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COVID-19 IN CANADA

• Canadians travelling abroad should consider coming home immediately, Global Affairs said on Saturday. The statement marks an escalation of the government’s earlier advisories, which warned against non-essential international travel. Travel restrictions are becoming tighter as countries move to stem the spread of the coronavirus.
• On Friday, Ontario followed the lead of Quebec, B.C. and Alberta in restricting public gatherings of more than 250 people to slow the virus down. Quebec also closed all schools, universities and daycares for two weeks, going a step further than Ontario, which extended its March Break holiday by two weeks from March 14 to April 5.
• Some front-line physicians have reported difficulty getting patients tested because of inconsistent information about who qualifies. For weeks, public health officials weighed the need to test against a list of affected countries, but since the Public Health Agency of Canada widened the criteria on Wednesday, some doctors are worried the change is not being communicated consistently.

COVID-19 AROUND THE WORLD

• On Saturday, Spain’s government was set to announce tight restrictions on movement and closures of restaurants and other establishments in the nation of 46 million people as part of a two-week state of emergency to fight the sharp rise in coronavirus infections.
• COVID-19 fears brought professional sports to a halt across North America on Thursday as the National Hockey League, Major League Soccer and Major League Baseball all suspended or delayed their regular seasons, following the lead of the National Basketball Association on Wednesday. Here’s a primer on what experts recommend for recreational sports events whose organizers may be considering cancellations.
• From Washington to Europe, President Donald Trump is under mounting criticism for allowing the United States to fall behind on national COVID-19 testing while introducing a drastic European travel ban that public-health experts said would be ineffective in stopping the virus. Mr. Trump’s ban, announced Wednesday, triggered the largest single-day drop in markets since 1987′s Black Monday crash.
• Governments and central banks, including Canada’s, have been escalating measures this week to limit the economic pain of the coronavirus, from very broad stimulus measures in the United States and Australia to targeted relief for small- and medium-sized business in South Korea. Here’s the latest on what various countries have proposed or enacted so far.

WHAT COVID-19 MEANS FOR YOU

• Are you feeling unwell? If you’ve got symptoms associated with COVID-19 (dry cough, fever and aches), health officials say you should self-isolate and call your doctor or health authority. Here’s the contact information and other expert advice that can help, a primer on what seniors can do to stay safe and tips for parents about how to care for sick or quarantined children.
• Are you prepared? If you’re getting ready for a self-quarantine situation, here are pointers from dietitian Leslie Beck about good foods to buy, and a primer on what cleaning products and methods are most likely to remove the virus from contaminated surfaces. Whether you’re sick or not, frequent hand-washing with soap or hand sanitizer is definitely a good idea.
• Are you travelling? Provincial and federal governments’ advice about international travel is changing quickly, but increasingly, many are urging Canadians to stay home. Here’s what health professionals recommend about how to weigh travel risks, and a guide to the safety measures that some airports, hotels and tour companies are offering. If you do cancel, be aware that some companies have revised their cancellation insurance policies to exclude the coronavirus, which they say is no longer an unforeseeable risk.

What we know so far about the disease

Symptoms and mortality: The new illness that emerged last December in China – officially called COVID-19, previously known as 2019-nCoV – is caused by a coronavirus called SARS-CoV-2. Corona means “crown” or “halo” in Latin, describing the viruses’ typical shape when seen under an electron microscope. The common cold is a type of coronaviral illness, but it tends to cause nasal congestion, which COVID-19 does not. COVID-19′s symptoms (dry coughing, fever and muscle pain) resemble more serious and dangerous coronaviruses, like SARS and MERS, but initially they can also resemble flu, which is caused by a different virus type. But COVID-19 is a far greater threat than the flu because of its higher mortality rate: About 3.4 per cent by recent estimates, which is lower than SARS (10 per cent) but much higher than seasonal influenza (0.1 per cent).

HOW DOES CORONAVIRUS INFECT A PERSON?

Human coronaviruses most commonly spread from an infected person to others through:

The air by coughing and sneezing

Close personal contact, such as touching or shaking hands

Touching the eyes, nose or mouth after touching an infected surface

Rarely, fecal

contamination

COMMON SIGNS OF INFECTION

Headache

In more severe cases, infection can cause pneumonia, severe acute respiratory syndrome, kidney failure and even death

Dry cough

Fever

SOME FACTS ABOUT THE VIRUS

Belongs to large family of viruses that cause illnesses ranging from common cold to more severe diseases such as MERS and SARS

Coronaviruses are zoonotic, meaning they are transmitted between animals and people

There are no specific treatments for coronaviruses, but symptoms can be treated

MURAT YÜKSELIR / THE GLOBE AND MAIL, SOURCE: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Health Canada, WHO

Transmission: Though SARS had a higher mortality rate than COVID-19, it infected and killed far fewer people (8,098 infections and 774 deaths worldwide, according to the U.S. CDC’s estimates). One possible reason for this is that unlike SARS, whose carriers generally knew they were sick, the new coronavirus may be transmissible before symptoms develop, according to one non-peer-reviewed analysis by Canadian and international scientists. On average, it takes about five days for people infected with COVID-19 to show symptoms, according to a U.S.-based team’s estimates published in the Annals of Internal Medicine. SARS’s incubation period was much longer, about 10 days.

Testing: Health officials in Canada and other countries have a test to make sure whether a patient has COVID-19 or some other illness. Depending on where you live in Canada, these may be available either at dedicated clinics or in at-home visits from health officials. If you start showing the symptoms of COVID-19, contact your local health authority or family doctor and do as they advise. Check The Globe and Mail’s guide compiling health officials’ advice for people who are travelling or have questions about the virus.

Where has it spread?

Most of Canada’s COVID-19 cases are in B.C., Ontario and Alberta, with some in Quebec, Manitoba and New Brunswick. The first report of community spread came on March 5, when B.C. health officials announced the diagnosis of a woman in her 50s who hadn’t travelled abroad or had contact with any other known coronavirus patients. That case was later traced to an outbreak at a long-term care facility for seniors in North Vancouver, where Canada’s first coronavirus casualty, an elderly man, died on March 8. Ontario also saw community spread for the first time after an international mining conference in Toronto.

Dozens more Canadians have fallen sick overseas, including those who were on board the Diamond Princess cruise ship off the Japanese coast, which was put under a quarantine in February that only made the spread of the disease worse. Canadians infected aboard the ship remained in Japan for treatment, while those who were cleared were flown back to Canada and quarantined at the Nav Centre in Cornwall, Ont. Another airlift was organized for passengers on the Grand Princess cruise ship, which was barred from docking in California for nearly a week in March.