Day 19: Bigger and Germier

The numbers hit over 75,000 cases, 2,000 deaths, and 15,000 recovered today. A new country has reported cases, Iran with 2 confirmed cases in Qom and apparently more suspected. South Korea reports 20 more cases in one day, most related to a super-spreader at a church, for a total of 51. Japan's count for the day is at 10 and still climbing. I've seen some reports that today's count includes an Okinawa taxi driver who drove passengers from Germ Boat #2 (the Diamond Princess) at their previous port of call (Naha), but this particular case seems to have been confirmed last week. It remains unclear whether the passengers infected the driver or vice versa.

Germ Boat #2 has 79 more cases, bringing the total to 621. The Irish Examiner reports that, in addition to his SARS-CoV-2 infection and Type II diabetes, Germ Boat celebrity David Abel also suffers from early-onset dementia (which, along with an initial diagnosis by a Japanese-speaking doctor, explains some confusion in the reporting of his case). But the food tweeter tweets on about the ongoing evacuations.

BBC News reports (in Chinese) on a postulated Patient Zero in his seventies who lived near the suspect wet market, but was already ill and did not actually visit the market before becoming sick(er) around December 1st.

P.S. Reuters reports that the two Iranian patients have already died.