The military is preparing for an outbreak here on US soil, as well as protecting troops stationed overseas. CDC is already planning, working with local/state agencies for the worst. They know it's coming, matter of time. If you’re not already prepping at home you should be. Most cases will not be severe, normal cold flu stuff, but if you wait there will not be any over the counter meds available. The problem with this bug is it’s highly contagious nature, about twice that of the normal flu. Everyone has seen how the flu effects us, work, schools, now double the amount of people. Hospitals, Doctors will not be able to keep up. If you don’t think they will quarantine areas here in the US, you’re sticking your head in the sand. So everyone needs to stock up a minimum 2-3 weeks supply of food, you won’t want to go to the store and some items will run low. This thing is very survivable but it will be a disruptive force both socially and economically. Pray for third world countries, they will be hit the hardest.
Not over hyped for the disruption it causes and the fact that China fucked up and started this whole shit. Would not bother me a bit to see China's economy take a hit and maybe they learn something from it (stop eating shitty animals). It is so easily spread which is the scary part not the death rate per se. I have one or two deals in China where workers were home for the Chinese New year and then not allowed to leave theri hometown to go back so things have slowed down. Multiply that by hundreds of thousands all over. See the news story today on car parts coming out of Hubei province.
Limbaugh just said that this coronavirus stuff is being hyped by the MSM only to hurt Trump. I disagree with that opinion.
I don't agree with it either but I do agree that the media will use any negative events as weapons against Trump. They are desperately looking for the uncontained cases he has brought or will be brought into the country. From there he will be portrayed as being akin to the Spanish Conquistadoras who brought in the plagues that wiped out 90% of the Aztec and Inca populations. I sure hope that if cases spread to central america in a widespread way that all the illegals being sent up or coming on their own have been screened for coronavirus before crossing the Rio. I am sure they will be because it would be a disaster otherwise.
....in case anyone thought China was on the back foot..... https://www.scmp.com/news/china/mil...rms-industry-back-business-despite-disruption China’s arms industry back in business despite disruption by coronavirus Manufacturers say they resumed full aircraft production in early February Pace must be maintained to meet military’s growing needs, observers say Minnie Chan Published: 6:00am, 23 Feb, 2020 Updated: 6:00am, 23 Feb, 2020 The Chinese air force has been pressed into service delivering medical supplies during the outbreak, but arms production is returning to normal. Photo: Reuters The Chinese arms industry resumed full production early this month amid the prolonged coronavirus outbreak, as military experts said the People’s Liberation Army should keep up its weaponry programmes in the face of rising security challenges in the region. Several subsidiaries of the state-owned Aviation Industry Corporation of China (AVIC) that make the PLA’s warplanes said on their websites they resumed full aircraft production on February 10, while aerospace institutes and naval shipbuilders pledged they would not let the coronavirus affect their production and scientific research schedules. The new coronavirus was discovered in Wuhan, central China, in December, and as of Saturday morning had caused the deaths of 2,360 people – almost all in China – and infected more than 77,700 worldwide. Coronavirus outbreak: global businesses shut down operations in China Chengdu Aerospace Corporation (CAC), a subsidiary of AVIC that designed and built the PLA’s new-generation J-20 fighter jet, has a set target of producing at least 300 J-20s in the next decade, according to a military insider. “Other state-owned enterprises like steel plants have also resumed production, and it’s impossible for the aircraft and naval industry to slow up production once the heat treating furnaces are turned on,” the person said, on condition of anonymity. China’s Central Military Commission, chaired by President Xi Jinping, had ordered the arms industry to maintain production levels to support the PLA, he said. Beijing-based naval expert Li Jie said the PLA needed at least 50 active J-20s in service by the end of the year to match intended Chinese air force deployment in the Asia-Pacific region. Military experts estimate China has about 24 J-20s already in service. “The PLA Air Force should step up its new fighter jet build-up because the United States is expected to deploy more than 200 advanced F-35s fifth-generation fighter jets in northeast Asia, especially in Japan and South Korea, in the coming years,” Li said. “The Pentagon also deployed more than a dozen of its F-22 fighter jets to its Kadena Air Base in Okinawa in recent years, all those new deployments will cause a direct threat to China.” Analysing coronavirus impact on China: trade, force majeure and economic crisis The newest versions of the J-20, with its advanced supersonic and manoeuvring capabilities, are capable of competing with the US’s F-22, and the F-35s that have used by Japan and South Korea since 2018. “The epidemic outbreak had postponed weaponry development progress for almost a month when the Lunar New Year holiday was prolonged, but now everyone should resume their schedules,” Li said. “Compared with other staff of state-owned enterprises, the arms industry’s scientists, engineers and workers are more self-disciplined, and they are more capable to meet production missions during an epidemic.” China’s military tightens secrecy rules as PLA steps up exchanges abroad 20 Feb 2020 Besides the fighter jets, China plans to build a further two Type 002 new-generation aircraft carriers, expected to be fitted with catapults similar to those found on the nuclear-powered USS Gerald Ford – which uses the world’s most advanced electromagnetic aircraft launch system. All shipyards under the China State Shipbuilding Corporation (CSSC) resumed work earlier this month, according to their websites. Hudong Zhonghua Shipbuilding, builder of the Type 075 amphibious assault ship and one of CSSC’s subsidiaries, has used reserve manpower to replace workers who could not make it back to work due to the epidemic, in an attempt to keep to their original production schedule.
Spent much of the day on a buying spree including, yes, Chinese securities. About the only stock on the upswing is Gilead. Some of the financials held up pretty well but most ended up off about 6%. Smoke 'em if you got 'em lol.
Buy $BUD in front of earnings. Its risky I know.... but buy it with long term money, sell calls along the way, and collect the near 3% divy if you don't get the options exercised. Best deal in the market right now.
https://www.nbcnews.com/health/heal...e-coronavirus-higher-other-countries-n1142646 Why is Iran's reported mortality rate for coronavirus higher than in other countries? Iran’s reported mortality rate for the illness — about 16 percent — surpasses the rate for other countries by a dramatic margin. WASHINGTON — Iran has the highest reported number of deaths from the coronavirus outside China, raising questions about how the government is handling the public health crisis and whether the often secretive regime has been fully transparent about the extent of the outbreak. Iran's health ministry spokesman Kianoosh Jahanpour said on Tuesday that 15 Iranians have died out of a total of 95 positive cases. But Iran's state news agency later said one person infected with coronavirus had died in the city of Saveh, bringing the death toll to 16. Apart from China, where the virus was first detected in December, Iran has recorded the most deaths from the coronavirus. There have been 2,663 deaths in China, out of a total number of 77,658 confirmed cases. But Iran’s reported mortality rate for the illness — about 16 percent — surpasses the rate for other countries by a dramatic margin. At the epicenter of the outbreak in Hubei province in China, the reported mortality rate is estimated at around 2 percent. In South Korea, 11 patients have died from the virus out of 977 cases, for a reported mortality rate of about 1 percent. Amid a shortage of surgical masks and hand sanitizer in Iranian shops, public health experts say Iran could become the hub of a major outbreak across the Middle East, especially given its porous borders with unstable countries at war or in turmoil. Iranian officials reported the first case of virus in the religious city of Qom last week and the virus has spread to at least seven other provinces in Iran. Countries in the region, including Iraq, Kuwait, Oman and Afghanistan, reported their first cases this week and said the patients had recently visited Iran. In an echo of public reaction in China, critics of the Iranian regime in and outside of the country are questioning whether officials in Tehran have given the public a full and accurate picture of the outbreak. But Iranian officials have rejected any suggestion they are playing down the epidemic. The head of Qom's Medical Science University, Mohammad Reza Ghadir, said on Iranian state television that the Health Ministry in Tehran had banned releasing figures on the coronavirus outbreak in the city. When asked how many people had been placed in quarantine, Ghadir said "the health ministry has told us not to announce any new statistics." Ghadir also said that "most of the tests have to be done in Tehran and Tehran announces it." His comments suggested that diagnostic tests were mainly being conducted in the capital Tehran. Outside medical experts say reporting on the total number of cases of infection in Iran was possibly lagging behind reporting on deaths. That could be because Iranian authorities are missing less severe cases across the country due to how they are testing and diagnosing patients, how information is shared or because of flawed medical equipment. "This appears to be a reporting issue," said Dr. Yanzhong Huang, a professor at Seton Hall University and a senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations. "Reporting on the cases of infections may have fallen behind the reporting on the deaths." It's unclear if Iran has the ability to find out how many people have been infected, which would require venturing out to towns and villages to conduct tests and not simply relying on who comes to large hospitals with severe symptoms, said Dr. William Schaffner, a professor of preventive medicine and infectious diseases at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. "That means going to the neighborhood and knocking on doors and really aggressively trying to find cases," Schaffner told NBC News. "I don't know if they have that capacity. Many countries do not, and they don't have that tradition in their public health systems. This would be a very new thing for them to do." Another possibility is that the patients affected are from an elderly, more vulnerable part of the population. Schaffner said. If the virus "was introduced to a population that was older, and as a consequence has a bunch of underlying illnesses, [that] could explain a high fatality rate," Schaffner said. A less likely explanation is that Iran's hospitals had fallen short and patients were not getting the necessary medical care, Schaffner said. But he doubted that was the case, since Iran has a relatively advanced health care system. Dr. John Torres, NBC News medical correspondent, said there is no evidence of a change in the genetic profile of the virus, so the explanation for the higher mortality rate likely has to do with how the Iranians are tracking cases of infection. "There are no significant DNA changes in the virus. The virus has not mutated elsewhere," Torres said. An Iranian member of parliament, Mamoud Sadeghi, and the country's deputy health minister, Iraj Harirchi, who lead a task force battling the virus, tested positive for coronavirus, state media said Tuesday. The news came a day after Harirchi appeared at a press conference looking feverish, reaching for tissues to wipe his brow. He wore no face mask as the ministry spokesman standing next to him expressed confidence about the government's response to the crisis. "I say this from the bottom of my heart. Take care of yourselves," Harirchi said in a video he took of himself that was posted after his diagnosis became public. "This is a democratic virus, it does not distinguish between rich and poor, the powerful and not powerful. It may infect a number of people." Harirchi earlier had reacted with anger when an Iranian politician alleged the number of deaths was much higher in the city of Qom than the government had acknowledged. Harirchi also had appeared on television coughing during an interview. The episode raised questions about how Iran is managing the crisis and whether officials are failing to disclose information to the public — and the rest of the world. Iranian officials are already under public scrutiny over the handling of the downing of a Ukrainian airliner in January. It took Iran's military three days to admit the plane was shot down by an Iranian missile in error, triggering angry street protests. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told a news conference on Tuesday that "the United States is deeply concerned by information indicating the Iranian regime may have suppressed vital details about the outbreak in that country." "All nations including Iran should tell the truth about the coronavirus and cooperate with international aid organizations," Pompeo added. In Washington, top U.S. public health officials warned Tuesday that Americans should prepare for the spread of the coronavirus in communities across the country. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/24/world/middleeast/coronavirus-iran.html ‘Recipe for a Massive Viral Outbreak’: Iran Emerges as a Worldwide Threat Long a regional crossroads, Iran is spreading the new coronavirus to a host of neighboring countries. Many are ill equipped to cope. Religious pilgrims, migrant workers, businessmen, soldiers and clerics all flow constantly across Iran’s frontiers, often crossing into countries with few border controls, weak and ineffective governments and fragile health systems. Now, as it struggles to contain the spread of the coronavirus, Iran is also emerging as the second focal point after China for the spread of the disease. Cases in Iraq, Afghanistan, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Lebanon, the United Arab Emirates — even one in Canada — have all been traced to Iran, sending tremors of fear rippling out from Kabul to Beirut. The Middle East is in many ways the perfect place to spawn a pandemic, experts say, with the constant circulation of both Muslim pilgrims and itinerant workers who might carry the virus. Iran’s economy has been strangled by sanctions, its people have lost trust in their government and its leaders are isolated from much of the world, providing little clarity about the extent of the epidemic. Civil wars or years of unrest have shattered the health systems of several neighboring countries, like Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and Yemen. And most of the region is governed largely by authoritarians with poor track records at providing public transparency, accountability and health services. “It is a recipe for a massive viral outbreak,” said Peter Piot, director of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and the former founding executive director of the Joint United Nations Program on H.I.V./AIDS. Millions of Muslim pilgrims travel each year from around the region to visit Shiite holy sites in Iran and Iraq. In January alone, 30,000 people returned to Afghanistan from Iran, and hundreds of others continue to make the pilgrimage to Qom, the site of the outbreak, every week, Afghan officials say. Iraq closed its border with Iran on Saturday, but millions cross it every year. So scores of infected people could potentially have brought the virus to Iraq, depending on how long it has been present in Iran. And as of midday on Monday in Najaf, flights to and from Iran were still taking off and landing. Governors of Iraqi provinces bordering Iran were taking the potential for contagion seriously and at least two were personally inspecting the border crossings to ensure that they were being policed and that Iranians were barred from crossing into Iraq. Qutaybah al-Jubouri, the head of the Iraqi Parliament’s Health Affairs Committee, called the coronavirus “a plague” and said his committee was demanding a far more complete closure of all “land, sea and air” borders with Iran “until the disease is completely controlled.” Iran’s health ministry sent a letter to the governor of Qom on Thursday and asked Shiite religious leaders to limit the number of pilgrims at the Shrine to Fatima Masumeh and other religious sites in the city, but as of early Tuesday, throngs of people still gathered around the shrine, touching it and taking part in communal prayers. The Coronavirus Outbreak What do you need to know? Start here. Updated Feb. 25, 2020 Now the slow drip of news about the spread of the virus is compounding Tehran’s already acute credibility problems, less than two months after officials were forced to admit lying about their knowledge of the accidental downing of a Ukrainian passenger jet by air defense systems. Many Iranians on Monday were openly skeptical about the official accounts of the spread of the virus. A member of Parliament representing Qom claimed on Monday that at least 50 people had already died there, including 34 in quarantine, and that the first case had been reported more than two weeks before officials acknowledged any infections. “Every day 10 people are dying in Qom,” the lawmaker, Ahmad Amiri Farahani, asserted in a speech to Parliament, demanding a quarantine on his city. Health ministry officials vehemently disputed his claims. “I will resign if the numbers are even half or a quarter of this,” said Iraj Harirchi, adviser to the health minister. Adding to the public anxiety, the Iranian news media reported that Dr. Mohamad Reza Ghadir, the head of a medical university in Qom and the top official in charge of managing the outbreak there, was among those placed in quarantine. On Monday, Dr. Ghadir said on Iran’s state television network that the health ministry had ordered city officials “not to publish any statistics” related to the outbreak in Qom. The situation there was “very dire and disease has spread across the city, ” he said. Iranians, distrusting the authorities, were ignoring official urgings to stay away from hospitals for fear of spreading the disease, instead crowding into emergency rooms to get themselves tested. Imam Khomeini Hospital in Tehran put up a triage tent outside to handle the overflow. In an interview with BBC Persian from Tehran, Dr. Babak Gharaye Moghadam urged citizens to “please, please listen” to the advice of health officials and not to turn to social media feeds on their cellphones for guidance. The price of hospital masks was spiking across the region, including in Iran, Iraq, Lebanon and Afghanistan, where some were selling for as much as 30 times the usual cost. Experts worry that few Middle Eastern countries are ready to respond effectively to the threat posed by the virus. “How ready are these countries?” asked Dr. Montaser Bilbisi, an American-trained infectious disease specialist practicing in Amman, Jordan. “In all honesty, I have not seen the level of readiness that I have seen in China or elsewhere, and even some of the personal protective equipment is lacking.” In Jordan, for example, he said that he had not yet seen a fully protective hazardous materials suit. “So health care workers would be at very high risk for infection.” In Afghanistan, officials said the first confirmed case of the virus was a 35-year-old man from the western province of Herat who had recently traveled to Qom. Health officials declared a state of emergency in Herat. The government on Sunday had already suspended all air and ground travel to and from Iran. But the border is difficult to seal. Thousands cross every week for religious pilgrimages, trade, jobs and study — about 30,000 in January alone, the International Organization of Migration, an intergovernmental agency, reported. “In the past two weeks, more than a 1,000 people have visited or traveled to Qom from Herat, which means they come into closer contact with the virus,” the Afghan heath minister, Ferozuddin Feroz, said on Monday at a news conference in Kabul. As officials offered reassurances that they were ordering more hospital masks, residents were panicking about what other precautions to take. The son of a professor at a university in Herat, who returned three days ago from Iran, called a reporter for The New York Times on Monday asking what the procedure for quarantine was. “My father doesn’t show any signs of corona, but he and our family are worried,” the son, Mohamad Iman, said. “He’s locked himself up in a room where he just reads books. He has asked us to leave him some food and water at the door, but to stay away.” Saudi Arabia was the epicenter of a similar outbreak seven years ago, known as the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome, or MERS, that was transmitted from camels to humans. But even after seven years, Saudi Arabia, one of the richest countries in the world, has struggled to adapt state-of-the-art hygiene procedures to limit the spread of the virus within hospitals. A MERS outbreak last spring infected at least 61 people, killing eight of them. “Many hospitals in Saudi Arabia have improved but some could still do better at prevention,” said Dr. David L. Heymann, former chairman of Britain’s Health Protection Agency. In Iraq, the country with the most extensive border with Iran, only one case has been detected so far: that of a 22-year-old Iranian religious student in Najaf, Suhail Mohammad Ali. In the first comprehensive steps to combat the spread of the virus, the education department in Najaf on Monday postponed spring exams and the sacred Imam Ali Shrine was closed. The central government’s health department recommended avoiding crowded places, kissing or shaking hands. In Beirut, Lebanon, a 41-year-old woman who had traveled to Qom on a religious pilgrimage landed in Beirut on Thursday night and was found on Friday to have the virus. It was not until Monday, though, that the government issued an emergency plan, suggesting that travel to the affected areas be restricted and that arriving passengers be isolated at the airport if they showed symptoms. But no definite restrictions were ordered; not all passengers landing in Beirut in recent days have been screened; and another two planes from Qom were allowed to land in Beirut on Monday. Passengers on the plane carrying the infected Lebanese woman from Qom were told to quarantine themselves at home. The country’s health minister, Dr. Hamad Hasan, on Monday urged the Lebanese to stay calm. But Rabih Shaer, founder of a Lebanese nonprofit that campaigns against corruption, called the government’s sluggish response “irresponsible and criminal.” “Already the Lebanese population lost trust that this political class can face all the problems,” he said. “And now, until today, they still haven’t taken the right measures. There’s no transparency, there’s no accountability.” Dr. Nada Melhem, a virologist at the American University of Beirut who has been consulting with the Health Ministry, acknowledged that, “the level of panic in Lebanon is really high.” “But with systematic follow-up, we will be able to contain it,” she added. “Are we going to have some gaps? We will definitely have some, but I hope we can limit them as much as we can.” https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/25/health/coronavirus-us.html C.D.C. Officials Warn of Coronavirus Outbreaks in the U.S. Clusters of infection are likely in American communities, health officials said. Some lawmakers questioned whether the nation is prepared. "It's not so much a question of if this will happen any more, but rather more a question of exactly when this will happen and how many people in this country will have severe illness," Dr. Nancy Messonnier, the head of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, told reporters. Federal health officials starkly warned on Tuesday that the new coronavirus will almost certainly spread in the United States, and that hospitals, businesses and schools should begin making preparations. “It’s not so much of a question of if this will happen anymore but rather more of a question of exactly when this will happen,” Dr. Nancy Messonnier, director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, said in a news briefing. She said that cities and towns should plan for “social distancing measures,” like dividing school classes into smaller groups of students or closing schools altogether. Meetings and conferences may have to be canceled, she said. Businesses should arrange for employees to work from home. “We are asking the American public to work with us to prepare, in the expectation that this could be bad,” Dr. Messonnier said. Shortly after the news conference, stock markets plummeted for the second day as investors dumped stocks and turned to the safety of government bonds. The S&P 500 fell by more than 3 percent, following a 3.4 percent slide on Monday — the worst day for the American markets since February 2018. In contrast to his own health officials, President Trump, traveling in India, played down the threat, saying, “You may ask about the coronavirus, which is very well under control in our country.” “We have very few people with it, and the people that have it are, in all cases, I have not heard anything other — the people are getting better, they’re all getting better.” As of Tuesday, the United States has just 57 cases, 40 of them connected to the Diamond Princess, the cruise ship overwhelmed by the coronavirus after it docked in Japan. Those patients are in isolation in hospitals, and there are no signs of sustained transmission in American communities. But given the outbreaks in more than two dozen countries, officials at the C.D.C. seemed convinced that the virus’s spread in the United States was inevitable, although they did not know whether the impact would be mild or severe. “We cannot hermetically seal off the United States to a virus,” Alex M. Azar II, the secretary of health and human services, told a Senate panel on Tuesday. “And we need to be realistic about that.” But this has been overshadowed by new clusters of infections in Iran, South Korea and Italy. The emergence of these new hubs underscored the lack of a coordinated global strategy to combat the coronavirus, which has infected more than 80,000 people in 37 countries, causing more than 2,600 deaths. By Tuesday, South Korea had reported a total of 893 cases, the second most in the world. The C.D.C. on Monday warned Americans not to travel there. Of the 60 new cases reported by South Korea’s federal health agency, 49 came from Daegu, the city at the center of the country’s outbreak. In Iran, a spike in coronavirus infections — including to the top health official in charge of fighting the disease — has prompted fears the contagion may spread throughout the Middle East. In Italy, one of Europe’s largest economies, officials are struggling to prevent the epidemic from paralyzing the commercial center of Milan. Keenly aware that the virus has the potential to wreak havoc in the United States, lawmakers from both the Democratic and the Republican parties grilled Mr. Azar and other members of the administration at the Senate hearing, apparently unconvinced that the Trump administration was prepared for the outbreak that the C.D.C. is forecasting. Senator John Kennedy, Republican of Louisiana, grew exasperated when the acting secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, Chad F. Wolf, could not say how many people were expected to become infected. “I’m all for committees and task forces, but you’re the secretary,” Mr. Kennedy responded. “I think you ought to know that answer.” The administration officials overseeing the response to a coronavirus outbreak told lawmakers that the initial funding requested by the White House — $1.25 billion in new funds and $1.25 billion taken from other programs — would most likely be just a first round. Mr. Azar said that there were 30 million N95 masks, respirators best suited to guarding against viruses that typically cost less than $1 apiece, in the nation’s emergency stockpile. Senator Patty Murray, Democrat of Washington, asked the health secretary whether he thought the United States currently had enough health masks in stock. “Of course not,” he responded, “or else we wouldn’t be asking for more.” Health care workers may need 300 million masks in the event of an outbreak, he added. Mr. Azar said he was alarmed by the human-to-human transmission of the virus in other parts of the world without an identifiable connection to confirmed cases, and what that could mean for how the virus may spread in the United States. But other federal health officials were trying to tamp down concerns. “You need to do nothing different than you’re already doing,” Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said at a news briefing. Federal officials were only trying to tell Americans that if an outbreak occurs, he added, “these are the kinds of things you want to think of.” Larry Kudlow, director of the National Economic Council, declared on CNBC that the coronavirus had been “contained” and would not do serious harm to the economy. “I don’t think it’s going to be an economic tragedy at all,” Mr. Kudlow said. Preparations to respond to a potential outbreak have begun, government officials said, but are far from complete. [Like the Science Times page on Facebook. | Sign up for the Science Times newsletter.] It still is difficult to diagnose the infection. The C.D.C. performs most of the testing, and samples must be sent from state and local laboratories to the agency in Atlanta, a process that takes days. The C.D.C. had manufactured diagnostic kits to be used by state and local labs, but the kits turned out to be flawed. Replacements have not yet been distributed. While the nation’s hospitals have had to handle only a few dozen cases to date, many are ramping up efforts to prepare for a widespread outbreak. “We’ve been planning for this for weeks and weeks now,” said Dr. Michael S. Phillips, an infectious disease expert and chief epidemiologist at NYU Langone Health System in New York City. Hospital officials were assuming the efforts to contain the virus would delay, not prevent, a pandemic — sustained transmission of the coronavirus on more than one continent. “We are really staging it, from a minor issue of small numbers of patients, to a full-blown community spread,” said Dr. Mark Jarrett, the chief quality officer at Northwell Health, which operates 23 hospitals on Long Island and elsewhere in New York. Hospital administrators nationwide anticipate a wave of patients that could strain their intensive care units and isolation rooms. Many are starting to conserve medical supplies, including specialized masks and ventilators. “It is a special concern that there is a shortage, a worldwide shortage, of personal protective equipment,” said Nancy Foster, a vice president of the American Hospital Association. Many hospitals say they are also planning to treat as many patients outside their facilities, using telemedicine to care for people with mild symptoms at home. “We have surge plans to go broader and broader — and if it gets broader, tents,” said Dr. Susan Huang, medical director of infection prevention at the University of California, Irvine Health System. “The hope for containment is rapidly fading.” The epidemic in China also has threatened supplies of some drugs and medical devices that hospitals rely on. The Food and Drug Administration has been monitoring supplies of about 20 important drugs that are manufactured in China or depend on ingredients made only there, including such common drugs as aspirin, ibuprofen and penicillin. Chinese factories are slowly reopening, officials said, although transportation remains a challenge because truck drivers face quarantines or are not allowed into certain cities. Despite the early hospital preparations, there is no vaccine or treatment for the coronavirus, and communities and individuals should prepare other means of protecting themselves. Individually, people can take the measures recommended for other infectious diseases, like washing their hands, covering their mouths when they cough, and staying home and away from others when they are sick. The World Health Organization said that the pace of confirmed new cases in China, which exceeded 2,000 a day a month ago, had dropped steadily, to a low of 508 on Monday. The severe measures imposed by the Chinese authorities to isolate patients and the hardest-hit areas had likely prevented hundreds of thousands of additional infections, the W.H.O. officials added. But W.H.O. officials have also warned that the world is unprepared for a leap in infections, which could overwhelm medical resources in many countries. They also cautioned that new cases could suddenly resurge in China, as the government struggles to get people back to work. And there are persistent doubts about the accuracy of infection figures reported by the Chinese government, raising the possibility that the true magnitude of the outbreak remains underreported. Rick Gladstone and Reed Abelson contributed reporting from New York; Zolan Kanno-