Mid-Week Post

A post-Saint Patrick's Day musing or two ... 




For a country whose risk was repeatedly seen as "low", we sure do seem to be exploding in infection cases and ways not to handle the coronavirus that originated in China:

Quebec health officials are reporting the province’s first COVID-19-related death, and Canada’s ninth.

Premier Francois Legault said the patient was an elderly person from the Lanaudière region, northeast of Montreal.

On March 18, the province also announced 20 new cases of COVID-19, bringing their total case count to 94, which includes six people who are in hospital and four in intensive care.

Of the new 20 cases, five are in the Québec City region, nine in Estrie, two each in Montréal and Chaudière-Appalaches, and one each in Laurentides and Outaouais, which has just reported its first case.

No further information about the 20 new cases, such as the patients’ ages or exposure to the virus, has been made available at the moment. But health officials in the province are currently investigating 3,627 people for the virus. So far, 5,213 tests have come back negative.

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“During this time-period while the openness of international borders and availability of international flights is rapidly changing, there has been a significant impact on removal operations,” said a CBSA spokesperson.

“In light of the current circumstances and in the best interest of officers and clientele, the Government of Canada, in conjunction with the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA), has decided to stop carrying out removals at the current time.”

Were you doing that before?

Oh, wait:

Those who illegally cross the border into Canada are not being quarantined, despite assurances to the contrary by Public Safety Minister Bill Blair, according to the head of the union representing CBSA officers.

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Dr. Li Wenliang, a doctor who worked at Wuhan Central Hospital, raised alarm bells about the virus. He had contacted medical colleagues on December 30, but police instructed him to stay silent and to desist in “making false comments.” He has since died from the illness.

Only 34 years old at the time of his death, Dr. Li was aware of seven cases that resembled SARS, which was also a global pandemic in 2003, but of a lesser magnitude than the COVID-19 strain of coronavirus.

It was also in late December that sick patients in Wuhan were tested by genomics companies, who noticed that there were similarities to the SARS virus. The New York Post reports that the “researchers alerted Beijing of their findings—and on Jan. 3, received a gag order from China’s National Health Commission, with instructions to destroy the samples.”

The result of this was that local officials in Wuhan went ahead with their gala potluck plans, where 40,000 families attended. Even when the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention went to Wuhan on January 8, information was intentionally withheld about the virus, its spread, or sick patients.

It was on January 20 that the news finally surfaced, and Wuhan was placed on lock down three days later. This was far too late for those who were already sick, dying, or would contract the virus.

The Canada-US border is shut for everyone except illegal migrants crossing at Roxham Road.


But what will solve the problem of an economic shutdown?

Why - money, of course!:

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Wednesday said his government would provide C$27 billion ($18.6 billion) in stimulus directly to families and businesses struggling because of the coronavirus outbreak. 

Trudeau also told reporters the government would provide C$55 billion in additional aid to businesses and households through tax deferrals. 

Where are you getting the money, Justin?

From the same place you got these?:

Health Minister Patty Hadju has assured us that there is a national stockpile of emergency medical equipment, but they have been understandably tight-lipped on how much we have of which products and how they will be rationed and deployed.

It would be folly to assume right now that we will not soon become like Italy, where they do not have enough ventilators to keep the critically ill alive and are making tough choices about who receives care.

Canadian doctors are currently sounding the alarm that our health care system is lacking much needed supplies as we face an inevitable uptick in COVID-19 cases. They worry about everything from ventilators in ICUs to gloves for family physicians and specialists. 

These were the concerns voiced by Dr. Kulvinder Gill, President of the Concerned Ontario Doctors, when she joined me on National Post Radio on SiriusXM Canada Talks Wednesday morning.

One particularly troubling fact that Gill pointed out is that Canada very recently gave away 16 tonnes of medical equipment to China.

On Feb. 9, Global Affairs Canada announced that: “To support China’s ongoing response to the outbreak, Canada has deployed approximately 16 tonnes of personal protective equipment, such as clothing, face shields, masks, goggles and gloves to the country since February 4, 2020.”

Canada’s first case was identified on Jan. 25 and by the time we started shipping that equipment to China we already had 5 confirmed cases.

Canadians knew since 2013 that Justin's favourite country was China so this should not be a surprise to them. 

Something that India is doing:

Mumbai, a metropolis of 18 million people, also authorised hospital and airport authorities to stamp the wrists of those ordered to self-isolate with indelible ink reading "Home Quarantined" and displaying the date the quarantine ends.

But we won't enforce isolation or quarantine. 

A new spike in South Korean cases:

Korean authorities are on alert as additional clusters of the novel coronavirus infections emerged in Daegu, the epicenter of the local outbreak, despite a relative slowdown in new cases nationwide.

On Wednesday, Korea reported 93 new COVID-19 cases, bringing the nation’s total to 8,413, according to the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It marks the fourth straight day that the number of new cases remained in double digits rather than triple. Three more people died, raising the death toll to 84, and 139 were newly declared virus-free, putting the total number of recoveries at 1,540.

Daegu, the southeastern city accounting for 70 percent of all cases here, reported new clusters of infections at nursing homes. At Hansarang Nursing Hospital, 74 people -- 57 patients and 17 medical staff -- have tested positive so far.

There were 117 patients hospitalized with 71 medical staff total at the hospital, which was immediately placed under cohort isolation.

Four other nursing homes in Daegu reported 13 additional cases, seven at Baesung Hospital, four at Suseong Hospital and one each at Jinmyung Silver Home and Siji Giriatic Hospital. The sudden revelation of cases at nursing homes is a result of the city’s exhaustive testing at nursing homes and social welfare facilities, amid concern about mass infections among seniors and people with preexisting illnesses who are at greater risk of death or serious complications.

In Daegu, a 17-year-old showing pneumonia-like symptoms died on Wednesday, raising concerns as cases with teenagers and children were thought to be less fatal than older people. The KCDC has yet to confirm the case as COVID-19, as the result of a posthumous test is still pending. But health officials noted the deceased had mixed results -- both positive and negative -- when tested several times while hospitalized. 

Oh, things are getting worse.

Goody:

Experts say chest CT scans and X-rays can reveal COVID-19 infections that go undetected by RT-PCR, which is currently the chief method for determining if a person has the disease.

Speaking at a conference organized by the Korean Federation of Science and Technology Societies last week, radiologist Do Kyung-hyun of Asan Medical Center in Seoul said the chest radiographs of otherwise asymptomatic patients sometimes revealed signs of infiltration in their lungs.

“Such radiological abnormalities can lead to early detection of suspected pneumonia in patients,” she said.

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Scientists from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the U.S. National Institutes of Health, attempted to mimic the virus deposited from an infected person onto everyday surfaces in a household or hospital setting, such as through coughing or touching objects.

They used a device to dispense an aerosol that duplicated the microscopic droplets created in a cough or a sneeze.

The scientists then investigated how long the virus remained infectious on these surfaces, according to the study that appeared online in the New England Journal of Medicine on Tuesday – a day in which U.S. COVID-19 cases surged past 5,200 and deaths approached 100.

The tests show that when the virus is carried by the droplets released when someone coughs or sneezes, it remains viable, or able to still infect people, in aerosols for at least three hours.

On plastic and stainless steel, viable virus could be detected after three days. On cardboard, the virus was not viable after 24 hours. On copper, it took four hours for the virus to become inactivated.

In terms of half-life, the research team found that it takes about 66 minutes for half the virus particles to lose function if they are in an aerosol droplet.

And now, bored? Being laid off and kept from school getting you down? Why not try these live-stream events?