Latest News #CORONAVIRUS

Source: BBC & WHO

As coronavirus continues to spread within the Australian community, health authorities are ramping up measures to protect those most at risk of life-threatening complications from the disease.

A 95-year-old woman from a Sydney aged care facility has become the second Australian to die from the COVID-19 strain.

NSW Health Minister Brad Hazzard today conceded that containment is now unlikely, with the focus turning to minimising the disease's impact.

With more than 93,000 cases reported across 74 countries, coronavirus has already killed over 3,200 people – more deaths than previous epidemics SARS and MERS combined.

So just who is most at risk – and how concerned do you need to be?

Here's what studies of the progression of COVID-19 in China, where the disease initially broke out three months ago, have shown.

The age factor

It's now well-established that the elderly are at the greatest risk of serious complications from the new coronavirus strain, but younger people can still catch and transmit the disease.

As of February 11, more than three quarters of all confirmed cases across China (77.8 per cent) were found in those aged between 30 and 69 years, according to statistics reported by the China Centre for Disease Control (CDC).

A further 8.8 per cent were aged 70 to 79 and 3.2 per cent were over 80.

Health authorities have speculated that may be in part attributable to community behaviours, with the elderly less likely to travel extensively and come in contact with carriers of the disease.

However, the death rate in elderly individuals remains much higher – one in every seven people aged over 80 who contract coronavirus will die, compared to one in 80 for 50-somethings.

This is believed to be largely due to the strength of patients' respiratory system, with most deaths caused not by the disease itself but by pneumonia and other complications from the illness.

Interestingly, the very young – who are generally the other most at-risk group from infectious diseases – appear to be protected from the serious side-effects of the illness.

Children aged under 10 made up just 0.9 per cent of cases across China, while a further 1.2 per cent were children and teenagers aged 10 to 19.

A World Health Organisation mission to China supported this, finding those aged under 18 made up just 2.4 per cent of all cases.

Only one of these 549 young people died.

It remains unclear if the low rates of confirmed cases are because children do not show symptoms, even if infected – presenting the possibility that they could act as "silent" transmitters of the illness in the community.

Are men or women more likely to get coronavirus?

The gender imbalance is much less clear-cut than the age factor, but preliminary reports suggest that men may be slightly more at risk of contracting coronavirus than women.

China CDC found that 106 men had the disease for every 100 women while another, earlier study of over 1000 COVID-19 patients in Wuhan found a greater imbalance, with 58 per cent of confirmed cases being men.

However, the mortality rate for men remains significantly higher, at 2.8 per cent compared to 1.7 per cent for women.

This could be due in part to men being more likely to have pre-existing conditions such as heart disease.

Are pregnant women at increased risk?

Pregnant women are often more susceptible to respiratory illnesses and, once infected, become more seriously ill.

Little is known about the new coronavirus strain in pregnant women, but preliminary data suggests they are not at a higher risk than the general population.

In an investigation of 147 pregnant women who were either confirmed or suspected to have coronavirus, eight per cent had severe disease and one per cent were critical, the WHO-China Joint Mission found.

A small study by scientists at Wuhan University found that, of the nine pregnant patients infected with the virus, none appeared to pass it on to their babies, who were all delivered healthy via caesarean section.

Pre-existing illness

Along with the elderly, those with pre-existing health conditions are most at risk of becoming seriously ill or dying from COVID-19.

These diseases range from respiratory illnesses, such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, through to heart disease and cancer.

A large China-based study of 1,590 coronavirus patients found that those with pre-existing conditions were almost twice as likely to be admitted to intensive care, be put on a ventilator and to die.

Those with two or more additional diseases were at 2.5 times greater risk.

Data from the China CDC supported these statistics, reporting the death rate for healthy individuals at 0.9 per cent, while in those with cardiovascular disease it was 10.5 per cent.

The death toll for diabetes sufferers was 7.3 per cent, 6.3 per cent for those with chronic respiratory diseases such as COPD, 6 per cent for hypertension and 5.6 per cent for those with cancer.

This is in line with previous deadly outbreaks such as MERS and SARS.

Australia’s Chief Medical Officer Brendan Murphy has warned Australians will be facing COVID-19 for the long haul, saying we should expect “disruptive and intrusive” measures for at least six months.

“People who say we can lockdown the country for four weeks and send everyone home, close the schools, are not being realistic,” he told A Current Affair this evening. “At the end of those four weeks, you have to undo all that, and then the virus can break out in a more aggressive way.

“We are trying to get the community adjusted to the fact that this is a long haul,” he said, adding that Australians would have to “change the way we behave”.

He said forcing people to stay home was a “possibility in the future” in sections if a small part of the country experienced a “very significant” outbreak.

568 cases of coronavirus have now been confirmed across Australia, with 267 in New South Wales, 121 in Victoria, 94 in Queensland, 37 in South Australia, 35 in Western Australia, 10 in Tasmania, three in the ACT and one in the Northern Territory.

Live updates:

March 18, 2020

That's a wrap!

That concludes our COVID-19 blog for today.

Until tomorrow morning, here are some related stories worth reading:

Exponential growth explains terrifying spread of virus

'Perfect storm' of new flu strains and virus spell danger

Closed schools told to reopen

Australia must prepare for 'disruptive, intrusive measures'

Australia’s Chief Medical Officer Brendan Murphy has warned Australians will be facing COVID-19 for the long haul, saying we should expect “disruptive and intrusive” measures for at least six months.

"People who say we can lockdown the country for four weeks and send everyone home, close the schools, are not being realistic," he told A Current Affair this evening. “At the end of those four weeks, you have to undo all that, and then the virus can break out in a more aggressive way.

"We are trying to get the community adjusted to the fact that this is a long haul,” he said, adding that Australians would have to “change the way we behave”.

He said forcing people to stay home was a “possibility in the future” in sections if a small part of the country experienced a “very significant” outbreak.

He also reiterated Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s advice against travelling.

“Unless there are exceptional circumstances, do not travel,” he said. However, he said Australia would “never” close its borders to Australian citizens and permanent residents.

He also said Italy’s infection rate was based on community transmission, while ours are based on imported cases, concluding that we have a “very different situation”.

"We think that six months is a good estimate, a period we will need to introduce very strong social distancing measures,” he said.

He admitted while these measures are going to be “disruptive and intrusive… they will enable us to go on living".

Latest updates: Wednesday 18th March

GOLF: The PGA Championship, one of the sport’s four majors, has been postponed. The tournament was scheduled to take place at TPC Harding Park in San Francisco, California from 11th to 17th May. 

HORSE RACING: All racing in Great Britain will be suspended from 18th March until the end of April. The British Horseracing Authority (BHA) said the decision will be kept under 'constant review'.

CYCLING: The International Cycling Union (UCI) has postponed the Paris-Roubaix and Liege-Bastogne-Liege races, having initially suspended all events until 3rd April. Paris-Roubaix was set to take place on 12th April, with Liege-Bastogne-Liege two weeks later. The Fleche Wallonne, scheduled for 22nd April has also been cancelled. The Tour de Yorkshire has been postponed. The race had been scheduled from 30th April to 3rd May. Dates are being looked at for the event to be staged later on in the year. 

BOXING: The all-English heavyweight bout between Daniel Dubois and Joe Joyce has been rescheduled from 11th April to 11th July at the same venue, London’s O2 Arena.
All boxing events are cancelled until at least the start of April by the British Boxing Board of Control (BBBofC).

BASKETBALL: The British Basketball League has suspended the 2019/20 season until further notice.

DIVING: The Fina Diving World Series finale, due to be staged at the London Aquatics Centre between 27th and 29th March, has been postponed.

The Confederation of African Football (Caf) has postponed the African Nations Championship, which had been set to take place from 4th to 25th April. The African Champions League final and Confederation Cup final, both due to kick off at the end of May, are still due to go ahead.

Explained: How do I self-isolate after landing in Australia?

From midnight anyone who entered Australia must self-isolate for 14 days. But what does that mean for you, amid the coronavirus outbreak?

Here's your guide to what you can and can't do, and what it means for your family or others you live with.

If you must self-isolate, then your wife or husband, family, kids or flatmates at home do not need to self-isolate.

But you should minimise or avoid any situations where you may have close contact with them. Close contact is any face-to-face contact closer than one metre for more than 15 minutes with people.

When you get home you are allowed to go into your backyard and garden. You can also access the common areas of your apartment or the hotel you are staying in.

However, and this very important, if it is an apartment or hotel then you must wear a surgical mask.

More updates will be available as it develops

Fears of a coronavirus pandemic have grown after sharp rises in new cases reported in Iran, Italy and South Korea but China relaxed restrictions on movements in several places including Beijing as its rates of new infections eased.

The surge of infections outside mainland China triggered steep falls in Asian shares and Wall Street stock futures as investors fled to safe havens such as gold. Oil prices tumbled.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) said it no longer had a process for declaring a pandemic but the coronavirus outbreak remained an international emergency.

"We are specially concerned about the rapid increase in cases in ... Iran, Italy and the Republic of Korea," WHO head Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told a news conference in Sweden.

South Korea reported a seventh death and 231 new cases taking its total to 833, as its hard-hit fourth-largest city of Daegu became more isolated with Asiana Airlines and Korean Air suspending flights there until next month.

Japan had 773 cases as of late Sunday, mostly on a cruise ship quarantined near Tokyo. A third passenger, a Japanese man in his 80s, died on Sunday.

Iran, which announced its first two cases on Wednesday, said it had confirmed 43 cases and eight deaths. Most of the infections were in the Shi'ite Muslim holy city of Qom.

More cases appeared in the Middle East with Bahrain reporting its first case, the state news agency said, and Kuwait reporting three cases involving people who had been in Iran.

Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iraq, Turkey, Pakistan and Afghanistan imposed travel and immigration restrictions on Iran. But Afghanistan reported its first case on Monday, in the western border province of Herat, again involving someone who had recently been in Iran, officials said.

The WHO has been saying for weeks it dreads the disease reaching countries with weak health systems.

Europe's biggest outbreak is in Italy with some 150 infections - from just three before Friday - and a fourth death.

Scientists around the world are scrambling to analyse the virus, but a vaccine is probably more than a year away.

China postponed the annual meeting of its parliament and would ban the illegal trade and consumption of wildlife, state media reported. The virus originated late last year, apparently in an illegal wildlife market in the city of Wuhan.

But in good news for China, more than 20 province-level jurisdictions including Beijing and Shanghai, reported zero infections, the best showing since the outbreak began.

President Xi Jinping urged businesses to get back to work though he said the epidemic was still "severe and complex, and prevention and control work is in the most difficult and critical stage".

Excluding central Hubei province, the epicentre of the outbreak, mainland China reported 11 new cases, the lowest since the national health authority started publishing nationwide figures on January 20.

The coronavirus has infected nearly 77,000 people and killed more than 2500 in China, most in Hubei province.

China reported 409 new cases on the mainland, down from 648 a day earlier, taking the total number of infections to 77,150 cases as of February 23. The death toll rose by 150 to 2592.

Xi said on Sunday the outbreak would have a relatively big, but short-term impact on the economy and the government would step up policy adjustments to help cushion the blow.

Outside mainland China, the outbreak has spread to about 29 countries and territories, with a death toll of about two dozen, according to a Reuters tally.

Italy sealed off the worst-affected towns and banned public gatherings in much of the north, including halting the carnival in Venice, where there were two cases.

© AAP 2020

China's deadly coronavirus outbreak could have spread from bats to humans through the illegal traffic of pangolins, the world's only scaly mammals, which are prized in Asia for food and medicine, Chinese researchers say.

Pangolins are among Asia's most trafficked mammals, although protected by international law, because its meat is considered a delicacy in countries such as China and its scales are used in traditional medicine, the World Wildlife Fund says.

"This latest discovery will be of great significance for the prevention and control of the origin (of the virus)," South China Agricultural University, which led the research, said in a statement on its website.

The outbreak, which has killed 636 people in mainland China, is believed to have started in a market in the city of Wuhan, in central Hubei province that also sold live wild animals.

Health experts think it might have originated in bats and then passed to humans, possibly via another species.

The genome sequence of the novel coronavirus strain separated from pangolins in the study was 99 per cent identical to that from infected people, China's official Xinhua news agency reported, adding the research found pangolins to be "the most likely intermediate host".

But Dirk Pfeiffer, professor of veterinary medicine at Hong Kong's City University, cautioned the study was still a long way from proving pangolins had transmitted the virus.

"You can only draw more definitive conclusions if you compare prevalence (of the coronavirus) between different species based on representative samples, which these almost certainly are not," he said.

Even then, a link to humans via food markets still needed to be established, Pfeiffer said.

Samples from a child evacuee on Christmas Island have been sent to Australia for urgent testing with concerns it could return positive for the deadly coronavirus.

Doctors and nurses inside the detention centre on Christmas Island caring for Australians evacuated from Wuhan have sent the samples from a young girl to the mainland as a precautionary measure however it is the first time a sample has been sent to Australia to make sure.

The sample was put on a plane yesterday and results should be confirmed within the next 24 to 48 hours.

A new quarantine site for more evacuees from China has been set up in Howard Springs in the Northern Territory.

The total number of confirmed cases in Australian remains at 15, while the global number has risen to 31,530.

The total number of deaths has now risen to 638 however the number of people who have successfully recovered is more than double, currently sitting at 1,764 worldwide.

Even in the epicentre of the outbreak, in Hubei, the number of recoveries has surpassed the number of deaths with 867 people successfully cleared after contracting the virus.

Evacuees bound for Darwin delayed

The next group of coronavirus evacuees expected from Wuhan will be quarantined at an old mining camp near Darwin.

Passengers on the second flight to extract Australians from China will be sent to the Manigurr-ma Village at Howard Springs, 30km from Darwin, with Christmas Island unable to house another couple of hundred evacuees.

Roughly 260 Australians will be on board the flight and health officials are stressing those being evacuated are not sick or showing any symptoms however must be quarantined as a safety measure to prevent the further spread of virus.

The passengers will be screened a total of five times – once before they leave China, twice on the flight, then at the RAAF Base in Darwin and again when they arrive at the quarantine site.

Anyone found to be unwell on arrival at Darwin will be taken directly to hospital where they will be quarantined, according to the joint statement from Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton, Health Minister Greg Hunt and Australia's Chief Medical Officer Brendan Murphy.

Professor Murphy said those staying at the Howard Springs facility were unlikely to become infectious and their health would be closely monitored.

"It is important people living in and around Howard Springs know the novel coronavirus can only be transmitted by close contact with an infectious person and cannot be spread through the air," he said.

"The health and safety of the Howard Springs community is of paramount importance and I am confident the security and public health measures put in place will prevent any risk to the community's health."

Residents in Howard Springs have raised concerns about the location of the site being so close to homes however officials have reassured locals there is no danger.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison has warned people not to assume further evacuation flights will be possible, either from Wuhan or mainland China.

The first bus-loads of evacuees were due to arrive this morning however the flight was delayed because clearance for it was not secured by China.

Mask prices soar due to increased demand

Demand for masks, gowns, gloves and other protective gear has risen by up to 100-fold and prices have soared due to the coronavirus, producing a "severe" disruption in global supply, the World Health Organisation chief says.

The situation has been made worse by people who are not medical workers buying the protective gear for their own use, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on Friday.

"When supplies are short and demand is high, then there could be bad practices like hoarding in order to sell them at higher prices, and that's why we ask for solidarity," Tedros told a briefing at WHO headquarters in Switzerland.

"Demand is up to 100 times higher than normal and prices are up to 20 times higher" and the rush has created supply backlogs of four to six months, he added.

Frontline health workers in China, where 31,211 confirmed cases of coronavirus have been reported, need the bulk of such supplies, he said.

Tedros said that he had spoken to manufacturers and distributors to ensure supplies for those who need them most, with health care workers a priority followed by the sick and those caring for them.

The WHO has sent gloves, masks, respirators and other "personal protective equipment" - known as PPE in its jargon - to every region, he said.

Tedros said that he had just spoken to the WHO's "pandemic supply chain network" which includes manufacturers, distributors and logistics providers to ensure that protective supplies reach those in need.

"We call on countries and companies to work with WHO to ensure fair and rational use of supplies and the re-balancing of the market. We all have a part to play in keeping each other safe."

The public and private network was focusing first on surgical masks because of the extreme demand and market pressures, Tedros said, adding: "We are appreciative of companies who have taken the decision to only supply masks to medical professionals."