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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: 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.