The debate about masks

There is a lot of discussion about prevention and cure Covid-19. Most people miscalculate how to prevent the virus. Massive home disinfecting has mostly no meaning if there are no visitors and if the few who enter immediately take off shoes and gloves (and like me put them on the heating to kill the germs). And of course wash hands and disinfect mobile with an alcohol tissue.

SCMP wrote:
Most doctors agree that the masks offer protection, but mainly from a wearer’s own hands rather than from airborne pathogens.
The primary purpose of surgical face masks is to prevent surgeons infecting patients during surgery, not to protect the wearer.
“The surgical mask is designed to prevent what is in the surgeon’s nose and mouth from getting into the surgical wound.”
Although medical specialists do not entirely agree on the effectiveness of masks against airborne germs, they do find consensus on the danger from hands and fingers, in spreading disease by touching potentially infected surfaces such as door handles. That information seems to be of greater benefit to the general public and is the reason all health authorities stress the importance of washing hands.
“One of the things the mask prevents you from doing is putting your hands, your fingers, on your nose and mouth, and that may help reduce transmission.”

My take: I have been using N95 masks for many years whenever pollution levels pass a certain level, when on my bicycle. That at least WORKS (see the difference new – used)! A good mask has a meaning in crowded places to avoid droplets in the air from infected people. And right now when I go shopping on my bicycle I use a motorcycle helmet with a full face visor.
More to come on this, wait for link to Singapore Government recommendations.

Experimental treatments for Covid-19

SCMP reports about experimental treatments for Covid-19 (15 Feb 20)
Plasma and stem cell therapy possible treatments
Zhang Xinmin, director of the science and technology ministry’s biology center, said the trial of convalescent plasma – taken from the blood of recovered Covid-19 patients – on 11 people with the virus had so far yielded positive results, with no side effects.
About 70 Shenzhen patients had also shown positive progress, with fewer side effects, to Favipiravir, an experimental antiviral drug. Meanwhile, Remdesivir, a US drug used to treat the Ebola virus, is being tested on 168 Wuhan patients presenting severe symptoms and 17 others with milder symptoms.

The Chinese government is also supporting research into stem-cell therapy as a potential treatment for the disease.
Research was under way into the use of stem cell therapy and rheumatology medicines used to treat systemic inflammatory response syndrome (Sirs) which has been found in some patients.
A computer model has been built to screen more than 70,000 drugs, eventually shortlisting about 100 existing medications for further experiment.
Of those chloroquine phosphate, an antimalarial agent, had responded well and was being tested on about 100 patients in Beijing and the southern province of Guangdong.

Second batch of experimental Gilead Coronavirus Drug arrives in Wuhan
A second batch of Gilead Sciences Inc.’s experimental antiviral drug remdesivir has arrived in Wuhan, where it will be tested on patients infected with the Covid-19 coronavirus, reported Caixin.
The drug was transported from the US to China by FedEx to be distributed to hospitals in Wuhan, the epicenter of the virus, for two ongoing clinical trials on a combined 760 patients.
They follow some 3,400 doses of the drug and 900 placebo doses that reached Wuhan’s Jinyintan hospital last week as part of Phase 3 trials, which began on Feb 6.
The trials are randomized, controlled and double-blinded, meaning neither doctors nor their patients know whether they are using the active drug or a placebo, so researchers can determine whether patients truly benefited from the new treatment or recovered on their own.

China Daily on medication

On 17 February China Daily published two articles.
The first one details the progress made with plasma therapy, and the difficulties to carry it out.
The second article gives a very good overview on the 3 areas of interest:

– medication
– vaccine
– treatment
– diagnosis

Because of its interest, see here the PDF:

200217 CDmedicine.pdf

It is a nice addition to the SCMP article I quoted.

WHO delegation without Americans?

SCMP 15 Feb 20
Mistrust between Beijing and Washington has tainted US offers of help to contain a deadly coronavirus outbreak, forcing the WHO into a political corner, analysts said.
US officials said they first offered to send American specialists to China as part of a WHO mission in early January but despite Chinese President Xi Jinping’s calls to deepen international cooperation in the public health crisis, that offer had yet to be accepted.
US officials said on Thursday that no American had been invited to China to take part, despite Americans accounting for 13 of the 25 names that the WHO submitted to China for the mission.
On last Friday, WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the final WHO team comprised of 12 international experts and 12 from China, and would begin its investigation into the spread of the outbreak and its severity in the past weekend.

Update: still confusing situation as it seems American specialists did finally join.
However experts said the international team would be left with an “incomplete picture” of the outbreak if it did not go to Wuhan or Hubei; China said “Hubei was at a critical moment in its fight to stop the virus and might not have the capacity to work with the WHO mission right now.”

WHO said late on Sunday that the future path of the outbreak was “impossible” to predict, as international experts began meeting their counterparts in China.

Breaking news (but not a surprise)

China postpones year’s biggest political event amid coronavirus outbreak!
China’s annual parliamentary meeting, that was scheduled for early March, has been postponed, apparently because of the Covid-19 outbreak. It is known as the “Two Sessions”.