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.
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