Thursday 16 April 2020

The virus does not seem to spread outdoors, but by people talking in confined, unventilated spaces

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Lockdowns were imposed to prevent hospitals being overburdened as they were in Lombardy. This danger seems to be passing, thank God, in a number of countries, including England. In fact many ICU beds are empty in the UK, the US, Switzerland and other countries, but now we are told by some that the lockdown should continue until the infection is largely over and when that happens some of the same voices will tell us to continue the lockdown for fear of a second wave.

Professor Hendrik Streeck is a virologist who has made a study of Heinsberg, the “epicentre” of Germany’s COVID-19 outbreak which began at the Heinsberg carnival. He found no evidence of ‘living’ viruses on surfaces and says:


“There is no significant risk of catching the disease when you go shopping. Severe outbreaks of the infection were always a result of people being closer together over a longer period of time, for example the après- ski parties in Ischgl, Austria.”


He also said:



“When we took samples from door handles, phones or toilets it has not been possible to cultivate the virus in the laboratory on the basis of these swabs….”


A number of other reports have said that infected surfaces are not a problem but on the Diamond Princess, a cruise ship on which a month elapsed between the first discovery of the virus and the disembarkation of all the passengers, and on which thirteen people have now died, the virus was found on many surfaces. I do not know if it was 'living'.

From a Chinese preprint (a preprint is the draft version of a scientific paper before peer review).


Case reports were extracted from the local Municipal Health Commissions of 320 prefectural cities (municipalities) in China, not including Hubei province, between 4 January and 11 February 2020. We identified all outbreaks involving three or more cases and reviewed the major characteristics of the enclosed spaces in which the outbreaks were reported and associated indoor environmental issues. Results: Three hundred and eighteen outbreaks with three or more cases were identified, involving 1245 confirmed cases in 120 prefectural cities. Home outbreaks were the dominant category (254 of 318 outbreaks; 79.9%), followed by transport (108; 34.0%; note that many outbreaks involved more than one venue category). Most home outbreaks involved three to five cases. We identified only a single outbreak in an outdoor environment, which involved two cases. Conclusions: All identified outbreaks of three or more cases occurred in an indoor environment, which confirms that sharing indoor space is a major SARS-CoV-2 infection risk.
A paper funded by the Japanese Ministry of Health found that 


"The locations where mass infections were confirmed so far are places where the following three conditions were met simultaneously (1) closed space with poor ventilation, (2) crowded with many people and (3) conversations and vocalization in close proximity (within arm's reach of one another)."
"This may explain why the virus does not spread in crowded commuter trains in Japan, as few talks in trains or buses. The very strict rule against cell phone talking in trains and buses in Japan enforced for many years may have also helped."
Professor Yitzhak Ben Israel of Tel Aviv University has plotted the rates of new coronavirus infections in the U.S., U.K., Sweden, Italy, Israel, Switzerland, France, Germany and Spain and found all countries experienced identical infection patterns, with the number of infected peaking in the sixth week and rapidly subsiding by the eighth week. Note that this includes Sweden, which has not had a lockdown. It sounds like what has happened in South Korea and Japan.


What does seem clear is that hospitals can always be very dangerous places. Old people who are taken from care homes to hospital are often allowed to die there. The scenes of overcrowded hospitals in Lombardy, which terrified the world, seem to have been caused by far too many Coronavirus patients being taken to hospital, which helped spread the virus and prevented patients with other sicknesses from having beds. The use of ventilators seems to have been mostly ineffective or counter-productive too.

In Romania the thought of the hospitals, depleted of doctors and nurses who emigrated to Western Europe, being overwhelmed is frightening. Here a temporary lockdown may have been necessary, but I hope the whole world very quickly decides that only people aged over 60 or 65 or with serious health problems need stay at home and isolated.

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