Chinese Virus

Chinese Virus www.infralive.com 33 Infra LIVE April 15, 2020 Treatment: Most of the 99 patients were given antibiotic treatment; 25 patients were treated with a single antibiotic and 45 patients were given combina- tion therapy. The duration of anti- biotic treatment was 3-17 days. Thirteen patients used non- invasive ventilator mechanical ventilation for 4-22 days, and 4 patients used an invasive ventila- tor for 3-20 days. Nine patients received continuous blood purifi- cation due to renal failure and three patients were treated with extracorporeal membrane oxygen- ation (ECMO). Selling defective kits - Busi- ness as usual for China On March 28, Dutch officials recalled 600,000 face masks man- ufactured in China because they did not meet quality standards, the government's health ministry said. The news shocked frontline medical staff in the Netherlands, who rely on high-quality products to protect them from contracting Covid-19. Half of the shipment of 1.3 million supposedly top-of-the-line face masks – known as N95 in the United States and Hong Kong – had already been distributed to doctors and nurses treating the most critical Covid-19 patients. N95 masks – known as FFP2 in Europe or KN95 in mainland China – play a critical role in health care, as they are supposed to block over 90 per cent of air- borne particles that may carry the coronavirus. The Dutch experience is not the first time that European countries have had problems with coronavirus-related medical equipment manufactured in China. Earlier, Spain announced that hundreds of thousands of rapid test kits sent by a Chinese company were unreliable. Before that similar reports came from the Czech Republic. According to the Dutch Minis- try of Health, Welfare and Sport, the masks did not fit well and the filters did not function properly. The ministry was notified by inspectors that the quality of this shipment “did not meet the qual- ity criteria” for the product. “Part of this shipment was delivered to health care providers, while the rest of the cargo was immediately put on hold and was not distrib- uted further,” the ministry said. “A second test also showed that the masks did not meet quality standards. It has now been decided that the whole shipment would not be used. New ship- ments will undergo an additional test.” The problem with the Chinese masks was first discovered by hospitals that received them, with health workers finding the masks did not fit properly. “If the masks do not fit properly, the virus parti- cles can simply pass through. We did not use them. They are unsafe for our people.” FFP2 face masks are supposed to have a filter efficiency of 92 per cent, according to European stan- dards, but were found to be meet- ing not even half of the expected quality. In mid-March, Madrid stopped using a rapid Covid-19 test kit made by a Chinese company after research suggested it was not accurate enough. While the Chi- nese company claimed its test kits had an accuracy rate of 80 per cent, the Spanish Society of Infec- tious Diseases and Clinical Micro- biology found that they got the results wrong 70 per cent of time. WHO A pneumonia of unknown cause detected in Wuhan, China was first reported to the WHO Country Office in China on December 31. On January 30, WHO declared the outbreak a Public Health Emer- gency of International Concern. On February 11, WHO announced the official names: for the 'Dis- ease', it is “coronavirus disease (COVID-19)”; and for 'Virus' it is “severe acute respiratory syn- drome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV- 2). On March 11, WHO declared COVID-19 a global pandemic. remains prudent to consider the incubation period of at least 14 days. Germany: By 24 March 2020, 50,569 laboratory-confirmed cases have been reported to the European Surveillance System (TESSy). Information on symp- toms was available for 14,011 cases from 13 countries, mainly (97 pc) from Germany. Among these cases, the most commonly reported clinical symptom was fever (47 pc), dry or productive cough (25 pc), sore throat (16 pc), general weakness (6 pc) and pain (5 pc). Europe: By the end of February 2020, several countries were experiencing sustained local transmission, including in Europe. The most commonly reported clinical symptom in laboratory-confirmed cases is fever (88 pc), followed by dry cough (68 pc), fatigue (38 pc), sputum production (33 pc), dyspnoea (19 pc), sore throat (14 pc), headache (14 pc) and myalgia or arthralgia (15 pc). Less com- mon symptoms are diarrhoea (4 pc) and vomiting (5 pc). China: A retrospective study of records of 99 patients of COVID- 19 in Wuhan Jinyintan Hospital from Jan 1 to Jan 20, 2020 was published in Lancet (box-c at pg 44 to 48). Of the 99 patients, 83 pc had clinical manifestations of fever, 82 pc cough, 31 pc short- ness of breath, 11 pc muscle ache, 9 pc confusion, 8 pc headache, 5 pc sore throat, 4 pc rhinorrhoea, 2 pc chest pain, 2 pc diarrhoea, and 1 pc nausea & vomiting. Accord- ing to imaging examination, 75 pc patients showed bilateral pneu- monia, 14 pc patients showed multiple mottling and ground- glass opacity, and 1 pc had pneumothorax, 17 pc developed acute respiratory distress syn- drome and, among them, 11 pc patients worsened in a short period of time and died of multi- ple organ failure.