Southern California Physician Services

Coronavirus: What Every Medical Coder Needs to Know By Bruce Pegg In AAPC News February 26, 2020 1 Comment Share Print Post... Coronavirus: What Every Medical Coder Needs to Know On Dec. 31, 2019, as many of us here in the U.S. were celebrating New Year’s Eve, a pandemic quietly began in the Chinese province of Hubei. First identified in Wuhan, the provincial capital, coronavirus (more accurately known as COVID-19 or 2019-nCoV) has spread rapidly in the two ensuing months, resulting in infections, and even deaths, around the globe. What do we need to know about the virus, either as individuals or as members of the coding community? And what steps can we take to help prevent a pandemic? Here are the most current answers we have. What is COVID-19? According to the World Health Organization (WHO), COVID-19 is a coronavirus, one of a group of infectious diseases classified as zoonotic, meaning that it can be transmitted from animals to humans. Although it is a part of the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS-CoV) and Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS-CoV) family of viruses, the COVID-19 strain is regarded as novel, or new. How Widespread is the COVID-19 Virus? The latest World Health Organization (WHO) Situation Report (dated Feb. 25, 2020) reports 80,239 cases of COVID-19 have been confirmed worldwide since the beginning of the outbreak. Of those cases, 77,780 have been confirmed in China, resulting in 2,666 deaths. Elsewhere, the virus has been reported in 33 countries, with 34 deaths being recorded in the Republic of Korea (10), Japan (1), Philippines (1), Italy (6), France (1), and Iran (12). Three elderly Japanese passengers on the Diamond Princess cruise ship, which has been quarantined in the Japanese port of Yokohama, have also died from the virus, which infected 621 others on board. Here in the U.S., just 14 confirmed cases have been reported so far. Almost all the cases have been traced back to exposure in China, with just two occurring as the result of exposure to the COVID-19 virus within this country. To date, no deaths related to the virus have been reported on U.S. soil. UPDATE 3/6/2020

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