I cannot produce a link for this (sorry) but apparently one of the major Thai banks - Kasikorn (K-Bank) - has suspended all in-bank and remote kiosk foreign currency exchange due to virus concerns.

Edit: Source is expat friends who are in Thailand.

I was in a K-Bank branch on Friday, not for forex, but it was otherwise operating quite normally. All the exchange booths around Bangkok seems to be functioning as normal; certainly Superrich is ( although I was the only customer in the head office late last week)
I think these concerns stem from the report that the virus can stay �alive� on bank notes for a period of days; possibly, give higher levels of xenophobia than usual in Thailand at the moment, there could be some suspicion of �dirty� foreign money.
Perhaps people will start ironing their cash ( although I�m not sure the polymer notes wouldn�t melt...).

From the above mentioned Ars article's comment - the same situation in Italy now:
https://arstechnica.com/science/2020...&post=38703583

Here is a first-hand report from someone who has it and travelled all over: https://www.intermusica.co.uk/news/4410 - some of the background here: https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/eva-...d-19-case.html

Even with the most experienced traveller in a place where people are most aware of Covid-19 this happened. That is why we all have to be careful.

Agree. The latest news from Vietnam underscores the point: 10 new cases confirmed, all having flown London to Ho Chi Minh on the same Vietnam Airlines flight.

VGP News | One more tested positive for COVID-19, total rises to 30 - One more tested positive for COVID-19, total rises to 30
https://www.straitstimes.com/asia/se...hanoi-triggers

Is this the first confirmed in-flight outbreak?

minor correction, I believe it was London to H� Nội

It's been a while since I've been back to this thread and a lot of changes have happened. We now seem to be in a situation where several countries have established community spread so the nature of prevention/mitigation processes is evolving and I think we are gradually seeing some more awareness of the gravity of COVID-19 both by policy makers and the general public which is a good thing but there is still much more to be done.

I just wanted to highlight a few issues to consider regarding mortality rates as unfortunately we are heading in the direction where this is going to become increasingly important over the coming weeks/months. The most important point to highlight is that mortality rates can and will change. There is a wide degree of uncertainty in mortality rates because they depend on a number of factors. These can be broadly categorised into factors related to the virus itself (i.e. pathogenicity, genetic shifts which may/may not occur during this pandemic), host related factors (e.g. older individuals/multiple medical comorbidities/immunological status) and healthcare infrastructure related factors (i.e. availability of acute/high dependency/ITU hospital beds).

Of all of these factors it is the last one (i.e. healthcare infrastructure) which will could have the greatest degree of impact and where we have the greatest degree of control with respect to mitigation factors. For the sake of argument (i.e. these figures are not necessarily accurate), let's say the current mortality rate of the virus is 1% but that 10% of people develop serious symptoms which require intensive care in hospital. Once hospital beds are full/overwhelmed, a proportion of those in the serious symptoms category who would have survived had they had access to intensive medical care will die. This will result in a rise in mortality rates.

The other issue related to the above is non-COVID-19 related mortality. All medical interventions have an opportunity cost. For every person with COVID-19 in ITU, there is one less bed available to treat someone with cardiac failure following a heart attack, or cardiorespiratory support following major trauma. This means that we will have to consider not only the mortality attributed to the virus but also the mortality attributed to lack of access to care for people with other medical conditions.

The task at hand is to manage the flow of patients into and out of high dependency medical care as best as we can. The best way to do this is to slow down the rate of new infections through personal/societal infection control approaches. Just in terms of casual observation I feel like we are very far behind in the US and UK (the two countries I have been in since the pandemic started). People are still touching their faces, coughing/sneezing everywhere, not practising social distancing measures effectively. I've seen people wearing masks doing bizarre things like taking them off to touch rub their nose/touch their face etc. I can't tell if people have changed their hand washing habits but I suspect not. All those alcohol gel bottles everyone have been buying must be sitting under the kitchen sink because I have yet to see anyone in public using alcohol gel (which is where you should be using it if you don't have access to a sink to wash your hands).

We need to do a lot better to educate people on basic hygiene measures and social distancing because this is what will have the greatest impact. I really don't know how we can do this better but people need to have constant reminders not to touch their faces, not to cough/sneeze everywhere, to wash their hands. Maybe we should blast these messages out every couple of minutes on the radio/TV/public transport? I don't know but some of the behaviours I am observing just make me cringe and make me despair!

That would just kill the airlines.

Good points, I think people in the US and Europe, especially in areas where there is limited or no local transmission, they are still acting like this is not affecting them, it is somewhere else, it is not yet here, or it is not that serious. I get the sense there is some degree of shame, reluctance, or perceived overaction or just being seeing as a weirdo, anxious, or a buzzkill in engaging in any public behaviors of hand sanitizing or social distancing. I personally have also not witnessed anyone using hand sanitizers at work, even though they are publicly available everywhere, I feel I am the only one. I think we are lacking modeling, or people not taking this seriously, or any concentrated efforts at behavioral changes. Behavioral changes are often hard anyway, and take deliberate effort, but I feel we are even lacking initial motivation and buy-in here, which are even more primary problems.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kas0...ature=youtu.be

General primer on exponential growth specific to COVID-19

Cruise ships - India's way to deal with them

India turns away cruise ship with 1,400 people

Indian authorities in the port city of Mangalore have turned away a cruise ship with 1,400 passengers that was due to dock there, an official confirmed to the BBC.
The country's shipping ministry has issued an advisory that says no cruise ships from foreign countries can dock anywhere in India, as part of coronavirus preventive measures.

https://www.bbc.com/news/live/world-51796781

CAG airport.
on arrival, mandatory temperature checks for all passengers, medical personnel in bright overalls, masks and safety goggles, passport control officers in uniform, no specific equipment.
Car rental desks - not a single employee had a mask.
On departure, checkin agents without masks, but all security and airside personnel seemed to wear one

I flew CDG-LHR-JFK yesterday. The only few people I observed wearing masks were Asian. Most of them in the CX lounge at CDG. None of the security or border agents wore masks. Apart from CDG and LHR missing at least half of the normal load of travelers, it was business as usual.

This interactive graphic has a link on each patient leading to the article from the day they were admitted.

https://infographics.channelnewsasia...-clusters.html

I noticed that one of the Bangladeshi construction workers is 36 and has been in the hospital since Feb 8 or 9.

There are a few others hospitalized as long but they are older.