Health New Coronavirus in China

Coronavirus: what is behind Africa’s apparent resistance to the pandemic

May 12, 2020

RjE6EZJ.jpg


The African continent has so far about 55,000 confirmed cases of coronavirus infections (Photo: Getty Images via BBC News Brasil)
bbc_footer_sJkmJ5D.jpg


Since the first case in Africa was reported on February 14, the world media, experts, governments and even the World Health Organization (WHO) have predicted a “catastrophe” on the continent.


Although experts warn that it is too early to claim victory, the “impending disaster” predicted by John Nkengasong, director of the Center for Disease Control and Prevention in Africa, has not yet occurred.

While Europe accounts for more than 1.5 million confirmed cases, the United States exceeds 1.3 million and Latin America is close to 250,000, the African continent has so far 55,000 infections.


Its relatively low number of deaths is even more surprising: until May 8, this region of the world registered just over 2 thousand deaths, much less than other continents or even compared to a city like New York, which has already passed 20 thousand deaths.

These figures are more impressive given the fact that Africa is the second most populous continent in the world, with 1.2 billion inhabitants.

But what is behind the African continent’s apparent resistance to the coronavirus pandemic and why are there so few reported cases of covid-19?

Diversity of approaches

The most affected African countries, until May 11, are South Africa, with 10,015 cases, Egypt with 9,400, Morocco with 6,063 and Algeria with 5,723. Together, they represent almost 50% of all infections in Africa.


Some experts argue that the explanation for the supposed exception that the continent has become is that local health systems are unable to do enough tests to detect more cases of covid-19, mainly due to a lack of resources.


But others assert that other factors also influence this situation. Anne Soy, the BBC’s deputy editor in Africa, explains that there is indeed a complex situation on a continent with 53 countries that have confirmed the presence of the virus and have adopted different strategies to deal with it.


“There are those who have taken drastic measures from the beginning and where the number of cases continues to increase, however, there are others who are still in denial and are not implementing measures to prevent the spread of the disease, such as Tanzania,” says Soy.

Africa has a relatively low number of infections and deaths when compared to other regions of the world (Photo: Getty Images via BBC News Brasil)
Tanzania’s President John Magufuli is one of the few world leaders to continue to minimize the severity of the virus. Last week, he questioned the accuracy of the tests for covid-19 and dismissed the head of the national health laboratory in charge of carrying out the tests, denouncing a “cheat”.

Magufuli had already asked Tanzanians to pray for the coronavirus to disappear, and his government does not offer daily updates on the progress of the outbreak.

Rapid reactions from African countries
Despite some exceptions, most African countries have taken action “more quickly than the rest of the world,” notes Soy.


“Rwanda was one of the first to implement confinement when there were fewer than 20 confirmed cases. They closed the border and stopped international flights,” he said.

South Africa, the continent’s country that has reported the most infections so far, has since March 27 imposed one of the strictest isolation regimes in the world, banning all commercial flights and even the sale of drinks and cigarettes.

But mainly due to the slump in South Africa’s economic activity, its health officials began to relax some measures last week.


Experience with epidemics

Although the coronavirus pandemic is the most serious health crisis of our generation, it is far from the first. Especially in Africa, a continent that has faced severe epidemics of malaria, tuberculosis, cholera, HIV and Ebola.

All of these diseases took lives, but they also forced the African scientific and medical community to innovate.

“The African population is used to reacting quickly, to resorting to volunteers in rural areas. I think that has allowed them to circulate information on preventive measures and apply them in time,” says Karl Blanchet, specialist in global health and health emergencies at the Center Geneva for Education and Research in Humanitarian Action (Cerah).

The recent Ebola epidemic that hit West Africa, with greater intensity between 2014 and 2016, caused havoc in countries like Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone and left more than 11,000 dead.

Although WHO declared the end of the health emergency in the region in March 2016, authorities are still on alert in some of the countries most affected by the outbreak due to the emergence of isolated cases.


“Ebola was a problem that still existed when the covid-19 pandemic was declared. This means that some African countries already had detection infrastructure at airports. Public health officials and non-contact thermometers were already positioned at the entrance doors,” explains Soy.


The ebola outbreak also taught Africa the importance of detecting cases quickly, treating confirmed patients and isolating communities, says the BBC journalist.

“Because of that epidemic, people have even stopped shaking hands in West Africa and the Democratic Republic of Congo. They have become aware that this is important,” he adds.

A less globalized continent


Frederique Jacquerioz, an African public health specialist from the team of tropical and humanitarian medicine at the Geneva University Hospital in Switzerland, estimates that another factor that may explain Africa’s resistance to the pandemic is the low circulation between the countries of the continent and the rest of the world.


“The first confirmed cases in Africa were young people, Africans or Europeans, who traveled, returned to Africa and brought the virus with them,” says the doctor.


Rwanda imposed containment measures when there were fewer than 20 confirmed cases.

“In a globalized world, this was one of the factors that fueled the spread of the virus in Europe, where groups of young people spend weekends in different cities. Perhaps in Africa, in that sense, there is less mobility between countries.”


This hypothesis is supported by several experts. Blanchet, from Cerah, gives as an example three of the countries that have so far been most affected by the virus: South Africa, Egypt and Algeria.


“They are the countries with the largest number of air connections with China. The exception is Ethiopia, which despite not being in this group, has a direct connection with the Asian country. But it has not yet been affected by the pandemic. This is something that it cannot be explained, “he says.


Is there a demographic factor?


The African demographic pyramid is another element that may have helped the death toll in the region to be no greater: Africa is the continent with the youngest population in the world.

Blanchet believes in this hypothesis and points out that “the average age in Africa is 19.7 years, while in Europe it is around 40 years, for example”.

Although Anne Soy recognizes that this could be one of the factors, she warns that there are still no scientific studies to support this theory.


“It may be one of the advantages of Africa, but at the same time, you also have a large population of malnourished children, with a weaker immune system, than the rest of the world population, which makes them more vulnerable. This means that would we have to see more African children affected than in the rest of the planet? “asks the journalist.


The risks of the continent


On Friday, the WHO warned that the coronavirus in Africa could “burn slowly” for several years and kill about 190,000 people in the next 12 months.


That warning came a month after the agency estimated that the outbreak would cause 10 million infections on the continent within six months.

The same report from Friday predicts that between 29 million and 44 million people could be infected in the first year of the covid-19 pandemic if containment measures on the continent fail.

Several analysts emphasize that the impact of the pandemic will really depend on the actions that governments take.


The director of the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa, Stephen Karingi, told the British newspaper The Guardian that it is necessary to recognize that African authorities are “doing a lot” to contain the outbreak.


“Projections were that we would now be in a war situation, but due to measures taken by governments and communities, transmission rates are lower than those we have seen elsewhere.”


Soy says movement restrictions have slowed the spread of the virus, but officials must remain vigilant, especially in Africa’s slums.


“They have a high population density and very poor health services. Some of them don’t even have access to water,” says the journalist.


Soy points out that the majority of its inhabitants would have trouble staying confined for a long time, because they are informal workers who cannot eat if they do not go out to work.


Despite the diversity of opinions and debates about why Africa has resisted the covid-19 pandemic better than other resource-rich regions, the vast majority of experts agree that it is too early to speak of an “African exception”.

Source:
https://www.time24.news/t24/2020/05...esistance-to-the-pandemic-epoca-negocios.html


I think it is mostly due to a lack of proper testing. The native Africans are far worse off than African-Americans on every level (access to food, clean water, healthcare, etc.). Yet we see a disproportionate impact on African-American communities, when you adjust for the relative size of their population. Often societal factors are cited as the reason. This is surely even worse in Africa.
 
I think it is mostly due to a lack of proper testing. The native Africans are far worse off than African-Americans on every level (access to food, clean water, healthcare, etc.). Yet we see a disproportionate impact on African-American communities, when you adjust for the relative size of their population. Often societal factors are cited as the reason. This is surely even worse in Africa.

I agree with you. The African-Brazilians was strongly affected by the pandemic. This group presents higher mortality rates than others. The societal factors are the principal cause.
 
I'm not so sure it's just societal inequality, i.e. worse healthcare, nutrition, more drug use.

"Tim Cook and colleagues identified 106 NHS staff who had died from COVID-19 up to 22 April. They found that 63% were black or Asian, despite the fact that non-white staff comprise only 21% of the NHS workforce."

These aren't underclass people. They have decent jobs, nationalized 100% decent health care etc.

Every thing else has a genetic component, why would this be any different. I think it's going to vary not only in terms of "ethnic groups", but individuals. We already know it hits men harder.

See:
https://www.mystateline.com/health/...levels-of-enzyme-more-vulnerable-to-covid-19/

As for Africa, maybe there is something to the fact that Covid replicates better in cooler temperatures, as well as the fact that their population is so young, and they weren't seeded in the same way as happened with Europe and North America. A lot depends on how much you're part of certain types of international travel.
 
More on herd immunity as a strategy:
Sweden not only has more deaths per million than the US, but a growing gap in our deaths per million--& a shrinking gap with countries with higher numbers like France/ Spain/Italy.


S. Korea “club” cluster: they weren’t getting people calling to be tested, perhaps because many of them are gay/lesbian clubs, so they got their info using cell phone tower numbers and credit card numbers, and then contacted them to come in for testing. They’re promising not to release the names.

S Korea is going above and beyond to stop the clubbing outbreak in its tracks. Now it's testing *every* high school student in Seoul as there were reports of some HS students going to the clubs


They found six new cases in Wuhan so they’re planning to test eleven million people over the next ten days. Neither number is a typo.


A full-body sterilization booth is being trialed at the Hong Kong International Airport. The “CLeanTech” booth is coated in an antimicrobial covering that can kill viruses and bacteria on clothing and human skin.

I'm sure Trump will cite it to prove he wasn't as crazy as he sounded when he said maybe we can disinfect the whole body. What about the side effects, though.


3M Expanding N95 Mask Production to 95M Per Month
New DoD contracts and internal investments will allow 3M to make more than 2 billion respirators by the end of 2020.

Once they know the masks are there, I'll bet they recommend them across the board. It should be compulsory country wide. I don't want to die or get seriously ill, or for it to happen to my family because some idiot thinks it looks "foreign" and un-American, or, like our President, un-macho.


Now for the ridiculous.
WATCH: Protesters calling for gyms to reopen in Florida are doing squats and push-ups outside the Clearwater courthouse

So, a crowded bunch of people, inside, with poor ventilation going by the smell of sweat, huffing and puffing and leaving their sweat on all the machines, and shouting to be heard over the noise of said machines. I feel sorry for the owners of the businesses, especially the ones who are solo or own a franchise, but these guys should be IQ tested.


There's something I don't get about the "scandal" over supposed deaths in nursing homes in New York being the fault of Cuomo's order in March forcing nursing homes to accept recovering seniors. Clearly, they didn't know where to put them if they had no family or the family wasn't willing to take them in. If you're recovering you're supposed to be immune, right? So you can be immune but still contagious.

If that's the case, all the rules will have to change.


Notice how all the anti-vaxxer mommies are dead silent?
 
Just do not trust N95 mask if someone else wears it,
FFP2 N95 KN95 with valve can transmit virus,

trust more someone with a simple or triple cotton, than someone with N95 and valve
 
Coronavirus: what is behind Africa’s apparent resistance to the pandemic

May 12, 2020

RjE6EZJ.jpg


The African continent has so far about 55,000 confirmed cases of coronavirus infections (Photo: Getty Images via BBC News Brasil)
bbc_footer_sJkmJ5D.jpg


Since the first case in Africa was reported on February 14, the world media, experts, governments and even the World Health Organization (WHO) have predicted a “catastrophe” on the continent.


Although experts warn that it is too early to claim victory, the “impending disaster” predicted by John Nkengasong, director of the Center for Disease Control and Prevention in Africa, has not yet occurred.

While Europe accounts for more than 1.5 million confirmed cases, the United States exceeds 1.3 million and Latin America is close to 250,000, the African continent has so far 55,000 infections.


Its relatively low number of deaths is even more surprising: until May 8, this region of the world registered just over 2 thousand deaths, much less than other continents or even compared to a city like New York, which has already passed 20 thousand deaths.

These figures are more impressive given the fact that Africa is the second most populous continent in the world, with 1.2 billion inhabitants.

But what is behind the African continent’s apparent resistance to the coronavirus pandemic and why are there so few reported cases of covid-19?

Diversity of approaches

The most affected African countries, until May 11, are South Africa, with 10,015 cases, Egypt with 9,400, Morocco with 6,063 and Algeria with 5,723. Together, they represent almost 50% of all infections in Africa.


Some experts argue that the explanation for the supposed exception that the continent has become is that local health systems are unable to do enough tests to detect more cases of covid-19, mainly due to a lack of resources.


But others assert that other factors also influence this situation. Anne Soy, the BBC’s deputy editor in Africa, explains that there is indeed a complex situation on a continent with 53 countries that have confirmed the presence of the virus and have adopted different strategies to deal with it.


“There are those who have taken drastic measures from the beginning and where the number of cases continues to increase, however, there are others who are still in denial and are not implementing measures to prevent the spread of the disease, such as Tanzania,” says Soy.

Africa has a relatively low number of infections and deaths when compared to other regions of the world (Photo: Getty Images via BBC News Brasil)
Tanzania’s President John Magufuli is one of the few world leaders to continue to minimize the severity of the virus. Last week, he questioned the accuracy of the tests for covid-19 and dismissed the head of the national health laboratory in charge of carrying out the tests, denouncing a “cheat”.

Magufuli had already asked Tanzanians to pray for the coronavirus to disappear, and his government does not offer daily updates on the progress of the outbreak.

Rapid reactions from African countries
Despite some exceptions, most African countries have taken action “more quickly than the rest of the world,” notes Soy.


“Rwanda was one of the first to implement confinement when there were fewer than 20 confirmed cases. They closed the border and stopped international flights,” he said.

South Africa, the continent’s country that has reported the most infections so far, has since March 27 imposed one of the strictest isolation regimes in the world, banning all commercial flights and even the sale of drinks and cigarettes.

But mainly due to the slump in South Africa’s economic activity, its health officials began to relax some measures last week.


Experience with epidemics

Although the coronavirus pandemic is the most serious health crisis of our generation, it is far from the first. Especially in Africa, a continent that has faced severe epidemics of malaria, tuberculosis, cholera, HIV and Ebola.

All of these diseases took lives, but they also forced the African scientific and medical community to innovate.

“The African population is used to reacting quickly, to resorting to volunteers in rural areas. I think that has allowed them to circulate information on preventive measures and apply them in time,” says Karl Blanchet, specialist in global health and health emergencies at the Center Geneva for Education and Research in Humanitarian Action (Cerah).

The recent Ebola epidemic that hit West Africa, with greater intensity between 2014 and 2016, caused havoc in countries like Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone and left more than 11,000 dead.

Although WHO declared the end of the health emergency in the region in March 2016, authorities are still on alert in some of the countries most affected by the outbreak due to the emergence of isolated cases.


“Ebola was a problem that still existed when the covid-19 pandemic was declared. This means that some African countries already had detection infrastructure at airports. Public health officials and non-contact thermometers were already positioned at the entrance doors,” explains Soy.


The ebola outbreak also taught Africa the importance of detecting cases quickly, treating confirmed patients and isolating communities, says the BBC journalist.

“Because of that epidemic, people have even stopped shaking hands in West Africa and the Democratic Republic of Congo. They have become aware that this is important,” he adds.

A less globalized continent


Frederique Jacquerioz, an African public health specialist from the team of tropical and humanitarian medicine at the Geneva University Hospital in Switzerland, estimates that another factor that may explain Africa’s resistance to the pandemic is the low circulation between the countries of the continent and the rest of the world.


“The first confirmed cases in Africa were young people, Africans or Europeans, who traveled, returned to Africa and brought the virus with them,” says the doctor.


Rwanda imposed containment measures when there were fewer than 20 confirmed cases.

“In a globalized world, this was one of the factors that fueled the spread of the virus in Europe, where groups of young people spend weekends in different cities. Perhaps in Africa, in that sense, there is less mobility between countries.”


This hypothesis is supported by several experts. Blanchet, from Cerah, gives as an example three of the countries that have so far been most affected by the virus: South Africa, Egypt and Algeria.


“They are the countries with the largest number of air connections with China. The exception is Ethiopia, which despite not being in this group, has a direct connection with the Asian country. But it has not yet been affected by the pandemic. This is something that it cannot be explained, “he says.


Is there a demographic factor?


The African demographic pyramid is another element that may have helped the death toll in the region to be no greater: Africa is the continent with the youngest population in the world.

Blanchet believes in this hypothesis and points out that “the average age in Africa is 19.7 years, while in Europe it is around 40 years, for example”.

Although Anne Soy recognizes that this could be one of the factors, she warns that there are still no scientific studies to support this theory.


“It may be one of the advantages of Africa, but at the same time, you also have a large population of malnourished children, with a weaker immune system, than the rest of the world population, which makes them more vulnerable. This means that would we have to see more African children affected than in the rest of the planet? “asks the journalist.


The risks of the continent


On Friday, the WHO warned that the coronavirus in Africa could “burn slowly” for several years and kill about 190,000 people in the next 12 months.


That warning came a month after the agency estimated that the outbreak would cause 10 million infections on the continent within six months.

The same report from Friday predicts that between 29 million and 44 million people could be infected in the first year of the covid-19 pandemic if containment measures on the continent fail.

Several analysts emphasize that the impact of the pandemic will really depend on the actions that governments take.


The director of the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa, Stephen Karingi, told the British newspaper The Guardian that it is necessary to recognize that African authorities are “doing a lot” to contain the outbreak.


“Projections were that we would now be in a war situation, but due to measures taken by governments and communities, transmission rates are lower than those we have seen elsewhere.”


Soy says movement restrictions have slowed the spread of the virus, but officials must remain vigilant, especially in Africa’s slums.


“They have a high population density and very poor health services. Some of them don’t even have access to water,” says the journalist.


Soy points out that the majority of its inhabitants would have trouble staying confined for a long time, because they are informal workers who cannot eat if they do not go out to work.


Despite the diversity of opinions and debates about why Africa has resisted the covid-19 pandemic better than other resource-rich regions, the vast majority of experts agree that it is too early to speak of an “African exception”.

Source:
https://www.time24.news/t24/2020/05...esistance-to-the-pandemic-epoca-negocios.html


I imagine that in many African countries people stay outside a lot and don't use climate control systems in their buildings which promotes the virus a lot. If this is true, then most of the case should occur within better off countries/locations like South Africa where people may work in large groups together in closed spaces with air conditioning systems.
 
Mongolia - so close to China - its health care system not of the superb state too, but absolutely no deaths up until now. Hong Kong - just over 1000 cases with only 4 overall deaths, which is very very good having in mind that it is a city like New York
 
Jilin, a city of four million people in northeast #China, has been locked down after a #coronavirus outbreak. The situation is said to be "extremely severe and complicated" and "there is major risk of further spread".

It's right next to North Korea. Maybe it's an indication of what's going on there. I guess if you're an incompetent Communist dictatorship it will rip through your country. If you're an efficient one like China you can stamp it out.


On the home front, Cuomo is encouraging everyone to wear face masks. He shouldn't encourage; he should mandate.


The media elite can't understand why some people are so desperate for the economy to reopen.

"
35% of the lowest-paid workers have lost their jobs9% of the highest-paid workers have lost their jobsThe damage has been so imbalanced that the average U.S. wage has "grown" 8% just by removing so many low-wage workers from the poolhttps://washingtonpost.com/business/2020/05/08/awful-reason-wages-appeared-soar-middle-pandemic/"





 
Russia has confirmed 232,000 cases of coronavirus - the second highest toll in the world after the US.

"Masks are not a sign of fear. Masks are a sign that you have a moral compass, you care about your community, and you have a functioning brain. That's all there is to it."

For those who think masks are un-American because they block out the face and one's individuality:
EU4GFpjXgAAyVIp


I swear, if I see people going around mask less I will publicly and LOUDLY shame them.
 
"Germany must help its European Union neighbours revive their economies after the coronavirus crisis, Chancellor Angela Merkel told a meeting of lawmakers from her conservative bloc on Tuesday, according to several participants. It is essential for Germany, as an export nation, that its EU partners also do well, Merkel told the lawmakers, with a view to consultations on an EU reconstruction programme, both the scale and the financing of which were open, the chancellor said."

she got the point.
 
^^Yeah, it only took her 3 months to get what she and her country should have realized in the first weeks: if the Southern European economies crumble because of Covid, so will Germany's, because no one will buy their damn products. Then they can die of starvation as they were on the brink of doing after the Second World War, only now no one will be able to help them except China, and the price will be their freedom.

Idiots. As I said from the beginning, Germany can't survive without a healthy and reasonably prosperous Europe. They wanted the EU and the Euro and totally intertwined economies, and now they're stuck with it.

Sometimes the humane thing turns out to be in your ultimate self-interest. How's that for irony?

The stupidity of the human race is astounding.
 
I imagine that in many African countries people stay outside a lot and don't use climate control systems in their buildings which promotes the virus a lot. If this is true, then most of the case should occur within better off countries/locations like South Africa where people may work in large groups together in closed spaces with air conditioning systems.

Most of the reported cases are from four countries: South Africa, Morocco, Egypt and Algeria
900px-COVID-19_Outbreak_Africa_Map.svg.png

High tourism and good air-conditioning?
 
I think it is mostly due to a lack of proper testing. The native Africans are far worse off than African-Americans on every level (access to food, clean water, healthcare, etc.). Yet we see a disproportionate impact on African-American communities, when you adjust for the relative size of their population. Often societal factors are cited as the reason. This is surely even worse in Africa.
On January 25th was Chinese New Year and around 1 Million Chinese visitors came to Thailand. Around 20,000 of them were from Wuhan. It took almost 2 months for the number of cases to exceed 100.
83f64ca1d5fd96487c6e966ffee19522efb49409.png
 
On January 25th was Chinese New Year and around 1 Million Chinese visitors came to Thailand. Around 20,000 of them were from Wuhan. It took almost 2 months for the number of cases to exceed 100.
83f64ca1d5fd96487c6e966ffee19522efb49409.png

What was the temperature and humidity during that period, and when cases were found, what did the government do?
 
What was the temperature and humidity during that period, and when cases were found, what did the government do?
Humidity avg. 75, but high fluctuation, 40-98%. Temperature avg. 80-85 F.

The government issued a curfew to take effect on 3 April between 10pm-4am in order to limit the spread. The government has additionally issued a travel ban for all foreigners entering Thailand.
 
[h=1]Coronavirus: 10 charts to understand Brazil’s current situation in the pandemic[/h]
May, 14 2020

2VwCIYg.jpg


On May 12, Brazil registered 9,300 new cases of covid-19, totaling 177,000 notifications and 12,400 deaths. But what do these and other data mean and reveal about the reality of the disease in Brazil? And how do they compare to other countries?

BBC News Brasil gathered ten of the main indicators to explain the country’s current situation in the pandemic, despite the scarcity of laboratory tests that would serve for a more accurate picture of reality – experts use expressions such as “data blackout” and “blind flight “.
Currently, there are almost no more ICU beds in the public health system on the part of States, cases and deaths are increasing – but at a speed that has been falling or remained constant -, more and more small towns are affected and people have less respected social distance.
See below.
[h=2]1. Brazil is the seventh country in number of cases, but the tenth per capita[/h]
The first case of coronavirus in Brazil was released by the federal government on February 26. The patient had traveled to Italy for work, but at that time it was not known that the virus was already circulating strongly in the European country.
Since then, the volume of new cases recorded has grown exponentially, but at a speed that has been declining in recent days or has remained constant.
On April 12, it registered 1,388 new cases in 24 hours. On May 12, there were 9,258.
Is this too much or too little compared to other countries? Well, any international comparison comes up against limitations. One is that each place in the world is at a particular stage of the pandemic.

  • Coronavirus: the answers to the questions most searched by Brazilians on Google
  • Deaths, tests and contagion: how Brazil compares to other countries in the coronavirus pandemic
So, instead of looking at countries on the same calendar, we can avoid some distortions and compare them, for example, from the day when the 100th case was registered in each nation. At this stage, the virus is already circulating among citizens.
In the graph below, on a logarithmic scale, the vertical axis shows the number of cases and the horizontal axis deals with the number of days from the hundredth case. This scale makes it easier to see the progression of cases.
The more vertical the line of daily cases is, the faster the pandemic is advancing. Currently, the number of cases doubles in Brazil every 5 days, the third worst rate in the world. But in the beginning, when the number of cases was lower and there were no measures such as quarantines, it happened every two, three days.

RB0nTdE.png

According to physicist Roberto Kraenkel, professor at Unesp (State University of São Paulo) and a member of the Covid-19 Observatory (independent initiative of 43 researchers from the country), the Brazilian contagion rate was close to 3 at the beginning of the pandemic in the country. That is, each infected person transmitted the disease to others 3.
Currently, Kraenkel estimates this rate to be 1 to 1.1. For him, this means that the measures adopted have worked, but not enough to keep the number below 1, a level that indicates the pandemic’s retreat. At a rate of 0.5, for example, 10 infected people transmit the disease to 5 people.
Staying below the level of 1 is the condition that Germany has adopted, for example, in order to make social distancing measures more flexible. If any region has this index again above 1, the quarantine will be adopted again.
The graph below explains the relationship between the contagion rate and the absolute growth in the number of cases.
EvmIom9.png

At a contagion rate of 1.1, the number of cases goes from 0 to 25 thousand in 13 weeks. In 1, it’s half that

The country that most quickly adopted this type of distance measure was China, with a strict quarantine at the epicenter of the pandemic, Hubei province, just days after the number of cases exceeded 100. The entire confinement of Italy has taken two weeks since the hundredth case.
On the 30th day in this trajectory of the graph, which measures the progress of the disease from the 100th case onwards, notifications grew rapidly in the USA and less rapidly in Brazil. China had already managed to contain the spread of the disease and Italy was beginning to control the situation. USA and Brazil did not adopt national quarantines, but only in isolated cities or states.
Fifty days after the 100th case, the USA and Italy say they have stabilized the pandemic. China has virtually no new cases.
The trajectory of Brazil still points upwards, that is, the number of cases still grows. But this is just a trend and can improve or worsen depending on what happens in Brazil.
GDcZ41o.jpg

Covid-19 Fiocruz Monitor
Fiocruz graph shows how many days the number of cases doubles in the country
But to understand more precisely what is happening, it would be necessary to test the population en masse to find out who is infected.
Brazil, however, has faced a series of difficulties to expand its capacity for carrying out tests, such as management problems and greater demand than the laboratories’ analysis capacity.
Another problem is that the Ministry of Health does not know how to properly report how many tests have been carried out in the country.
Until April 20, according to the folder, only the Brazilian public health network had carried out 132 thousand tests. Altogether. That same April 20, the United States carried out 147 thousand tests in 24 hours, accumulating 4 million.
If we compare taking into account the size of the population, on April 20, Brazil had a rate of 0.63 test per thousand inhabitants. The USA, 12.2.
But after all, without sufficient tests, how to calculate how many people are infected in Brazil and have not developed symptoms or have not become ill enough to go to the hospital?
Studies are underway to try to answer that. One of them is coordinated by the Federal University of Pelotas and is in the second phase. 4,500 people were chosen by sampling and tested in nine cities.
According to the researchers, for each known case, there are 12 not reported.


[h=2]2. Brazil has the lowest death rate per 100 thousand inhabitants among the 10 countries most affected[/h]Throughout the pandemic, the coronavirus killed at least 12,400 people in Brazil (until 12/05). “At least” because experts say that identifying the cause of death is also underreported, but to a lesser extent.
The first of them to be officially released was on March 17. The 62-year-old man, who was admitted to the Sancta Maggiore hospital in São Paulo, died six days after the first symptoms appeared. He had diabetes and hypertension, two pre-existing diseases that are considered risk factors for those who contract the new coronavirus.
In the last week, 3,877 people died. The daily peak so far has been on May 12, with 881 deaths.
The United States is the country with the highest absolute number of deaths in the current pandemic, and Brazil appears in seventh in this comparison.
If the size of the population is taken into account, Brazil appears last in the list of ten countries most affected by the pandemic prepared by Johns Hopkins University, in the United States.
Brazil has 3.5 deaths per 100 thousand inhabitants in a list led by Belgium, with 69.3.

AsTWL6A.png

Death rate per population

Total people who die from covid-19 for every 100 thousand inhabitants



Johns Hopkins also analyzes the so-called mortality rate, the ratio between the number of deaths per total infected. According to the American university, this international comparison faces several distortions. This rate tends to be lower in countries that do more tests on the population and tends to be higher when there is a burden on the health system.
Brazil appears in seventh, with 7 deaths for every 100 infected. Italy ranks fourth, with 14 deaths for every 100 infected. The USA, in ninth, has 6 dead for every 100 infected.



[h=2]Mortality rate of the 10 countries most affected by the pandemic[/h]
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Number of people dying for every 100 people diagnosed with covid-19



This rate also varies widely from one state to another in Brazil. From 10.4% in Rio de Janeiro to 1.7% in Tocantins, according to data from May 12th.
In addition to the problems of lack of testing and underreporting, experts estimate that the real mortality rate of covid-19 is somewhere between 1% and 3%.
The increasing number of deaths at home, which increased during the pandemic, is another indication of underreporting. The total number of deaths at home increased by an average of 10.4% in the country between March 16 and April 30, according to data released by the registry offices.
There were 27,217 deaths in the home environment, which represents 20.1% of the total number of deaths recorded by the Civil Registry Offices since the first death by covid-19 (March 16), according to the numbers of the Transparency Portal of the Civil Registry.

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[h=2]Deaths at home[/h]Comparison between the periods from March 16 to April 30, 2019 and 2020


[h=2]3. Illness kills more elderly, people with heart disease and blacks[/h]The Brazilian Ministry of Health released an analysis of 1,985 deaths in the country. The data indicate something similar to what was seen in other countries. For example, the highest incidence among men. In Brazil, they are 48% of the population, but they are 60% of the patients who died with covid-19.

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[h=2]7 out of 10 dead were elderly[/h]Age group of 1,985 people who died



An imbalance is also seen in the victims’ ages. Brazilians under 19 are 14% of the population, but they represent less than 1% of people who died of covid-19.
People over 60 are 13% of the population and 72% of the dead.
There is another point to be mentioned, which is the presence of pre-existing diseases or comorbidities in 70% of the dead. Of these people, 46% had heart disease, 35% had diabetes and 9% had pneumopathy.
Data from the Ministry of Health also show disparity in race or skin color. Blacks are almost 1 in 4 hospitalized, but 1 in 3 dead. Experts say this may indicate inequality in access to health care, but this is still under study.
[h=2]4. Occupation of ICU beds exceeds 90% in 5 states[/h]And not everyone who contracts the new coronavirus is hospitalized or dies. In general, for every 100 infected, 83 recover, 15 need to be hospitalized and 2 die.


Overload of the health system can lead to an increase in the mortality rate of the disease


But these numbers vary depending on the location and stage of the pandemic.
And they can get worse if too many people get sick at the same time and overburden the health care system. To give you an idea, researchers say that if São Paulo had not adopted any containment measures, the ICU beds would have been full since March 31.
This is important because, although there is no treatment or vaccine against the coronavirus, a life can be saved thanks to an intensive care unit (or ICU) bed with a respirator, which supplies oxygen and works like a pump.
If we compare it with other countries, Brazil is one of the countries with the most ICU beds per inhabitant in the world, largely because of other epidemics we face, such as violence and traffic accidents.
The WHO recommends 10 to 30 ICU beds for every 100 thousand inhabitants. Brazil has about 20. But this rate varies according to the region, and the Southeast is three times that of the North, for example.
There are almost 50 thousand, half in the private network, half in the public. However, as 7 out of 10 Brazilians depend on SUS, the demand for public beds is much higher.
And how many beds are occupied by patients with covid-19? The Brazilian government does not know, but has been doing a census since mid-April to try to find out.
Quite different is the situation in Germany where anyone can check the occupancy rate in hospitals across the country on a website.
An important indicator to understand what is happening is the number of hospitalizations for severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), which is the health condition of a hospitalized patient for having been affected by covid-19 or the flu, for example. This year, the number is 10 times higher.

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[h=2]Hospitalization every week for severe acute respiratory syndrome[/h]Health-based indicator does not suffer from underreporting due to lack of testing



But it is also possible to understand the situation from data released by the States on the occupation of ICU beds in the public network.
On May 10, in Piauí, the occupancy rate of ICU beds for covid-19 was 43%. In Espírito Santo, 63%. In São Paulo, 69%. In Ceará, Roraima, Maranhão, Pernambuco and Rio de Janeiro, it is over 90%.

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[h=2]Occupancy rate of ICU beds[/h]State data on public system



[h=2]5. Disease already affects all medium and large cities and now advances inland[/h]The exact date on which the new coronavirus landed in Brazil is not known, but the first case of covid-19, the disease caused by it, was registered in São Paulo on February 26.
From there, the virus began to spread throughout the country, first by air routes between the capitals and the main urban centers, then by highways, which interconnect Brazilian cities.

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[h=2]Spreading in the country[/h]Cities reached by size, in%



On March 28, there were cases registered in 100% of the municipalities with more than 500 thousand inhabitants, in 42% of the municipalities with a population between 100 thousand and 500 thousand people and 15% of those with between 50 thousand and 100 thousand inhabitants.
On April 28, there were cases registered in all of the municipalities with more than 100 thousand inhabitants and 86% of those with between 50 thousand and 100 thousand inhabitants.
In small municipalities, the first case emerged on March 14. Since then, 13% of cities with less than 10,000 inhabitants have registered cases.
The data are from MonitoraCovid-19, a system created on March 30, by researchers from the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation (Fiocruz) and the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE).
[h=2]6. Adherence of Brazilians to social isolation is on a downward trend[/h]Without vaccine and drugs with proven efficacy, the main strategy that has been adopted around the world to contain the advancement of covid-19 is social distance.
The intensity varies depending on the ruler, the severity of the situation and the ability to conduct mass tests.
At the top is the total and compulsory confinement adopted by the Italian government. Everyone was forbidden to leave the house, except to go to the market or the pharmacy, for example. On the opposite side is the government of South Korea, which did not adopt mass confinements, but the isolation only of people who were sick and the monitoring of those who had contact with them.
On April 19, protesters protested in Manaus against social isolation measures by the state government of Amazonas


In Brazil, there was no national quarantine. President Jair Bolsonaro assesses that such a measure has a more devastating socioeconomic impact than the disease itself, and compares confinement to a drug that ends up killing the patient.
The Federal District was the first unit of the federation to adopt some kind of restriction on the circulation of people, on March 11.
However, non-mandatory confinement requires authorities and experts to make frequent recommendations and requests to increase or maintain people’s adherence to social distance.
Many people, however, continue to leave for work, especially informal workers.
The main way to measure this mobilization is through the location of cell phones. The technology company In Loco monitors the location of 60 million people in Brazil (without identifying them) and has developed an index of social isolation, released daily.
The rate is below the recommended level to prevent the spread of the disease, and the trend is for a fall in the country.

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[h=2]Social distance in the country[/h]Monitoring of 60 million cell phones points to a decline in adherence



São Paulo, for example, has a goal of 70% of isolation, but it did not exceed 62.5% and now revolves around 43.6%.
Of the 5 states that most adhere to isolation, 3 are from the North and 2 from the Northeast. During the pandemic, the number of deaths in the capital of Amazonas, Manaus, quadrupled from the same period last year.
On the other hand, of the 5 states that least adhere, 3 are from the Midwest. According to a survey by Google, also from mobile data, the movement in leisure and commerce areas (except markets and pharmacies) in Goiás fell 33%. In Amazonas, that same segment dropped 50%.

Source:
https://www.time24.news/2020/05/a/c...razils-current-situation-in-the-pandemic.html






 
^^This comes on the heels of a pronouncement by the WHO that a vaccine may never be found, and that, like HIV, it's something we might be able to manage, but not cure. Of course, having only protected sex or sex only with someone who has been tested is doable, but we have to breathe every second of our lives.

The upside is that these are the geniuses who told us it couldn't be transferred from person to person and people in the west shouldn't worry and shouldn't close down international flights.

Btw, what the heck is going on in Belgium? Why are there no articles explaining it?
 
How Hong Kong is keeping it out...

It goes without saying that you have to be masked.

Upon landing each passenger has to fill in a health declaration and a form agreeing to quarantine. You have to download an app so they can trace you (and someone calls your phone to make sure it works). You are then given an ankle bracelet which you have to wear for the same purpose.

After all of that you are taken to a separate hall where you watch a video on how to do the Covid test. You then go into a private booth and do it. You wait in the original hall until your results come back in eight hours. You can't leave until the results are in that you're negative.

Interestingly, you are made to hack up spit from the back of your throat for the test. They clearly believe the studies saying the nasal swabs, even the deep ones, are not as accurate.

Oh, and all the staff in the airport are practically in hazmat.

I guess this is what it takes.
 

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