welcome to another MedCram update so where are we currently well as it stands
the number of deaths is up from 132 to currently 170 and the number infected
globally to a current seven thousand seven hundred and eighty-three now these
numbers have to be taken with a grain of salt first of all I'm going to give you
a link where you can get a update any time of day on the number of cases and
it's updated by Johns Hopkins University and the link to that is in the
description below the other thing though is that there is a real shortage of the
tests and so that's gonna affect both the numerator here in terms of deaths
and also the denominator obviously when someone is very sick they're gonna be
wanting to make sure that they know whether or not this is the novel
coronavirus as it stands right now good news is a
lot of these countries outside of China have really been static in terms of the
number of cases USA is still at five Canada is still at three one thing that
shows the concern here in terms of spreading the disease is the case of the
ten-year-old that was essentially asymptomatic let's talk about that so
apparently this ten-year-old child with his parents also grandparents flew from
Shenzhen all the way up to Wuhan and this was around the end of December and
they were there of course for the new year and after about three to four days
they came down with symptoms at that time there was a little bit interest in
about you know twenty to thirty cases of pneumonia that had been undiagnosed in
the hospital but it wasn't certainly the international level of news as it is
today both the parents and the grandparents became ill and in further
review of this it seems as though the family went to actually go visit some
loved ones that were in the hospital at the time so the parents and the
grandparents became ill and they were tested and by about this point
of course if you add 3 to 4 days to December 29 they knew that they were
dealing with a viral outbreak and of course they tested positive for the
novel coronavirus and the grandparents were tested and of course they turned
out to be positive for the novel coronavirus well the parents insisted
that their 10 year old boy be tested even though he was asymptomatic and they
didn't want to test the boy because he wasn't showing any signs of illness but
they went ahead and tested him anyway and the 10 year old child tested guess
what positive for the novel coronavirus even though he was completely
asymptomatic didn't have fever cough shortness of breath when they did a cat
scan though and they looked they found that he actually had signs of pneumonia
so here's this thing where people can be asymptomatic have very mild disease but
be shedding the virus and of course this is concerning with the recent news of
this plane taking our diplomats from China back and landing at the March Air
Force Reserve Base and it is there that they are all under voluntary quarantine
for at least 3 days where they're being checked out and actually having nasal
swabs and things of that nature but the question really comes down to is how
good of a quarantine can we do and how good of a blockade or lockdown can we do
how well can we screen people coming in through the airports if people may not
have fevers may not have these sorts of symptoms and they're coming in with the
virus and they're shedding it and it's spreading interestingly a couple of
points that I want to show is it only took about 3 to 4 days to show symptoms
in the parents and the grandparents that's a pretty short incubation period
so this ten-year-old shows that it's possible and I think this is the basis
for the Health Minister in China saying that there may be some cases where this
can spread even though people may be asymptomatic it also highlights
something else as well what they're noticing is that the young may have a
milder course whereas the elderly have a more severe course it's kind of a
dichotomy I saw one article that brought this up and you've got this continuum
where as on one side you have Czar's which actually was a coronavirus
and the other side you have flu and what is the continuum here well with SARS
this was a very severe disease but you couldn't really spread it unless you
were symptomatic so SARS basically allowed authorities to isolate it and to
prevent its spread so severe however not going to spread in an asymptomatic
patient take the other extreme here which is the flu where generally
speaking you get the flu you take some over-the-counter medication not a big
deal
but you can spread the flu when you're asymptomatic it has more of a shedding
and so the question is is where exactly in this continuum is this new corona
virus going to be certainly it has some of the components on this end which is
where you can have it be asymptomatic but you can shed it where as we can see
very clearly that this thing does have a mortality rate especially in the old so
I think time is gonna tell on which side this corona virus is gonna come down on
again go to the Johns Hopkins website and you can get immediate updates and a
little map out and we'll show you where things are spreading well this is the
update thanks for joining us