Only a few hundred cases of wuhanflu here in the Philippines, I suspect numbers are still low, probably because so few people have been tested: Which explains why we are seeing headlines of the celebrities and politicians who are testing positive (they are the only ones getting the tests before they get really really sick).
from PhInquirer:
COVID-19 CASES BREAKDOWN (PH)MANILA, Philippines —
The Department of Health (DOH) has recorded three more deaths due to the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) and 84 new cases of infection in the country.
This brings the number of deaths due to COVID-19 to 38. The total number of confirmed COVID-19 cases in the country is now recorded at 636. The DOH also reported six new recoveries, taking the total number of persons who have recovered from the illness to 26 as of 4 pm Wednesday.government website LINK
remember: Manila has 10 million plus folks, many living in crowded slums. There is first class medical care, and (usually crowded) public hospitals for the poor, but if there is a large number of cases that need ICU, there will be chaos and a lot of folks will die because I doubt there are enough respirators.
Manila, like our area, has been on strict lockdown: indeed, one of the worries is the delay in passing screening sites to get food to customers.
here, in our neighborhood, the maid reports one child died of pneumonia and one old lady died at home in the past 2 days (I often get asked for a donation to help the family with burial expenses). Neither of them appear to be from Wuhan flu: because their symptoms didn't fit the clinical picture.
I ran across this post at an Aggie website, from an ER doc in Texas that describes the clinical pattern of the disease... It's quite well written, but frightening. (headsup FR).
Essentially five days after you get sick you get shortness of breath etc...
and the severe cases "crash" on day ten with a cytokine storm and go into acute ARDS and multi organ failure over a matter of hours and might need to get on a respirator or you'll die...., Lancet article on cytokine storm here.
and he said he hasn't had much luck with Hydroxychloroquin (many other docs report it works, but it might not work on severely ill patients, or even cause cardiac toxicity, and note that there have been no well done controlled studies yet). And he notes some have cardiomyopathy etc as a complication.
Read only if you are in the medical field since both articles are technical.
we remain in lockdown. I stay indoors except to walk the dogs: I do need exercize and hate to use Lolo's exercize bike which I got out of storage so that I could exercize at home...
Joy is going to the farm where they have harvested and are drying the rice in the sun. (traditional drying is on a tarp or a clean surface, even a roadway, under the hot sun...and you have to move it around now and then to make sure it dries evenly. There are electric driers for when it rains but this increases the farmer's expenses and lowers their profit).
She is most happy they now have a harvester/thresher for the farmers to use, since when she was young, they had to cut and gather all the rice by hand before they put it in a thresher to separate.
one of the side streets near us has a barrier saying no one is to pass there because of quarantine. Does that mean there is a case in one of the homes? Maybe, but actually I suspect tricycles and cars have been using the street to avoid getting checked by the police who stop cars on the main streets and they are tired of all the traffic noise.
----------------
update: One case in a local hospital was transferred to the larger city nearby.
And the maid's niece's twins are sick with a chest infection and were admitted to the hospital in the next town where there is specialty care(I suspect RSV, which is pretty bad in kids, because we've been asked for money to have other neighbor's children seen at the hospital,... so probably not Wuhan Flu)
No comments:
Post a Comment