Originally Posted by
Drc40
The biggest news is the testing revelation so we get a much better picture of the overall impact.
The only revelation related to testing is that China has decided to accept "clinical diagnosis" -- basically assessment of symptoms plus radiological findings from chest scans -- as confirming the disease for practical purposes under current conditions. That decision was made because they can't come close to keeping up with RT-PCR testing.
This practice is almost certainly correctly identifying most of the many new cases it's adding to the total, but it is also undoubtedly erroneously including other viral respiratory infections, since symptoms and radiological findings are more or less identical for the various viral infections.
Edit: Also, of course, clinical diagnosis won't find any asymptomatic carriers. But few of those individuals are probably being found in Hubei, anyway, given the size of the outbreak and the fact that they can't keep up with nucleic acid testing even for already-ill patients.
By the way, since this is PPRuNe, does anyone have a summary of overall flight cancellations at this point?