Coronavirus UPDATE: More Chinese cities restrict travel, Thailand checking land borders

By The Thaiger

 

 

The death toll from the novel coronavirus has grown to 80 today. The entire Hubei Province is now in the largest health ‘lockdown’ ever mounted in modern medical history with tight controls of who or what is inbound or outbound from the central Chinese province, plus severe restrictions on movement in place in several other Chinese cities.

 

The number of deaths from the flu-like virus in Hubei province climbed from 56 to 76 overnight with four deaths elsewhere in China. The total number of confirmed cases in China had risen to 2,744, but that number is sure to rise in the next days and weeks.

 

In Thailand, the Public Health Minister Anutin Charnvirakul has come out to assure the Thai public that current preventive measures are sufficient to control the spread of the novel coronavirus within the Kingdom. He says the Ministry is coordinating with the World Health Organisation to keep up-to-date with the evolution of the virus in China, as well as the limited cases in Thailand involving Chinese visitors.

 

In a livestreamed video at midnight last night, the minister said that Thailand “had been through similar crises before and is making use of the experience”, with updated technology and tracking to suit the current situation.

 

Anutin announced that there have been eight confirmed cases in Thailand, all of them tourists who had flown in from Wuhan, the Chinese city at the epicentre of the current outbreak.

 

“Five of these have already returned home with the remaining three clear of the virus with their condition steadily improving.”

 

“I can assure you that, for the time being, the situation is under control.”

 

The Minister confirmed that 84 Chinese tourists remain under observation in Thailand, including 24 who were detected with a “fever” at airport screening on their arrival. 60 other voluntarily admitted themselves to hospital after developing symptoms associated with the coronavirus.

“45 of them, however, have been discharged and have returned to China, leaving 39 still under observation.”

 

Meanwhile, Dr. Suwanchai Wattanayingcharoenchai, claims that person-to-person transmission of the novel coronavirus is “not easy”. He made his comments after following the recovery of 40 patients, including medical personnel who had been working in close contact with infected patients without becoming infected themselves.

 

Apart from screenings at all international airports, Chinese nationals entering Thailand over the Cambodian border point in Aranyaprathet district are also being given thermal health scans for signs of the coronavirus. About 500 Chinese in tour groups passed through the checkpoint this morning. They were all screened and none were detected with any symptoms. All were allowed to enter Thailand, according to the Bangkok Post.

The side-effects of the global concerns include international markets. The US S&P500 futures fell more than 1% in Asian trade this morning on mounting worries the outbreak of the virus could severely disrupt the Chinese economy.

 

China’s cabinet says it is extending the week-long Chinese New Year holiday to ten days, to February 2 in a bid to slow the spread of the virus. And Beijing is calling for full transparency in managing the crisis, after losing public trust following a cover-up of the spread of SARS, a similar coronavirus that originated in China and killed nearly 800 people globally in 2002 and 2003.

 

The World Health Organisation has stopped short of designating the outbreak a “global health emergency”, but some international health experts question if China can contain the epidemic.

 

WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus arrived in Beijing over the weekend to meet government officials and health experts dealing with the outbreak.

 

Meanwhile, France, Italy, Japan, Thailand and the US have all announced evacuation plans to repatriate their citizens from Wuhan. France said it expected to repatriate up to a few hundred of its 800 citizens living in the Wuhan area. The French government says the evacuees will spend 14 days in quarantine to avoid the spread of the virus when they return. In Thailand the government has also announced plans to use civilian and Air Force planes to bring Thai citizens, including students and massage spa workers, home.

 

Source: https://thethaiger.com/hot-news/coronavirus/coronavirus-update-more-chinese-cities-restrict-travel-thailand-checking-land-borders

 

 

-- © Copyright The Thaiger 2020-01-27

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2 minutes ago, webfact said:

"I can assure you that, for the time being, the situation is under control.”

 

That statement put me at ease....????

please clean the fingerprint machines!!!! not sure why it isnt being done yet.

The incubation period can be up to two weeks, checking anyone at this point isn’t very helpful other than identifying the ones who are showing symptoms.

 

But carry on, there are plenty of celebrations around the country for Chinese New Years. It’s all safe, no worries. Meanwhile the rest of civilized Asia is banning group gatherings, shutting down schools, and urging people to stay inside.

 

Mongolia shut its borders today, Hong Kong is denying travelers from certain regions, and Taiwan is not approving any visas for Chinese. But Thailand.... mai pen rai, come spend your money and enjoy our New Years celebrations. You’re safe. Keep spending, na krupt. 

45 minutes ago, webfact said:

Meanwhile, Dr. Suwanchai Wattanayingcharoenchai, claims that person-to-person transmission of the novel coronavirus is “not easy”.

Meanwhile back in the real world, a new study of 27 genomes from initial patients now strongly suggests that only one case acquired the disease from a non-human source. In other words, the virus has spread by human-human contact from the beginning. The thousands of people now with the virus may disagree with Dr. Wattanayingcharoenchai.

 

Reference: http://virological.org/t/clock-and-tmrca-based-on-27-genomes/347

We are starting to see more structure in the tree and overall the genetic data is highly suggestive of a single-point introduction into the human population followed by sustained human-to-human transmission.

Edited January 27, 20206 yr by rabas

Two things:

2 hours ago, webfact said:

The French government says the evacuees will spend 14 days in quarantine to avoid the spread of the virus when they return.

So they don't have a test for it yet, at least at the asymptomatic stage.

 

2 hours ago, webfact said:

Meanwhile, Dr. Suwanchai Wattanayingcharoenchai, claims that person-to-person transmission of the novel coronavirus is “not easy”. He made his comments after following the recovery of 40 patients, including medical personnel who had been working in close contact with infected patients without becoming infected.

These obviously aren't Thai personnel he's referring to (40 cases), so he' s not speaking from direct experience, and I'm sure I read somewhere that health workers "had" been infected. It's one of the factors they took into account when deciding that human transmission was spreading the virus. Anyway, comparing ease of transmission to medical personnel who, no doubt, are taking every possible precaution, with ease of transmission among the general population, is pushing it a bit, to say the least.

Quote

Meanwhile, Dr. Suwanchai Wattanayingcharoenchai, claims that person-to-person transmission of the novel coronavirus is “not easy”. 

Current estimate for R0 is 2.6 . Funky definition of "not easy".

16 hours ago, webfact said:

“I can assure you that, for the time being, the situation is under control.”

At least this is a better statement than the PMs 100% under control.

(bold added)

This news on the women's soccer might be interesting as it involves Thailand.

 

https://www.smh.com.au/sport/soccer/chinese-team-bound-for-sydney-after-training-in-coronavirus-epicentre-20200127-p53v4w.html

39 minutes ago, DoctorG said:

This news on the women's soccer might be interesting as it involves Thailand.

 

https://www.smh.com.au/sport/soccer/chinese-team-bound-for-sydney-after-training-in-coronavirus-epicentre-20200127-p53v4w.html

why are countries still allowing people that have been in Hubei Province to arrive.

why is Thailand still allowing arrivals from anywhere in China

how will France get the people from Wuhan to an airport, no travel is allowed within Wuhan

14 hours ago, nausea said:

Anyway, comparing ease of transmission to medical personnel who, no doubt, are taking every possible precaution, with ease of transmission among the general population, is pushing it a bit, to say the least.

The virus only survives a few hours on surfaces, so it is mostly spread by coughing or sneezing, and enters your system via breathing it in or through the eyes. If medical personnel wore protective gear (which they surely did) then the chance of transmission is low, but if a person without protective gear were to be in close proximity to an infected person then the chances are high. Not to panic just yet, but we will likely see cases of transmission later on - if not a full on epidemic. 5 million people left Wuhan before it was quarantined - those people are spreading the virus all over China, and Chinese are coming to Thailand by the planeload. The sane thing to do would be suspend all travel from China, but they would rather risk all our lives than jeopardize the Chinese cash cow.

3 minutes ago, car720 said:

106 dead as of this morning.

Doubtless less than the number of people that have been killed on the roads in Thailand in the same period of time! be careful! 

9 minutes ago, CGW said:

Doubtless less than the number of people that have been killed on the roads in Thailand in the same period of time! be careful! 

a poor comparison

Edited January 28, 20206 yr by steve187

6 minutes ago, steve187 said:

a poor comparison

As your opinion is both appreciated and valued, please share what you consider to be an appropriate comparison? 

43 minutes ago, CGW said:

Doubtless less than the number of people that have been killed on the roads in Thailand in the same period of time! be careful! 

Drivers on Thai roads aren't increasing exponentially, the coronavirus will catch up. Granted Thai drivers are putting up a fight.

36 minutes ago, CGW said:

As your opinion is both appreciated and valued, please share what you consider to be an appropriate comparison? 

deaths from a disease, not road traffic collisions that could be avoided

5 minutes ago, steve187 said:

deaths from a disease, not road traffic collisions that could be avoided

Ok, how does this fit, 110 people have died so far, over 25,000 die daily from heart disease, which disease should I be more "fearful" off?

let me know when I should go into full on panic mode, at this time the numbers suggest it is media driven hysteria!

Are they just letting all of these people go home without paying their bills ???? As far as I see, they aren’t doing anything in Thailand but ineffective temperature checks.

44 minutes ago, CGW said:

Ok, how does this fit, 110 people have died so far, over 25,000 die daily from heart disease, which disease should I be more "fearful" off?

Depends on if you already have heart disease or not. AFAIK it isn't contagious. This new coronavirus is.

22 hours ago, RotBenz8888 said:

That statement put me at ease....????

Maybe this will. 

 

4 hours ago, steve187 said:

how will France get the people from Wuhan to an airport, no travel is allowed within Wuhan

France said they would "evacuate" their nationals. Travel restrictions are limited to normal passenger travel. The airport, I am speculating, still allows for medical, postal/freight, diplomatic, military, and other specifically authorized flights.

38 minutes ago, DrTuner said:

Depends on if you already have heart disease or not. AFAIK it isn't contagious. This new coronavirus is.

Is it so contagious? to everyone or just the vulnerable, the numbers released are nowhere near the figures for "Diarrhoea diseases" which according to WHO, ~5,450 people die from daily or lower respiratory infections, especially given the pollution levels here should be more concerning, ~8,200 people die everyday.

If the death toll increases to these levels, I will be concerned.

Unfortunately people die every day from some sort of flu or another, and bacterial infections, and germs, and on the roads, and the list goes on. So far, SARS, MERS, bird flu and a dozen other 'oh my god' diseases that were hyped up to scare the <deleted> have not killed half the world. I don't expect this Coronabeer virus will either simply based on history.

 

But so what, doom and fear sells, it's popular, and occupies peoples minds. In all likelihood if you get this flu you will get sick, which sucks, but until or unless it's proven by more than a handful of twitter and youtube doom hounds to be a killer, drink fluid, rest, and don't cough on others. meh

1 hour ago, CGW said:

Is it so contagious?

Seems so: https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/bda7594740fd40299423467b48e9ecf6

 

 

That's just the diagnosed. Bear in mind there's a bottleneck with the diagnostics and the reports are not real-time, they have other things to do than reporting.

I don't think comparisons to the number of people who die daily from heart disease or old age or traffic accidents are really valid.  Everyone in the world has already been exposed to those risks. Those just generally reflect the size of the world or national population.  What will the death numbers from Coronavirus look like after everyone in the world has been fully exposed to it, if that happens?  Then maybe we'll have a valid comparison of that sort.

So far, what's going on is alarming.  Have you ever seen restrictions on travel the size of what the Chinese are imposing now?  I haven't in my lifetime.  We didn't see this with SARS or even with Ebola. If they're trying to fake everyone out and create fear with a false flag, they're really going all in this time - even sabotaging their own GDP, and at a time when national economies are pretty fragile. They seem to be quite concerned about it. 

4 hours ago, car720 said:

106 dead as of this morning.

It would be interesting to know about how long (on average) from infection it takes for someone to die. From that we can extrapolate a mortality rate by going back that number of days to see how many infections had then been reported. Are we between 5 and 10 per cent?

 

For readers interested in facts, the link on post #5 is quite interesting, but highly technical.

Close the borders—to Hell with the tourist numbers.  Maybe western currencies will continue to rise to a normal level.  High spenders would return.

19 minutes ago, placnx said:

It would be interesting to know about how long (on average) from infection it takes for someone to die. From that we can extrapolate a mortality rate by going back that number of days to see how many infections had then been reported. Are we between 5 and 10 per cent?

Too early to have averages, but I did spot a single case: 

 

Edited January 28, 20206 yr by DrTuner

2 hours ago, CGW said:

Is it so contagious? to everyone or just the vulnerable, the numbers released are nowhere near the figures for "Diarrhoea diseases" which according to WHO, ~5,450 people die from daily or lower respiratory infections, especially given the pollution levels here should be more concerning, ~8,200 people die everyday.

If the death toll increases to these levels, I will be concerned.

That figure is increasing rapidly as everybody sh**s themselves when they see a Chinese person.

 

 

Edited January 28, 20206 yr by Traubert
Clarification

3 minutes ago, Traubert said:

That figure is increasing rapidly as everybody sh**s themselves when they see a Chinese person.

Indeed! there will be a bounty on every Chinese head the way this is being driven!