An infection control experiment that was rolled out in a small Italian community at the start of Europe’s coronavirus crisis has stopped all new infections in the town that was at the centre of the country’s outbreak. Through testing and retesting of all 3,300 inhabitants of the town of Vò, near Venice, regardless of whether they were exhibiting symptoms, and rigorous quarantining of their contacts once infection was confirmed, health authorities have been able to completely stop the spread of the illness there. Andrea Crisanti, an infections expert at Imperial College London who is taking part in the Vò project while on sabbatical at the University of Padua, urged countries that have been limiting virus testing, which includes the UK and US, to learn lessons and ramp up the numbers of people being screened. “In the UK, there are a whole lot of infections that are completely ignored,” Prof Crisanti told the Financial Times. “We were able to contain the outbreak here because we identified and eliminated the ‘submerged’ infections and isolated them,” he said of the Vò approach. “That is what makes the difference.” The success underscores the importance of testing and isolating otherwise healthy carriers, an approach that has been strongly endorsed by the World Health Organization. The WHO this week urged all countries to test aggressively, noting that South Korea and Taiwan were having success in limiting infections by doing so. “Our key message is: test, test, test,” Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO chief, said on Monday. https://www.ft.com/content/0dba7ea8-6713-11ea-800d-da70cff6e4d3 Tell this the bigly boy in da White House....!
Coronavirus: South Korea’s aggressive testing gives clues to true fatality rate https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/heal...navirus-south-koreas-aggressive-testing-gives With 140,000 people tested, the country’s mortality rate is just over 0.6 per cent compared to the 3.4 per cent global average reported by the WHO Various factors can influence this percentage, but scientists agree that all things being equal, it is more accurate when more people are tested Within a month of confirming its first case of Covid-19 on January 20, South Korea had tested nearly 8,000 people suspected of infection with the new coronavirus that causes the disease. A little over a week later, that number had soared to 82,000 as health officials mobilised to carry out as many 10,000 tests each day.
Testing and retesting? Without the kits? I'm confused. How are they testing and retesting with out any kits available???
I understand, but what are they using if they dont have the "kits" that they say we need here in order to determine if someone has the virus or not
probably using the WHO kits that were offered to the US but rejected. I don't know if how the supply side is on those, but I think China had pretty large capacity in a matter of weeks.
In the U.S. the kits are used to obtain and ship the swabs to a lab that than carries out Reverse Transcriptase PCR that first transcribs minuscule amounts of viral RNA into DNA and then greatly amplifies the amount of DNA so that its presence is easily detected. Nowadays, this is fairly standard procedure that shouldn't cost much. But of course in the context of the U.S. healthcare system there are forces at work aiming to make it monumentally expensive. From: https://issues.org/the-virus-that-tells-us-who-we-are/ ... The United States is still at an earlier stage. To date, unimaginably in a high-tech society spending trillions on “health care,” access to diagnostic testing remains virtually nonexistent for most people, and this has totally crippled the nation’s efforts at response. Ironically, the assay for detecting the virus in a patient—aside from the complex task of standardization—is a very simple, basic laboratory procedure known as RT-PCR. Millions of labs are capable of doing it, given the genetic sequence data, which is on the internet. And yet, six weeks later, with the exception of a few academic medical centers, access is still through public health labs, with results that are returned far too slowly—a matter of days. In China, patients are given the result while they wait at the facility. Germany also quickly developed an assay, which was adopted by the World Health Organization (WHO), and this has resulted in Germany recording the fewest deaths in Europe. The United States declined the opportunity to follow that model of test development.... Our poor national healthcare outcomes continue as a symptom of the worst healthcare among all industrialized nations at by far the highest cost. Our pigheaded insistence that the square peg of Healthcare be forced into the round hole of Capitalism, is now going to literally kill us.
But then just 1 person gets it or has and doesn't realise and bang it's back and your back on lock down again, stop the crap, carry on regardless, lock yourself away if your an at risk group and lets just become immune by having it. 4 mates have it, if I don't come down with it soon then I'm either naturally immune or I had it when the GF came back sick from Singapore but only mildly. I on purpose haven't been careful, I've went to the gym, seen said mates and have washed my hands cause I think it's BS zero extra times.
We're all just losing our bearings. Because practice shows that such events are usually a distraction. After all, if you turn on the TV now, all we see is endless reports about what the virus is, how many people are sick today, and what to do if you get infected. But at the same time around the world in different countries can indeed be taken global decisions that are not visible in the background of all the hype. So now every trader must be extremely careful and attentive in order not to miss the moment. Now, depending on the reaction of countries and large companies, it is possible to make forecasts for the future, so let's do it, not waste time on empty conversations!
It seems to me that in any such situation, measures should be as strict as possible to achieve the most effective result, if we are talking about the health of people, if we are talking about the fact that our children and elderly people could survive in such conditions, then something radical is what will help in this situation. Personally, I think that in such a situation it is necessary to act in this way, and everyone should take personal responsibility for what is happening. I don't see anything wrong with staying at home for a while or working remotely, especially since your location is not of global importance to our business. So you just need to avoid panic and keep a close eye on developments.