Italy’s 11-Day 1500% Coronavirus Explosion Throws Scary U.S. Warning

The number of coronavirus cases in Italy has spiraled from 600 to over 9,000 in just 11 days. Meanwhile, the U.S. has seen 729 COVID-19 cases to date, raising the risk of a large-scale epidemic. Coronavirus can become significantly more contagious in areas that have lacking precautionary measures in place.

In a city with overloaded medical centers, low coronavirus testing capacity, and generally low awareness of the virus, the infection rate of the virus can increase substantially through community spread. As seen in Italy and South Korea, just one individual infected by coronavirus that goes diagnosed has the potential to affect more than a thousand people.

With a basic reproduction number (R0) ranging from 4 to 12, one person affected by coronavirus can infect 12, 12 can infect 144, and 144 can impact 1,728 people in a short period of time. The highly contagious nature of coronavirus was what led the cruise ship in Japan to record nearly 700 cases in merely weeks. Currently, the U.S. is showing a general lack of awareness of the severity of the coronavirus epidemic.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) only started to increase the capacity of coronavirus testing in early March, while South Korea, China, and Italy have been testing hundreds of thousands of people since February. Author Mikel Jollett warned that the coronavirus outbreak has grown exponentially in many regions and the difficult process of being tested for the virus.

When infected with coronavirus, patients suffer with lung diseases, making respirators a necessity to treat patients. When medical centers are overcrowded, hospitals start to run out of respirators, and staff started to get overworked, it the becomes challenging to contain the virus. Similar issues have been raised by prominent medical experts like former Stanford professor Balaji Srinivasan, who pointed out that when China had around 700 confirmed patients, it locked down the entire city of Wuhan and began to build temporary hospitals.

According to Srinivasan, the decision of the CDC to delay tests and the reluctance towards increasing testing capacity essentially replaced diagnostics with deaths. The U.S. is yet to see overloaded medical centers that can cause a local epidemic to break out, but scientists are issuing dire warnings on the potential of it.

Italy’s 11-Day 1500% Coronavirus Explosion Throws Scary U.S. Warning, CCN, Mar 10