We’re still in what amounts to the first minutes of our coexistence with the coronavirus
Deaths also rose–the U.S. recorded its first coronavirus-related mortalities–and health officials warned that the disease has “pandemic potential.” There are now more than 80,000 cases of COVID-19 infection in mainland China and nearly 13,000 outside the country, with the latter tally growing daily.
When the Chinese government took the unprecedented steps of quarantining first the city of Wuhan, where COVID-19 emerged, and then 60 million people living in the province of Hubei, where Wuhan is located, the hope was to contain the virus. If the people most likely to have been exposed to and infected by the virus couldn’t travel, then they couldn’t spread the disease very far.
That was also President Donald Trump’s public reasoning for the aggressive travel restrictions the U.S. government put in place in January, denying entry to many foreign nationals from China, and funneling passengers arriving in the U.S. who might have traveled to China through select airports where they had their temperature scanned and then, for those with a fever, on to further testing and monitoring.
But if COVID-19 has taught government and public-health leaders anything, it’s that containment, in an era when viruses are given wings through the ease of international travel, is increasingly only a short-term strategy for combatting infectious disease. And that’s especially true when it comes to the COVID-19 virus, which appears to jump covertly from person to person by piggybacking in some hosts without really making them sick.
Detecting these people is akin to capturing clouds, and public-health officials are now acknowledging that the time for containment has slipped through their fingers. But that reality is proving more difficult for political leaders to accept. At his first press conference directly addressing the COVID-19 outbreak, Trump downplayed its potential impact in the U.S., declaring that a widespread uptick is “not inevitable. The risk to the American people remains very low.
South Africa Latest News, South Africa Headlines
Similar News:You can also read news stories similar to this one that we have collected from other news sources.
U.S. 10-year yields drop below 1% for first time everU.S. benchmark 10-year Treasury yields on Tuesday slid below 1% for the first ti...
Read more »
Prince Harry Meets With the Queen for the First Time Since Returning to the UKLooks like the Queen and Harry might be getting along better than the rumor mill says...
Read more »
Bernie Sanders embraces Obama for the first time in new adFormer Vice President Joe Biden, Sen. Sanders' top competitor for the Democratic presidential nomination, has frequently highlighted his close relationship with Obama in his appeal to voters.
Read more »
Doctors use CRISPR gene editing inside a person's body for first timeScientists say they have used the gene editing tool CRISPR inside someone’s body for the first time, a new frontier for efforts to operate on DNA to treat diseases.
Read more »