With 4 Deaths in Iran and More Cases on 3 Continents, Fears of Coronavirus Pandemic Risehttps://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/21/world/asia/china-coronavirus-iran.htmlHONG KONG — An alarming surge of new coronavirus cases outside China, with fears of a major outbreak in Iran, is threatening to transform the contagion into a global pandemic, as countries around the Middle East scrambled to close their borders and continents so far largely spared reported big upticks in the illness.In Iran, which had insisted as recently as Tuesday that it had no cases, the virus may now have reached most major cities, including Tehran, and has killed at least four people, according to health officials. Already, cases of travelers from Iran testing positive for the virus have turned up in Canada and Lebanon.
The number of cases also soared in South Korea, with the sudden spread tied to a secretive church where hundreds of congregants attended services with numerous people infected with the virus.
The United States now has 34 cases, with more expected, and Italy experienced a spike from three cases to 17 and ordered mandatory quarantine measures.
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The almost random nature of new reports and new deaths is an indication the virus is moving much faster than countries are reporting to the W.H.O., ...... The disturbing reports out of Tehran suggested the virus was being transmitted far more widely there than officials had previously acknowledged. While the country’s health officials confirmed only 18 cases by Friday, the number of deaths indicates the total is likely to be far higher.Four reported deaths probably mean at least 200 cases, said Michael T. Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota. If the virus kills about 2 percent of known victims, as Chinese doctors have reported, then the number of deaths can be multiplied by 50 to get a rough case estimate, he explained.
“People don’t die right away of this virus — it usually takes two or three weeks after cases start to spread for the first death,” Mr. Osterholm said. “So there may be a lot more cases, and a lot more deaths on the way. And we didn’t even know there was a problem in Iran before yesterday.”
A spokesman for the Health Ministry, Kianush Jahanpur, said on Friday there were more than 735 people hospitalized with flulike symptoms who were being tested for the virus.In Qom, schools and religious seminaries were shut down on Thursday as officials urged people to avoid gathering in large groups. But
on Friday, as Iranians went to vote in parliamentary elections, polling stations were open and the communal pools of ink for people to dip their fingers proving they voted were in wide use.With rumors spreading across the country on instant messaging services like Telegram, a confused and increasingly worried public watched as
Tehran’s largest metro station was suddenly closed. Workers wearing protective gear descended on the station, apparently responding to reports of sick commuters. It remained closed Friday night.... Mahmoud Sadeghi, an outspoken member of Parliament from Tehran, accused the government of “covering up the spread of an epidemic.”
Critics accused the government of playing down the disease, and failing to take strict precautions to prevent its arrival in the country, in order to avoid provoking China, a key trading partner and a lifeline for Iran’s economy in the face of U.S. sanctions.
The sanctions against Iran could hamper its ability to contain the spread of the virus.
“Iran does have problems accessing specialized medication for rare and special diseases (... like anti-virals)because of sanctions — either private companies or banks refuse to work with Iran in fear of U.S. secondary sanctions,” said Tara Sepehri Far, an Iran researcher at Human Rights Watch.
... “How many of these clusters and travel cases and prison outbreaks do we have to see before we realize that we’re just seeing the tip of the iceberg?” he said. “Testing is just getting set up around the world. There’s barely any in Africa right now. Even in the U.S., we’re testing travel cases — but we’re not testing in any meaningful way that will pick up cases that we didn’t suspect were there.”
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World Health Organisation Says 'Time Is Running Out To Contain the Outbreak'https://www.msn.com/en-my/news/national/coronavirus-warning-world-health-organisation-says-time-is-running-out-to-contain-the-outbreak/ar-BB10fKjpWorld health chiefs fear that time is running out to "contain the outbreak" of the deadly Covid-19 coronavirus.
The World Health Organisation warned that the timeframe to stop the situation becoming an international epidemic in a latest update on Friday evening.
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the organisation's director-general, questioned whether the outbreak is at a "tipping point" after new cases and deaths in Iran.
... He said it was "very concerning" that Iran had reported 18 cases and four deaths in just the past two days.
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CDC Prepares for Possibility Coronavirus Becomes a Pandemic and Businesses, Schools Need to be Closedhttps://www.cnbc.com/2020/02/21/us-health-officials-prepare-for-coronavirus-outbreak-to-become-pandemic.htmlThe CDC is working with state and local health departments to ready the public health workforce to respond to a possible pandemic.The agency is collaborating with supply chain partners, hospitals, pharmacies and manufacturers to understand what medical supplies are needed.
The CDC is reviewing all of its pandemic materials and adapting them to COVID-19.
“We’re not seeing community spread here in the United States, yet, but it’s very possible, even likely, that it may eventually happen,” Dr. Nancy Messonnier, director of the CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, told reporters on a conference call. “Our goal continues to be slowing the introduction of the virus into the U.S. This buys us more time to prepare communities for more cases and possibly sustained spread.”
... Messonnier pointed to China, where schools and businesses have been shuttered for weeks to contain the outbreak there, saying the U.S. may eventually need to do the same.“The day may come where we may need to implement such measures in this country,” she said.
... Of the 329 Americans brought back from Japan, Messonnier said 18 of them tested positive for COVID-19. She said it’s possible that some of those patients did not test positive before boarding the evacuation flights in Japan but that they were “already incubating the disease.”
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Coronavirus Outbreak Edges Closer to Pandemichttps://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/coronavirus-outbreak-edges-closer-to-pandemic/ar-BB10fJLZ?li=BBnb7Kz... Harvard epidemiologist Marc Lipsitch estimates that 40 to 70 percent of the human population could potentially be infected by the virus if it becomes pandemic. Not all of those people would get sick, he noted. The estimated death rate from covid-19 — roughly two out of 100 confirmed infections — may also drop over time as researchers get a better understanding of how widely the virus has spread.
The novel coronavirus may be particularly suited for stealth community transmission since its symptoms can be indistinguishable from those of a cold or flu, and testing capabilities are still being ramped up.
Experts estimate it takes about a week for the number of people infected in a given community to double. Based on that, it would likely take several weeks for a new infection cluster to be picked up by a local health department, said Trevor Bedford, a computational biologist at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle.
By mid-March, he estimated, officials should know if there is community transmission and a true pandemic.The virus has already infected people in every province in China, and is now spreading in communities in Singapore, South Korea, Thailand, Vietnam, Hong Kong and Japan, according to Nancy Messonnier, a top Centers for Disease Control and Prevention official.
“I want to be clear that we are not seeing community spread here in the United States yet,” she said on Friday. “But it’s very possible, even likely, that may eventually happen.”
... The lethality of the new coronavirus remains difficult to estimate. But across the planet, many health systems are already preparing for a pandemic emergency. That includes making plans for treating people who are suspected of having the disease, and for protecting health care workers.
Public health experts are devising strategies on how to conserve N95 respirators, specialized masks that are in a limited supply amid surging demand. They’re even thinking about seemingly small details, like how to make sure patients don’t spark new infections when they use a touch screen to check in, or pump sanitizer onto their hands.“We have to be ready,” said Paul Biddinger, chief of the division of emergency preparedness for Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston.
“Extrapolating from some of the numbers we’ve seen on the impact to the health care system in China, it means we’ll have to surge fast.”
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