Breaking! The Evolving Coronavirus Is Outwitting The World! Quarantines Deemed As Non-Effective As Incubation Period Can Be Limitless! Diagnostics Also Being Questioned

China health authorities in Guangzhou’s Liwan district are reporting clinically observed situations where (please click here to see report in Mandarin language) a quarantined family of family of six having been isolated for 30 days without any outside contact and were initially tested negative upon the start of their quarantine, started developing symptoms after 30 days and only then  tested positive for the coronavirus.



This case would add to evidence that challenges the current medical understanding of the disease’s incubation period, or the time it takes for a growing pathogen to reach a quantity necessary to produce symptoms in the host.
 
A previous study of more than 1,099 coronavirus patients by Chinese scientists, published in early February as a preprint, or a paper that has not been peer reviewed, has already made the case that the incubation period could be as long as 24 days, rather than the 14-day maximum previously believed.( https://www.thailandmedical.news/news/alarming-news-new-chinese-research-on-coronavirus-finds-incubation-period-of-up-to-24-days)
 
Another development lead experts to believe that it could be as long as even 27 days. (https://www.thailandmedical.news/news/breaking-news-new-coronavirus-can-incubate-for-as-long-as-27-days-before-showing-symptoms)
 
In another anomaly in  Xinyang, a city in Central China’s Henan province, Health officlas announced on Feb. 16 that local authorities had diagnosed a “highly unusual” case where a patient tested positive on a third screening, some 34 days after leaving Wuhan.
 
Another documented case involved a person in Zhongshan, Guangdong, who had undergone a routine two-week quarantine after arriving from Hubei on Jan. 26 tested positive almost 31 days later.
 
Chinese epidemiologist Dr Zhong Nanshan, who discovered the SARS coronavirus in 2003 and co-authored the 1,099-person study, at a Feb. 18 press conference, said that he did not find the longer incubation periods to be strange, explaining that there are always exceptions.

Of the Covid-19 patients studied, 13 had incubation periods longer than 14 days, though the majorit y developed signs of illness within two to seven days of contracting the virus, Zhong said.
 
However it is now appearing that the number of such cases are actually much more than initially thought of.
 
Medical experts are now saying that as the time prolongs from the time the coronavirus was first discovered , more and more clinically observed studies will show that the incubation period for this disease could even be limitless, indicting a unique nature of this new coronavirus.
 
It also shows that all efforts in term of quarantine and isolation to contain the coronavirus spread might be simply non-effective. Already there are many incidences of individuals placed under the 14 day quarantine rules that many countries are advocating as it as part of its travel screenings or in cases of breakouts , are testing positive after being released despite initial tests showing them as negative.
 
To even make things more complicated, many medical experts are now questioning the current diagnostics involving the PCR nucleic acid tests as since these test are not quantitative based, and also we do not know as to what threshold of the coronavirus viral load in the human body can go as ‘undetected’ by these tests, just as in the case of HIV diagnostics where minute viral loads cannot be picked up by current tests, a more effective test involving viral loads might be urgently needed.
 
Furthermore since the behavior of the coronavirus in the body has yet to have been studied in detail yet, the coronavirus could have its ‘own developed strategy’ of survival by infecting as much host as possible and remaining ‘dormant’ for a while before wreaking havoc through fast multiplications of its viral load.
 
Another pressing matter that needs to be addressed is that  despite the fact that it now already confirmed that the virus can also be transmissible by airborne and aerosol based transmissions although its claimed to be not as often the case as compared via respiratory droplets (https://www.thailandmedical.news/news/china-officially-announces-that-the-coronavirus-can-be-airborne-and-can-be-conditionally-spread-via-aerosol-transmission-) coupled with the fact that the virus could remain active on surfaces for a long time (https://www.thailandmedical.news/news/breaking-news-new-research-reveals-coronavirus-can-remain-infectious-for-as-long-as-9-days-on-surfaces-), its time to undertake detailed studies to see if  the coronavirus is being spread  by new evolved airborne strategies that we could be overlooking.
 
In another related development, researchers from Imperial College London working with the World Health Organization, have said that the world has failed to stop the new coronavirus outbreak from becoming a full-blown pandemic as it has been unable to locate and isolate infected individuals that could contaminate others.
 
The researchers said ,"We estimated that about two thirds of COVID-19 cases exported from mainland China have remained undetected worldwide, potentially resulting in multiple chains of as yet undetected human-to-human transmission outside mainland China.”
 
Dr Daniel Levy-Bruhl, a researcher at France's public health agency said, “One of the problems posed by this coronavirus is that ‘there is a whole range of clinical symptoms’, including some no worse than a common cold. This means that people with few or faint symptoms can slip through the net undetected.
 
Another category even harder to spot are infected persons with no signs of the virus whatsoever. Scientists say these "asymptomatic" cases are probably not a small minority as originally assumed.
 
The overall strategy of trying to block the coronavirus's spread is becoming less viable as more and more countries become reservoirs.
 
Sooner or later, national health authorities may have to switch from blocking its progress to coping with its effects.
 
Dr Simon Cauchemez, an expert at the Institut Pasteur in Paris told Thailand Medical News, "In that case, we can't maintain the same approach of identifying and isolating all cases, because we won't have the resources
In developed countries, this could weigh heavily on health systems.”

He added, "It is estimated that sixty-five percent of those infected do not have a severe form of the disease. But the ones that are serious are worse than the seasonal flu and would need to be hospitalised."

Issues arising from an outbreak become harder to cope with in a less developed setting. Compared to the 2014-16 Ebola outbreak in west Africa, the new coronavirus is less deadly but harder to detect and thus stop.

Dr Cauchemez added, "Even if only three percent of cases result in death, that can add up to a large number if 30 to 60 percent of the population is infected."

To even complicate and show the seriousness of the new coronavirus, there are studies underway in China that are indicating that even low viral load presence in so called treated or cured patients could have severe heath repercussions on the individuals not in the long term as in the case of most viral infections such as HPV (that causes cancer in certain individuals after some time) or HIV ( a multitude of diseases if infected for a long time) or even herpes that is linked to even dementia, neurological diseases and even blindness with long term infections, but rather in short term durations due to highly aggressive cellular behavior of the coronavirus in terms of binding to ACE2 receptors and ‘attacking’ organ tissues. These studies are underway and Thailand Medical News will be reporting on them once the studies are completed.

In the meanwhile, all the medical experts and authorities that had mentioned in the beginning that the new coronavirus is merely like a common cold without any proper medical or scientific studies to back up their statements, should sit down and start pondering how to salvage their reputations.

For more on the developments the global coronavirus pandemic, keep checking at: https://www.thailandmedical.news/articles/coronavirus