Health experts say it’s time to prepare for worldwide spread on all continents. coronavirus
While other countries are now scaling up, this outbreak has been going on since late last year, and it’s possible cases have gone uncounted. So far, only one case has been detected in Africa — in Egypt — yet Africa is thought to be at particular risk given its economic ties to China, with more than a“If the disease spreads to fragile states it would be even harder to contain.
This coronavirus is still very new, and we don’t know the entire spectrum of illness yet, but we’re learning the disease may sometimes surface in surprising ways. Though it’s a respiratory infection,article found some have abdominal symptoms such as discomfort first. This means “we may not be detecting cases that do not present in the classic way with fever and respiratory symptoms,” said William Schaffner, an infectious disease expert at Vanderbilt University.
As more and more mild or asymptomatic cases are found, the death rate is likely to drop. Still, Osterholm warned, even a 1 or 2 percent case fatality rate could equate to a lot of deaths if Covid-19 continues to spread around the world. “A 2 percent case fatality rate is 20 times higher than a bad flu year,” he said. “So now, you can infect many more people than the flu and add a case fatality that is as much as 20 times higher.
5 to 10 percent of patients need care in an ICU, Osterholm said. Many countries may not have enough beds or equipment to care for them, not to mention such care could cost billions.
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