Coronavirus Update for 2/26/2020

In general the estimated number of people infected from an infected person (R0) has been reported as 2 to 3.  The study below estimates double that number...

From a study at Los Alamos National Laboratory:

The Novel Coronavirus, 2019-nCoV, is Highly Contagious and More Infectious Than Initially Estimated

"... we estimated that the number of infected individuals during early epidemic double every 2.4 days, and the R0 (how many people get infected from one person) value is likely to be between 4.7 and 6.6."

SOURCES:

https://arxiv.org/abs/2002.03268

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dnE9O-vV-ws

Ugly battles erupt as residents fight housing coronavirus patients in their cities - Los Angeles Times

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-02-26/coronavirus-isnt-here-yet-but-u-s-cities-are-already-pushing-back-against-housing-the-ill

" The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on Tuesday alerted Americans to begin preparing for the spread of coronavirus in the United States after infections surfaced in several more countries"

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-health-usa/us-health-officials-urge-americans-to-prepare-for-spread-of-coronavirus-idUSKBN20J1Y4

UPDATE 1-WHO says no longer uses “pandemic” category, but virus still emergency

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/02/24/reuters-america-update-1-who-says-no-longer-uses-pandemic-category-but-virus-still-emergency.html

Based on the older WHO definition of pandemic, we are in one now...

EXCERPT:

Phase 5 is characterized by human-to-human spread of the virus into at least two countries in one WHO region (Figure 4)²³. While most countries will not be affected at this stage, the declaration of Phase 5 is a strong signal that a pandemic is imminent and that the time to finalize the organization, communication, and implementation of the planned mitigation measures is short.
Phase 6, the pandemic phase, is characterized by community level outbreaks in at least one other country in a different WHO region in addition to the criteria defined in Phase 5. Designation of this phase will indicate that a global pandemic is under way.

SOURCE:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK143061/

Johns Hopkins is tracking the virus spread here:

https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/bda7594740fd40299423467b48e9ecf6

Further detailed coronavirus tracking can be found here:

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#countries

The CDC Situation Summary can be found here:

"The potential public health threat posed by COVID-19 is high, both globally and to the United States."

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-nCoV/summary.html

You may want to consider downloading this App for your smart phone.

Sickweather: " Sickweather scans social networks for indicators of illness, allowing you to check for the chance of sickness as easily as you can check for the chance of rain."

http://sickweather.com/