Surveying the Covid-19 Pandemic and Its Implications

Urban Health, Data Technology and Political Economy

Zaheer Allam

• Publisher: Elsevier
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9780128243145
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Human Geography
• Index: Social Sciences

Surveying the Covid-19 Pandemic and Its Implications: Urban Health, Data Technology and Political Economy explores social, economic, and policy impacts of COVID-19 that will persist for some time. This timely book surveys the COVID-19 from a holistic, high level perspective, examining such topics as Urban health policy responses impact on cities economies, Urban economic impacts of supply chain disruption, The need for coherent short term urban policies that aligns with long term goals, The rise to citizen science initiatives, The role of open data, The need for protocols to support research collaborations, Building larger infectious disease modelling datasets, NS Advanced computing tools for health policy.

• Includes the most hot topical issues surrounding COVID-19
• Provides an urban viewpoint on COVID-19 and its effects on urban health
• Presents a multidisciplinary perspective

Part 1

A Chronological Account Of the Pandemic: The First 150 Days

Outline

Chapter 1. The First 50 days of COVID-19: A Detailed Chronological Timeline and Extensive Review of Literature Documenting the Pandemic

Chapter 2. The Second 50 days: A Detailed Chronological Timeline and Extensive Review of Literature Documenting the COVID-19 Pandemic From Day 50 to Day 100

Chapter 3. The Third 50 Days: A Detailed Chronological Timeline and Extensive Review of Literature Documenting the COVID-19 Pandemic From Day 100 to Day 150

Chapter 1: The First 50 days of COVID-19: A Detailed Chronological Timeline and Extensive Review of Literature Documenting the Pandemic

Abstract

This chapter surveys the global unfolding of events during the first 50 days of the COVID-19 pandemic in China. An extensive review of literature from both academic and popular sources provides a daily overview of the situation covering health, economic, political, and social perspectives and outlines the major course of actions. This chapter surveys, and lays, the chronological timeline of the outbreak, health policy, deaths, recovery, and socioeconomic measures and provides a factual narrative on the unfolding of the pandemic and, while doing so, underlines major milestones and contradictory findings and beliefs on the subject. This supports the perception that data collection varied between research groups, organizations, and national bodies, which later fueled differing viewpoints and policies for combatting the outbreak.

Keywords

2019-nCoV; China; Chronology; Coronavirus; COVID-19; Pandemic; SARS; Timeline; Wuhan

Introduction

The COVID-19 pandemic took the world by surprise and unfolded extremely rapidly. It began relatively slower, and only a little is documented on its actual first case, with claims as from November, while others links it to on December 1. Besides not knowing when it began, there was also very little known on the many issues about the virus, including its mode of transmission, its incubation time, and the medication the vaccination, among many other elements. Even to date, at the time of writing, there still remain some gray areas about the virus including its origin and whether it could have permanent impacts on patients, and whether it is possible for patients to develop immunity, among many other areas that are still being looked into. Following these uncertainties, there had been numerous health policies with a number of those being rendered ineffective as more knowledge about the virus is revealed. For instance, at the beginning, the World Health Organization (WHO) advised that masks should only be worn by health professionals or patients while in hospital, but later on, after it established that there were possibilities of human-to-human transmission, it became apparent that everyone need to wear a mask while in public to prevent transmitting or contracting the virus.

However, while the impacts of the virus in the first 50 days were still relatively smaller, and the spread as per the available information was still slower, there were already 44 confirmed cases reported in China, Wuhan region (41 cases), Thailand (2 cases), and Japan (1 case). From the 41 reported cases in Wuhan, 2 people had succumbed to the unknown disease, whereas 12 are said to have recovered and discharged. Interestingly, on this pandemic, though it took health official approximately 38 days to identify that they were dealing with a new kind of coronavirus, an artificial intelligence (AI)–powered algorithm developed by BlueDot, a Canadian startup tech company, provided early warnings that the world might be experiencing a new virus outbreak (Bowles, 2020). The warning came 7 days earlier before the Chinese scientist identified the virus (Huang et al., 2020), and 9 days before they notified the WHO, which then made the official announcement to the world (WHO, 2020e). This early warning supports that computer predictions could be relied upon in predicting future pandemics before they arise, hence saving allowing for early preparations the challenges of future pandemic.

In these first 50 days of the COVID-19 pandemic, despite the virus having spread to two more countries outside China, most of the global community were not particularly worried, as the perception was that only those who had come into contact with the Wuhan seafood market had the highest probability of being infected. Therefore, even with the help of technologies like that of BlueDot, the countries that were seen to be at risk of the 2019-nCoV outbreak (the temporary name previously given to the virus) were those neighboring China and those directly linked to Wuhan via airlines. For this reason, some of the countries that were flagged to be at risk included Taiwan, Australia, United Arab Emirates, Hong Kong, Japan, and Thailand. This chapter documents the outbreak over the first 50 days through the sections in the following.

Day 1—December 1, 2019

The earliest date of symptoms for COVID-19, according to a study performed by Huang et al. (2020) and published in the Lancet journal, was December 1, 2019. However, there are other sources (Bryner, 2020; Davidson, 2020) claiming that individuals with similar symptoms may have presented themselves to hospital as early as November. According to the report, by South China Morning Post (Ma, 2020), the first person who presented similar cases was a male patient of 55-year old from the province of Hubei. However, Chinese doctors only came to realize that they were dealing with a new and serious virus late December, when similar symptoms continued to increase every day, and mostly originating from Wuhan. According to the article in Lancet, the first patient, and whom they insist may be the first case, was reported on December 1, 2019, and whom did not have direct link with the Wuhan Seafood Market that has been associated with the origin of the virus. This finding interestingly matches with Ma (2020) who also argues that the November 2019 case was not from Wuhan. The story as to the origin of the virus has fueled much political and social divides and is expected to evolve as further efforts are poured into understanding this crisis.

Day 8—December 8, 2019

The number of new patients voluntarily presenting themselves to hospital continued to increase (Bryner, 2020). Hospitals report new one to five cases with similar symptoms on average each day. However, this being a new virus, some sources quoted December 8 as the first day where the first patient in the city of Wuhan sought medical help for pneumonia-like symptoms. At this time, the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC, 2020c) contended that many dimensions, which were known today, like the need for social distancing, human-to-human infections, lack of vaccine or cure, and many such issues, were unknown, and the precautionary measures taken then were routinely delivered. Also, during these early stages of the onset of the virus, there was no clear evidence of how many people were affected. For this reason, information from Chinese authorities (Wuhan City Health Committee, 2020) and those of the WHO (WHO, 2020a) stated that the December 8, 2019, marked the onset of the first 41 cases that were tested and which were later confirmed positive with COVID-19, then known as “2019-nCoV.”

Day 29—December 29, 2019

As hospitals continued to receive more patients with unknown “pneumonia-like symptoms,” fear of the outbreak is already spreading, especially among the social media (WeChat) use within China, more so Wuhan (Secon, 2020). Li et al. (2020) explained that during the period beginning December 1, 2019, the recurrence of the words “SARS” and “shortness of breath” in the social media started to increase, and by December 29, it had peaked. Meanwhile, in the hospitals, doctors were observed to concede that there might be a new virus of unknown etymology in Wuhan, presenting symptoms of acute respiratory syndrome. The reporting is affirmed by availability of the first four cases officially confirmed. All the four cases were linked to the Huanan (Southern China) Seafood Wholesale Market, which has been highly linked to have been the source of the virus. While only four cases had been pointed, by this date, Bryner (2020) reports that already, over 180 people in Wuhan had been infected, but since doctors had not earmarked them as suspected cases noting that there were no suspicion of this “unknown” disease. The 180 cases were only identified after doctors cross-verified records. The suspicion after reporting the four cases was t...

Table of contents

• Cover image
• Title page
• Table of Contents
• Copyright
• Foreword
• Contents
• Part 1. A Chronological Account Of the Pandemic: The First 150 Days
• Part 2. Data Technology
• Part 3. Political Economy
• Part 4. Conclusion
• Index