Wuhan Coronavirus Resource Thread

[schinnas]

Train berth ms to go converted into isolation wards. Up to 10K.

https://www.financialexpress.com/infras ... ssion=true

This is a brilliant juggad. 10K mobile isolation wards with plumbing for water and electricity that can be moved to most needed location.

[anmol]

Protests are taking place near Hubei province:

https://twitter.com/TruthAbtChina/statu ... 7536058368

[vera_k]

What India Needs to Fight the Virus

Estimates from our group of scientists and others suggest the actual number of infection cases in India is likely to be about 21,000 by now.

[VKumar]

100K in quarantine in Kasargod. Looks like Kasargod is the epicenter for India.

[VKumar]

Kejriwal preparing for 1000 cases a day.

[prashanth]

What India Needs to Fight the Virus

Estimates from our group of scientists and others suggest the actual number of infection cases in India is likely to be about 21,000 by now.

Kindly indicate that the source is nytimes. This medium is known to be biased against India.

[Mort Walker]

What India Needs to Fight the Virus

Estimates from our group of scientists and others suggest the actual number of infection cases in India is likely to be about 21,000 by now.

Fake news. Don’t post NYT or WaPo here.

[vera_k]

What India Needs to Fight the Virus

Kindly indicate that the source is nytimes. This medium is known to be biased against India.

It's an Op-Ed. Everyone has an agenda - it is up to us to make the best of available information.

[Suraj]

Mod Note

I've deleted a bunch of noise about Chinese, Tbonds and punishment. C'mon people, can't you focus on the thread ? How hard can it be to tell that such conversation is off topic in a pandemic resource thread ?

[yensoy]

Sirjee, on the one hand, you are advocating more testing, and if that reveals greater numbers as you seem to imply, these farmers are not even going to step on to their fields due to sheer panic, nor would anyone step out of their homes to buy their produce (same outcome). On the other hand, you are saying the govt's fiscal and food security measures (worth ₹3,74,00,00,00,000 crores) to address these very groups' distress is of no consequence, and that you'd rather see the agriculture minister on television - to say what, exactly?

Fact is, there is no panic buying and shops are open with ample supplies, and the cost of perishables has not increased. Under the circumstances, that's a remarkable achievement, some niggles notwithstanding. Such a big move will have some immediate consequence till things stabilize - we can't keep complaining at the drop of a hat. I am sure if Radha Mohan Singh had showed up on TV, NS would have been pilloried for hiding somewhere and not being front and centre of the response.

But then, some people can never be satisfied, I suppose. P.S. Media will do its best to blow things out of proportion, but we at BRF ought to be more discerning.

We have yet to see how the supply chain works.

Perishables - fruits and vegetables - are selling at low prices because there are no options for the growers and even the middlemen. Food processing (ketchups, jams, papads, pickles etc) is in all likelihood stopped, restaurants are closed, so the only avenue is the end customer who has started tightening their belts anyway. Let's see how things change over time. If growers aren't getting their input costs as the article I sent implies, they may stop planting altogether.

Milk continues uninterrupted, so do water cans, at least in my experience so far so good. Animal fodder is specifically called out as an essential. Coffee may not be an essential (though tea may qualify) so I may need to drag out my coffee stock for a little bit by switching to tea in the evening.

Other essentials, in my understanding, are rice/wheat, dal and sugar; fish and poultry. What is our plan for harvest and what is our plan for sugar extraction? 3 weeks may pass by but if this drags on any further, yes it's the agriculture minister who must speak.

Salt & spices are next in the ladder. No idea where they stand in the totem pole, but soon enough peoples stock will run out. But let's remember they are growing on some farm and must be extracted just as fruits and vegetables need to be harvested. There is also some processing & packaging involved as well - which means labour and material.

A lot can happen in 21 days. Some number of people will get heart attacks, some others will be diagnosed for diabetes or cancer. Some families borewell motors will burn out. Some number of eyeglasses will break. Some number of hearing aids will run out of battery. Some number of phones will stop working, cutting people off from their families and essential services. Some fraction of ATM and credit cards will expire. Some families will run out of soap (an essential these days) and toothpaste. This is just statistics. Statistically, stuff will happen that will deprive people of essentials of living in these 21 days.

We don't need to get it all figured out on day 1 or day 2 or even day 7 but by day 14 we should have a plan to restore normalcy, very slowly, very carefully, step by step - so that people can resume their lives during and after this lockdown. We need to be proactive while defining "essential services" - at the tip of the pyramid you see a bar of soap but there is a lot below that must come together to make the bar of soap happen. The money helps but doesn't actually spell out this path.

[Sanju]

He is the Chancellor of Exchequer i.e., Finance Minister.
Rumours are it will be Hancock and the Tories have decided on the succession if case anything happens!!

Now Mr. Hancock says he is also tested positive. Source TOI.

He is, as per his twitter a/c:

Matt Hancock
@MattHancock .3h
Following medical advice, I was advised to test for #Coronavirus.

I‘ve tested positive. Thankfully my symptoms are mild and I’m working from home & self-isolating.

Vital we follow the advice to protect our NHS & save lives

#StayHomeSaveLives

[Bart S]

Kindly indicate that the source is nytimes. This medium is known to be biased against India.

It's an Op-Ed. Everyone has an agenda - it is up to us to make the best of available information.

The fact that it is an Op-Ed makes it even more likely to be fake and biased.

The author is not a medical doctor, is associated with some questionable NGOs, and was recently extracted from the woodwork by well-known Durbari folks to push an agenda. This was exposed, and widely discussed and dissected already.

This is an outlet with a rabid hatred of India, extreme anti-India bias and is virtually carrying out a propaganda campaign against India. The 'everyone has an agenda' is not a fig leaf to be used in this case.

[Bart S]

Kerala reports 39 new cases. The reason for the big jump. 34 in Kasargoad. I think Kasargoad is now becoming a epicenter.

Extremely troubling news out of Kasargod today, looks like a mob attacked health workers on an awareness campaign and were so violent that 4 policemen (who were sent in to rescue them) were admitted to hospital because they were badly injured. Treating these people with kid gloves during 'peacetime' results in these kinds of incidents during 'wartime'.

[Arun.prabhu]

Well... Well... Well...

1. The Reproduction Rate of the virus is much higher than suspected.
2. The older models based on the older reproduction rate had predicted 400,000 dead in Italy on a certain date, but there were actually 8000 dead (and Italy are classifying everyone who dies and tests positive of nCoViD-19 as having died of the disease. Doesn't matter what the patient really died of, cause of death is recorded as nCoViD-19) That is 25 times less fatalities than earlier modeled and estimated.

This has prompted the UK researcher who predicted 500,000 dead in UK and 2.2 million dead in US to revise his numbers. He now believes there are far more infected who are asymptomatic or who are symptomatic but have very mild symptoms. Further, he believes that the disease is about to peak and that there are enough beds in UK to handle the ARDS crisis. Lastly, he believes that there'll be just 20,000 deaths in UK (A little over a normal flu season's worth.)

https://www.newscientist.com/article/22 ... -predicts/#

[KL Dubey]

EDIT: Yeah I know, this sounds like Olympics medals tally commentary, what to do onlee .

Meanwhile, South Korea is the first majorly affected country to get on the sigmoidal curve without questionable China-type control measures. One can see it here. Looking good. They are now entering the stage of how to manage the recovery back to "normal" life.

https://www.bing.com/covid/local/southkorea

Ad you probably know, the sigmoidal curve model (also called the logistic function model) is used in many scientific fields to describe growth/propagation of different types of events. I googled today and found that people have been already using it for corona predictions. E.g., here is one from the Chinese:

https://www.biospace.com/article/releas ... bruary-23/

[Suraj]

[A lot can happen in 21 days. Some number of people will get heart attacks, some others will be diagnosed for diabetes or cancer. Some families borewell motors will burn out. Some number of eyeglasses will break. Some number of hearing aids will run out of battery. Some number of phones will stop working, cutting people off from their families and essential services. Some fraction of ATM and credit cards will expire. Some families will run out of soap (an essential these days) and toothpaste. This is just statistics. Statistically, stuff will happen that will deprive people of essentials of living in these 21 days.

We don't need to get it all figured out on day 1 or day 2 or even day 7 but by day 14 we should have a plan to restore normalcy, very slowly, very carefully, step by step - so that people can resume their lives during and after this lockdown. We need to be proactive while defining "essential services" - at the tip of the pyramid you see a bar of soap but there is a lot below that must come together to make the bar of soap happen. The money helps but doesn't actually spell out this path.

Here's some perspective: we are on day 3 or 4 of the India lockdown now, depending on time zone. The lockdown was announced a day prior to the actual start.

The ToI article was posted a day ago (i.e. approx day 2), presumably of reporting within 1-2 days prior by a ground level reporter, of items that have a perishable life of a few days. In other words, the article attributes the lockdown to food spoilage that occured before the lockdown was announced. The point I'm making here is that some news is real, some are motivated or manufactured. Your original post began with "Collateral damage has started". That's really grating. Please consider the antecedents of such news carefully before speaking like that. Dubious stories like the originally quoted one feed memes of the 'crying taxi driver' variety.

It doesn't detract from the point that we have a real problem with cold store and distribution infrastructure, and it's completely unrelated to the current circumstnaces. It also doesn't negate any other general concerns listed. None of the listed places are closed by the way - hospitals, banks and communications services are all still open, and people are still very much permitted to make essential travel to deal with these. However, here is the OFFICIAL set of guidelines (will be made a sticky):
Official MHA Guidelines to All States and UTs (PDF)

It's worth noting that every example quoted - whether pharmacies, ATM or utility devices - are all covered by exceptions. I've seen the official guidelines reproduced in partial form in the press, but the original is still the one to turn to.

[chetak]

Aditya Raj Kaul@AdityaRajKaul·Mar 24
#BREAKING: WHO: Exceptionally important that countries like India lead the way in showing the world what can be done to save lives. India led the world in eradicating two silent killers - Small Pox and Polio. India gifted that to the world. India has tremendous capacities.


https://twitter.com/AdityaRajKaul/statu ... 9911148544

[ldev]

I also wonder to what degree the natural immunity that Indians have due to the environment is helping in slowing down the spread of the virus in India. e.g. growing up in India I have had malaria, measles and para-typhoid. When I visit India I eat and drink at roadside dhabas without, touch wood, any repercussion. No need for fancy bottled water which in any case can also be spurious/contaminated.

But regardless the best way to keep your immunity up is to sleep well, eat well and exercise well.

[VinodTK]

Aditya Raj Kaul@AdityaRajKaul·Mar 24
#BREAKING: WHO: Exceptionally important that countries like India lead the way in showing the world what can be done to save lives. India led the world in eradicating two silent killers - Small Pox and Polio. India gifted that to the world. India has tremendous capacities.


https://twitter.com/AdityaRajKaul/statu ... 9911148544

Exceptionally important WHO tells CHINA to clean itself up and stop spreading a new viruses every two years that kills thousands of people around the world.

[nam]

Here is my theory.

The people who bought this infection in to India are middle/upper middle class & rich people.

What percentage of these would be use a regular transport means like buses or crowded train? Or even be in a very crowded street?

Most of the spread seems to be by people, who got involved in weddings or gathering. There are 1.7M returnees since Jan. Even if 1 percent are infected, that is 17K people.

What would the level of infection if these 17K people spread to 2 other people? We haven't seen such a level so far.

It is possible the infected people in fact did not get an opportunity to spread the virus, as expected. We do have reports of people defying isolation or attending weddings. What is the number of such cases? 500?

[Suraj]

chetak: please stop posting stuff that should go in the politics thread. More thread derailment here will result in a ban.

[nam]

For those to think, if we are doing enough, here is what is been done in a district in Rajasthan. A place of 6 lakh people.

https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/ind ... 810132.cms

[nam]

Chinis are trying to make profit using the current state of the world. This lot, tried to sell kit bought at locally in Czeck, labelled it as import from China/HK, to the Czech gov for a large profit.

https://twitter.com/JirousFilip/status/ ... 7540534285

[Manish_P]

Here is my theory.

The people who bought this infection in to India are middle/upper middle class & rich people.

What percentage of these would be use a regular transport means like buses or crowded train? Or even be in a very crowded street?

Most, but not all.

Quite a few were students, religious tourists, low level workers (one guy, who tested positive, lives in a Mumbai slum, but worked as a waiter in Italy). In a metro, especially a linear one like Mumbai, trains and buses are the best for transport.

I myself know few VP level folks of private companies who use public transport like Buses.

[g.sarkar]

Beware of Greeks bearing gifts:
https://www.rediff.com/news/report/xi-o ... 200327.htm
Xi offers help to Trump to combat COVID-19
Source: PTI - Edited By: Roshneesh KmaneckMarch 27, 2020.
Chinese President Xi Jinping on Friday assured full support to his United States counterpart Donald Trump in fighting the coronavirus as America emerged as the next major epicentre of the pandemic but underlined that infectious diseases did not recognise any border or race.
Chinese President Xi took a phone call from President Trump, the Chinese foreign ministry said in a statement.
During the conversation, Xi stressed that since the COVID-19 outbreak began, Beijing has acted in an "open, transparent and responsible manner and provided timely updates on the outbreak to the World Health Organization and relevant countries including the United States".
After their telephonic talk, Trump tweeted, "Just finished a very good conversation with President Xi of China. Discussed in great detail the Coronavirus that is ravaging large parts of our Planet.
"China has been through much & has developed a strong understanding of the Virus. We are working closely together. Much respect!" Trump wrote, hours after he said the WHO of has "very much sided" with China on the coronavirus crisis, asserting that many are unhappy with the "very unfair" praise by the global health agency on Beijing's handling of the COVID-19 outbreak in the country.
.....
Gautam

[saumitra_j]

Here is an interesting line of treatment for managing the side effects of Chloroquine and other anti viral drugs.

Summary: They have devised a process to check if a covid19 patient will suffer from sudden cardiac arrest if given these drugs.

[vera_k]

It's an Op-Ed. Everyone has an agenda - it is up to us to make the best of available information.

The fact that it is an Op-Ed makes it even more likely to be fake and biased.

The author is not a medical doctor, is associated with some questionable NGOs, and was recently extracted from the woodwork by well-known Durbari folks to push an agenda. This was exposed, and widely discussed and dissected already.

This is an outlet with a rabid hatred of India, extreme anti-India bias and is virtually carrying out a propaganda campaign against India. The 'everyone has an agenda' is not a fig leaf to be used in this case.

What are we arguing about? The article largely compliments the efforts within India so far and explains why a lock down was necessary. What part of it is disagreeable?

Or is the argument that the current lock down was unnecessary?

[Bart S]

The fact that it is an Op-Ed makes it even more likely to be fake and biased.

The author is not a medical doctor, is associated with some questionable NGOs, and was recently extracted from the woodwork by well-known Durbari folks to push an agenda. This was exposed, and widely discussed and dissected already.

This is an outlet with a rabid hatred of India, extreme anti-India bias and is virtually carrying out a propaganda campaign against India. The 'everyone has an agenda' is not a fig leaf to be used in this case.

What are we arguing about? The article largely compliments the efforts within India so far and explains why a lock down was necessary. What part of it is disagreeable?

Or is the argument that the current lock down was unnecessary?

I didn't read the article as it is behind some signup page and I have no interest in reading anything from the NYT, but the snippet that you quoted that contains unsubstantiated fake news by someone who was caught red handed trying to create panic and present doomsday scenarios, is an immediate red flag:

Estimates from our group of scientists and others suggest the actual number of infection cases in India is likely to be about 21,000 by now.

There is a difference between those who have a difference of opinion/contrarian view etc and those who simply have malevolent intent, and the NYT and it's ilk fall into the latter category.

[Tanaji]

What is the opinion on the study by John Hopkins CDDEP group that was released on march 24th? Essentially it predicts that a peak will occur in May with 12-25 crore infections, 12-25 lakh hospitalisation but does not talk about deaths.

Uses the indiaSIM model as basis. I think this is the same group as the one that was interviewed by Burkha Dutt...

[arshyam]

Kindly indicate that the source is nytimes. This medium is known to be biased against India.

It's an Op-Ed. Everyone has an agenda - it is up to us to make the best of available information.

Exactly what information is available from an op-Ed, especially one that has an agenda (your own words)? And what will we do with a random number like 17k infected that has nothing substantiating it, except the said author's opinion?

[chola]

^^^ There is nothing in these oped pages in any American publication that can provide guidance to India. Not when infections in the US are hurtling towards 100K. All those expert opinions have given the American people zilch. India needs to follow its path and IMO it will be better.

If you must read something, read someone with experience in both places.
https://www.statnews.com/2020/03/27/cor ... paredness/

Covid-19 hasn’t yet hit India in a widespread way. But I saw more warnings there than I did in the U.S.

By SHRADDHA CHAKRADHAR @scchak
MARCH 27, 2020

India — I grab my grandfather’s cellphone to call the corner shop and make sure it’s open, but before I hear the grocer’s voice, I hear a loud, off-putting cough.

That was the abrupt start of a pre-recorded government PSA. The phone message listed off symptoms of Covid-19 — including that cough — and offered guidance for anyone suspecting they or someone they knew was infected. Only then would the call go through.

Similar alerts have been sent to people’s cellphones in places like Washington, D.C., and the New York metro area, and the Federal Communications Commission has authorized some health providers and government entities to issue Covid-19-related communications without seeking prior approval. But I find it difficult to imagine that a nationwide PSA like the one in India will show up on every single U.S. phone number.

In fact, during a recent 11-day trip to see family in India, I found it striking that the country of more than 1 billion people, which has not yet seen the scale of Covid-19 that the U.S. is experiencing, seemed to be doing far more to monitor its citizens and educate people about the risk of the virus and ways to protect against it.

...

Arriving in Chennai, the airport had already swung into action with measures to stem the spread of coronavirus, even though, at that point, the country had only reported 62 cases and no deaths.

Immediately upon deplaning, masked airport staff handed each of us forms to self-report any Covid-19 symptoms and our travel history. There was then a mad dash to find the closest flat surface — everything from the nearest wall to the tops of carry-on luggage. We proceeded to the end of the hallway, where officials seated at kiosks aimed thermometers at each passenger’s forehead from an arm’s length, checked over our completed forms, and gave us the go-ahead to proceed to immigration.

There were several posters throughout the arrival hallways about the new “Corona virus” (styled as two words), informing passengers about hand-washing and precautions the Airport Authorities of India was taking. I hadn’t seen any such signage at Logan.

...

Yet for all my concerns about red tape, perhaps there is something to be said for the government’s tendency to unilaterally undertake such sweeping measures in the name of staunching the coronavirus. Soon after I got to Chennai, malls, theaters, schools, and many places of worship both in my hometown and in other parts of the country had been ordered to close. Back in the U.S., however, things were markedly different. Washington state, parts of California, and other U.S. cities had taken action to restrict the movement of its citizens, but most places were still waiting to see if the case count would increase before implementing widespread distancing measures. When the case count was nearing 100 in Massachusetts alone, public schools were still debating whether to shut down or continue having students come in.

...

It remains to be seen whether India’s preventive measures will work as planned — I landed there in mid-March to fewer than 70 cases and zero deaths, but that has since gone up to more than 700 cases and 20 deaths, and experts believe that the real number is much higher. For those of us who are familiar with India, it’s perhaps obvious why strict — and early — steps had to be taken: With nearly a fifth of the world’s population and a poor public health infrastructure, Covid-19 would very quickly overwhelm an already burdened system.

The peace of mind I had from the phone PSAs and other government measures I was surrounded with in India quickly dissipated when I came back to the U.S. last weekend aboard a packed flight with Americans and Canadians trying to make it back to North America.

[yensoy]

Chennai airport was collecting information from passengers arriving from Asia starting in January itself including address, phone number, seat number, places visited - and a cursory temperature check. I have actually seen stats from the GoTN enumerating district-wise arrivals of people from Wuhanvirus hit countries and this data goes back to January. Friends who flew in through Delhi from Asia said there was no check of any kind even in mid February.

[SRajesh]

100K in quarantine in Kasargod. Looks like Kasargod is the epicenter for India.

https://www.haaretz.com/world-news/.pre ... -1.8708783
Has this got anything to do with Kasargod .
Or is it the Middle East connection.
The problem is finding 'Patient Zero' and then to identify the origin of possible infection???
The intelligence agencies are quite aware of the Kerala-Jehadi-Tawahidi connection
But with a pliable LDF government in Kerala I suppose the peacefuls are having a free run in North Kerala.

[disha]

For those to think, if we are doing enough, here is what is been done in a district in Rajasthan. A place of 6 lakh people.

https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/ind ... 810132.cms

The above is a must must must-read.

#mediapimps & #urbannaxals who have associated NPR/NCR/CAA with HealthCare worker checking for ChinaVirus victims must be tried as accessories to murder. Criminal behaviour and such #mediapimps & #urbannaxals must get the derision they deserve.

Imagine an entire town in lockdown and a health worker going through each and every household and ensuring that its citizens are safe. People talk about Wuhan and how ChiComm implemented a lockdown on Wuhan. Here is one entire district and is being taken care of very well.

Hats off to those health workers that the cases in India are in control unlike US or Italy or former-UK or Spain.

[Jay]

For those to think, if we are doing enough, here is what is been done in a district in Rajasthan. A place of 6 lakh people.

https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/ind ... 810132.cms

Absolutely impressive. Jai Hind!

[Leonard]

Testing protocols might need to be updated -- Things are changing FAST ..

https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandso ... n-positive

>>
A spate of mysterious second-time infections is calling into question the accuracy of COVID-19 diagnostic tools even as China prepares to lift quarantine measures to allow residents to leave the epicenter of its outbreak next month. It's also raising concerns of a possible second wave of cases.

From March 18-22, the Chinese city of Wuhan reported no new cases of the virus through domestic transmission — that is, infection passed on from one person to another. The achievement was seen as a turning point in efforts to contain the virus, which has infected more than 80,000 people in China. Wuhan was particularly hard-hit, with more than half of all confirmed cases in the country.

But some Wuhan residents who had tested positive earlier and then recovered from the disease are testing positive for the virus a second time. Based on data from several quarantine facilities in the city, which house patients for further observation after their discharge from hospitals, about 5%-10% of patients pronounced "recovered" have tested positive again.

Some of those who retested positive appear to be asymptomatic carriers — those who carry the virus and are possibly infectious but do not exhibit any of the illness's associated symptoms — suggesting that the outbreak in Wuhan is not close to being over.

NPR has spoken by phone or exchanged text messages with four individuals in Wuhan who are part of this group of individuals testing positive a second time in March. All four said they had been sickened with the virus and tested positive, then were released from medical care in recent weeks after their condition improved and they tested negative.

Two of them are front-line doctors who were sickened after treating patients in their Wuhan hospitals. The other two are Wuhan residents. They all requested anonymity when speaking with NPR because those who have challenged the government's handling of the outbreak have been detained.

One of the Wuhan residents who spoke to NPR exhibited severe symptoms during their first round of illness and was eventually hospitalized. The second resident displayed only mild symptoms at first and was quarantined in one of more than a dozen makeshift treatment centers erected in Wuhan during the peak of the outbreak.

But when both were tested a second time for the coronavirus on Sunday, March 22, as a precondition for seeking medical care for unrelated health issues, they tested positive for the coronavirus even though they exhibited none of the typical symptoms, such as a fever or dry cough. The time from their recovery and release to the retest ranged from a few days to a few weeks.

Could that second positive test mean a second round of infection? Virologists think it is unlikely that a COVID-19 patient could be re-infected so quickly after recovery but caution that it is too soon to know.

Under its newest COVID-19 prevention guidelines, China does not include in its overall daily count for total and for new cases those who retest positive after being released from medical care. China also does not include asymptomatic cases in case counts.

"I have no idea why the authorities choose not to count [asymptomatic] cases in the official case count. I am baffled," said one of the Wuhan doctors who had a second positive test after recovering.

These four people are now being isolated under medical observation. It is unclear whether they are infectious and why they tested positive after their earlier negative test.

It is possible they were first given a false negative test result, which can happen if the swab used to collect samples of the virus misses bits of the virus. Dr. Li Wenliang, a whistleblowing doctor who later died of the virus himself in February, tested negative for the coronavirus several times before being accurately diagnosed.

In February, Wang Chen, a director at the state-run Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences, estimated that the nucleic acid tests used in China were accurate at identifying positive cases of the coronavirus only 30%-50% of the time.

Another theory is that, because the test amplifies tiny bits of DNA, residual virus from the initial infection could have falsely resulted in that second positive reading.

"There are false positives with these types of tests," Dr. Jeffrey Shaman, a professor of environmental health sciences at Columbia University, told NPR by email. Shaman recently co-authored a modeling study showing that transmission by individuals who did not exhibit any symptoms was a driver of the Wuhan outbreak.

How real is China's recovery?

On Tuesday, Hubei province, where Wuhan is the capital, said it would relax lockdown measures that have now been in place for more than two months and begin letting residents leave cities the following day. Wuhan said it would begin lifting its quarantine measures and letting residents leave two weeks later, on April 8.

To leave Wuhan, residents must first test negative for the coronavirus, according to municipal authorities. Such screenings will identify some remaining asymptomatic virus carriers. But the high rate of false negatives that Chinese doctors have cited means many with the virus could pass undetected.

Last Thursday, Wuhan reported for the first time since the outbreak began that it had no new cases of the virus from the day before — a milestone in China's virus containment efforts. The city reported a zero rise in new cases for the following four days.

Assessing asymptomatic carriers

But Caixin, an independent Chinese news outlet, reported earlier this week that Wuhan hospitals were continuing to see new cases of asymptomatic virus carriers, citing a health official who said he had seen up to a dozen such cases a day.

Responding to inquiries about how the city was counting asymptomatic cases, Wuhan's health commission said Monday that it is quarantining new asymptomatic patients in specialized wards for 14 days. Such patients would be included in new daily case counts if they develop symptoms during that time, authorities said.

"Based on available World Health Organization data, new infections are mainly transmitted by patients who have developed symptoms. Hence [asymptomatic cases] may not be the main source of transmission," the commission said.

A researcher at China's health commission told reporters Tuesday that asymptomatic carriers "would not cause the spread" of the virus. Zunyou Wu, the researcher, explained this was because the authorities were isolating people who had close contact with confirmed patients. Wu did not explain how they would identify asymptomatic carriers who had no close contact with confirmed patients.

...

Research suggests that the spread can be caused by asymptomatic carriers. Studies of patients from Wuhan and other Chinese cities who were diagnosed early in the outbreak suggest that asymptomatic carriers of the virus can infect those they have close contact with, such as family members.

"In terms of those who retested positive, the official party line is that they have not been proven to be infectious. That is not the same as saying they are not infectious," one of the Wuhan doctors who tested positive twice told NPR. He is now isolated and under medical observation. "If they really are not infectious," the doctor said, "then there would be no need to take them back to the hospitals again."

Geoff Brumfiel contributed reporting from Washington, D.C.
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[vijayk]

https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watc ... of-testing World is running out of testing chemicals

[nvishal]

What is the opinion on the study by John Hopkins CDDEP group that was released on march 24th?

Combination of fantasy and sensationalism(it is assuming that GoI does not exist).

[Sravan]

Informative simulation apparatus to understand different strategies

[suryag]

This is not by any means to champion ayurveda but somehow I feel it is a good time for in vivo and in vitro tests with a cocktail of ginger, garlic, tulsi, turmeric, amla and ashwagandha. All of them are known to help boost your immune systems and also have shown antiviral properties in in-vitro tests.