nudge

I believe that there might be some overlap somewhere(I think the US repatriated 14 confirmed cases because their tests turned negative at the start of the evaluation process but then showed positive on the second test before leaving and they were allowed to board nevertheless) but these 18 new cases are newly diagnosed so they weren't included in the Diamond Princess total!

Midnight's update for international cases outside of mainland China in the last 24 hours (00:00 to 24:00 CET Feb 24): 377 new cases and 10 new deaths. South Korea reported most new cases again (231 new cases and 2 deaths), followed by Italy (74 new cases and 4 deaths), Iran (18 new cases and 4 deaths) and USA (18 new cases - all former passengers of the Diamond Princess cruise ship). Other countries that reported new cases today are Japan (+13), Honkong (+7), Taiwan (+2) and Singapore, Malaysia and Spain (+1 each). 5 new countries also reported their first ever cases - Kuwait (5 cases), Bahrain and Oman (2 each), Iraq and Afghanistan (1 each). As it stands now, the current total is 2429 cases and 36 deaths in 37 countries.

@Harry: Current China numbers from the China Health Emergency Office (as of 24:00 on February 23): 77150 confirmed cases (9915 of those in severe condition). 2592 deaths. 3434 suspected cases. 25007 recoveries. 635531 close contacts traced; 97481 of those remain in medical observation.

@Azeem knows more about their primary health system than I do; what I know is that similar to Thailand, their medical tourism industry is kind of big due to them having higher quality, better specialised and at the same time affordable health care compared to most of the countries in the continent so they attract a lot of people from abroad seeking medical services. Their medical science and research are also top notch; used to consistently be in top 10 in the world when it comes to nanotech, biotechnology, biomedical engineering and the likes.

The biggest case study so far (based on 1300+) estimates the range of onset period from zero to 24 days, with the median of 3 days. A smaller study (400+) found the median to be around 5 days with a range from 4 to 7 days. There have also been many outliers (someone only started showing symptoms only after 27 days, but it's suspected that it could actually be a result of secondary exposure), and the period appears to vary greatly among the patients. 2-14 days is the current official estimated range of incubation period. Singapore did a nice mapping of all their cluster cases including the time periods and the links between the infected. I'll see if I can find it.

Health care in Iran is far from being shit. I'm sure @Dr. Gonzo can shed more light on it, but it's modern enough and the personell are qualified and well trained too. Sanctions obviously make it worse though as I believe they are now facing shortages as a result. The relatively high number of deaths probably indicates a much higher number of infected than officially confirmed so far.

They are still being reported, but lately the reports have been coming in later than normal (e.g. Last day's report from Hubei province was 2 hours late while the one for the rest of the provinces was released 4 hours later). I'll post them when I'm on my laptop but in general there has been a significant dip in their numbers; both in new cases and deaths. However, they've been changing the definitions of what is considered to be a confirmed case too often and revising their already released numbers from previous days several times, it's kind of hard to keep track of and make sense of that. But anyway, if the numbers reported are to be taken at face value then it seems their containment measures are definitely working.

Midnight (CET) update: 2052 total cases (+358 in in the last 24 hours) and 26 deaths (+8) outside of China. South Korea reported 169 new cases and 4 fatalities; Italy 92 new cases and 1 fatality, Iran 15 new cases and 3 fatalities today. New cases also reported in Japan (+12 and 1 death), the UK and Hongkong (+4 each), Taiwan (+2), as well as in Australia, Canada and Israel (1 new case each). 57 additional new cases confirmed onboard the Diamond Princess cruise ship. Italy has surpassed Japan in total number of confirmed cases. South Korean numbers continue to grow with new reports coming in; apparently 11 soldiers infected and over 7000 in quarantine (will be included in the next update). In better news, train services on Italy-Austria line have been restored as the two passengers tested negative. If anyone would like to see any specific data/graphs, let me know and I'll do my best.

Austria has stopped all passenger train connections from/to Italy after Austrian authorities were informed by their Italian colleagues about two suspected cases on the train from Venice to München via Austria.

I would say it's not that unexpected though. The first person fell ill in China in the beginning of December but the outbreak was reported 30 days later only and that's when the first precautionary actions started - and to be honest, outside of China, there weren't many precautionary measures except temperature scanners and then later stopping flights from/to Hubei province. Considering the fact that the virus is not extremely fatal and asymptomatic people can also spread it, it's quite likely that it was brought to numerous countries well before the Chinese cities were quarantined and travel restrictions were put into place. Add incubation period on top of that as well as the fact that about 80% of cases tend to have mild symptoms, and it's very likely that the spread simply went unnoticed until now. Now that more people are starting to get sick due to human-to-human transmission in numerous countries, more people also experience more serious symptoms and seek medical help, so more aggressive testing is being carried out instead of only testing those who have symptoms and have traveled to China, resulting in a sharp increase in total numbers. I think once other countries start doing the same, we'll start seeing a lot more confirmed cases there too. Also some interesting facts about the outbreak in South Korea - most of those cases are linked to that weirdo religious cult (the leader of which - I kid you not - claims to be the second coming of Jesus and says the virus is "the test of faith" and the work of the devil hellbent on stopping the rapid growth of the cult). So anyway, the cases in the cult are pretty much all traced to one woman who got symptoms but refused to be tested and sneaked out of the hospital at least four times to attend services of the cult until she finally got tested and confirmed to have the virus. In addition to that, as more members of the cult started getting sick, they were still being encouraged to continue their "evangelical work" and to deny their affiliation to the church if public health officials asked. So all in all, a bunch of inconsiderate religious nutjobs are pretty much at fault for the outbreak in South Korea.

4 more cases in the UK (all from the Diamond Princess cruise ship). Turkey, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Armenia have all closed their borders with Iran who reported 15 new cases and 3 new deaths today. Italy's number of total cases is growing further (currently at 155 cases and 3 deaths); Venice carnival and other public events have been suspended, some football matches have been canceled and at least 10 towns are in partial lockdown affecting about 50000 people. South Korea reported almost 200 new cases and one more death today and they're about to raise the alert level to red.

Daily international update (from 00:00 CET Feb 22 to 00:00 CET Feb 23): There have been 316 new cases and 3 deaths outside of mainland China. Most of those were reported in South Korea (+229), Italy (+43), Japan (+26) and Iran (+10). New cases also reported in Singapore, Hongkong, Australia and UAE. In addition to that, South Korea already reported 123 new cases and 2 new deaths just past midnight today; there also have been 14 new cases in Italy. As a result, the total number of cases outside of mainland China is currently 1831 + 19 deaths.

The man @Harvsky mentioned who traveled to China and was suspected to be the original spreader tested negative and never had any symptoms so at this points they are not sure if he had the virus, spread it despite being asymptomatic and then recovered, or if it originated from someone else. One of those 54 confirmed cases might be patient zero too; they're currently trying to trace the links between all the cases. It appears some of them were at the same hospital about 10 days ago.

Italian nationals with no travel history to China but the first infected patient (a 38-year-old man now in intensive care) fell ill after meeting a friend who had recently been there. Seems to be an untraceable cluster in several small towns around Milan mostly (they haven't been able to trace patient zero so far).

54 confirmed cases and 2 deaths in Italy: 39 in Lombardy, 12 in Veneto and 3 in Lazio. 12 towns are put under restrictive measures.

It increased more than tenfold since Wednesday as well. Expect the number to rise further, there's a cluster of cases from a religious cult and they have now located 9336 known cult members, 1261 of them already have symptoms.

Yeah; I mean even insignificant uni research questionnaires have built-in inconsistency checks because everyone knows that self-report is ridden with all sorts of bias and the data received that way is of questionable accuracy. To rely on self-report in actual epidemic seems a bit naive to say the least...

I mean they are getting quarantined one way or another... I also find it very weird that the health officials relied on self-report of the passengers on their health status.

142 new cases in South Korea just reported, bringing their total to 346. They had only 30 cases 3 days ago

that's the reason I was kind of looking forward to Klitschko's spell in the parliament; would have made the fighting more interesting with his left hook - straight right technique. But he disappointed by just watching it from the sidelines

Ukrainians just love to riot don't they I must say their tradition of parliamentary brawling is at least slightly amusing. This...not so much.

Somehow she even looks proud of that too

@Eco: Just saw this. Apparently one of the passengers from the cruise ship admitted on live TV that she and her husband lied about testing negative and not having symptoms in order to get on that repatriation flight back to the US

Italy reports first death (77 year old man). Another (a 38 year old) is in a very serious condition with respiratory failure.

14th case has just been confirmed in Sacramento. Plus 21 confirmed cases in repatriated citizens from Wuhan and the cruise ship.