Reported and Edited by Linda Moulton Howe
“Now that the COVID-19 coronavirus has a foothold in so many countries, the threat of a pandemic has become very real.”
— Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director, World Health Organization, March 9, 2020
“The future depends on us and everyone must do their part. There won’t be just a red zone for Lombardy. There will be Italy.”
— Gieuseppe Conte, Italy’s Prime Minister, March 9, 2020Click for report.
“We are facing an emergency, a national emergency.”
— Prime Minister Giuseppte Conte in a 2 AM Sunday news press conference, March 8, 2020
“The head of the Italian Lombardy region’s intensive care crisis unit says the health system is on the brink of collapse, intensive care being set up in hallways. By March 26, they predict ~ 18,000 COVID-19 cases in Lombardy, of which ~ 3,000 will need intensive care.”
— Twitter feed from Rachel Donadio, Lombardy Province, Italy, March 8, 2020
“Well, it’s arrived. I also have the coronavirus.”
— Rome-based leader of Italy’s Democratic Party and president of the Lazio region, Nicola Zingarette, announced on Facebook, Saturday, March 7, 2020
“It’s a false hope to say, yes, that COVID-19 will disappear like the flu (with summer). We have to assume that the virus will continue to have the capacity to spread.”
— Mike Ryan, M. D., Executive Director, World Health Organization Health Emergencies Program, Geneva, Switzerland, March 6, 2020Click for report.
“England’s first COVID-19 death was an older woman believed to have contracted the virus in the U.K.,” another example of community spread to someone who had not been to China, Italy or other infected countries.
“Indian authorities on Tuesday, March 3, 2020, ordered India’s vast pharmaceutical industry to stop exporting 26 drugs and drug ingredients, most of them antibiotics, without explicit government permission. The reason: shortage of Chinese drug ingredients because of the COVID-19 pandemic.”
— The New York Times, “With Suppliers in China Hobbled, India Curbs Exports of Vital Drugs,” March 4, 2020Click for report.
“The coronavirus outbreak in northern Italy has so overwhelmed the public health system that officials are taking extraordinary measures to care for the sick. … Alarmingly, 10% of Lombardy’s doctors and nurses cannot work because they tested positive for the virus and are in quarantine.”
— Giulio Gallera, Top Health Official, Lombardy in northern Italy, March 2, 2020Click for report.
“If the virus has been spreading undetected in Washington state since mid-January 2020, that could mean that anywhere from 150 to 1,500 people may have it, with some 300 to 500 people the most likely range. Many of those people would now be in the early stages of incubating the virus and might not yet be contagious.”
— Mike Famulare, M. D., Principal Research Scientist, Inst. for Disease Modeling, Bellevue, Washington, March 1, 2020
“The COVID-19 coronavirus will ultimately not be containable and within a year will infect somewhere between 40 – 70% of humanity,” but only about 20% of human population will be seriously ill.
— Marc Lipsitch, Ph.D., Epidemiologist, Harvard University
“In the past week, COVID-19 has started behaving a lot like the once-in-a-century pathogen we’ve been worried about. I hope it’s not that bad, but we should assume it will be until we know otherwise.”
— Bill Gates, Founder of Microsoft and Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, writing in The New England Journal of Medicine, February 28, 2020Click for report.
“It is a sad day in our state as we learn that a Washingtonian has died from COVID-19. Our hearts go out to his family and friends. We will continue to work toward a day where no one dies from this virus.”
— Jay Inslee, Governor of Washington, February 29, 2020 Click for report.
“We have now increased our assessment of the risk of spread and the risk of impact of COVID-19 to very high at a global level.”
— Director-General of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Geneva, Switzerland, February 28, 2020
“The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has confirmed on February 26, 2020, that an infection with the virus that causes COVID-19 in California in a person who reportedly did not have relevant travel history or exposure to another known patient with COVID-19. At this time, the patient’s exposure (how infected) is unknown.”
— CDC Newsroom, Atlanta, Georgia, February 26, 2020Click for report.
“It’s not so much a question of — if this will happen in this country anymore (U.S.) — but a question of WHEN this will happen. We are asking the American public to prepare for the expectation that this (COVID-19) might be bad.”
— Nancy Messonnier, M. D., Director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, Centers for Disease and Prevention, Atlanta, Georgia
“Expelling out journalists exposes once again the China government’s issue that led to SARS and now the coronavirus, namely censorship. It can have deadly consequences. Had China permitted its own and foreign journalists and medical personnel to speak and investigate freely, Chinese officials and other nations would have been far better prepared to address the COVID-19 challenge. … All nations, including Iran, should tell the truth about the coronavirus and cooperate with international aid organizations.”
— Mike Pompeo, U. S. Secretary of State, State Dept. News Conference, Washington, D. C., February 25, 2020
“A pandemic is when you have an infectious disease that is consistently in sustained transmission from person to person through a wide range of regions and countries around the globe.”
— Dr. Anthony Fauci, Director, National Inst. of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, Feb. 23, 2020
Apple’s supply of smart phones “would be hurt because production was slowed by the outbreaks and demand for its products was being hurt in China by the huge lock downs of so many people.”
— Apple caution statement about impact of the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic on its financial outlook, February 17, 2020