nudge

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.

35 total cases in the US now including 18 from the cruise ship who were evacuated and repatriated by the US government. CDC apparently advised against bringing them back but it was overruled.

Definitely; it's highly unlikely for someone to get the virus after traveling to a country if there are only a handful of cases there... But at least Iran seems to be pretty transparent in reporting the cases/deaths - something that can't be said about some other countries. It's also still unclear how long the incubation period actually is; there are examples of as short as 3 days to as long as 24 which has been more of an exception so far but the latest outbreak in that Korean religious cult is a bit worrisome as it's suspected that most of the infected there caught the virus in the end of January and only started showing symptoms now. Italy just confirmed 10 new cases as well. There has been the total of 146 new cases outside of China so far today; highest since January 13th when the countries started reporting it. I bet that in the next week or two the number of international cases will keep on rising.

Alright so here's an update... I'm not doing the regular updates with daily deltas from China anymore as they've been changing the definitions of confirmed and suspected cases back and forth so as a result their data has been a mess that's impossible to analyse in any sensible way. Their current reported number of total cases is 75465 as of now; with 2236 deaths, 11633 patients in serious or critical condition and 18264 recoveries. Moving to international cases outside of mainland China (including Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan), there's currently (as of 15:30 CET) 1345 confirmed cases and 14 deaths in 32 countries + the cruise ship Diamond Princess (the cruise ship cases now have their own separate category as the huge number of cases on it was skewing the Japanese total too much.) There has been a sudden spike in cumulative number of cases in South Korea in the last 48+ hours as it went from 30 odd cases to over 200; mostly related to the outbreak in a Shincheonji religious sect. That makes South Korea the country with the most confirmed cases outside of mainland China followed by Japan. The situation in Iran warrants monitoring as well as they recorded their first case two days ago and already have 4 fatalities as of today.

I don't think the potential spread in South America would be directly linked to China tbh. If it happens then it's more likely to be imported cases by individual travelers and at this point it is pretty much localised and contained in most countries outside China - although there have been a few outbreaks of a somewhat larger scale in the last few days (e.g. South Korea; Japan). I honestly wouldn't worry if I were you.

18 cases and 4 deaths in Iran as of now. Iran's health ministry: "Based on existing reports, the spread of coronavirus started in Qom [and] has now reached several cities ... including Tehran, Babol, Arak, Isfahan, Rasht and other cities and it's possible that it exists in all cities in Iran" - Reuters New cases have been popping up in the last 3 days everywhere, South Korea is particularly affected as they registered over a 100 of new cases in the last 48 hours. Will post the numbers/graph when I'm on my laptop.

Going to do the Philippines trip later this year for a month or two. Visiting friends in one of the smaller islands and then the usual tourist destinations like Palawan and Boracay. Also a few nights in Manila and Angeles City for sure.

The first two cases (resulting in two deaths) were reported yesterday in Qom; two more cases confirmed in Qom and one in Arak today.

Haha yeah; shit happens with google search sometimes. I find this graph illustrates the mortality and contagiousness pretty well: To be fair I'm not doing regular updates anymore; mostly because China's numbers are a mess due to them constantly changing the description of what constitutes a confirmed case. I still keep track of daily changes outside of China though. BTW to keep it a bit on topic there have been 5 cases and 2 deaths in Iran in the last two days.

Errr.... I think your numbers are completely wrong. Seasonal flu has mortality rate of less than <0.1%. Swine flu pandemic was 0.03%. the infamous Spanish flu had estimated mortality of 2–3%.