In the latest Situation report 53 posted March 13th, five new countries have reported cases of COVID-19 in the past 24 hours. Additionally, the WHO UN foundation and partners launched its first Solidarity Response Fund today. Hubei has the most confirmed cases at 67786 and the most deaths at 3062. The United States has 1264 confirmed cases, 277 confirmed new cases, and 36 deaths. While the WHO has developed interium guidance for lab diagnosis, advise on mask use and home care, and clinical management, there still seems to be a shortage of necessary test kits to determine diagnosis. This can be a target of concern because if not enough people are getting tested, then there are in reality many more undiagnosed cases.
The WHO also posed case definitions, for example a suspect case is a patient with acute respiratory illness (fever and at least one sign and symptom of respiratory disease), and with no other etiology that can fully explain the clinical presentation. I think that this is very difficult to explain and also detect because the symptomes are so much like other colds, flu, etc that people do not want to go get tested. I am worried that people will not want to go get tested if they have symptoms because they do not want to go to the doctor and risk picking up the virus. A probable case is a suspect case for whom testing COVID-19 is inconclusive and a confirmed is when the test kit is positive. I also fear the the hospitals and health care clinics will be over crowded with people getting sick and being tested.
The epidemic in the United States keeps on growing since the first case in late February. According to the CDC, as of March 13th, there are 1629 cases, 41 deaths, and 47 states reporting cases. I believe the numbers are much larger however, because clinics do not have enough test kits. 138 cases are travel related, 129 cases are close contact related, and the other 1362 are under investigation. The states with the largest number are California, Washington, and New York. North Carolina is under an intermediate category. Also, since COVID-19 has a two week incubation period, illnesses that began during March are now just being reported, and many others may have it without knowing. As we learned in class, long incubation periods allow for more spread of the disease because people do not show symptoms.
