Coronavirus originated from China's Wuhan lab: US President Donald Trump

Feb 22: A 20-year-old Chinese woman from Wuhan, the epicentre of the coronavirus outbreak, travelled 400 miles(675 km) north to Anyang where she infected five relatives, without ever showing signs of infection, Chinese scientists reported on Friday, offering new evidence that the virus can be spread asymptomatically.

The case study, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, offered clues about how the coronavirus is spreading, and suggested why it may be difficult to stop.

"Scientists have been asking if you can have this infection and not be ill? The answer is apparently, yes," said Dr. William Schaffner, an infectious disease expert at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, who was not involved in the study.

China has reported a total of 75,567 cases of the virus known as COVID-19 to the World Health Organization (WHO) including 2,239 deaths, and the virus has already spread to 26 countries and territories outside of mainland China.

Researchers have reported sporadic accounts of individuals without any symptoms spreading the virus. What's different in this study is that it offers a natural lab experiment of sorts, Schaffner said.

"You had this patient from Wuhan where the virus is, travelling to where the virus wasn't. She remained asymptomatic and infected a bunch of family members and you had a group of physicians who immediately seized on the moment and tested everyone."

According to the report by Dr Meiyun Wang of the People's Hospital of Zhengzhou University and colleagues, the woman travelled from Wuhan to Anyang on Jan. 10 and visited several relatives. When they started getting sick, doctors isolated the woman and tested her for coronavirus. Initially, the young woman tested negative for the virus, but a follow-up test was positive.

All five of her relatives developed COVID-19 pneumonia, but as of Feb. 11, the young woman still had not developed any symptoms, her chest CT remained normal and she had no fever, stomach or respiratory symptoms, such as cough or sore throat.

Scientists in the study said if the findings are replicated, "the prevention of COVID-19 infection could prove challenging."

Key questions now, Schaffner said, are how often does this kind of transmission occur and when during the asymptomatic period does a person test positive for the virus.

A shrimp seller at the wet market in the Chinese city of Wuhan believed to be the centre of the coronavirus pandemic, may be the first person to have tested positive for the disease, a media report said on Saturday.

The report by the London-based Metro newspaper said that 57-year-old woman, named by the Wall Street Journal as Wei Guixian, was selling shrimp at the Huanan Seafood Market when she developed what she thought was a cold last December.

Chinese digital news outlet, The Paper has said that she may be epatient zero'.

Wei was told by doctors her illness was "ruthless" and other workers at the market had come to the Wuhan Union Hospital with the same symptoms, the Metro newspaper report quoted the outlet as saying.

"Every winter, I suffer from the flu, so I thought it was the flu," the woman was quoted as saying by The Paper news outlet.

The shrimp seller added that she believed she contracted the coronavirus from the shared toilet in the market.

She said the fatal disease would have killed fewer people if the government had acted sooner.

Wuhan Municipal Health Commission has confirmed that Wei was among the first 27 people to test positive for the coronavirus.

It said she was one of 24 cases with direct links to the market, the Metro newspaper reported.

Though Wei may be "patient zero", it does not mean she is the first person to have contracted the virus, added the Metro report.

Chinese researchers have claimed that the first person diagnosed with the airborne virus had no contact with the seafood market and was identified on December 1, 2019.

Wei was later quarantined when a connection was made between the bug and the market before recovering in January.

As of Saturday, the global number of coronavirus cases stood at 104,837 with 27,862 deaths, according to the latest update by the Washington-based Johns Hopkins University.

The US has the highest number of cases at 104,837, followed by Italy 86,498 and China 81,948.

Italy has recorded the highest number of fatalities with 9,134 deaths, followed by Spain and China, at 5,138 and 3,299, respectively.

Washington, Mar 29: The number of known coronavirus US cases soared well past 115,000, with more than 1,900 dead, as President Donald Trump said on Saturday he was considering imposing a quarantine on the hard hit New York region.

American healthcare workers in the trenches of the pandemic are appealing for more protective gear and equipment to treat a surge in patients that is already pushing hospitals to their limits in virus hot spots such as New York City, New Orleans and Detroit.

Trump told reporters he could order a quarantine on three states, New York, New Jersey and Connecticut, which between them have recorded at least 64,000 infections and 895 deaths.

He also appeared to soften his previous comments calling for the US economy to be swiftly reopened. Asked whether he thought the United States would restart by Easter Sunday, April 12, Trump replied, "We'll see, what happens."

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said he had no details on any possible quarantine order for his state, telling a briefing: "I don't even know what that means. I don't know how that would be legally enforceable, and from a medical point of view I don't know what you would be accomplishing."

He said New York was postponing its presidential primary election to June 23, from April 28.

As the crisis deepened, nurses at Jacobi Medical Center in New York's borough of the Bronx protested outside the hospital on Saturday, saying supervisors asked them to reuse personal protective equipment, including masks. Some held signs with slogans including "Protect our lives so we can save yours."

"The masks are supposed to be one-time use," one nurse said, according to videos posted online. "Now, all of a sudden the CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) is saying that it's fine for us to reuse them. These choices are being made not based on science. They're being made based on need."

One resident at New York Presbyterian Hospital said they were issued with just one mask.

"This is your mask forever. You can bring it home with you. Here's how you can clean your mask," said the resident, who asked not to be named because he was not authorized to speak to the media. "It's not the people who are making these decisions that go into the patients' rooms."

Doctors are also especially concerned about a shortage of ventilators, machines that help patients breathe and are widely needed for those suffering from COVID-19, the pneumonia-like respiratory ailment caused by the highly contagious novel coronavirus.

Hospitals have also sounded the alarm about scarcities of drugs, oxygen tanks and trained staff.

By Saturday afternoon, the US number of cases stood at 115,842 with at least 1,929 deaths, according to a Reuters tally. The United States has had the most recorded cases of any country since its count of infections eclipsed those of China and Italy on Thursday.

BLACK MARKET
As shortages of key medical supplies abounded, desperate physicians and nurses were forced to take matters into their own hands.

New York-area doctors say they have had to recycle some protective gear, or even resort to bootleg suppliers.

Dr. Alexander Salerno of Salerno Medical Associates in northern New Jersey described going through a "broker" to pay $17,000 for masks and other protective equipment that should have cost about $2,500, and picking them up at an abandoned warehouse.

"You don't get any names. You get just phone numbers to text," Salerno said. "And so you agree to a term. You wire the money to a bank account. They give you a time and an address to come to."

Nurses at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York said they were locking away or hiding N95 respirator masks, surgical masks and other supplies that are prone to pilfering if left unattended.

"Masks disappear," nurse Diana Torres said. "We hide it all in drawers in front of the nurses' station."

One nurse at Westchester Medical Center, in the suburbs of the city, said colleagues have begun absconding with scarce supplies without asking, prompting better-stocked teams to lock masks, gloves and gowns in drawers and closets.

An emergency room doctor in Michigan, an emerging epicenter of the pandemic, said he was wearing one paper face mask for an entire shift due to a shortage and that hospitals in the Detroit area would soon run out of ventilators.

"We have hospital systems here in the Detroit area in Michigan who are getting to the end of their supply of ventilators and have to start telling families that they can't save their loved ones because they don't have enough equipment," the physician, Dr. Rob Davidson, said in a video posted on Twitter.

Sophia Thomas, a nurse practitioner at DePaul Community Health Center in New Orleans, where Mardi Gras celebrations late last month fueled an outbreak in Louisiana's largest city, said the numbers of coronavirus patients "have been staggering."

In the nation's second-largest city, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti said spiking cases were putting Southern California on track to match New York City's infection figures in the next week.