Coronavirus Updates: Cruise pax cannot disembark in Japan / 1st HK death / update on US quarantine

[Dennis Donovan]

Cruise ship passengers must stay on board in port near Tokyo during virus checks

The “Diamond Princess” cruise ship will remain in the Japanese port of Yokohama overnight, city officials announced Tuesday, after it was revealed that a former passenger has contracted the Wuhan coronavirus.

Its operator, Princess Cruises, halted plans for passengers to leave the vessel at the end of a 16-day Asia cruise after it was informed that a man who disembarked in Hong Kong tested positive with the virus several days later.

“While on the ship he did not visit the ship’s medical centre to report any symptoms or illness. The hospital reports that he is in stable condition and the family members traveling with him remain symptom-free,” the cruise company said in a statement.

Japanese authorities are racing to contain a possible outbreak of the Wuhan coronavirus, locking down the vessel and the roughly 2,500 passengers and 1,000 crew on board.

China virus claims second life off mainland, Macau casinos told to close

HONG KONG/BEIJING (Reuters) - The coronavirus outbreak claimed its first life in Hong Kong on Tuesday, compounding the international financial centre’s problems after anti-government protests, and Macau, the world’s biggest gambling playground, urged casinos to shut their doors.

The victim in Hong Kong was a 39-year-old man with an underlying illness who had visited China’s Wuhan city, the epicentre of the outbreak now under virtual quarantine.

It was the second death from the new coronavirus outside mainland China and brought the toll from the fast-spreading outbreak to 427.

Thousands of medical workers in Hong Kong, a semi-autonomous region of China, held a second day of strikes to press for complete closure of borders with the mainland after three checkpoints were left open.

US military hosts dropped off supplies in the parking lot for quarantined coronavirus diplomats

Toilet paper was the number one request from the 198 U.S. citizens quarantined at March Air Reserve Base in California while they wait out the two-week coronavirus incubation period.

“We just dropped it off in the parking lot, and their people came and got it,” said a receptionist who answered the phone at the base lodging desk. The quarantined people have been isolated in two separate buildings for five days since arriving from China's Hubei province, the center of the outbreak.

“In the first few hours, it was kind of a running joke,” the receptionist said, before stating she had no information about how the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was caring for the quarantined people, and that base personnel had “no contact” with the temporary residents, who are under the care of the Department of Health and Human Services.

The welcome kit included toys, coloring books, puzzles, and games for the children of the foreign service officers.

Pentagon spokesman Jonathan Rath Hoffman said on Monday that the Department of Defense was hosting the quarantined people but is not involved with their treatment or observation.

[alwaysinasnit]

1. k&r. Thanks for the update.

[NewJeffCT]

2. Thanks

interesting - the article on the people at the miliary base says the people there are being tested daily, but I did not see if any have tested positive or anything similar?

[Dennis Donovan]

3. I haven't seen much in the way of news about the evacuated diplomats until now

If any did test positive, would they tell us?

[Squinch]

4. But on a bright note, the recoveries are now pulling away from the deaths.

Many more recoveries than deaths. For a long time it was lots more deaths than recoveries.

[Ms. Toad]

6. Pretty sure no one is actually tracking recoveries.

Last edited Tue Feb 4, 2020, 09:56 PM - Edit history (1)

Both confirmation of infection and deaths are formally tracked (through the CDC testing or its equivalent entities in other countries). Same thing with deaths via death certificates.

There is no formal "recovery" data collection point. My daughter still has the chicken pox (more than a decade after she actually had it) - if you look at formal data. She was diagnosed & reported as having it, but there was no mechanism by which her recovery was tracked and reported. That just isn't the way we handle viral infections.

I suspect the recoveries represent release from the hospital, for that small fraction of the ill population that required hospitalization (or was otherwise someplace where the data would be captured as a matter of course).

I've been watching the numbers closely - and complete ignore the recoveries, because I'm pretty sure it is so randomly collected as to be meaningless.

There is actually a bright side - for two days in a row the growth of infections has slowed slightly.

The growth has been holding steady or increasing (with one exception) since I started tracking it. For the last two days the growth rate has declined (from 1.28 between 4 days ago & 3 days ago), 1.20 (between 3 days ago and 2 days ago), and 1.14 between 2 days ago and yesterday (based on only infections in China - since that's the only total number I have access to). So for the trend to continue, check the Johns Hopkins map around 11 PM EST today - and look for a Mainland China infection of less than 22,458.

ETA: Darn the good news did not continue. Infections in Mainland China are 24,122 - up a factor of 1.22 from yesterday - and there's probalby still one more report coming out today.

So if R0 =2.6, it's (stilll) currently growing by a factor of 2.6 every 3.8 days, wit a death rate slightly above 2%.

[Squinch]

7. I think I'll take the Johns Hopkins site info over your "pretty sure." But thanks.

[Ms. Toad]

8. The Johns Hopkins site is pulling data from publically available sources.

They are not creating it.

Please identify for me the public site in the US that tracks actual recoveries of every person diagnosed (along with the policy that ensures that recoveries are actually being tracked).

The other data is routinely reported - recoveries from viral conditions are not.

[Squinch]

9. Were ebola and SARS recoveries tracked? Gosh. I think they were!

[Ms. Toad]

10. Again - if you believe the sources from which Johns Hopkins pulls data

routinely captures relatively complete recovery data, please provide a link, please provide it.

[Squinch]

11. Strangely, I have not studied the methods of Johns Hopkins in gathering their data.

Nor do I plan to because you want me to.

And yet, I am still going to take their data over your opinion.

Go figure!

[Ms. Toad]

12. Data is meaningless,

unless you can confirm its validity. Johns Hopkins is pulling data from other sources. It is not "their" data. The data they are reporting is only as accurate as the source and methods of collecting it.

There are routines in place for tracking diagnosis (reported by the testing entities) and deaths (reported via death certificates). There is no parallel mechanism for tracking recoveries. Ultimately, confirmed diagnoses - deaths = recoveries, but that is not available in real time. Discharge from hospitals is available real time - but not everyone who acquires the coronavirus is ill enough to require hospitalization. It is largely those individuals who are not ill enough to be hospitalized for which there is no mechanism to collect the data.

That said, there is one US recovery (measured by discharge from the hospital) that is not reported in the Johns Hopkins data. The first person hospitalized has been released - the others 10 in the US remain hospitalized. None are listed as recovered in the Johns Hopkins data. So it does not appear to be accurate, even using that easily gathered data point.

[Squinch]

13. Have a lovely evening!

[Demovictory9]

5. thanks for update