Coronavirus info, facts & updates

[Beldarna]

North Sweden, we have 8 confirmed cases in the region. One death total in the country. Some people have stocked up on masks and sanitizers and are trying to sell to riddicoulus prices online. Luckily Tradera and our largest selling site Blocket has forbidded sales of these to keep scalpers from profiting. Stores and schools and workplaces are open as usual, with people who have been to high risk areas are to stay in quarantine at home for 14 days. Events with audiences 500 and larger has been cancelled throughout the country.

I listen to the experts, wash my hands and keep living as normal.

[freezestime]

I am in Western Australia, Australia.

I believe there has been 3 or 4 reported and confirmed cases in the state, not sure if in my city.

I haven't seen people myself buy tons of tp or stocking up on any of the common stuff, however I have seen a decent amount of empty shelves in various stores.

Tp, tissues, chocolate, ect is still in stock but sanitizer and anti bacterial wipes are all gone from the stores I visited.

Even the hospital in my birth town has had to zip tie sanitizers to things people can't steal.

Life is almost entirely normal, people are catching buses, going to work and school, going on trips (if they weren't cancelled) meeting up with friends, all that kind of stuff.

Edit: apparently there's 14 cases Australia wide.

[Artemesia's Garden]

1. Where do you live?
2. What is the current climate like where you're at?
3. Are news reports coming from your area accurate or no? What is going on?

I live in Norfolk, UK that as of yesterday had no confirmed cases, but I work near Cambridge which does have confirmed cases. People were more visibly concerned by the evening yesterday. Hub went out for some essentials at 8pm and said people were panic buying in bulk. We've already done a 'big shop' over the last two weeks and decided to self-isolate except for work because I'm ten weeks pregnant and will try to get out of first trimester before catching it if poss. My Mum wasn't taking it seriously until yesterday when I told her I wouldn't see her and Dad for the forseeable. I'm not sure about news reports - apparently it was taking 10 hours to get through tot he NHS over the Phone in ENgland, so I wonder how many people needed testing but simply gave up. I now have a craving for corned beef and can't buy any! obviously my pregnancy cravings are by far the worst things about this whole situation!!

[kellybates1993]

I'm glad we have a thread like this, because the shoutbox is going to explode if it carries on there and it's literally something that's affecting us all. Community is pretty much the watchword.

I live in the UK, in the Midlands.

There are no confirmed cases in my immediate region yet.
The neighbouring county has 2 reported cases, both came from trips to Italy, neither have been publically mixing since their return. The wider region has something like 6 or 8 confirmed cases.

It's a surreal sense of normal here at the moment. Stockpiling is happening in this area but the worst thing is hand sanitiser (we always carry it so have some but will have trouble replacing it if this continues). Our local store had tons of toilet roll on Monday - by Tuesday morning it was all sold out apparently. No problems getting rice, pasta, etc. Antibacterial soap and wipes, it's hit and miss. We also have had some flooded communities here in the last few weeks so that's probably also aggravating the situation. It may also be keeping visitors away, however, as tourist areas were the ones that flooded.

Everything else is as normal. We're being told to wash our hands and be considerate of other people when coughing, sneezing, etc. Especially on public transport, but this is running as normal. There's been no local advice to change anything but some events in the midlands have been cancelled, especially at the NEC (Exhibition centre) in Birmingham.

UK nationally is currently not closing schools or cancelling large events because govt believe the science doesn't support doing so, but I think local communities are making their own decisions about this kind of thing. There's also no ban on travelling except advice not to travel to the worst infected areas.

I feel like quarantine could have been handled better and people in infected spaces abroad should have served quarantine time there and only returned to the UK when it was clear they were not infected. But I do think it's too late to think about that kind of policy now. Just repatriating people with the virus to their homelands spreads the virus. Quite a lot of onus is put on people to self-isolate. Many are. Some are refusing to.

I have more concerns about my parents/sister than myself getting it. Of all of us I'm the lowest risk candidate.

The UK govt has said that mild cases may have flown under the radar so our figures may not be 100% but it seems to have spread more slowly here SO FAR than in some of our neighbours. Nobody really knows why, but they expect it to go up so it's day by day.

I am focusing on my garden, my writing, and we're going walking because here you can easily go walking and meet hardly anyone.

On a personal note, because of the awkward timing of finishing my PhD, I was taking this year out to write articles and try and get an academic post for the autumn. However, my academic field has cancelled so many conferences (being Japanese studies) and the job market is currently nonexistent so I guess that's also on hiatus and I'm in a wait and see...

I'm also from the Midlands, it's crazy how it differes county to county, me and my family have been made to self isolate for 7 days as of this morning  me and the kids all have a bad cough a sore throat and a fever and body aches all over.
we called the doc and were told to stop school and work for 7 days and isolate.
It feels like a really bad case of the flu, I really can't see how it would be corona as we don't go far afield or out much at all lately, it's a shame they didn't offer us testing.

[Aeryala]

I'm in Southern Ontario, Canada, a hour or so away from Toronto. There are 54 confirmed cases in this province, almost all of which are people who recently traveled abroad.  None in my town, but 2 in the city next door.

Feels like coronavirus is the only thing they're talking about in the news.  People seem to be freaking out a bit, though not as much as in some places.. Hand sanitizer and dust masks have become impossible to acquire, and things like TP and water are flying off the shelves but not disappearing entirely.  My employer sent out a memo that all work-related gatherings of more than 8 people are to be cancelled (where did the number 8 come from?  I do not know).  Schools are taking an extra two weeks off after their imminent spring break.

I'm trying to be level-headed, and not "one of those people" but I'm starting to get really worried.  It would be devastating if my husband and I were to get sick with this new virus - we both have jobs that are technically part time which means no sick days and no security.  We have no savings and no local support network; the kind of interruption to our income that would be caused by quarantine would be untenable.  I'm also stupid scared about the virus itself; I have bad lungs and the flu last year put me down for a torturous 6 weeks that included some really scary struggles to breathe.  Not something I'm keen to experience again.

Even if COVID-19 does end up spreading as widely as the flu has though, most people will just get mildly sick and move on with their lives, and hopefully all this freakout will have been unnecessary. I'm personally in a tough place but thankfully we're the outliers.  It's kind of a surreal thing to have this happening, it feels like we're all inadvertant actors in one of those disaster movies from the 2000s. 

[banditpony]

I'm also from the Midlands, it's crazy how it differes county to county, me and my family have been made to self isolate for 7 days as of this morning  me and the kids all have a bad cough a sore throat and a fever and body aches all over.
we called the doc and were told to stop school and work for 7 days and isolate.
It feels like a really bad case of the flu, I really can't see how it would be corona as we don't go far afield or out much at all lately, it's a shame they didn't offer us testing.

So the flu is obviously going around too.

But you are not going to know if it's corona or flu unless you get tested. Because governments have no ability to test all but severe cases, the corona virus numbers are very MUCH higher than "confirmed cases".  Lots of people might just have a small cough and a low fever and have it.

So, I'd call your doctor up again and ask if you can get tested for the flu. There's NO reason you can't be tested for that, and if you had that you wouldn't have corona virus. You also can get medicine for flu if need be if it's early on.

[Barnacle_lady]

I live in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. At the moment there are 614 confirmed and 5 who had passed away. But there are also people who recovered but no figures.
Most of the people who got sick were in Italy on holiday. In south of Holland it was carnival all over a few weeks ago.
The current situation which was advised yesterday. Stay at home if you don't feel well with coughing, fever and try to work at home if possible. Vulnerable people should stay at home, avoid public transport. Events over 100 people should be cancelled until the end of March. So concerts, festivals, fleamarkets, football games all shut down. But schools have to stay open with the argument "we need the parents".
And even though its not total lockdown like Italy people are doing loads of grocery shopping so there are empty shelves and long lines.
For me, I feel good. I still have to go to the office on Monday even though I go by public transport bus & train. My manager thinks there is no risk in the room where I and collegues work. So I have to make sure not taking any risk. Don't have much worries about upcoming events since a lot can be moved to another date. But I would be sad if Kings day or Eurovision is cancelled.

[Taffeta]

I'm also from the Midlands, it's crazy how it differes county to county, me and my family have been made to self isolate for 7 days as of this morning  me and the kids all have a bad cough a sore throat and a fever and body aches all over.
we called the doc and were told to stop school and work for 7 days and isolate.
It feels like a really bad case of the flu, I really can't see how it would be corona as we don't go far afield or out much at all lately, it's a shame they didn't offer us testing.

Wishing you and your family the best.

Are you West Mids or East? West seems fairly unscathed at the moment. Mind you, where I used to live in London - both those areas only have 1 confirmed case as well despite all the tabloids trying to whip up drama about London's case numbers. When you look at it nationwide by region - and the BBC had a tracker thing by postcode - the reality is something like 1-3 cases in a much larger local population. But of course that's only confirmed cases.

On the subject of flu, I don't suppose the NHS is going to do tests for that. But over here vulnerable people are encouraged to have a flu jab and every winter a huge number of people do (also sometimes a pneumonia one in the older population). Even though they are not the same, I imagine people who don't need an annual flu jab are probably better placed to fight off covid19. I would expect the NHS not to do a test for flu, so unless things get really rough, it's better to just follow the govt's advice for now.

UK govt have been testing people who were in contact with an infected person or who came back from an infected area but from yesterday are now testing generally - BUT they did say only the ones which required medical care/in hospital, so mild cases will go under the radar. They don't test for things like flu or other viruses unless the case is serious and requires more detailed treatment, so trying that path would just waste time. They refused my sister a test for glandular fever three times already this year, even though they're sure that she had it.

One concern I have is that prior to this the govt were talking about letting our A&E close (despite the fact A&Es in the UK are overcrowded and especially here where there are only 2 full hospitals anyway treating a large area of England and central Wales. It hasn't closed, but it makes me wonder what resources are actually available here if and when it finally arrives.

I think all this has made a lot of people take stock. There's hardly been a conversation about Brexit here in some weeks despite it dominating the news for the last three years prior to this. What will happen re that nobody knows or apparently cares right now. My hope is that at the end o this crisis the UK and Europe will sit down and talk like sane people understanding there are bigger things than scoring points that need to be repaired. I suspect our economies will all need us to take a cooperative effect.

Stuff like this brings out best and worst in people. People have stolen hand sanitiser from hospitals and madly stockpiled stuff, which has caused many vulnerable people to complain they can't get essentials and put a huge strain on foodbanks which the govt still doesn't seem to acknowledge are a thing. But on the other hand some local areas are setting up volunteer networks to help high risk people get supplies so they don't have to go out. If it wasn't for worrying about bringing it to my folks I'd be involved in one of those but I will be helping them if rules change and I need to do so - there are a lot of older folk in this area (several of whom are probably the kind to hit death with a walking stick if it came to call, if I'm perfectly honest about it).

BBC had an article about someone with the virus and my mother read it and said that it sounds identical to what she had last April/May time - dry cough that she couldn't control, fever that kept coming back, pneumonia that required hospitalisation. It took her a few weeks to recover. It's not that either of us think that that was covid19 but it made us all think a bit about what other similar diseases actually have been circulating in the past. Govt made a big thing about this being different from Swine Flu (which was bad) in 2009-10, because people have some immunity to flu in general and it was easy to get an innoculation done fairly fast. But then again they also keep saying that coronavirus is related to other diseases like the common cold. I think we really don't know what we're in for yet here.

However as of today some premier league football people have been diagnosed, so it looks like there's going to be some upheaval in the football, even though the govt has not ruled out their games.

Also, the US ban on flights to/from Europe doesn't affect the UK at the moment which seems a bit nuts since we have the disease here too. There's some concern about people getting the Eurostar here to get a flight to the US anyway. Nobody here knows how Trump intends to enforce keeping out anyone who has been somewhere infected in the last 14 days, since there are no passport stamps or visas within the EU, even outside of schengen. So basically a person can come from another infected country to the UK and onto a plane to the US undetected...bringing more infection onto our systems along the way. Unless the US intend to ban people based on their passports - but at the same time that would bar someone who'd spent 20 years in the UK who happened to come from France or Italy. I just don't see how that's going to work, and a lot of airlines and jobs are taking the strain.

One British airline (flybe) has already folded and tourism everywhere is way down.

[banditpony]

On the subject of flu, I don't suppose the NHS is going to do tests for that.

Wow, what a shame. The test would be more so to rule out things, rather then just confirm the flu.

[Taffeta]

On the subject of flu, I don't suppose the NHS is going to do tests for that.

Wow, what a shame. The test would be more so to rule out things, rather then just confirm the flu.

The NHS is publically funded so we all get free health care, including tests on things like covid19, at no personal expense. But that means that unnecessary tests on people who are not high risk just don't happen, because there's not the spare funds to do that when there are other things that need to be addressed. I don't know anyone who has ever had a test for flu, but I know a lot of people who have had free vaccination against flu every year for a long time, so it's a balancing act. I tend not to criticise the NHS overall because without it, my mother's cancer treatments would have been prohibitive for my family and she would have died a long time ago. It's not perfect but I think we just have to accept that there has to be some prioritisation in order for everyone who needs urgent treatment to get it as quickly as possible.

[tailrustedtealeaf]

Glad to see a thread for this!
I'm about under an hour from Philly. The county next to us is basically all but locked down because about half the cases in the state are there. They closed schools, non-essential retail stores, the mall, etc etc...I do worry that they will all come to us as we are just ten minutes away and we'll be next.
My college has moved the remainder of the semester online. Good for me because I commute anyway, but my coworker who lives on campus is upset. Most other colleges around here moved to online on Wednesday. The school district here has not closed yet, but my sisters do have the day off so their teachers can prepare online learning or otherwise.
I work at a grocery store, so if my county has to close all non essential stuff I'll still be working. It was so crazy yesterday and it was still super busy at 10 pm. We are a 24 hour store so I'm sure we're just picking up customers that Target and Walmart lost by not being open all night. We were out of: TP, been out of Sanitizer since Sunday, pasta, sauce, meat, bread, flour, sugar, creamer, orange juice, greek yogurt, shredded cheese, canned beans, canned veggies, frozen pizza, bagel bites. I wonder how the shelves will look today. I think it's going to get worse but we have less to actually sell so numbers will be down.
I feel sick myself but I think it's allergies and sinus related. The only place I went really was my college and they haven't said if there are any confirmed cases there.

[banditpony]

On the subject of flu, I don't suppose the NHS is going to do tests for that.

Wow, what a shame. The test would be more so to rule out things, rather then just confirm the flu.

The NHS is publically funded so we all get free health care, including tests on things like covid19, at no personal expense. But that means that unnecessary tests on people who are not high risk just don't happen, because there's not the spare funds to do that when there are other things that need to be addressed. I don't know anyone who has ever had a test for flu, but I know a lot of people who have had free vaccination against flu every year for a long time, so it's a balancing act. I tend not to criticise the NHS overall because without it, my mother's cancer treatments would have been prohibitive for my family and she would have died a long time ago. It's not perfect but I think we just have to accept that there has to be some prioritisation in order for everyone who needs urgent treatment to get it as quickly as possible.

I still think it's a shame. The way most places are handling it is a shame.

Yes because there's a limited amount of testing I don't think everyone should be tested for covid19. that's why I said flu test, because it rules it out. Plus if diagnosed earlier there's medicine for flu. And only make my comment because the symptoms overlap.

(The only thing that skews less likely is kids are less likely to show symptoms).

[kellybates1993]

I'm also from the Midlands, it's crazy how it differes county to county, me and my family have been made to self isolate for 7 days as of this morning  me and the kids all have a bad cough a sore throat and a fever and body aches all over.
we called the doc and were told to stop school and work for 7 days and isolate.
It feels like a really bad case of the flu, I really can't see how it would be corona as we don't go far afield or out much at all lately, it's a shame they didn't offer us testing.

So the flu is obviously going around too.

But you are not going to know if it's corona or flu unless you get tested. Because governments have no ability to test all but severe cases, the corona virus numbers are very MUCH higher than "confirmed cases".  Lots of people might just have a small cough and a low fever and have it.

So, I'd call your doctor up again and ask if you can get tested for the flu. There's NO reason you can't be tested for that, and if you had that you wouldn't have corona virus. You also can get medicine for flu if need be if it's early on.

I took your advice and gave them a call, they said with my and my families symptoms that we unfortunately wouldn't be allowed to enter the gp surgery at all for 14 days !
This is news to me and worrying news with my youngest being so vulnerable.
I was told to call the 111 hotline that's been set up for corona virus but it just goes beep beep beep??
We are all ok, lots of fluids and rest and we've all had painkillers so I'm not panicking but I thought the gp would have maybe offered us testing,  as of now I can't see any reason it would be coronavirus  but we are just following orders.

Post Merge: March 13, 2020, 06:44:08 AM

I'm also from the Midlands, it's crazy how it differes county to county, me and my family have been made to self isolate for 7 days as of this morning  me and the kids all have a bad cough a sore throat and a fever and body aches all over.
we called the doc and were told to stop school and work for 7 days and isolate.
It feels like a really bad case of the flu, I really can't see how it would be corona as we don't go far afield or out much at all lately, it's a shame they didn't offer us testing.

Wishing you and your family the best.

Are you West Mids or East? West seems fairly unscathed at the moment. Mind you, where I used to live in London - both those areas only have 1 confirmed case as well despite all the tabloids trying to whip up drama about London's case numbers. When you look at it nationwide by region - and the BBC had a tracker thing by postcode - the reality is something like 1-3 cases in a much larger local population. But of course that's only confirmed cases.

On the subject of flu, I don't suppose the NHS is going to do tests for that. But over here vulnerable people are encouraged to have a flu jab and every winter a huge number of people do (also sometimes a pneumonia one in the older population). Even though they are not the same, I imagine people who don't need an annual flu jab are probably better placed to fight off covid19. I would expect the NHS not to do a test for flu, so unless things get really rough, it's better to just follow the govt's advice for now.

UK govt have been testing people who were in contact with an infected person or who came back from an infected area but from yesterday are now testing generally - BUT they did say only the ones which required medical care/in hospital, so mild cases will go under the radar. They don't test for things like flu or other viruses unless the case is serious and requires more detailed treatment, so trying that path would just waste time. They refused my sister a test for glandular fever three times already this year, even though they're sure that she had it.

One concern I have is that prior to this the govt were talking about letting our A&E close (despite the fact A&Es in the UK are overcrowded and especially here where there are only 2 full hospitals anyway treating a large area of England and central Wales. It hasn't closed, but it makes me wonder what resources are actually available here if and when it finally arrives.

I think all this has made a lot of people take stock. There's hardly been a conversation about Brexit here in some weeks despite it dominating the news for the last three years prior to this. What will happen re that nobody knows or apparently cares right now. My hope is that at the end o this crisis the UK and Europe will sit down and talk like sane people understanding there are bigger things than scoring points that need to be repaired. I suspect our economies will all need us to take a cooperative effect.

Stuff like this brings out best and worst in people. People have stolen hand sanitiser from hospitals and madly stockpiled stuff, which has caused many vulnerable people to complain they can't get essentials and put a huge strain on foodbanks which the govt still doesn't seem to acknowledge are a thing. But on the other hand some local areas are setting up volunteer networks to help high risk people get supplies so they don't have to go out. If it wasn't for worrying about bringing it to my folks I'd be involved in one of those but I will be helping them if rules change and I need to do so - there are a lot of older folk in this area (several of whom are probably the kind to hit death with a walking stick if it came to call, if I'm perfectly honest about it).

BBC had an article about someone with the virus and my mother read it and said that it sounds identical to what she had last April/May time - dry cough that she couldn't control, fever that kept coming back, pneumonia that required hospitalisation. It took her a few weeks to recover. It's not that either of us think that that was covid19 but it made us all think a bit about what other similar diseases actually have been circulating in the past. Govt made a big thing about this being different from Swine Flu (which was bad) in 2009-10, because people have some immunity to flu in general and it was easy to get an innoculation done fairly fast. But then again they also keep saying that coronavirus is related to other diseases like the common cold. I think we really don't know what we're in for yet here.

However as of today some premier league football people have been diagnosed, so it looks like there's going to be some upheaval in the football, even though the govt has not ruled out their games.

Also, the US ban on flights to/from Europe doesn't affect the UK at the moment which seems a bit nuts since we have the disease here too. There's some concern about people getting the Eurostar here to get a flight to the US anyway. Nobody here knows how Trump intends to enforce keeping out anyone who has been somewhere infected in the last 14 days, since there are no passport stamps or visas within the EU, even outside of schengen. So basically a person can come from another infected country to the UK and onto a plane to the US undetected...bringing more infection onto our systems along the way. Unless the US intend to ban people based on their passports - but at the same time that would bar someone who'd spent 20 years in the UK who happened to come from France or Italy. I just don't see how that's going to work, and a lot of airlines and jobs are taking the strain.

One British airline (flybe) has already folded and tourism everywhere is way down.

East Midlands here close to derby, my mum recently returned from Spain but I'm unsure of the situation over there, shes recently been through a few airports, I had completely forgot about that 
And I'm sorry but did you say people are stealing hand sanitizer from HOSPITALS? jesus christ 
My son is due to have an operation on his kidney at the end of this month but it's all so uncertain now, the fact that people would steal hand sanitizer from such vulnerable people makes me feel sick, I hope this is over with soon,  all of my direct family are over 65, my grandmas 90 my grandads 91 my mums 67 and my aunts 66 and my uncles 61.
I'm just worried sick
Stay safe x

[PinkieLopBun]

I live in Massachusetts. 108 cases have been reported here, with 82 being linked back to a conference held by a company in Cambridge called Biogen from February 26-28. The governor declared a state of emergency on Tuesday. Last I heard, there weren't any cases in my town, but I do live in one of the counties that's been affected.

[Taffeta]

@Kellybates1993 - It feels like they're ramping up cases and testing only when they need to now, but if your youngest has other health issues I'd watch him like a hawk and be prepared to act if you think he's at risk. You know your kids better than random strangers do, after all, and you can always make the case that your mother had been in Spain recently and in contact with the kid if they aren't listening to you.

I genuinely don't know how the EM situation is, I know we have a lot of flights through Birmingham Int'l and you guys have EM Airport, both of which I think do a fair amount of European flights, but right now numbers here are pretty low in official figures. 1/3 of our trains run to/from Birmingham airport though.

I believe the hand sanitiser thing was in Northamptonshire somewhere. We were in Dudley the other day and the archive had sanitiser just left out on the desk for people to use. Nobody was trying to steal it - it was all quite civilised and everything was just business as usual. This in spite of the fact at least one person has died in the hospital in Dudley and another in Wolverhampton hospital which is not that far.

It's literally just the hoarding of certain items or you wouldn't know anything was happening here.

The other thing is that people are very worried about coronavirus deaths but what is unclear is whether these people died of coronavirus or just happened to have it when they died. One case here the family said they didn't know what the cause of death was. I think media like to hype things up.

Some things that the media here have been reporting which seem to be debunked elswhere include a claim that this virus is a super aggressive form of the bug (based on a paper saying it spread more aggressively, NOT that it was more severe a disease). Our tabloids are of course irresponsibly feeding the panic by making mad headline claims which, when you read the story, aren't as dramatic as they claim to be. It's not that this isn't serious - it is - but you'd think they'd be more responsible. At least it looks like social media companies are trying to get fake news about it off the internet.

I don't like our government at all, really, mot least because I am firmly pro-Europe and anti-Brexit - but at least they are trying to explain why they're taking the decisions they are, even if there are people who disagree with their approach.

@Banditpony - I've never known anyone to get specific medicine for flu here either. Advice is usually lots of rest, fluids, and then things to mitigate symptoms. But we may be talking about different strains as there are a lot. I've actually in 38 years never had flu once, even though it's here every winter, and it may well be because a lot of people in my environs are innoculated.

In any case, it's just a difference in how the health service works. Honestly, I'd rather have free health care available for everyone and not have regular flu testing than have all those tests available, but only to those who can afford it. There's pros and cons to how we all handle health - nowhere is perfect.