A sudden rise in the number of COVID-19 cases reported in China does not mean that the outbreak is accelerating dramatically. Here's what the numbers really mean.
The increase"largely comes down to a change in how cases are being diagnosed and reported," Dr. Mike Ryan, executive director of the WHO's health emergencies program, said."This does not suggest a significant change in the trajectory of the outbreak outside China."
Doctors in the epicenter of the outbreak in China's Hubei province are now identifying cases based on what the patients' lungs look like on CT scans, rather than waiting for lab results to confirmThis allows doctors to move more quickly to get patients the care they need, as well as start monitoring patients' family members or other close contacts who may have been exposed to theHowever, there is no proven way for clinicians to distinguish whether lung damage seen on a CT scan is...
"You can only say, 'We think it's COVID-19 because it's compatible with the virus that's circulating, and there's an epidemic here," Dr. Gregory Poland, an infectious diseases expert and director of the Mayo Clinic's Vaccine Research Group in Rochester, Minnesota, told NBC News. He said the cases are likely to be confirmed later by lab tests.
What's more, Ryan said, many of the nearly 15,000 new cases that were reported reflected a backlog of patients who had actually been diagnosed with COVID-19 in previous days and weeks. There have been nearly 450 cases confirmed in countries other than China, including 15 in the U.S. All of the U.S. cases can be traced to travel to China.
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