What do you need to know?
As of 23:59 Jan 31, there are officially:
Confirmed Cases: 9,171
Deaths: 213
5794 suspected cases in 30 provinces. 81947/88693 are under medical observation
170 deaths and 1370 are severe cases. 162/170 deaths occurred in Hubei province (where Wuhan is). The rest are within various provinces in China
Please refer to the live trackers for the most up-date statistics
Initial symptoms
No cure, care is supportive to relieve symptoms. Drugs and vaccines are being explored.
Rough Timeline of Some Key Events
Date 2019-nCoV Dec 1Earliest known patient with symptom onsetDec 24Collection of genomic sequence based on atypical pneumoniaDec 31WHO notifiedJan 1Seafood market is closed + decontaminatedJan 8Novel coronavirus identifiedJan 10Dr. Zhang (Shanghai) releases genome, first fatalityJan 131st exported case in ThailandJan 19First diagnostic testJan 20Human-Human transmission confirmedJan 23CEPI funding of vaccine development, quarantine beginsJan 28Australia is 1st to grow virus outside ChinaPresent/Onwardsanimal modeling, identification of reservoir, pathogenesis, pathophysiology etc
Some things healthcare professionals are doing + will do
★ = highly recommended
As of 23:59 Jan 31, there are officially:
Confirmed Cases: 9,171
Deaths: 213
5794 suspected cases in 30 provinces. 81947/88693 are under medical observation
170 deaths and 1370 are severe cases. 162/170 deaths occurred in Hubei province (where Wuhan is). The rest are within various provinces in China
- 17 deaths range from 48-89 years old. 14/17 deaths are of the elderly above 65 years old. Most have pre-existing conditions that seem to predispose to a more severe disease presentation. People who are already sick prior to infection may be more at risk due to decreased immunity. Some of these people had hypertension, diabetes, and heart disease. Death was typically the result of severe respiratory failure but includes others like multi-organ failure. Info on some of the remaining deaths is currently unknown
- Healthy people have died
- 124 people recovered
Please refer to the live trackers for the most up-date statistics
Initial symptoms
- cough
- fever (pyrexia possible absence in young individuals)
- fatigue, discomfort (malaise), shortness of breath (dyspnea), dizziness, chest tightness, headache, muscle aches, chills, sore throat
- possible atypical presentations in immunosuppressed/elderly.
No cure, care is supportive to relieve symptoms. Drugs and vaccines are being explored.
Rough Timeline of Some Key Events
Date 2019-nCoV Dec 1Earliest known patient with symptom onsetDec 24Collection of genomic sequence based on atypical pneumoniaDec 31WHO notifiedJan 1Seafood market is closed + decontaminatedJan 8Novel coronavirus identifiedJan 10Dr. Zhang (Shanghai) releases genome, first fatalityJan 131st exported case in ThailandJan 19First diagnostic testJan 20Human-Human transmission confirmedJan 23CEPI funding of vaccine development, quarantine beginsJan 28Australia is 1st to grow virus outside ChinaPresent/Onwardsanimal modeling, identification of reservoir, pathogenesis, pathophysiology etc
Some things healthcare professionals are doing + will do
- Largest quarantine in the history of public health (~15 cities: with a combined population ~56 million)
- Diagnostic testing: Molecular diagnostics, cell culture, microscopy, antigen/antibody detection, serosurveys
- Genomic analyses: gives us an idea of drug targets, transmission, etc
- vaccine development: at least 4 different vaccines confirmed,
- Preparation of animal modeling: testing clinical manifestations etc
- Epidemiological tracking: people at risk, super spreaders, R0 value etc
- It shares a crucial protein with SARS. We're targeting this for drugs. Existing compounds are already being tested in China for treatment
- Use of masks alone is insufficient to prevent infection. It can worsen problems if people believe all you need is a mask. Other hygiene measures are needed: wash hands, sneeze/coughing into a disposable tissue, maintain distance of >1 meter https://www.who.int/publications-de...of-the-novel-coronavirus-(2019-ncov)-outbreak
- Incubation period for the first 425 patients was 5.2 days. R0 differs by study. If R0 > 1, the epidemic will increase. We aim to reduce this number to < 1. R0 = 2.2 so on average, each patient will infect 2.2 other people
- Of the first 425 patients: 240 (56%) were male. No cases for children under age 15. 84 cases for ages 15-44. 179 cases between ages 45-64. 162 cases for age 65 and over. Incubation period for the first 425 patients was 5.2 days. Nearly half of cases occurred people over age 60. It's possible that children are infected but show milder symptoms. In the coming weeks, once developed, a seroprevalence study (where we test your blood serum) will give us a much better idea.
- What we're monitoring is whether exportation of cases in other countries can sustain transmission. This is crucial leading up to a pandemic. Circulation within the community is bad news. It's why surveillance, isolation, and why close contacts are being monitored.
- China does deserve some credit. If you compare the timeline with the SARS outbreak, we are doing way better (availability of data, transparency, measures of control, research etc). China hid reports of SARS and took 4 months to report to the WHO. It took 5 months to even identify it was a coronavirus and sequence the genome. We had a genome to analyze in lab within 11 days of their announcement to WHO. I remember laying in bed and jumping up when I was notified that the complete genome was available, pretty excited
- I also want to stress that it is quite easy to sit behind a screen and throw blame around. Granted there are certain contributing factors leading to this outbreak but in my opinion, there is a time to address those. At the moment, there needs to be a focus on containment and research. If you're outside of China and worried about it, consider how it would feel to be in China. There are good people doing good work
★ = highly recommended
- World Health Organisation ★
- WHO situation reports ★
- China Center for Disease Control (typically updates ~8:30 EST) ★
- Centers for Disease Control (US) ★
- Health Canada
- Centers for Disease Prevention and Control (EU)
- Australian Department of Health
- Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy
- Real-time Chinese broadcast updates
- Flutrackers forum
- Case trackers: John Hopkins (JHU)★, Healthmap (Oxford/Harvard), moritz.kraemer★
- Epidemiological data spreadsheets: 1, 2, 3
- What the virus looks like
- Footage of growth (Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity)
- Phylodynamics: spread/evolution of the virus (credit to Dr. Bedford + his team)
- Phylodynamics situation report + mini tutorial ★
- Coronaviridae family (Swiss Bioinformatics Institute)
- Estimation of epidemic growth (Imperial College London)
- Complete genome (GenBank)
- GISAID (verification of credentials needed)
- Clinical features: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)30211-7/fulltext ★