Coronavirus and Startups
Elad Gil has excellent collection of resources on Coronavirus developments and workplace guides which is regularly updated.
updated: 20 March 2020
#Coronavirus Europe #Coronavirus Economic #Coronavirus Hot Links #Pandemics
- Dashboards
COVID-19 PANDEMIC COVERAGE — Stanford
Coronavirus (COVID-19) in Australia
Slide Packs
— How Shanghai hospitals adjusted.
— How to fight the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 and its disease, CoVID-19
2. Public Policy
clear epidemic pattern that Asian technocratic democracies (incl. Taiwin, not featured) are dealing with it better than western liberal democracies. Complex reasons why, but many lessons to be learned.
Flattening the Coronavirus Curve
Border Control, Case Identification, and Containment in Taiwan
On January 27, the National Health Insurance Administration (NHIA) and the National Immigration Agency integrated patients’ past 14-day travel history with their NHI identification card data from the NHIA; this was accomplished in 1 day. Taiwan citizens’ household registration system and the foreigners’ entry card allowed the government to track individuals at high risk because of recent travel history in affected areas. Those identified as high risk (under home quarantine) were monitored electronically through their mobile phones. On January 30, the NHIA database was expanded to cover the past 14-day travel history for patients from China, Hong Kong, and Macau. On February 14, the Entry Quarantine System was launched, so travelers can complete the health declaration form by scanning a QR code that leads to an online form, either prior to departure from or upon arrival at a Taiwan airport. A mobile health declaration pass was then sent via SMS to phones using a local telecom operator, which allowed for faster immigration clearance for those with minimal risk. This system was created within a 72-hour period. On February 18, the government announced that all hospitals, clinics, and pharmacies in Taiwan would have access to patients’ travel histories.
What the U.S. Needs to Do — Right Now — to Fight Coronavirus
Telehealth response centers with 24/7 call-in lines staffed by nurses should be established within each local public health department. People with concerning symptoms can call in to be assessed and, if deemed necessary, referred for testing. These nurses should follow up with all patients with positive test results. Patients who appear to be developing serious illness — about 20% of all cases — should be transported by ambulance for higher-level assessment and care at a local hospital.
The roughly 80% who only have mild symptoms can remain in home isolation and counseled on caring for themselves and preventing the spread of the virus to others, including ways to disinfect shared spaces in the home. Similar to the way poison control centers that already exist in each state remotely monitor people who have ingested a toxic substance, telehealth centers should periodically check on these patients and refer any patients who evolve more concerning signs to the hospital. This monitoring can be enhanced with FaceTime or Skype and devices that allow remote tracking of vital signs such as Fitbit or Apple Watch.
We can expect a doubling of cases every six days, according to several epidemiological studies. Confirmed cases may appear to rise faster (or slower) in the short term as diagnostic capabilities are ramped up (or not), but this is how fast we can expect actual new cases to rise in the absence of substantial mitigation measures.
That means we are looking at about 1 million U.S. cases by the end of April; 2 million by May 7; 4 million by May 13; and so on.
As the health care system becomes saturated with cases, it will become increasingly difficult to detect, track, and contain new transmission chains. In the absence of extreme interventions like those implemented in China, this trend likely won’t slow significantly until hitting at least 1% of the population, or about 3.3 million Americans.
What does a case load of this size mean for health care system? That’s a big question, but just two facets — hospital beds and masks — can gauge how Covid-19 will affect resources.
The U.S. has about 2.8 hospital beds per 1,000 people (South Korea and Japan, two countries that have seemingly thwarted the exponential case growth trajectory, have more than 12 hospital beds per 1,000 people; even China has 4.3 per 1,000). With a population of 330 million, this is about 1 million hospital beds. At any given time, about 68% of them are occupied. That leaves about 300,000 beds available nationwide.
3. On Testing
4. Data Analytics
How Taiwan Used Big Data, Transparency and a Central Command to Protect Its People from Coronavirus;
The authors note that Taiwan integrated its national health insurance database with its immigration and customs database to begin the creation of big data for analytics. That allowed them case identification by generating real-time alerts during a clinical visit based on travel history and clinical symptoms.
Taipei also used Quick Response (QR) code scanning and online reporting of travel history and health symptoms to classify travelers’ infectious risks based on flight origin and travel history in the last 14 days. People who had not traveled to high-risk areas were sent a health declaration border pass via SMS for faster immigration clearance; those who had traveled to high-risk areas were quarantined at home and tracked through their mobile phones to ensure that they stayed home during the incubation period.
The country also instituted a toll-free hotline for citizens to report suspicious symptoms in themselves or others. As the disease progressed, the government called on major cities to establish their own hotlines so that the main hotline would not become jammed.
5. Science
How Coronavirus Hijacks Your Cells
6. Miscellaneous
South Korea’s aggressive testing gives clues to true fatality rate
Tracking the Coronavirus: How Crowded Asian Cities Tackled an Epidemic
“The world is only as good as the weakest link,” said Dr. Lee, the head of Singapore’s communicable diseases division. “Diseases do not respect borders.”
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