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Number of confirmed COVID-19 cases rises in Japan
- dis-sys 7y agoWhy Japan still refuses to test everyone (or at least all Japanese passengers) on that Diamond Princess cruise ship is just strange at best.
- yokaze 7y agoThe tests have a true-positive rate of 40%. Could well be, that the tests bring more hassle than they are worth.
- deugtniet 7y agoTesting somebody without symptoms is not accurate. Additionally, the current tests are very expensive and remove capacity for other individuals with symptoms.
- pwim 7y agoAccording to this article (https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2020/02/12/national/science-health/japan-covid-19-test-kit-shortage-cruise-ship https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2020/02/12/national/scienc...), Japan doesn’t currently have the capacity to test everyone.
- usrusr 7y agoWhat's the upside? Tests are effectively positive/unknown in absence of truly reliable data about incubation periods etc. You'd treat someone from a high risk group who is tested negative just the same as while untested and without symptoms.
- akg_67 7y agoJapan doesn’t have enough testing capacity. Last week, they could do only about 300 tests each day nationwide and expect to increase to 1,000 by next week. Actually, currently no country has capacity to test everyone on a typical cruise ship. Even China has switched to chest x-rays and classifying anyone showing pneumonia on X-ray to be infected. That cruise ship has put lot of strain on Japanese resources from testing to treatment. Once a persons has been tested positive, preparing hospital to accept that patient is another can of worm.
- lifthrasiir 7y ago> Actually, currently no country has capacity to test everyone on a typical cruise ship. According to their official announcement last week [1], South Korean government is currently able to test 3,000 persons per day and will be able to test up to 10,000 per day by the end of February. Even after accounting for false positives this would be enough to test everyone on a cruise ship. [1] http://ncov.mohw.go.kr/tcmBoardView.do?contSeq=352788 http://ncov.mohw.go.kr/tcmBoardView.do?contSeq=352788 "그동안 진단검사 기관을 시도 보건환경연구원에서 민간의료기관으로 확대하였고(2.7), 검사가능 물량도 대폭 늘리고 있으나(1일 200명→3,000명), 2월 말까지는 생산업체, 민간검사기관 등을 확대하여 현재의 3배 수준인 하루 1만 건의 진단검사가 가능하도록 확충할 예정이다."
- akg_67 7y agoI don’t read Korean so cant comment on validity of claim of able to perform tests. It seems very unrealistic. I might be wrong but the translation seems to give impression of count of diagnostic test kit versus capacity to perform actual test per day after samples are collected. Edit: see additional information in reply comment by @lifthrasiir
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- lifthrasiir 7y agoYou have a good point, but the quoted text directly mentions the test capacity, not the amount of diagnostic kits. For non-Koreans the following is a rough translation (all errors are mine of course): > 그동안 진단검사 기관을 시도 보건환경연구원에서 민간의료기관으로 확대하였고(2.7), 검사가능 물량도 대폭 늘리고 있으나(1일 200명→3,000명), 2월 말까지는 생산업체, 민간검사기관 등을 확대하여 현재의 3배 수준인 하루 1만 건의 진단검사가 가능하도록 확충할 예정이다. > Meanwhile it was made possible to perform tests not only from local Health and Environment Research Institutes but also from private medical institutes as of February 7, and the diagnostic capacity has greatly increased from 200 to 3,000 per day, but we plan to increase it further to 10,000 tests per day by the end of February, through more diagnostic kit producers and more participating private medical institutes. The capacity might seem unrealistic, but the linked website has a live counter for the number of diagnoses in progress ("검사진행") and that reads 558 as of today. And that is not a stale counter; some daily report [1] has a table that reads 2,736 candidates were tested (negative) from 2020-01-03 to 2020-02-11 09:00 AM, and 4,054 were tested to 2020-02-12 09:00 AM, yielding at least 1,300 actual tests completed that day, and the counter remains relatively stable (992 back then). Probably it is true that 3,000/day figure is theoretical, but 1,000/day is very real. [1] http://ncov.mohw.go.kr/tcmBoardView.do?contSeq=352847 http://ncov.mohw.go.kr/tcmBoardView.do?contSeq=352847
- hdiriekei 7y agoBye bye Olympics. They are practically cancelled.
- roenxi 7y agoThe speed and scope of the Chinese response baffles me and it'll be interesting but unpleasant seeing how this plays out in other countries. The WHO situation reports had 258 confirmed cases in Hubei Province on the 21st of January [0]. Now 3 weeks later China is quarantined and new emergency hospitals have already built. The speed and organisation behind that response tells me that the fog of uncertainty still lies heavy and whatever the Chinese government estimates might be they are not being published in the WHO situation reports. As other countries start managing outbreaks the picture of exactly how bad this is will be a clearer. In no small part because the monitoring infrastructure will be ready in advance of cases appearing. [0] https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019/situation-reports/ https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2...
- zzrush 7y agoCause government gets so used to hide information, they thought they could have hidden this from their people and the world as well.
- makomk 7y agoIt looks like the rapid hospital building was basically a PR stunt - once they were "finished" they remained mostly empty despite the region struggling for hospital space, whilst distracting from the problems China was having setting up the makeshift hospitals in existing buildings that they've ended up relying on. This only works in a country like China with a tightly muzzled press because journalists would see through it elsewhere.
- Udik 7y agoThey built two hospitals in 10 days, and 6 days after the construction was completed they only hosted 1200 people [1] instead of the full capacity of 2600. How lame are these Chinese lolz! [1] https://www.businessinsider.nl/wuhan-coronavirus-hospitals-not-filling-beds-data-2020-2?international=true&r=US https://www.businessinsider.nl/wuhan-coronavirus-hospitals-n...
- 7y ago
- peteretep 7y agoUnpopular opinion: the long term benefits to Japan -- in particular -- of having a virus that mostly kills old people are substantial.
- roenxi 7y agoEconomies are for the benefit of the people. The point of the economy is to enable long, comfortable and happy lives as best we can. The system is not perfect but we have none better. Seeing any sort of win in an improvement in the metrics because of mass deaths is putting the cart before the horse. The point of a thriving economy is specifically to prevent that sort of thing.
- peteretep 7y ago> The point of the economy is to enable long, comfortable and happy lives as best we can Comfortable and happy, yes, but I can assure you That nobody who is dead has any opinion on how long their life was
- Razengan 7y agoEven edgier opinion: The long term benefits to the entire planet of having a virus that kills most people worldwide are substantial. The elites who can afford to live comfortably in quarantined bunkers for years will be the only ones left, and they'll remake the world in their image without having to worry about the riff raff. Solitary corporate overlords with armies of AI drones controlled from a StarCraft-like console, to keep the slaves in line until they finish building their personal pyramid spaceships.
- xvilka 7y agoThe Justar Journal[1] book series basically. [1] https://www.goodreads.com/series/169314-the-justar-journal https://www.goodreads.com/series/169314-the-justar-journal
- spicymaki 7y agoThe elites are only elite due to the riff raff. They depend on each other. My take on this is that the uber-elites will move the goal post segregating the elites into a new set of upper and lower classes. The cycle of greed, hatred, and delusion will thus continue ad infinitum.
- jdshaffer 7y agoI live in Japan, and the people here are definitely being cautious, but apart from the local stores being sold out of masks, not much has changed so far. (And here's hoping for the best!)
- apotheosis-neko 7y agoFrom my count there has been nearly a dozen large companies in Tokyo alone 'going remote' the past few weeks. Nearly 500k workers suddenly have the option to work from a satellite office or home.. Alcohol hand sanitizer at the entrance of nearly all events and people requested to wear masks. Think they are being fairly cautious. Definitely not a mask scale panic though! :)
- jsemrau 7y agoLikely the Japanese response is not cautious enough. The virus seems to spread fast. However, its lethalness is likely overrated.
- Merrill 7y agoAs of the morning, per Global Times, Hubei has 2.67% ratio of deaths to cases. For China outside of Hubei, the ratio is 0.55%. Of course, these are raw figures, and the lower ratio outside of Hubei may be simply due to the cases being newer and that more of the current cases will ultimately be fatal. https://www.globaltimes.cn//content/1177737.shtml https://www.globaltimes.cn//content/1177737.shtml One of the things needed is a quick and inexpensive test for antibodies to COVID-19 virus in order to establish how many actual infections there are.
- logicchains 7y ago>As of the morning, per Global Times, Hubei has 2.67% ratio of deaths to cases. This is a _confirmed_ deaths to _confirmed_ cases. Unless everyone has been reliably tested, we'd expected the number of actual cases to be higher given it can present with mild-to-no symptoms and such cases are less likely to be tested/identified.
- deorder 7y agoShouldn't it be "as SARS-Cov-2 spreads" or "as more people get COVID-19"? I see a lot of headlines using COVID-19 as if it is the virus and not the disease caused by it. Probably just semantics, but something I noticed.
- kgwgk 7y agoThe disease spreads together with the virus, doesn’t it? Edit: I mean that it is standard usage to talk about diseases like gastroenteritis, tuberculosis and malaria spreading. One does not need to use “spread” only for the virus/bacteria/parasite.
- escape_goat 7y agoNaming a virus after a disease is rather more monstrous than naming a disease after a virus, but nonetheless the virus is exclusively responsible for the causing and the spreading of the disease. In this particular epidemic, the risk of asymptomatic transmission makes the distinction more salient than it usually is.
- kgwgk 7y agoDo you have examples of diseases named after a virus? I cannot think if any. (Edit: I found Ebola virus disease, Maburg virus disease and Nipah virus disease.)
- escape_goat 7y agoSorry not to catch this question. COVID-19, "Coronavirus disease 2019," is a disease named after a virus. The virus itself is now named "severe acute respiratory syndrome-related coronavirus 2," or SARS-CoV-2, and hence is a virus named after a disease.
- rfoo 7y agoAlso MERS.