By Roger D. Seheult, MD -
Pulmonology Doctor in Banning, CA
Also, and addendum on governmental strategies to contain the disease.
Coronavirus Epidemic Update 33: COVID-19 Medication Treatment Trials, Global Testing Remains Limited
Virus Testing Blitz Appears to Keep Korea Death Rate Low
Testing early and widely—which the US is not doing—key to successful containment
Dateline: March 7, 2020
Highly contagious and manifesting in some with little or no symptoms, the coronavirus has the world struggling to keep up. But when it comes to containing the epidemic, one country may be cracking the code — by doubling down on testing.
South Korea is experiencing the largest virus epidemic outside of China, where the pneumonia-causing pathogen first took root late last year. But unlike China, which locked down a province of more than 60 million people to try and stop the illness spreading, Korea hasn’t put any curbs on internal movement in place, instead choosing to test hundreds of thousands of people everywhere from clinics to drive-through stations.
It appears to be paying off in a lower-than-average mortality rate. The outbreak is also showing signs of being largely contained in Daegu, the city about 150 miles south of Seoul where most of the country’s more than 5,700 infections have emerged. South Korea reported the rate of new cases dropped three days in a row.
An outbreak of Middle East Respiratory Syndrome in 2015 killed 38 people in South Korea, with a lack of kits to test for the MERS pathogen meaning infected patients went from hospital to hospital seeking help, spreading the virus widely. Afterward, the country created a system to allow rapid approval of testing kits for viruses that have the potential to cause pandemics.
When the novel coronavirus emerged, that system allowed regulators to collaborate quickly with local biotech companies and researchers to develop testing kits based on a genetic sequence of the virus released by China in mid-January. Firms were then granted accreditation to make and sell the kits within weeks –a process that usually takes a year.
In a short space of time, South Korea has managed to test more than 140,000 people for the novel coronavirus, using kits with sensitivity rates of over 95%, according to the director of the Korean Society for Laboratory Medicine.
That’s in stark contrast to countries like its neighbor Japan and the U.S., where the issues China experienced early on — with unreliable and inadequate testing resulting in thousands of infected patients not being quarantined until it was too late — are now threatening to play out.
Testing widely has meant South Korea knows where its infections are centered, and so far they’ve been able to keep them largely contained with outbreaks beyond Daegu in the minority. In the capital Seoul, home to 10 million people, there have only been 103 infections.
President Moon Jae-in has cast the virus fight as a battle, saying the country is “at war,” with a pathogen that’s killed 3,200 people globally and sickened more than 94,000. With parliamentary elections due in April, his government is under pressure to curb the outbreak and has faced criticism for not closing the border fully to travelers from China. Moon’s administration is seizing on the country’s testing apparatus as a solution.
The emphasis on diagnosis is also being credited with helping patients get treatment early, bringing the mortality rate from the virus to under 1% — below every other affected country save Singapore, where the outbreak is on a much smaller scale.
“The coronavirus is highly contagious and even those without symptoms can transmit the virus, which makes it hard to stop infection among communities,” said Lee Hyukmin, director at the Korean Society for Laboratory Medicine and a professor at Yonsei Severance Hospital. “Without enough testing capabilities, the death rate will be high as the delay worsens the damage in the lungs.”
You can find the full list of videos that Dr. Roger Seheult has produced pertaining to Coronavirus on his YouTube channel. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLQ_IRFkDInv-NvRRUN0aqe51sMs188k8z
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