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| ... while passing on the disease, of course: https://www.theargus.co.uk/news/18242077.thirty-brighton-doctors-coronavirus-isolation-says-clinician/ |
According to the Johns Hopkins
tracker the total number of confirmed cases now approaches 78,000 of which over
600 are outside the Chinese mainland. https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/bda7594740fd40299423467b48e9ecf6
. Of the latter, only 12 have died so far.
However, it is clear that the
virus is lethal to more than East Asians. Two days ago, a couple of Iranians
succumbed; and it seems they had not travelled outside their country. They died
in Qom (90 miles from the capital, Tehran), and two other patients have been
diagnosed there since, plus one in Arak (who happens to be a doctor from Qom),
bringing the total cases to five. https://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/world/iran-qom-coronavirus-covid19-religious-gatherings-cases-12455638
Qom is a magnet for pilgrims, so
there is some question as to whether piety may outweigh prudence. 20 million
visitors (both domestic and foreign) come annually because it is not only a
holy city but ‘the largest centre for Shiʿa scholarship in the world’. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qom
Conversely, millions of Shi’ite pilgrims travel from Iran to Iraq each year to
see the holy cities of Najaf and Karbala; Iraq has now taken the precautions of
suspending flights to Iran and closing their mutual border https://www.timesofisrael.com/iraq-closes-border-with-iran-over-coronavirus-fears/
but we shall see how effective and sustained these measures will be.
And today we hear of a fatality
in Italy (see below).
Here is the toll to date, in
sequence, for the world outside mainland China:
(1) 02 February: a 44-year-old
Chinese tourist from Wuhan, Hubei province died in hospital in Manila, the Philippines; he was ‘thought to have had other
pre-existing health conditions.’ https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-51345855
(2) 04
February: a 39-year-old Hong Kong man dies there
of heart failure, having been diagnosed on 31 January with the virus. He is
said to have had a ‘long-term illness.’ https://agbrief.com/headline/coronavirus-live-updates-2020/
(3) 13
February: a woman in her eighties died in a Japanese
hospital where she had been kept since February 1; her son-in law is a taxi
driver and has also been confirmed infected. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/feb/13/japan-reports-first-coronavirus-death-as-44-more-cases-confirmed-aboard-cruise-ship
(4) 15
February: an 80-year-old Chinese tourist from Hubei province died in Paris, France after weeks in hospital. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/15/world/europe/france-coronarivus-death.html
(5) 15
February: a 61-year-old male taxi driver from central Taiwan
died in hospital there from Covid-19-related pneumonia and sepsis; he had a
history of Hepatitis B and diabetes. Many of his fares had come from China,
Macau and Hong Kong.
(6, 7) 19 February:
two Iranian citizens died in Qom, northern Iran;
both were elderly and with underlying health conditions. They ‘were not known
to have left Iran’ but as said above, Qom is a major religious destination for
pilgrims and scholars. https://www.dw.com/en/coronavirus-first-deaths-reported-in-middle-east/a-52436966
(8) 19
February: a second Hong Kong victim dies there –
a 70-year-old man with ‘underlying illnesses.’ He had previously visited
mainland China on 22 January via the island’s border checkpoint at Lok Ma Chau.
https://www.hongkongfp.com/2020/02/19/breaking-70-year-old-dies-bringing-hong-kong-coronavirus-death-toll-two/
(9) 19 February:
a 63-year-old local man died in a hospital in South
Korea and was diagnosed posthumously with the virus. Many new cases have
been registered in the South Korean city of Daegu, where a South Korean woman
is thought to have infected the congregation of a Christian sect; she is said
to be in her early 60s and with no recent record of overseas travel. https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/health-environment/article/3050517/coronavirus-how-diamond-princess-cruise-ship-became
(10, 11) 20
February: two Japanese citizens died in a hospital in Japan,
having been taken off the ‘Diamond Princess’ cruise
ship (quarantined near Yokohama) the previous week. ‘Both were in their
80s with underlying health conditions.’ https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-51568496
The infection may have been spread by a Hong Kong resident who had briefly
visited the Chinese mainland prior to boarding the ship at Yokohama on 20
January https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/health-environment/article/3050517/coronavirus-how-diamond-princess-cruise-ship-became
; he disembarked at Hong Kong on January 25, reporting to a hospital on the
island, where he was diagnosed with coronavirus. The ship’s itinerary from 1
December 2019 on is here: http://crew-center.com/diamond-princess-itinerary
- the latest cruise was to have been 29 days long, starting in Singapore. https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/health-environment/article/3050517/coronavirus-how-diamond-princess-cruise-ship-became
(12) 22
February: a 78-year-old man died in Padua, Italy.
The first arrival of the virus in the country is traced to China: ‘The
"index case" - or patient zero - was reported to be a 38-year-old man
from Codogno who is believed to have caught the virus from a friend who had
returned from China in January.’ https://news.sky.com/story/italy-reports-first-coronavirus-death-as-infections-worldwide-pass-77-000-11940004
The pattern of
lethality is similar to that for ‘ordinary’ flu: Covid-19 hits the old and
infirm disproportionately. That said, we also see how easily it seems to
spread, and (thanks to modern communications and mass travel) how far – not
only across the Far East but the Middle East, Australasia, Europe, North
America, India, Egypt… So far, nothing reported from sub-Saharan Africa, or
central and southern American states; but we are hardly three months into this
outbreak and not all countries may as quick to diagnose cases correctly.
There is no
room for complacency, as Charles Hugh Smith explains. http://charleshughsmith.blogspot.com/2020/02/covid-19-pandemic-complacent-are.html
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