Monday March 30, 2020
Coronavirus situation in the US
New York has almost 60,000 infected people
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The United States is getting deeper and deeper into the coronavirus crisis. There are already more than 144,000 infected people across the country. Greater New York is developing into a disaster zone. In a fast-track process, a US agency is softening basic hygiene regulations.
In the USA, the number of cases continues to rise. By Monday afternoon (US East Coast local time), the number of coronavirus infections known nationwide had risen to 144,732 cases. That is already more than 22,000 infected people more than the previous evening. The death toll increased to 2527 Covid-19 patients who died.
The region around the most populous metropolitan area in the USA is still hardest hit: a good 40 percent of all coronavirus cases found nationwide currently come from the state of New York. In total, there are already almost 60,000 infected and 965 dead. Individual hospitals in the metropolis have long been working at the limit of their capacity and are heading towards untenable conditions in the foreseeable future.
New York State is the hardest hit state, but by no means the only hot spot in the current infection scene in the USA. The California authorities recently reported a significant increase in serious cases. The number of coronavirus patients in intensive care units has tripled in the past four days, said Governor Gavin Newsom. He does not give exact numbers. The most populous US state has about 40 million people.
Observers are also seeing increasing numbers of cases in the industrial regions of the Great Lakes. In Michigan, the number of infected people rose to just under 5,500 at the beginning of the week. In neighboring Illionois, there are already 4600 coronavirus cases. There are also local outbreaks in Lousiana on the Gulf Coast and especially in the sunny state of Florida, which is popular with retirees. The authorities there are now faced with 5,473 cases of infection. Florida is the US state with the highest proportion of senior citizens in the population.
In the fight against the spread of the pathogen, the US authorities are now taking desperate measures. Due to the blatant lack of protective equipment for medical personnel in many places, the otherwise extremely strict Food and Drug Administration of the USA (FDA) softened the hygiene regulations.
In order to eliminate the bottlenecks in face masks and face masks, a certain type of sterilization of masks that have already been used is now also permitted. N95 masks used by hospital staff can be sterilized and reused up to 20 times, the FDA said. US President Donald Trump had previously suggested such an approach.
It was “reasonable” to assume that sterilization with a Battelle CCDS device would effectively remove the Sars-CoV-2 coronavirus, it said. This advantage outweighs “the known and possible risks,” said the FDA in an exemption dated Sunday.
According to the manufacturer Battelle, special machines are able to sterilize up to 80,000 respiratory masks per day. For sterilization, the masks are treated with hydrogen peroxide vapor, among other things, for 2.5 hours. The masks should not contain any cellulose for the process.
According to Battelle, such a device is already in operation in the state of Ohio, and another is to be set up shortly in New York. So far, the city has been hardest hit by the Covid 19 pandemic in the United States. Battelle claims to have worked with the US military for decades to protect soldiers from incidents involving biological and chemical warfare agents.
A few years ago, as part of an FDA study, the company tested the decontamination of N95 masks in the event of a pandemic. According to the FDA, the project had “successfully demonstrated the feasibility” of sterilizing the respirators when tested.
The coronavirus has now spread to more than 180 countries and areas. More than 740,000 infections worldwide have been officially detected, of which 408,203 in Europe, just under 150,000 in the USA and Canada and 106,609 infections in Asia. According to official information, 2,635 infected people have died in North America and a total of 3,827 in Asia.
However, these numbers do not reflect the real extent of the pandemic, as some countries lack test kits. In addition, often only people with severe symptoms are tested for the novel coronavirus. How high the likely unreported number of undetected Sars-CoV-2 infections must be set depends on the respective circumstances, the efficiency of the local health systems and often also on the political decision-makers.
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