Time to change the case definition: COVID19 represents a tremendous public health threat

Time to change the case definition: COVID19 represents a tremendous public health threat

Dr KK Aggarwal

President CMAAO, HCFI and Past National President IMA

Some countries in Asia are beginning to experience community spread this is when cases are detected in a community, but it's not known what the source of the infection was. This is being reported in Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, and Vietnam, as well as Hong Kong and Japan. Once this has been established we need to redefine the definition of COVID 19.

Was it right to airlift corona positive persons in a plane mixed with corona negative persons?

How will 8 COVID 19 positive Indians in Japan come back?

US CDC did not want 14 people who had tested positive for COVID 19 to be flown back to the US, among hundreds of other uninfected people but on Sunday, February 16, the 14 positive people flew from Japan to the US on State Department-chartered planes.  They were among over 300 others, all evacuees from the luxury cruise ship, the Diamond Princess.

The cruise ship, initially carrying 3,711 passengers and crew, had been quarantined in Yokohama, Japan since February 3, after a former passenger tested positive on February 1. But the quarantine efforts failed and case counts steadily climbed during the 14-day confinement. Even in the last days, health officials in Japan were still reporting dozens of new cases.

On Friday, February 21, after the initial quarantine lifted on the 19th and hundreds of passengers and crew were allowed to disembark, the outbreak on the ship reached 634 cases.

Evacuation aircraft, two Boeing 747s, were already equipped with infectious disease doctors and areas enclosed by 3-meter-high plastic walls to keep infected passengers.

This has implication for India as out of the 132 crew members and six passengers of Indian nationality onboard quarantined cruise ship Diamond Princess, eight have tested positive for deadly coronavirus.

South Korea 346 cases

South Korea reported 142 additional confirmed cases of the coronavirus, bringing the nation’s total to 346, according to Korea’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Of the new cases, 91 have been traced to a hospital in Cheongdo County, which was designated as one of the “special care zones” by the government.

USA CASES

The US CDC will now track confirmed cases of novel coronavirus in the United States in two separate and distinct groups: those repatriated by the US Department of State and those identified by the US public health network.

 By these new metrics, there are now 21 confirmed cases among repatriated Americans and 13 confirmed cases among Americans first identified on US soil.

Eighteen cases have been confirmed among passengers from the Diamond Princess cruise ship now back in the United States. Three cases have been confirmed among passengers from the Wuhan repatriation flights now back in the United States.

Up until yesterday, the CDC was reporting 15 confirmed cases in the United States. The reason that number has dropped to 13 is because two cases have moved into the case count of repatriated individuals.

The change in the counting system starts today.

Once 8 positive cases of India in Japan, got infected in Diamond Princes, comes back to India, total cases will become 11.