials around the world battle a new virus that has spread from China.
Some virus clusters have shown no direct link to travel to China. The spread in Italy prompted local authorities in the Lombardy and Veneto regions to order schools, businesses, and restaurants closed and to cancel sporting events and Masses. Hundreds of residents and workers who came into contact with an estimated 79 people confirmed infected in Italy were in isolation pending test results. Two people infected with the virus have died.
South Korea has reported 433 cases and its third death from the virus, a man in his 40s who was found dead at home and posthumously tested positive. There’s concern that the country’s death toll could grow. In and around South Korea’s fourth-largest city, Daegu, health workers scrambled to screen thousands. Virus patients with signs of pneumonia or other serious conditions at the Cheongdo hospital were transferred to other facilities, 17 of them in critical condition, Vice Health Minister Kim Gang-lip told reporters.
79,360 confirmed infected
South Korea continues to see more infections confirmed as does China .
The 161 new cases bring South Korea’s total to 763 cases, and two more deaths raise its toll to seven.
China also Monday reported 409 new cases, raising the mainland’s total to 77,150 after a zigzag pattern of increases in recent days. The 150 new deaths from the COVID-19 illness raised China’s total to 2,592 and showed a spike after hovering below 100 for four days. All but one death were in Hubei province, where the outbreak emerged in December.
Here in Padua they’ve now cancelled practically all my lessons (I’m a free-lance teacher) if not my rent, and all public events and markets. We’re not under quarantine in that we can come and go as we please, but it’s no fun at all. Some of my friends are so scared they won’t even leave the house apart from grocery shopping.
Iran is now reporting they have had 50 deaths from Coronovirus.
That is massive. More than any Chinese province other then Hubei. Must mean thousands infected.
Twitter
Edit: This is apparently an official in Qom, but the central govt is denying it.
Bit more information on above from AP .
Also: Kuwait, Afghanistan and Bahrain join the infected club.
Tehran has closed its schools for at least a couple of days, and several of Iran’s neighbors have closed their borders .
80,147 confirmed infected
Bahrain stopped all flights to and from both Dubai and Sharjah UAE today.
The move by Bahrain, a small island off the coast of Saudi Arabia, suggested its monarchy had doubts about screenings of incoming passengers in Dubai and nearby Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates. It said the ban was immediate and would last at least 48 hours.
Bahrain counted its first case of the coronavirus that causes the COVID-19 illness on Monday in a school bus driver who transited Dubai while coming from Iran.
US and SKorea may cut back military moves due to coronavirus
After a meeting at the Pentagon to review a full range of issues, including a standoff over U.S. demands that Seoul pay a much bigger share of the cost of hosting American forces, Defense Secretary Mark Esper and South Korean Defense Minister Jeong Kyeong-doo told reporters that coronavirus is a threat to their schedule of military exercises.
The exercises are held periodically throughout the year and are intended to prepare troops and commanders for potential combat against North Korea.
Esper said the top South Korean and American commanders in Seoul “are looking at scaling back” some training exercises “due to concerns about the coronavirus.” He added that he is confident that commanders will find a way to protect troops while also ensuring that both countries “remain fully ready to deal with any threats that we might face together.”
Jeong said the coronavirus situation in his country is “quite serious” and has compelled authorities to limit the movement of troops, which makes it more difficult to conduct exercises with American forces. He said there have been 13 confirmed coronavirus cases in the South Korean military.
[url=]White House unveils $2.5B emergency coronavirus plan
The White House budget office said the funds are for vaccines, treatment and protective equipment. The request was immediately slammed by Democrats as insufficient and came as coronavirus fears were credited with Monday’s 1,000-plus point drop in the Dow Jones Industrial Average and are increasingly seen as a potential political threat to President Donald Trump.
The request was released Monday evening and came as key government accounts were running low. The Department of Health and Human Services had already tapped into an emergency infectious disease rapid response fund and was seeking to transfer more than $130 million from other HHS accounts to combat the virus but is pressing for more.
It has already been mentioned…Dow plunges 1,000 points on coronavirus fears, 3.5% drop is worst in two years
but check out this line:
The 10 year Ts can affect mortgage rates. I just happened to have my paperwork ready to go today, and pulled a refi at 1% lower than my old rate. I don’t know if they will go down even lower or what, but mortgage rates are really low as of today.
I’m going to go ahead and call this a pandemic.
It fits the WHO’s definition . I’m not sure why they are holding off.
dtilque
February 25, 2020, 7:22am
111
I noticed the wuhanvirus page has Iran with 12 deaths and only 64 cases. That’s way higher death rate than anywhere else. But I also heard they’re having difficulty getting test kits due to US sanctions. So there’s likely many more cases there that have not been confirmed.
Interesting page here. Study of 72,000 COVID-19 patients finds 2.3% death rate | CIDRAP
It states a 2.3% case-fatality rate, much worse in the elderly.
PookahMacPhellimey:
Here in Padua they’ve now cancelled practically all my lessons (I’m a free-lance teacher) if not my rent, and all public events and markets. We’re not under quarantine in that we can come and go as we please, but it’s no fun at all. Some of my friends are so scared they won’t even leave the house apart from grocery shopping.
It looks like they did cancel Carnival in Venice.
Interesting new The Atlantic article . 2020 is pretty likely to be the new 1919.
Iran’s deputy health minister, in charge of Coronavirus taskforce, contracts Coronavirus. :smack:
Meanwhile a hotel in Spain’s Canary Islands is on lock-down , after an Italian doctor staying there tests positive.
Yeah, gotta love the PR image of the deputy health minister on video mopping his forehead and looking sick testing positive for the virus the next day.
Hmm… this is going to be a problem for Iran’s government, given how many briefings the guy was giving and that he has probably exposed a lot of the top-level of government.
C3
February 25, 2020, 6:07pm
117
CDC is telling Americans to be prepared for disruptions to daily life . I’m more worried about this part of it all than I am of contracting and dying of the disease.
Edit: sorry! Meant to put this in the IMHO thread!
Me, too.
Also, it doesn’t help that the CDC isn’t long on both what to do and what NOT to do in preparation. “Get extra soap, hand sanitizer, cough drops, tissues, and chicken soup” as suggestions, for example. Also “Please DON’T run out and strip all milk and bread from grocery shelves this afternoon”.
Work from home? That’s nice - if you can. What about us poor schmoes who can’t work from home due to the nature of our jobs? AMF YO-YO?
C3
February 25, 2020, 7:14pm
119
I noticed the lack of details, as well. I looked to see if there were other articles that expanded on their comments, but nope! All we need now is a run on the banks and people stocking up their armories!
There is some serious fast-tracking going on; health officials recognize that COVID-19 is a serious and urgent problem: NIH clinical trial of remdesivir to treat COVID-19 begins .
A randomized, controlled clinical trial to evaluate the safety and efficacy of the investigational antiviral remdesivir in hospitalized adults diagnosed with coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has begun at the University of Nebraska Medical Center (UNMC) in Omaha. The trial regulatory sponsor is the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health. This is the first clinical trial in the United States to evaluate an experimental treatment for COVID-19, the respiratory disease first detected in December 2019 in Wuhan, Hubei Province, China.
The first trial participant is an American who was repatriated after being quarantined on the Diamond Princess cruise ship that docked in Yokohama, Japan and volunteered to participate in the study. The study can be adapted to evaluate additional investigative treatments and to enroll participants at other sites in the U.S. and worldwide.