The U.S. military announced late Tuesday that a U.S.-ROK Armed Forces in Korea soldier stationed at Camp Carroll in South Korea has tested positive for coronavirus.
A USFK soldier stationed at Camp Carroll tested positive for COVID-19, marking the first time a U.S. service member has tested positive for the virus. We’re implementing all appropriate control measures to protect the force. https://t.co/kkfEIuW7Jb
— U.S. Forces Korea (@USForcesKorea) February 26, 2020
The head of Iran's coronavirus government task force who urged the public not to freak out about the epidemic while coughing and sweating profusely has tested positive for the illness himself, authorities said Tuesday. New cases of COVID-19 originating in Iran are now rapidly popping up across the Middle East.
The coughing and heavily sweating Iraj Harirchi told journalists at a televised news conference in Tehran only one day ago that “the situation is almost stable in the country.” Read the rest
China's government health commission in Hubei province reported on Friday that the daily death toll from coronavirus rose by 116. Read the rest
The coronavirus test kits distributed to various U.S. states and 30 other countries by the U.S. Centers for disease control may not work, and are feared to deliver results that are at best 'inconclusive,' officials said today.
In the United States, 13 cases of the infection in patients have been confirmed so far. An estimated 850 evacuees who are American have quarantined at military bases after flying from China. Others are self-quarantining at home.
From the New York Times:
The kits were meant to enable states to conduct their own testing and get results faster than they would by shipping samples to the C.D.C. in Atlanta. But the failure of the kits means that states still have to depend on the C.D.C., which will mean several days’ delay in getting results.
The C.D.C. announced last week that it had begun shipping about 200 kits to laboratories in the United States and roughly 200 more to labs in more than 30 other countries. Each kit can test about 700 to 800 specimens from patients, the agency said.
On trial runs in some states, the kits produced results that were “inconclusive,” Dr. Nancy Messonnier, director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, said at a news conference on Wednesday.
“Things may not always go as smoothly as we may like,” Dr. Messonnier said.
Read more:
Coronavirus Test Kits Sent to States, 30 Countries Are Flawed, C.D.C. Says
PHOTO: CDC.GOV, the tests now seen as flawed:
Read the restThis is a picture of CDC’s laboratory test kit for the 2019 novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV).
Ex-convict, sex scandalist, and TV evangelist Jim Bakker is at it again. Read the rest
This essay on the Wuhan coronavirus by Xu Zhangrun, translated from the original Chinese and annotated by Geremie R. Barmé on Chinafile.com, is absolutely amazing. I'm grateful it is now available for English-speaking audiences. Read the rest
After 12 days out of sight while the coronavirus death toll surged, Chinese President Xi Jinping finally made a public appearance on Monday. He wore a face mask and a medical worker took his temperature at a “front-line” coronavirus facility in the Chaoyang district of Beijing. Read the rest
• Online tributes and expressions of grief for doctor who tried to sound alarm on NCoV
Online in China, where Novel coronavirus 2019-nCoV has now killed at least 630 as of today, one death seems to have affected the entire country profoundly. Read the rest
VIDEO: Episode One of “Our Coronavirus Diary.”
There is an incredible series of videos making the rounds today, and they are identified as being produced by a man in Wuhan, China, self-quarantined in his apartment with his wife--who is infected with the deadly Novel coronavirus 2019-nCoV. Read the rest
The latest Ebola outbreak in Congo has moved from the rural area in which is was first discovered to Mbandaka: a city home to approximately one million people. That the disease has spread to an area with such a dense population is extremely troubling all on its own. Add to this the fact that Mbandaka is a major transportation hub with an airport, river traffic and direct transport options to Kinshasa, Congo's capital city, and you've got a scenario with the potential to keep World Health Organization personnel awake at night.
From the BBC
Forty-two people have now been infected and 23 people are known to have died.
Confirmed, probable and suspected cases of Ebola have been recorded in three health zones of Congo's Equateur province, the World Health Organisation (WHO) said.
The WHO's Peter Salama said health workers had identified 430 people who may have had contact with the disease and were working to trace more than 4,000 contacts of Ebola patients, who had spread across northwest Congo.
As part of efforts to stem the spread of the often deadly disease, drug manufacturer, Merick, shipped 4,000 doses of an unlicensed Ebola vaccine to Congo that was proven to have been effective in a previous outbreak of the disease in West Africa. There's just one problem: the vaccine needs to be stored between -60 and -80 Celsius. In a first world country, that mightn't be an issue--we've the facilities and infrastructure to make chilling the vaccine to those temperatures a piece of cake. Read the rest
A woman in San Diego, CA is reported to have contracted the Zika virus through sexual transmission. Read the rest
