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Victoria Craw
Three children who are reportedly sick with COVID-19 have been taken from Sydney’s Hilton hotel and rushed to hospital.
Pictures from Tuesday evening around 10pm show the three children taken in ambulances from the hotel by emergency service workers in protective equipment. Their parents and siblings also got into waiting cars.
A police source told the Mail Online the children were bound for Royal Prince Alfred hospital for coronavirus treatment.
The Hilton is one of the hotels housing hundreds of Australians that have been forced to quarantine for 14 days after arriving home from overseas.
There is little concrete data on how COVID-19 affects children however it’s thought they are less susceptible to the disease or suffer a milder version. In Australia there have been less than 100 cases involving children aged 0-9 years old.
Victoria Craw
A London-based Professor of Intensive Care at University College Hospital has given a graphic description of what happens to those who enter the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) with COVID-19.
Speaking to Leigh Sales on 7:30, Prof Hugh Montgomery said those who require ICU on day 10-12 of the infection will get “progressively short of oxygen and suffer from a “very profound drive” to breathe.
“Sometimes those patients are aware of that air hunger and breathlessness and sometimes they’re just not and we see them blue and panting and they are unaware that they are even unwell at all,” he said.
Of those people admitted to the ICU some will need a “little supplemental oxygen” and be able to recover, while others will need tight-fitting oxygen masks or intubation and a ventilator – where a machine essentially takes over breathing.
“This is being presented like bad flu and it really isn’t. This is as different from flu as Ebola is from an ingrown toenail. It’s a very, very different disease,” he said.
Prof Montgomery said COVID-19 is unlike any other virus and appears to be a “blood and blood vessel disorder” that affects the lungs, with “off the scale” levels of clotting in the blood.
While he could not speak for other departments, he said roughly 50 per cent of those admitted to intensive care at his hospital would survive.
UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson is in intensive care at a different London hospital and has received oxygen but is said to be conscious in a stable condition.
Victoria Craw
Prince Andrew’s sexual abuse accuser Virginia Giuffre is being tested for coronavirus after suffering from trouble breathing, fever and a cough.
She tweeted a picture from a hospital bed and said she was praying she didn’t have the disease.
Ms Giuffre, who lives in Cairns with her husband and three children, made global headlines last year when she took part in a bombshell interview outlining her accusations against Prince Andrew.
She alleges she was trafficked by Jeffrey Epstein and made to have sex with the Prince three times when she was 17 years old – in London, New York and the Caribbean.
Prince Andrew denies the claims, however he was forced to step back from royal duties due the scandal the allegations created.
Victoria Craw
Thirteen wealthy local government areas across New South Wales will have testing for coronavirus ramped up amid a number of community transmission cases.
Waverley, Woollahra, Dee Why, Manly, Ryde, Macquarie Park, Broken Hill, Lake Macquarie, Manning, Nowra and South Nowra, Byron and Port Macquarie are all in line to have increased testing, The Daily Telegraph reports.
A NSW Health spokesman said the decision has been based on “areas which may be at elevated risk of community transmission.”
“We are encouraging people in these areas who have symptoms including fever and/or flu-like symptoms such as cough, sore throat or shortness of breath to be tested.”
The areas have shown cases of community transmission where the source of the disease is unknown – such as an oveseas traveller or cruise ship passenger.
Australian health authorities are concerned by the spread of such cases as it suggests there are people in the community who are unaware they have the disease and are passing it on.
