Precisely one year ago today, to the hour, I was sitting here at the kitchen table doing my usual morning scan of Google alerts, email, and new posts from other bloggers. After a few minutes, at 7:48 a.m. I made my first post about what became known as COVID-19:
Hong Kong: CHP closely monitors cluster of pneumonia cases on Mainland
Thanks to Mike Coston, Giuseppe Michieli, and Ian Mackay for alerting me to this report by the Centre for Health Protection: CHP closely monitors cluster of pneumonia cases on Mainland. Excerpt:
The Centre for Health Protection (CHP) of the Department of Health is today (December 31) closely monitoring a cluster of pneumonia cases in Wuhan, Hubei Province, and has contacted the National Health Commission for further information.
According to an announcement from the Health Commission of Hubei Province, a number of pneumonia cases related to a local seafood market was recently reported in Wuhan. The Wuhan Municipal Health Commission has commenced investigation and so far identified 27 cases. Among them, seven cases were serious and the remaining were stable. Symptoms were mainly fever while a few had presented with shortness of breath. All patients are isolated and receiving treatment. Contact tracing of close contacts and medical surveillance are ongoing.
The Wuhan Municipal Health Commission announced that assessment by relevant experts revealed that the cases were compatible with viral pneumonia. For the time being, no obvious human-to-human transmission has been observed and no healthcare workers have been infected. The causative pathogen and cause of infection are still under investigation.
Locally, while surveillance, prevention and control measures are in place, the CHP will remain vigilant and work closely with the World Health Organization and relevant health authorities to monitor the latest developments.
The CHP's Port Health Division conducts health surveillance measures at all boundary control points. Thermal imaging systems are in place for body temperature checks on inbound travellers. Suspected cases with serious infectious diseases identified will be immediately referred to public hospitals for isolation, treatment and follow-up. The CHP has also informed the Hospital Authority about the cluster of pneumonia cases in Wuhan.
Travellers are reminded to wear surgical masks and seek medical attention if they present with respiratory symptoms, and reveal their travel history to doctors. The CHP will continue to closely monitor the latest situation of the cluster of pneumonia cases in Wuhan and update the surveillance criteria and testing strategies accordingly.
Mike Coston has three posts on the outbreak and the response in Hong Kong and Taiwan. A quick check of Wuhan media didn't turn up anything, but I'll keep looking around.
I posted several items that morning. Far more knowledgeable people than I were clearly worried, and this "unxplained pneumonia" stirred echoes of SARS—the outbreak that first got me interested in emerging diseases and blogging. If this was like H5N1, H1N1, H7N9, cholera, MERS, and Ebola, the Wuhan outbreak would tell us a lot about the society dealing with it. China had tried to suppress news of SARS, and suffered for it. Its response to H7N9 avian flu had been far more open, and earned China new respect as a country with a vastly better public health system.
Well, we learned China will still suppress news when it wants to, and will respond with breathtaking decisiveness when it wants to. And we've also learned that a real pandemic tells us a lot about every society it affects—including our own. These have been unpleasant insights, especially into those countries that fancy themselves "advanced."
Now we begin Year 2 of COVID-19, and I do not expect a sudden news story to announce its end. It will go on for a long time, driven into corners and then resurging again and again—not because it's so malevolent, but because we are so stupid, and we insist on paying high tuition fees for very simple lessons.
