It’s 13 June 2020, day 145 since the first case of coronavirus disease was announced in the United States.
Until Thursday, Beijing had gone 55 days with no new domestic infections from SARS-COV-2. Then Saturday, six new infections, all related to Xinfadi market, one of the largest in Asia that supplies 90% of Beijing’s fruit and vegetables.
Officials have quarantined 139 close contacts of people infected. The market is closed and surrounded by military and police on 24-hour watch. More than 10,000 people who work there will now be tested.
And parts of Beijing are back under lockdown.
On Sunday, 36 more cases brought the four-day total to 79. The common thread, working or shopping at the market.
Beijing health authority spokesman Gao Xiaojun told the news conference anyone in the city with a fever will be given nucleic-acid and serology tests for the coronavirus, a blood test and a CT scan.
🔬 Research and medical news
This is not the first overview of the implications for long-term health issue for those with serious cases of COVID-19. It’s just the latest.
The UK National Health Service assumes that of Covid-19 patients who have required hospitalization, 45 percent will need ongoing medical care, 4 percent will require inpatient rehabilitation, and 1 percent will permanently require acute care. Other preliminary evidence, as well as historical research on other coronaviruses like severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) and Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS), suggests that for some people, a full recovery might still be years off. For others, there may be no returning to normal.
The emerging long-term complications of Covid-19, explained. Vox, 12 June 2020.
🤓 Recommended reading
“I feel guilty about surviving,” he says. “There’s a sense of ‘why me?’ Why did I deserve all this? Looking at the incredible cost of it all definitely adds to that survivor’s guilt.”
Coronavirus survival comes with a $1.1 million, 181-page price tag. Seattle Times, 12 June 2020.
📣The California corrections department experienced its first COVID-19 case 22 March when two staff tested positive. Despite that, it did not test its own employees for coronavirus until late May. It depended on them “to test and self-report.”
The California Institution for Men “has one of the largest coronavirus outbreaks among all 35 facilities within the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR).”
‘Obsessed with staying alive’: Inmates describe a prison’s piecemeal response to a fatal Covid-19 outbreak. STAT News, 12 June 2020.
Full issue, COVID-19 Memo from a News Hound
