The Hill reports:

Patients in 18 states have tested positive or are presumptively positive for the spreading coronavirus as public health officials race to get ahead of the growing worldwide epidemic.

Officials in Nevada, New Jersey, Tennessee and Texas said they had identified new cases in the last 24 hours, adding to an outbreak that has infected at least 162 people nationwide.

There are worrying signs that the number of cases is poised to grow. [Continue reading…]

Politico reports:

President Donald Trump on Wednesday night spun a web of theories minimizing the coronavirus’ threat to Americans, accusing the World Health Organization of dispensing inaccurate facts about the outbreak and suggesting that those with the disease could be safe going to work.

During expansive remarks on Fox News host Sean Hannity’s program, the president continued to break with public health officials’ more dire messaging regarding the international crisis and forcefully contradicted the WHO, which earlier in the week pegged the global mortality rate for the coronavirus at 3.4 percent.

“Well, I think the 3.4 percent is really a false number. Now, and this is just my hunch, and — but based on a lot of conversations with a lot of people that do this. Because a lot people will have this and it’s very mild. They’ll get better very rapidly. They don’t even see a doctor. They don’t even call a doctor,” Trump said. [Continue reading…]

The Wall Street Journal reports:

Doctors in China say conditions have improved significantly since the early days of the outbreak. Roughly 42,000 medical staff from around the country have descended upon Wuhan and the surrounding Hubei province to provide relief. That includes around 4,000 military doctors in one of China’s largest-ever mobilizations of military medical resources.

Wuhan has 53,000 beds in hospitals and temporary medical and quarantine facilities for treating patients with the coronavirus, with a goal of adding 17,000 more, according to an official media briefing on Feb. 20. Crowds and lines at fever wards have subsided as the rate of infections has slowed. Yet around 100 new cases are still emerging in Hubei province every day. An exhibit hall-turned-hospital that Zhongnan Hospital oversees had just one CT scanning machine during a recent tour by officials, according to state media.

Liu Fan, a 59-year-old nurse at Wuhan Wuchang Hospital, one of the main coronavirus crisis centers in Wuhan, died from the virus even though she wasn’t working in a fever ward, according to a Weibo post by the hospital. Her parents died from the virus a few days before her, and her brother, a local film director, died the same day she did, according to Chinese media.

In the early days of the outbreak, Wuchang Hospital’s 51-year-old director, a neurosurgeon named Liu Zhiming, had warned colleagues about working too hard and burning out. He worried their immunities would decline.

On Jan. 24, a chest scan showed he had a serious infection himself; he later tested positive for the virus. As Dr. Liu lay in intensive care, he kept fielding calls and asking about patients, while colleagues grew more anxious.

“I’m worried I can’t do anything,” Dr. Liu texted them, according to an account in official Chinese media. In another message, he said that “if it were any other illness, I would persevere and fight with everyone while sick.”

His wife, Cai Liping, a head nurse at another hospital, implored Dr. Liu to let her visit, but he kept saying no, according to official Chinese media. She asked him to call her every day at 2 p.m. to reassure her he was OK. She reminded him to breathe oxygen and not be afraid.

On Feb. 18, Dr. Liu died. A colleague sobbed while telling the media: “We really wanted to give him a farewell, but we had so much work to do.”

Many of the heaviest burdens are falling on younger doctors and nurses, who are seen as better suited for high-risk situations, because of their stronger immune systems.

One doctor, Peng Yinhua, died at just 29 years old, according to state media. He was working in a respiratory and critical care unit, and had postponed his wedding celebration to stay on the job. Li Wenliang, the Chinese ophthalmologist turned folk hero who died after warning about the dangers of the virus, was in his early 30s. Both doctors’ wives were pregnant. [Continue reading…]