Australians rescued from coronavirus hotspot aren’t getting tested, despite death toll surpassing fatalities from SARS
Despite the death toll of 902 surpassing that of the SARS epidemic, only one Australian rescued from the virus hotspot has been tested for the disease.
The death toll from the novel coronavirus has surged past 800 in mainland China, overtaking global fatalities in the 2002-03 SARS epidemic, even as the World Health Organisation said the outbreak appeared to be stabilising.
With 89 more people dying -- most in Hubei, the province at the centre of the outbreak -- the current death toll of 902 is now higher than the 774 killed worldwide by Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), according to official figures.
Despite these figures and WHO’s ominous warning that they can still “shoot up”,
only one of the 544 Australians rescued from the world’s coronavirus hotspot have been tested for the disease.
The coronavirus test is used sparingly in part because it takes time and specialist equipment.
Instead, medics screened Australians ahead of their evacuation flights from Wuhan with a basic health check that included taking their temperature. For example, anyone with a temperature above 37.5C would not have been allowed to board the first humanitarian flight from Wuhan to Christmas Island on Monday February 3.
There are now 278 people waiting out 14 days of quarantine on Christmas Island and 266 at a former workers’ camp outside Darwin.
Each day until their release, medical staff will go room to room at the Howard Springs facility to carry out health checks on each person.
Australian Medical Assistance Team doctor Dan Holmes is leading the mission on Christmas Island and explains the daily health checks as screening.
“There are criteria we use on the daily screening to decide whether to further assess and then possibly test someone for nCoV (novel coronavirus),” Dr Holmes told The Australian. “These include questions like ‘do you have a sore throat’ or ‘do you have a cough’ as well as a temperature check.
“Of course there are a multitude of reasons why someone might have a sore throat (shouting too much, dry air from the aircon, a simple cold, acid reflux etc etc) or a cough (again a simple cold, asthma, smoking whatever).
“So if someone is flagged they get more thoroughly checked by an infectious disease doctor.
“These guys are the experts and make further clinical judgements. “Sometimes people might clearly meet the criteria (let’s say - a very high temperature and vomiting) so the choice to test and isolate is clear. “Even then though, the person may well have something else - tonsillitis, appendicitis or whatever.
“The borderline cases (e.g. borderline raised temperature and no symptoms, or minor symptoms and no temperature) are when there is clinical judgement around the decision to do a 2019-nCoV test.
“As there is such a heightened alert over this disease, a conservative approach tends to be taken both at national level (guidelines) and by individual doctors on the ground making decisions.”
Dr Holmes said that it was expected that some people would have an illness of some kind in any large group.
This could be caused by all manner of diseases, especially in the hot climates where all evacuees are quarantined.
“Living in the tropics can cause a degree of heat stress and raise body temperature,” he said.
“We will be sending (samples for) tests on occasion when we think the risks are low but we want to be more certain.
“This is important because of course we are at the very early stages of understanding this virus and it’s behaviour.”
In the case of the only person in quarantine to be tested so far - a girl on Christmas Island with flu-like symptoms - she fulfilled borderline criteria enough to warrant a test “but not enough for us to be too concerned”.
She was confined to her room at the island’s detention centre from Friday to Sunday when the test result was negative.
More Coverage
Trump warns judges: ‘hands off my agenda’
Donald Trump used a press conference with Elon Musk to hit back at the courts for blocking his efforts to reduce government waste and prosecute his agenda, warning he may ‘look at the judges’ responsible for stymieing his plans.
Hamas in a corner after Bibi calls bluff
The clock is now ticking for Hamas over the Gaza ceasefire deal, and as Donald Trump put it, ‘they want to play tough guy, we’ll see how tough they are’.