Posted on 01/28/2020 7:48:45 AM PST by Zhang Fei
BERLIN (AP) — A man confirmed as Germany’s first case of the new virus that has emerged in central China is believed to have been infected by a Chinese colleague who visited his workplace, authorities said Tuesday.
The 33-year-old from the Starnberg area south of Munich is in isolation at a Munich hospital as a precaution, officials in Bavaria said. However, they stressed that his condition is good.
The man took part last Tuesday in a training session at his workplace that also included an employee of the same company visiting from China, said Andreas Zapf, the head of Bavaria’s office for health and food safety.
The woman, who hadn’t previously shown any symptoms, flew home on Thursday and went to a doctor after feeling ill on the flight, Zapf said. She then tested positive for the new virus. The woman lives in Shanghai, but had been visited a few days earlier by her parents, who come from the worst-affected Wuhan area.
(Excerpt) Read more at apnews.com ...
The woman, who hadn’t previously shown any symptoms, flew home on Thursday and went to a doctor after feeling ill on the flight, Zapf said. She then tested positive for the new virus. The woman lives in Shanghai, but had been visited a few days earlier by her parents, who come from the worst-affected Wuhan area.
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First off, I call bull.
I’m gonna bet she was symptomatic before she got on the plane, but wanted to ‘escape’ to Germany because she was afraid to stay in Shanghai.
Second, everyone on that plane should be (at least self imposed) quarantined. If she was starting to show symptoms, she was probably already contagious.
With the incubation period of up to 2 weeks, we’ll soon see how widespread this is.
The woman in question returned to China soon after the suspected infection occurred. It’s in your cut/paste.
Why would she return to Shanghai if she wanted to escape to Germany?
“The man took part last Tuesday in a training session at his workplace that also included an employee of the same company visiting from China...”
Yeah, that’s one training session I’d be missing for.
A tough question some US companies are facing is what to do with employees who have recently traveled in China, or who are there now, and about to return.
It would seem within the employer’s rights to ask the employees to stay home. That’s fine if you can work remotely. A bit more delicate if you have to be on-site to do your work.
If employers don’t have them stay home, they can’t be surprised when other employees don’t come to work.
The other question is what about dorms on college campuses. Talk about ‘shared risk’ environments.
The dorms are potential spreading havens.
But fortunately, this doesn’t seem to be hitting young adults very hard.
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