Kamchatka in the time of coronavirus -- 5 April is Day 1

Tanya called me a little early this morning, she had news.  Kamchatka has its first 2 documented coronavirus cases.  Although they were not on the 5 April 2020 Moscow Times map, already they are posted on the Wikipedia page covering the pandemic in Russia.

2 documented cases on Kamchatka throws us quickly into higher density due to low population!

5 April map from Moscow Times does not yet show cases on Kamchatka.

Tanya said she heard that the virus came to Kamchatka (via people!) from Vladivostok or Khabarovsk, that is, from other cities in the Far East. 

More than 85% of documented cases in Russia are in Moscow.  Tanya overhead someone on their phone today complaining angrily that a colleague had arrived back to Petropavlovsk yesterday from Moscow and came right away to their office.  This man yelled at the newly arrived guy, but to no avail.  No (self-)quarantine required for domestic travel, it seems.  Just as in the U.S., to date.  We all must take care and take responsibility!

Most of Russia is in full lockdown for over a week now, including Kamchatka. This past weekend I heard a car driving up and down the main road (there is only one) with an electric megaphone telling people to obey precautions and take care.

The Institute is closed, but you can (or you could) get a special paper to go into the building.  You must arrive between 8:30 and 10 AM, and they will take your temperature. The last day I went to the Institute, almost two weeks ago, they took my temperature (the forehead method).

So--Russia's first documented case was 31 January, but there was no growth/spreading for some time:

For this kind of reason, the site 91-DIVOC starts the calendar for countries according to "days since 100 cases":

From http://91-divoc.com/pages/covid-visualization/  5April 2020

To give even better perspective, and for comparison, 91-DIVOC has plotted the data per capita, again, starting each country off at the same statistical time, in this case, the first day with at least 1 case per million people:

In this plot (from http://91-divoc.com/pages/covid-visualization/), Russia was assigned a pea-green color, hard to see!  On 5 April, it had been 18 days since Russia documented at least 1 case per million people.  On 5 April, the U.S. is on day 29 and the U.S. is exactly at the per-capita point that Italy was on Italy's day 29. On 5 April 2020, Italy is on day 43.  So calendar/pandemic-wise, Russia is 11 days behind the U.S. and 25 days behind Italy.  

Kamchatka itself, the "oblast" [formal region] is better compared to a state in the U.S. -- a remote state, with not a very dense population, with most population concentrated in one city.  Alaska is a good general comparison, (but) with about twice as many people as Kamchatka. 

Kamchatka has not reached a point/day to appear on such a graph because it does not yet have 20 cases.  But with a total population of about 300,000, there need be only 4 cases for Kamchatka to appear on a per-capita graph of "at least 1 person per million population"

Today, 6 April 2020 GMT, who else has two cases?  The "Caribbean Netherlands" and the Falkland (Malvinas) Islands.

This morning after the news, I felt something like butterflies in my stomach. Though likely the virus has been here for some time, now we have facts -- data, and thus I have joined the "real world" of coronavirus.

Other than cross-country skiing with Tanya, I have not gone anywhere but once to the grocery and once to a bread shop, in about two weeks.  I see that people are starting to wear masks while out and about.  The shop people all wear masks. I will wear gloves and a mask when I shop.





None of this represents the real anxiety and anguish around the world.  My heart goes out to you.