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posted by Fnord666 on Wednesday May 13 2020, @08:42PM   Printer-friendly
from the not-completely-unexpected dept.

COVID-19 resurges in reopened countries; Wuhan sees first cluster in a month:

The World Health Organization on Monday called for continued vigilance as several areas that have eased lockdown restriction began to see a resurgence in COVID-19 cases—and the United States begins unbuttoning as well.

The Chinese city of Wuhan—where the pandemic began last December—saw its first cluster of cases in at least a month. The city began reopening in early April.

The cluster was just six cases: an 89-year-old symptomatic man and five asymptomatic cases. All of the infected lived in the same residential community.

[...] NPR's Emily Feng reported from Beijing that "The rise of such hard-to-detect asymptomatic cases has alarmed public health authorities in China, who have ramped up contact tracing and testing efforts."

China state media announced Tuesday that it has ordered all residents of Wuhan—roughly 11 million persons—to be tested within the next 10 days.

Likewise, the mayor of Seoul shut down bars and restaurants over the weekend—just days after South Korea had eased restrictions and allowed businesses to reopen—due to a spike of 86 new COVID-19 cases. Authorities identified a 29-year-old who visited five nightclubs and a bar while infected with the virus, sparking an outbreak of at least 54 cases, according to NPR. The uptick also led South Korean officials to delay the reopening of schools.


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  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 13 2020, @10:11PM (11 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 13 2020, @10:11PM (#993956)

    Both China and South Korea have the ability to do large scale testing and contact tracing. The United States does not. There are still issues with false negatives in testing, particularly for recently infected individuals. But it does significantly increase the ability to contain outbreaks.

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  • (Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 13 2020, @10:26PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 13 2020, @10:26PM (#993964)

    The outbreak in South Korea was one gay guy on a night out: 54 people infected. Bit late to "test" isn't it? And testing does nothing to prevent communal infection as the Wuhan testing will demonstrate.

  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by MostCynical on Wednesday May 13 2020, @10:35PM (8 children)

    by MostCynical (2589) on Wednesday May 13 2020, @10:35PM (#993971) Journal

    China intends to test all 11 million people in Wuhan [bbc.com]
    China has reportedly been testing 47,000 a day [canoe.com]

    --
    "I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
    • (Score: 0, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 13 2020, @10:45PM (5 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 13 2020, @10:45PM (#993977)

      And somebody tested yesterday will be infected by someone due to be tested tomorrow ad infinitum.

      • (Score: 4, Informative) by HiThere on Wednesday May 13 2020, @10:56PM (4 children)

        by HiThere (866) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday May 13 2020, @10:56PM (#993985) Journal

        You've got a point, but it's not as strong as you think. If the measure is sufficient to get the R value below 1, the epidemic will subside. There are various time delays in the process that make this difficult, but it doesn't need to be perfect to work, just good enough. But lower R value is much better.

        --
        Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 13 2020, @11:30PM (3 children)

          by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 13 2020, @11:30PM (#993999)

          The R value is an average, for the Korean guy mentioned in the story there were 54 infections with just 11 believed to be secondary. If you miss one case you could seed a new outbreak with 43 infections in a single day. Testing isn't any kind of preventative strategy without instant testing and 100% coverage.

          • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 14 2020, @12:59AM (2 children)

            by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 14 2020, @12:59AM (#994052)

            Testing isn't any kind of preventative strategy

            Who said it was? Aggressively isolating those who have either tested positive or been exposed to someone who tests positive is a *mitigation* strategy, not a preventative strategy.

            And the more you test, the more you can (if addressed properly) mitigate the spread of the Coronavirus.

            If you successfully keep R < 1 for an extended period you're still going to see infection clusters until there's a vaccine. When I say "there's a vaccine," I do not mean there's only been a successful clinical trial of a vaccine. Such a vaccine would require FDA (and in other countries, their analogs) approval (likely expedited, given the circumstance), then facilities need to be set up to make useful quantities (*billions* of doses) of that vaccine.

            Many clinical trials are underway, but even assuming a *best-case scenario*, it will be well into 2021 before enough vaccine can be manufactured/processed/distributed to make a real difference.

            As such, mitigation is really the only option at the moment -- and mitigation includes massive testing operations, aggressive isolation of those who are either infected or exposed to infected people, robust contact tracing for both of those sets of individuals and further isolation of those discovered through contact tracing.

            Currently, we aren't doing enough tests because we don't have enough testing centers, test kits, materials for analyzing tested samples. We're ramping that up in some places pretty significantly, with NYC for example trying to get to 150,000 tests/day by the end of May. But with more than 8.5 million NYC residents, it's going to take a while to complete enough tests to effectively mitigate the spread of the virus.

            And we're not doing anywhere near the amount of contact tracing because we don't have the contact tracers -- who need to be interviewed, hired, trained and gotten up to speed in performing those activities.

            Thinking (and worse yet, acting on such thinking) that this is going to go away anytime soon is wishful thinking at best, an even worse disaster, both economically and public health-wise, than we're already experiencing.

            But every area (testing/contact tracing on a per county basis in the US are a good way to focus efforts) will be a bit different and will require different amounts of effort in mitigation.

            The experts created guidelines for reopening based on data, but was never released by the White House [apnews.com], guidelines which detail the strategies and tactics [documentcloud.org] required to *safely* reopen communities once mitigation efforts are *confirmed* (via data on new cases, test results and results of contact tracing) to be keeping R < 1.

            tl;dr: This isn't going away anytime soon. It will likely be *at least* the end of 2021 (if we actually confirm the safety and efficacy of a vaccine within the next six months or so) before large enough numbers of vaccinations can be performed to make a real difference. But don't believe me. Check the data and the science yourself. Because in the end, *you* are responsible for your own health and the health of your dependents (if any).

            • (Score: -1, Redundant) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 14 2020, @01:45AM (1 child)

              by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 14 2020, @01:45AM (#994064)

              If you successfully keep R -lt 1 for an extended period you're still going to see infection clusters until there's a vaccine.

              On a long enough timeline, that eliminates the virus without a vaccine. The problem with your "clusters" is that R0 estimates are 3-6, most carriers are asymptomatic, negative tests are worthless, contact tracing misses infections and there isn't going to be a vaccine in 6-12 months. Apart from that, great job!

              • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 14 2020, @02:32AM

                by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 14 2020, @02:32AM (#994075)

                > Apart from that, great job!

                And your proposed solution is???
                Let me guess, your choice is: "Tough, let people die, I don't care 'cause I'm young and MAGA".[yes, sarcasm].

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 16 2020, @09:42AM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 16 2020, @09:42AM (#994936)

      11 million people, 47,000 tests a day = 234 days.

      Maybe if their tests are sensitive enough they can do a pooling method to determine if large numbers of people don't have the virus. e.g. mix 1000 people's samples and then test it. Repeat a few times and if negative then maybe 1000 of them don't have it, all for just a few tests.

  • (Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Thursday May 14 2020, @06:17AM

    by fustakrakich (6150) on Thursday May 14 2020, @06:17AM (#994137) Journal

    There are still issues with false negatives in testing...

    There are also issues with false positives on the death certificates.

    Accurate information is hard to come by, and probably is classified anyway. There's far too much secrecy to trust anybody.

    --
    La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..