Coronavirus by the numbers; wartime measures in China

are the latest

numbers

at 7:00 p.m. On the East Coast, the number of cases worldwide exceeds sixty-five thousand deaths and is approaching 1,500 and the fifteenth case has also been confirmed in the United States. The patient is part of a group quarantined at Lackland Air Force Base in Texas, a district in Hebei province. where there are more than 500 confirmed cases

wartime

population control

measures

have been initiated, which means that all buildings are closed, everyone must stay in their homes, neighborhood associations will buy food and medicine for residents and Those

measures

are expected to last two weeks beyond the fight to beat the virus another battle has broken out over how China is counting the sick Meg Terrell joins us tonight when Meg can I test last night of course , we saw that dramatic increase in the number of new cases reported from Hubei province, the epicenter of the outbreak, but it turns out that this is due to a change in the way they diagnose cases until last night, who were only reporting test-confirmed cases laboratory, the

numbers

were growing between 1600 and 3000 per day, now they also report clinically diagnosed cases.

Using chest images to detect pneumonia, the WHO said today that many of these cases date back days or weeks, even to the beginning of the outbreak, a backlog of cases that health authorities had not yet been able to analyze and, although they say this change will allow doctors to move. faster to provide proper care, they also warn that these numbers may detect cases of pneumonia caused by things other than the new corona virus and say we shouldn't read too much into them. Let's learn more about this now from former FDA Commissioner Dr. Scott Gottlieb Dr. Gottlieb, you were here helping us break down that big spike last night.

Now we've seen these new numbers tonight back to 4,000 new cases. We don't yet have the breakdown of how many of these were clinically diagnosed or confirmed with a test. but what do you think of such a small number that we saw last night? Well, I think part of the thinking last night was that they were clearing out the backlog of suspected cases and they were very suspicious and just converting them to confirm cases based on about the clinical findings that were consistent with the virus, the fact that numbers increased again tonight suggests that that is not the case, that they simply continue to have growth in these numbers and that they simply cannot keep up with PCR based diagnosis.

The test is again concerning because people who are being diagnosed based on CT scan findings suggest that they are likely to have significant findings on their chest x-rays and in the flu season. The peaks are a little earlier in China, there is not as much flu in the background and that is probably influencing them as well. people who present with significant pneumonia are simply assuming it's

coronavirus

. Well, I wanted to ask you about that too because the warning that this could detect other causes of this type of pneumonia on chest x-rays is not what you believe. there's too much flu so it could be mainly a new

coronavirus

, it's hard to tell and you know there's no reason to assume that your clinical diagnosis is any less reliable than your PCR based diagnostic test because we know it's not that reliable either, so which there is no reason to believe that these numbers are not true and will not continue to grow and keep in mind that they implemented their quarantine measures on January 23 and you are still seeing growth in cases and that is worrying, we know that there is an increase . procedure for screening people in China, are we seeing the same thing now in the United States as we start to look at other communities that may be more influenced by Chinese visitors who have been here for more than two weeks?

Well, not yet, we're not We're still looking for it here in the US, we're just looking at people who have a direct connection to people who have been diagnosed or who traveled to China. They're just now starting to talk about implementing measures to do background investigations in communities where there might be some spread to detect undetected spread and that's very important, that's how we're going to prevent large outbreaks here in the US. . is to find small outbreaks, so there are reports that we may be using the flu surveillance network in five varieties and then to potentially test people for the new coronavirus, five cities are enough, what else? should the US do?

What we are doing right now depends on the five cities we choose. If they are cities where there is a lot of travel from China, then that could lead to small outbreaks. I think the other thing we should do is try to get an approved diagnostic test kit sent to the labs right now we trust that the CDC is promulgating the tests. There were some issues with that, they had to take it down, so it hasn't been fully implemented, but there are platforms in doctors' offices that can be adapted to do corona virus testing so we can do broader surveillance, so You can see, are we being aggressive enough right now?

I think we are just beginning to intensify measures. I think it's very important to expand screening to anyone who comes in with Pneumonia that is not the flu and is not an obvious viral illness and is not a bacterial cause should probably be tested for coronavirus. We don't have the capacity to do that right now, but we could develop that capacity quite efficiently.