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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.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 13 2020, @10:50PM (4 children)
Think about this logically. Estimates suggest that this virus may have an infection fatality rate of around 0.5%. In a population that begins with essentially no immunity, the virus can spread through the population until enough immunity develops that each infected person subsequently infects less than one new person on average. That's what herd immunity is. Let's be honest, we're not going to be able to find everyone who's infected and isolate them until they either die or are free of the virus. Short of developing a vaccine, herd immunity is the only other outcome with any real chance of occurring.
The death rate varies depending on age and underlying medical conditions, meaning that older and sicker populations will be affected worse. We can't really control those factors. But there are other factors that we can control. There is reason to think that being exposed to a lower dose of the virus will result in a less severe infection. We can influence that with things like social distancing and wearing masks, so presumably that death rate could be modulated a bit below 0.5% if less people get severe infections. And we can prevent the healthcare system from becoming overloaded. That means ensuring there are enough hospital beds for everyone who needs to be hospitalized and enough ICU beds for everyone with severe infections. We also want to make sure that people with other serious medical conditions can also receive proper treatment during this pandemic, because that can prevent other deaths. And we can use testing and contact tracing to control the rate at which the virus spreads through the population.
We can't be confident that a vaccine will be available anytime soon. Candidate vaccines for SARS resulted in issues like immune hypersensitivity. We're also cutting corners with clinical trials. It would be great to have a vaccine, but I think we should expect that herd immunity will be the result. Measuring success probably depends on the mortality rate once the pandemic is over. We may have some idea of success based on the state of the healthcare system during the pandemic, which will influence the overall mortality rate. As per the data displayed by IHME, Sweden's need for ICU beds has remained fairly close to the amount of ICU beds available. And they haven't come close to exceeding the total number of hospital beds available.
(Score: 2) by arslan on Wednesday May 13 2020, @11:25PM (2 children)
I thought herd immunity have been ruled out [abc.net.au]? Of course IANAMD, maybe you are and know something the experts don't.
Keep in mind Australia ABC is not American ABC, they are unaffiliated nor as far as I know affliated with any political parties like the news channels in the US.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 13 2020, @11:36PM
That strategy does not work for children in any real disaster, no reason to expect it work any better for adults when applied countrywide.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 14 2020, @03:13AM
Ruled out as a strategy for the present time by politicians in Australia, not by scientists, or for other countries, or even if the situation changes. Even that article admits that other countries will end up going the herd immunity route. They might be making the right choice for Australia for today, but one major outbreak could change everything. And certainly nobody is claiming "herd immunity isn't possible," that's not what that is saying at all.
(Score: 1) by chr on Saturday May 16 2020, @10:32AM
> As per the data displayed by IHME, Sweden's need for ICU beds has remained fairly close to the amount of ICU beds available. And they haven't come close to exceeding the total number of hospital beds available.
I think the above is a little misleading, i.e. the part about "...haven't come close...".
Sweden increased the number of available ICU beds, roughly a doubling IIRC. If this had not been done, the number of ICU beds would have been less than the number needed. Around the 12th of May, there were 162 more patients than the original capacity of the intensive care system. The principle is illustrated here https://youtu.be/1hqolTXqzMk?t=868. [youtu.be] It's from the daily briefing from Swedish government agencies (note: by public servants, not politicians). The labels in the diagram are in Swedish, but I think you'll understand anyway. A few seconds before the diagram is shown, the presenter has given the number I mentioned above (162).
Also note that some patients on a national level have had to be transported between (health care) regions in order to receive an ICU bed. Partly because of varying capacity in regions, and partly because Covid-19 is very unevenly spread in Sweden, with roughly half in the Stockholm region. There's been significant, and newly developed, coordination between the different regions to optimize e.g ICU beds. Note that an "ICU bed" besides e.g. ventilator actually also includes having a number of necessary drugs available, as well as skilled staff.
So Sweden's strategy, like so many other countries, has been to flatten the curve, while at the same time increasing the ICU capacity to be able to meet the predicted need. It's worth repeating that without using _both_ social distancing measures and increasing the number of available ICU beds, there would have been a shortage of ICU beds.
The way I see it, Sweden is walking a fine line between on one hand trying to reduce the infection rate (i.e. gain time), protect people belonging to risk groups (reduce deaths) and increase health care capacity, while on the other hand avoiding to needlessly shutting down parts of the society where the effect isn't judged to be worth the cost. Or where it's even counter productive, like shutting down schools/day care for small kids that would have prevented a significant fraction of the health care staff from working.