Reuters/Andrew Kelly
As the spread of the novel coronavirus grinds to a near-halt in China, the virus continues spreading fast around the rest of the globe.
New York state, with more than 20,800 sick, now has near 6% of the world’s coronavirus cases. Meanwhile, New York City, where 2,359 new cases were diagnosed Monday, is in the process of turning its largest convention center into a makeshift hospital, capable of handling 1,000 coronavirus patients at a time.
“This is the first time I think they’ve ever built a hospital inside the Javits Center,” New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said Monday while touring the temporary emergency care site. “Construction will start this week, we’ll hope to have the construction done in about a week to 10 days.”
On Monday alone, the US tallied up 16,354 new cases of the virus, which can prompt a cough, fever, difficulty breathing, and in severe cases, death. The severity of COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, varies widely with age: the virus kills 15% of infected people over 80, but just 0.2% of people under 39.
The majority of other new cases were diagnosed and reported on Monday in Italy (5,560), Spain (3,646), and Germany (3,311), according to the WHO. In China, where the virus originated, transmission appears to have slowed dramatically: 103 new cases were confirmed Monday, and many of those originated abroad.
Bruce Aylward, who led a team of international public health experts through China in February, has said before that the rest of the world is “simply not ready” to fight COVID-19 as China did, but that far more could be done to contain, track, test, and treat cases.
“We have a simple message for all countries: test, test, test, every suspected case,” World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said last week. “The most effective way to prevent infections and save lives is breaking the chains of transmission, and to do that you must test and isolate.”
Prepping “hundreds” of hospital beds and ventilators and enlisting thousands of public-health workers are some of the most crucial “really practical things you can do to be ready,” Aylward said.
Washing your hands and avoiding touching your face is also the number one way individuals can prevent new infections from spreading further and sickening more people, as the coronavirus is easily killed with soap and water.
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