March 15, 2020

Everything You Need To Know About The CORONAVIRUS or COVID-19

The Chronicles Editorial March 15, 2020

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This Sunday, all schools have been closed and students in boarding schools are being transported home in government-paid buses

Public health experts around the globe are scrambling to understand, track, and contain a new virus that appeared in Wuhan, China, at the beginning of December 2019. The World Health Organization named the disease caused by the virus COVID-19, which references the type of virus and the year it emerged. The WHO declared that the virus is a pandemic.

Rwanda has confirmed ONE case. Yan see where and how many cases of the illness have been reported in this map. So far, there have been over 137,000 confirmed cases and 5,088 deaths. Over 69,000 people have recovered from the illness. The vast majority of the illnesses are still in China, but the rate of new cases there has slowed. The majority of new cases are appearing in other countries outside of China, and there are large outbreaks of the disease in multiple countries, including South Korea, Italy, and Iran. There are over 1,300 people with confirmed cases of COVID-19 and 38 deaths from the virus in the US.

As this important story continues to unfold, our hope is to answer all of your questions as people work to understand this virus and contain its spread.

Table of contents

Where did the virus come from?
Where is it spreading?
How dangerous is this new virus?
How easily can the virus spread?
Can we treat this virus?
What can I do to protect myself and others?
Should I travel?
How at risk is Rwanda?

Where did the virus come from?

At the end of December, public health officials from China informed the World Health Organization that they had a problem: an unknown, new virus was causing pneumonia-like illness in the city of Wuhan. They quickly determined that it was a coronavirus and that it was rapidly spreading through and outside of Wuhan.

Coronaviruses are common in animals of all kinds, and they sometimes can evolve into forms that can infect humans. Since the start of the century, two other coronaviruses have jumped to humans, causing the SARS outbreak in 2002 and the MERS outbreak in 2012.

Scientists think this new virus first became capable of jumping to humans at the beginning of December. It originally seemed like the virus first infected people at a seafood market in Wuhan and spread from there. But one analysis of early cases of the illness, published January 24th, found that the first patient to get sick did not have any contact with the market. Experts are still trying to trace the outbreak back to its source.

The type of animal the virus originated from is not clear, although one analysis found that the genetic sequence of the new virus is 96 percent identical to one coronavirus found in bats. Both SARS and MERS originated in bats.

Where is it spreading?

The virus is now spreading in dozens of countries around the world.

Although it originated in China, the country took aggressive action at the start of the outbreak, shutting down transportation in some cities and suspending public gatherings. Officials isolated sick people and aggressively tracked their contacts, and had a dedicated network of hospitals to test for the virus. The number of new infections reported in China has been declining, which indicated to WHO officials that transmission was slowing down — and that their containment measures were working.

Now, the WHO says, the epicenter of the pandemic is in Europe, which now has more new cases reported each day than China did at the height of its outbreak.

In the US, hot spots for the spread of the virus include a nursing home in Washington state, New Rochelle, New York, and the Boston area, where disease spread at a conference.

How dangerous is this new virus?

It takes information about both how severe an illness is and how easily it can spread to determine how “bad” it can be. Epidemiologists often use this tool to assess new strains of the flu, for example:

If an illness isn’t very severe (and kills only a small percentage of people), but it’s highly transmissible, it can still be devastating. An easily-transmitted illness that kills a small percentage of the people it infects can still cause a lot of deaths, precisely because so many people get sick.

The WHO named the illness caused by the coronavirus COVID-19 — “co” and “vi” for coronavirus, “d” for disease, and “19” for the year when the disease emerged.

Different groups of people, though, are more at risk of having a severe case of the illness or of dying from it. Most deaths in this outbreak have been in older people and those who have underlying health issues, like heart disease, hypertension, and diabetes. In that group, people are more at risk of dying. Around 14 percent of people over the age of 80 who get sick will die, for example.

How easily can the virus spread?

The virus is moving rapidly around the world. The new coronavirus spreads quickly in contained environments, like on the cruise ship the Diamond Princess.

Early evidence suggested that, like other coronaviruses, the virus jumps between people who are in very close contact with each other. It also probably spreads when an infected person sneezes or coughs. Coughs and sneezes produce little droplets of mucus and saliva. If these droplets make it into another person’s eyes, mouth or nose, they can get sick. The viruses in those little droplets can also fall onto surfaces, like tables or doorknobs — if someone touches that surface and touches their eyes, mouth or nose, they can also get sick.

Early research shows that the virus can linger on surfaces such as plastic and stainless steel for a few days, which is why it’s important to clean countertops, doorknobs, and other places people touch regularly. The virus doesn’t appear to stay infectious on cardboard for longer than a day — so packages should be safe.

The new coronavirus doesn’t appear to spread through the air. Certain hospital procedures can artificially create airborne viruses, but that does not happen normally.

Both SARS-2 and SARS classic viruses remain infectious after 3 hours as experimentally-generated aerosols. However, there is a 1-log reduction in virus titer, meaning that the number of infectious virus units decreased by a factor of 10 after 3 hours.
— Dr. Angela Rasmussen (@angie_rasmussen) March 11, 2020

It’s still not clear when people with COVID-19 become contagious, or how long being contagious lasts. One study of nine people in Germany with mild cases of the illness found that they had high levels of the virus in their throats early on in the course of the disease, before they felt very sick. That may mean that people can spread the virus before they know they have it.

Chinese officials have said that they have seen cases where people with the virus infected others before they started showing symptoms. Unfortunately, there isn’t detailed evidence to say if or how much that is happening. Research out of China showed that people without symptoms still have high levels of the virus in their throats and noses, so they may be passing it along if they cough or sneeze. In one case, a family in Anyang, China appeared to be sickened by an asymptomatic family member, according to a study in The Journal of the American Medical Association.

If that’s happening regularly, containing the virus will be more complicated. But evidence shows that people spreading the virus before they feel sick probably isn’t affecting the outbreak much, said Maria Van Kerkhove, manager in the Emerging and Re-Emerging Diseases Unit at the WHO, in a press conference.

Each sick person will go on to infect, on average, between 1.4 and 2.5 additional people, the WHO says, though that’s an early estimate. Other teams of researchers have published their own estimates, with most saying a sick person will infect an average of around two or three people.

Those numbers are called the virus’s R0 (pronounced “R-naught”). The R0 is the mathematical representation of how well an infection might be able to spread. The higher the number, the easier the disease is to spread. For comparison, the R0 for SARS was between two and five. But that doesn’t mean each sick person will actually infect that many people; quarantines and other actions taken to control outbreaks of a virus can bring down the number of people a sick person infects.

Can we treat this virus?

There aren’t any proven treatments for COVID-19, but there are dozens of studies underway to find some. One leading candidate is remdesivir, an antiviral medication originally developed to treat Ebola. There are clinical trials testing it in patients in China and in the US.

Research teams and pharmaceutical companies are also working to develop a vaccine that can protect people from infection. However, vaccine development takes a long time. Even if everything goes smoothly, it will be around a year to 18 months before one is available, said Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

What can I do to protect myself and others?

Based on what we know so far, you can protect yourself with the same measures you’d take (and should be taking) to protect yourself against the flu: wash your hands, cover your mouth when you cough, and stay away from people who are ill. Stay home from work or school if you’re feeling sick. If you’re older or have a chronic health condition — which makes you more likely to have a severe case of the disease — you might want to stay away from crowded places, and postpone any unnecessary travel.

If you’re a young, healthy person, you might not feel very sick if you catch COVID-19. But if you don’t stay home and away from others, you could pass it on to someone who might get really sick. That’s why it’s so important to stay home if you’re not feeling well.

One of the best ways to slow the spread of an outbreak is by staying away from other people, which is also called “social distancing.” That gives a virus less opportunity to jump from person to person. It’s why there aren’t going to be big events, professional sports, and in some places, school for a while. Those measures help blunt the impact of an outbreak by slowing the virus. If fewer people get sick at once, it’s easier for healthcare providers to give everyone good care.

*Centers for Disease Control and Prevention*

Should I travel?

There is currently no international travel advisory for travel to Rwanda by any other country. Rwanda has also not issued any international travel advisory.

However, Rwanda has suspended direct flights by national carrier RwandAir to China and India. At the Kigali International Airport, there is a vigorous screening mechanism. There are also said to be such at major entry points.

While Kenya, DR Congo and Ethiopia have also confirmed cases, travel in the region remains unhindered.

The U.S. CDC recommends that older adults or anyone who might be more at risk of having a severe case of COVID-19 should avoid unnecessary travel.

The US State Department raised the travel advisory for China to a level 4, saying Americans shouldn’t travel to China because of the virus. Level 4 is the most severe warning issued. It applies only to areas with a “greater likelihood of life-threatening risks.” US citizens currently in China should “consider departing using commercial means,” the alert said.

The CDC issued a level 1 travel advisory for Hong Kong, saying that anyone traveling there should take precautions by washing their hands and avoiding sick people. It’s issued level 2 travel advisories for Japan, saying that people who might be at higher risk from the virus — older adults and people with chronic health issues — should not travel there unless absolutely necessary. There are level 3 travel advisories for China, Iran, Italy and South Korea, and the CDC recommends people avoid non-essential travel to those countries.

Many countries have travel restrictions in place and are placing travelers in quarantine if they’re suspected of having the disease or if they’ve been somewhere it’s spreading widely. Anyone taking a trip should prepare for their plans to be disrupted if the situation changes.

For example, all flights from China to the US are being diverted to seven airports, and any US citizen who has traveled to China will be asked to self-quarantine for 14 days. Any US citizen who has been in the Hubei province (where Wuhan is and where the virus originated) will be held under a formal quarantine for 14 days.

In addition, any foreign national who has traveled to China in the past 14 days will not be allowed to enter the US, unless they have immediate family members there, according to a proclamation from President Trump. That initial decision was not supported by the WHO, which said countries should not restrict travel or trade in their response to the virus.

The US also placed travel restrictions on Iran, and restrictions on travel from Europe. Foreign nationals who have traveled to Iran and certain European countries in the past 14 days will not be allowed to enter the US.

What’s happening in Rwanda?

Government announced on Saturday that ONE case had been confirmed in Rwanda, of an Indian national. Since then, the following measures have been adopted

ALL schools have been closed and students in boarding schools are being transported in government-paid buses back home between Sunday and Monday
ALL prayer gatherings banned for ALL faiths
ALL public gatherings banned
Travelers in buses will all be required to sit. No one will be allowed to stand
The Car Free Day walks usually done in large groups have been suspended
Government officials are appearing on state broadcaster giving various other pieces of prevention information

Measures after #COVIDー19 case is confirmed in Rwanda. #CoronaPandemic
– ALL schools closed
– Churches closed
– No weddings
– Warning about funerals pic.twitter.com/l5y0QZ9mwq
— The Chronicles (@ChroniclesRW) March 15, 2020

Additional Information from The Verge

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