People who have general questions about COVID-19 [in Colorado] can call CO HELP at 303-389-1687 or 1-877-462-2911. Phone assistance is available in English, Spanish (Español), Mandarin (普通话), and more. If you have general questions in English, you can also email them to COHELP@RMPDC.org. [Rocky Mountain Poison and Drug Center]…
— from the Colorado Department of Public Health & Environment COVID-19 web page, updated Friday, March 6, 2020.
I don’t believe I’ve previously come across an announcement from a Colorado state agency, mentioning that assistance is available in “Mandarin.” But this one makes sense, considering the common theory that the COVID-19 virus originated in China. Last December, Chinese physicians noted an unusually high number of new cases of respiratory illness in the city of Wuhan, in Hubei province. According to an article published in the New England Journal of Medicine, it appears the identification of the new virus was the work of a fairly large group of Chinese medical experts and technicians.
At one point this winter, the province was reporting hundreds of new cases each day. More recent reports from China indicate a reduced number of new cases daily as we move into March, while the identification of new cases in some other countries seems to be on the rise. Only a handful of suspected cases have been identified in Colorado, as of yesterday.
Based on confirmed cases in China, 90 per cent of people with COVID-19 develop a fever, 70 per cent have a dry cough, 40 per cent feel very tired and 30 per cent cough up sputum. Rarer symptoms include shortness of breath, sore throat, headache, muscle or joint pains, nausea or vomiting, blocked nose and diarrhea.
Apparently, the process used to identify infected persons is currently rather complicated — it involves taking a swab of the nose or throat, and samples of sputum if you are coughing it up. You might also have blood drawn and tested. In the lab, technicians look for ‘genetic sequences’ specific to COVID-19. Some labs claims they have developed tests that can produce results in a little as three hours, but it will usually take longer to get results.
At this point in time, it appears that the tests are not entirely reliable, occasionally producing false positives or false negatives. Colorado first started testing for the virus on March 2, and the first positive test was registered on March 5. A total of seven people had tested positive by March 6, most of whom had recently traveled internationally. No new cases have been identified over the past weekend, according to the Colorado Department of Public Health & Environment.
Persons who suspect they might be infected with COVID-19 are asked NOT to report to a hospital. From the weekly Pagosa Springs SUN:
Those who believe they may have come in contact with someone with COVID-19 or who have traveled to an area of the world with high infection rates are asked to call their medical providers instead of going to a medical facility in order to assess the need for testing. Those without a doctor can call [San Juan Basin Public Health] at 247-5702, option 1.
Kathee Douglas, Pagosa Springs Medical Center’s chief operating officer, explained Tuesday PSMC, like other providers, is seeking to test and treat any potential cases outside of its facility — in a vehicle or ambulance.
At the moment, the identification of COVID-19 virus infections in Colorado is a challenging proposition. Who — in a population of 5 million people — might need to be tested?
An infected person must first self-identify as having a medical problem, and seek to be tested. Or alternately, a person must have traveled recently to a place where cases of COVID-19 are known to be spreading. Or a person could have been in close contact with one or more infected family members, co-workers, or medical patients. In China, it appears that many of the early cases involved health workers — nurses, doctors and technicians.
From everything we know so far, contracting COVID-19 can be a life-or-death issue. But just how serious is the problem? Let’s step back and look at the big picture.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), about 57 million people died in 2016, globally. The number has been increasing year over year, so we might guess that more than 60 million people will die this year. The most common causes of death, in higher-income nations, are non-infectious diseases — heart attack, pulmonary diseases, cancers, Alzheimers. In low-income nations, a person is more likely to die from an infectious disease.
Here in America, and in Colorado, we assume that we will probably die — when we die — from a non-infectious disease. Will the disease be caused by dietary choices? By lifestyle choices? Inherited traits? Bad luck? We each probably have our own assumptions about that. But we tend to have relatively few worries about contagious diseases — the kinds of diseases so common, and so deadly, here in America 150 years ago. Tuberculosis. Cholera. Influenza. Yellow fever. Dysentery. Small pox. Diphtheria. Polio.
Most of these diseases are now fairly rare in Colorado and in the US… and effective modern treatments are available for most.
A new form of infectious disease, like COVID-19, can seem frightening — even if we have faith that global medical experts will quickly develop a vaccine or other treatment.
Since the identification of the COVID-19 virus in December, about 100,000 people have tested positive for the infection, and apparently, nearly 4,000 have died from its complications — typically, pneumonia. That’s about 1,500 per month. Reports from China indicate that the rate of infection has been dropping — due to improved awareness, reduced travel, and other factors — but even more importantly, the death rate per infection has been dropping. Nearly everyone who contracts the disease recovers successfully, it would appear.
The WHO website suggests that 1,150,000 people die each week, globally. The rate from COVID-19 seems to be about 1,500 per week, globally. So at this point in time — counting each of us as members of the global human race — our likelihood of dying from COVID-19 instead of from some other cause, is about one-in-800… if we were to die this week.
We are almost certain to die of something else.
Looking at the current situation in Colorado, our chances of dying from COVID-19 seems to be zero, at the moment.
Of course, that could change. It has certainly changed in Italy, over the past month…