Covid 19 coronavirus: the cough that caused the blockade of South Australia

Hopefully, South Australia has caught its second wave of coronavirus just in time.

But the detection of that strain was due to the persistence of a young doctor at Lyell McEwin Hospital in Adelaide, who insisted on testing an elderly woman for the coronavirus after she went to the emergency room Friday night with a cough.

The woman, in her 80s, is the mother of a cleaner at the Peppers medi-hotel, who is believed to have contracted the coronavirus from a surface in the hotel.

South Australia had gone more than seven months without community transmission when the doctor realized it could be coronavirus.

The medical director, Professor Paul Kelly, praised the doctor yesterday.

“There was a young doctor at the hospital in North Adelaide who was absolutely essential in detecting that first case,” Kelly said.

“The relative who went to that hospital and went to the Emergency Department with something completely different, with no respiratory symptoms, one of the doctors heard that person cough and did the test and that’s how we know something is happening in South Australia very early.

“And they are getting ahead of themselves very soon, I’m sure they will.”

Dr Chris Moy, president of the South Australia branch of WADA, said it was basically due to luck that the state had found the case.

“Because of the conscience of one particular physician who insisted that a patient with minimal symptoms get tested,” Moy said.

“Really, to a certain extent, that can make a difference and it can mean we’ve caught it early and it hasn’t gotten to the Victorian level that it was happening at for weeks.

Moy said that “by the grace of God” the doctor “remained committed to that surveillance in a community that has not seen any cases for months and then closed this.”

The doctor’s insistence meant that South Australia had caught him quickly and could “control it like a fire rather than turning into a forest fire like it did in Victoria,” Moy said.

Public Health Director Professor Nicola Spurrier explained her “reason” behind the 14-day shutdown yesterday, admitting that the state’s coronavirus strain had an incubation period of around three days, causing it to spread rapidly. .

Epidemiologist and former World Health Organization employee Professor Adrian Esterman explained why the South Australian strain of the virus was particularly bad.

“It is dangerous because it is highly infectious,” Esterman told Today.

“This virus is what we call RNA viruses. All viruses are made of genetic material and can be DNA or RNA. Some viruses are RNA like HIV and influenza and they tend to mutate much more than DNA viruses.

“So the coronavirus is making small changes and every now and then they make a big change, so we have to make a big change.”

Esterman said that “quite possibly an existing strain that has struck funny circumstances that caused it to change its incubation period.”

The incubation period for the South Australian strain has been found to be less than three days, sometimes 24 hours, and the virus is generally incubated for about 14 days.

Esterman said the short incubation period meant that South Australia could get rid of the virus with its brief six-day lockdown.

“The idea is that this has a very short incubation period of, on average, 24 hours, which means that the maximum incubation period is three
days, “he said.

“So if we take two cycles, we have a chain from one infected person to another and the maximum for that is three days, and therefore two incubation periods is six days … in the usual situation, it is generally a incubation period of 14 days and the next cycle is 28 days “.