Day 83: Recounting China

China is once again a moving target in the coronavirus country counts, having locked down the northern city of Harbin (population 10 million). Accounts of why the city has been locked down vary, with some sources blaming an asymptomatic student "surnamed Han" ex New York City, while other sources only blame the 87-year-old super-spreader man "surnamed Chen" who actually spread the disease through two hospitals to 78 people, without any specific claims about where he got it. Sequencing the new cases would be quite helpful, but PlagueBlog does not expect to hear any such results, at least not anytime soon.

Some brave researchers at the University of Hong Kong have pulled an estimate of China's true case numbers by modeling results for the most accurate of their constantly fluctuating case definitions. Unfortunately the data they used for modeling dried up after February 20th, so their estimate is only of the case count as of that date. But it's still a doozy: 232,000 cases instead of the official count at that time of 55,508 cases. You can read more about it in their Lancet article.

On the cat watch, some suspect feline cases we've already mentioned have been confirmed. As part of the official confirmation of the two housecats from New York state, it came out that one of their owners was not actually sick. The cat appears to have caught COVID-19 through community spread. The CDC is now recommending social distancing for both dogs and cats, but (based on the research reviewed in previous posts) PlagueBlog recommends you not worry about the dogs unless you yourself are ill.

National Geographic reports that seven more large felines at the Bronx Zoo have tested positive; only one of the seven was asymptomatic and unsuspected back at the time their first tiger was tested. There's still no direct evidence that a zookeeper infected them; it's just "the only thing that makes sense."

The governor of California is planning to dig up more bodies more autopsies of possible early COVID-19 deaths like those revealed in Santa Clara county yesterday. Those patients have been identified, and had no obvious connection to Wuhan. A microbiologist involved in sequencing SARS-CoV-2 nevertheless believes that the two early deaths will prove to be from a strain imported from Wuhan to Santa Clara county early on.

Massachusetts' numbers are up 7% today, with about 3,000 new cases. The governor encourages people to seek treatment for other serious illnesses, because hospital visits are lower than expected (even taking the reduced accident rate into account) and the hospitals are safe to visit.