Category: China
Hong Kong: all passenger flights from UK banned to curb #coronavirus – Britain deemed “extremely high-risk”
Hong Kong will ban all passenger flights from the United Kingdom from Thursday (Jul 1) to curb the spread of the Delta variant of COVID-19, the government said on Monday. Britain will be specified as extremely high-risk, and people who have stayed in the country for more than two hours will be unable to board passenger flights bound for Hong Kong, it said.
It is the second time Hong Kong has barred arrivals from Britain after a ban that was in force from December 2020 until May.
The government said the ban was due to “the recent rebound of the epidemic situation in the UK and the widespread Delta variant virus strain there, coupled with a number of cases with L452R mutant virus strains detected by tests from people arriving from the UK”.
Preprint: Recovery of deleted deep sequencing data sheds more light on the early Wuhan SARS-CoV-2 epidemic #coronavirus
“Here I identify a data set containing SARS-CoV-2 sequences from early in the Wuhan epidemic that has been deleted from the NIH’s Sequence Read Archive. I recover the deleted files from the Google Cloud, and reconstruct partial sequences of 13 early epidemic viruses. Phylogenetic analysis of these sequences in the context of carefully annotated existing data suggests that the Huanan Seafood Market sequences that are the focus of the joint WHO-China report are not fully representative of the viruses in Wuhan early in the epidemic. Instead, the progenitor of known SARS-CoV-2 sequences likely contained three mutations relative to the market viruses that made it more similar to SARS-CoV-2’s bat coronavirus relatives.”
Image by Clker-Free-Vector-Images from Pixabay
China: 10-12% of Guangzhou #coronavirus patients are critically ill – far higher than Wuhan outbreak
Some 10-12 percent of the COVID-19 patients in the latest COVID-19 outbreak in Guangzhou are critically ill, Guan Xiangdong, a specialist in the Guangdong COVID-19 medical team, told media on Thursday. The proportion is higher than in the epidemic in Wuhan, and the following 20 regional clusters that took place across China, in which the proportion was usually 2-3 percent, 5-8 percent or “8-10 percent in a few areas,” Guan said to China Central Television (CCTV) on Thursday.
The relatively high proportion of severe and critically ill cases was probably caused by the highly pathogenic viral strains that spread in this wave of the epidemic in Guangzhou, Guan said.
China: 2,468 #coronavirus cases, 75 hospitalised in Guangdong after Delta B16172 variant outbreak
Image by Philippsaal from Pixabay
China: Thousands of wild animals for sale in Wuhan wet markets prior to the #coronavirus pandemic
Horrendous new report: “Here we document 47,381 individuals from 38 species, including 31 protected species sold between May 2017 and November 2019 in Wuhan’s markets. The wild animals on sale in Wuhan suffered poor welfare and hygiene conditions and we detail a range of other zoonotic infections they can potentially vector”
China: Zhengli/Daszak/Ecohealth – “Serological Evidence of Bat SARS-Related #Coronavirus Infection in Humans, China” 2018
Peter Daszak/Zheng-Li Shi/Ecohealth: “In this study, we performed serological surveillance on people who live in close proximity to caves where bats that carry diverse SARSr-CoVs roost. In October 2015, we collected serum samples from 218 residents in four villages in Jinning County, Yunnan province, China, located 1.1–6.0 km from two caves (Yanzi and Shitou). We conducted a virus neutralization test for the six positive samples targeting two SARSr-CoVs, WIV1 and WIV16. None of them were able to neutralize either virus. These sera also failed to react by Western blot with any of the recombinant RBD proteins from SARS-CoV or the three bat SARSr-CoVs Rp3, WIV1, and SHC014.”
Ning Wang, Shi-Yue Li, Xing-Lou Yang, Hui-Min Huang, Yu-Ji Zhang, Hua Guo, Chu-Ming Luo, Maureen Miller, Guangjian Zhu, Aleksei A. Chmura, Emily Hagan, Ji-Hua Zhou, Yun-Zhi Zhang, Lin-Fa Wang, Peter Daszak, Zheng-Li Shi
China: Zhengli & Daszak – Human-animal interactions and bat #coronavirus spillover potential among rural residents in Southern China
Zhengli & Daszak study, September 2019 – “We conducted a cross-sectional study in the districts of Yunnan, Guangxi, and Guangdong, China… Serological testing of serum samples from 1,497 local residents revealed that 9 individuals (0.6%) in four study sites were positive for bat coronaviruses, indicating exposure at some point in their life to bat-borne SARSr-CoVs (n=7, Yunnan), HKU10-CoV (n=2, Guangxi), or other coronaviruses that are phylogenetically closely related to these.
Zhengli Shi, Peter Daszak, Hongying Li, Emma Mendelsohn, Chen Zong, Wei Zhang, Emily Hagan, Ning Wang, Shiyue Li, Hong Yan, Huimin Huang, Guangjian Zhu, Noam Ross, Aleksei Chmura, Philip Terry, Mark Fielder, Maureen Miller
ScienceDirect.com: Human-animal interactions and bat coronavirus spillover potential among rural residents in Southern China
India: Shi Zhengli, October 2019 – Filovirus antibodies in humans and bats imply zoonotic spillover
Russia: WIV “did absolutely insane things in my opinion, for example, insertions into the genome”
Russia: WIV “did absolutely insane things in my opinion, for example, insertions into the genome”
“In China, scientists at the Wuhan Laboratory have been actively developing various variants of the coronavirus for more than 10 years. And they did this, supposedly not with the aim of creating disease-causing variants, but to study their pathogenicity. They did absolutely insane things, in my opinion, for example, insertions into the genome, which gave the virus the ability to infect human cells.”
В Китае ученые Уханьской лаборатории на протяжении более 10 лет активно занимались разработкой различных вариантов коронавируса. Причем они это делали, якобы не с целью создания болезнетворных вариантов, а для изучения их патогенности. Они делали совершенно безумные, на мой взгляд, вещи: к примеру, вставки в геном, которые придавали вирусу способность заражать клетки человека. Сейчас это все было проанализировано. Картина возможного создания нынешнего коронавируса потихоньку вырисовывается.
From an interview with Petr Chumakov, Professor, Corresponding Member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Engelhardt Institute of Molecular Biology.
Interview With Professor Petr Chumakov in Moskovsky Komsomolets (in Russian)
India: Shi Zhengli, October 2019 – Filovirus antibodies in humans and bats imply zoonotic spillover
Image by Михаил Иванович Лукин, пресс-служба РАН, CC BY 4.0, Link
India: Shi Zhengli, October 2019 – Filovirus antibodies in humans and bats imply zoonotic spillover
India, October 2019, Zhengli Shi et al: “We present evidence for prior exposure of bat harvesters and two resident fruit bat species to filovirus surface glycoproteins… Our results indicate circulation of several filoviruses in bats and the possibility for filovirus transmission from bats to humans.
Research Article: Filovirus-reactive antibodies in humans and bats in Northeast India imply zoonotic spillover
… Shi’s a busy lady…
China: 2,468 #coronavirus cases, 75 hospitalised in Guangdong after Delta B16172 variant outbreak
As of Sunday 30th May 2021, Guangdong had recorded a total of 2,468 cases with 1,035 of them imported. Currently, 75 people are in hospital. Guangdong province has also identified two imported confirmed cases, one from Cambodia to Guangzhou, and another from the United States to Foshan. Guangzhou has reported eight asymptomatic imported cases – from the United Arab Emirates, US, Chad, Amman, the Philippines, Cambodia and Papua New Guinea.
Parts of southern China are in lockdown to contain the Covid-19 outbreak. Guangzhou bears the brunt of latest cluster with 38 zones sealed to stop the spread as new infections continue to be identified.
Australia: B16172 #coronavirus variant spreading in the community via “fleeting contact”
Sars-Cov-2 #coronavirus for sale online in project financed by the European Commission
Wuhan Institute of Virology viruses for sale – Zika virus at just $500! Add them to your shopping trolley today if you are a “trusted partner”!
- Severe fever with thrombocytopenia syndrome virus ($2,000)
- Zika Virus ($500)
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Available from other vendors:
- SARS-CoV Frankfurt 1 RNA ($500)
- SARS-CoV-2 isolates including B.1.1.7, B.1.351 etc ($2000)
EVAg – European Virus Archive – Global
EVAg is an infrastructure project financed by the European Commission.
China: Government documents show first #coronavirus case was found November 17th 2019
The first case of someone in China suffering from Covid-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, can be traced back to November 17th [2019], according to government data seen by the South China Morning Post. According to the government data seen by the Post, a 55 year-old from Hubei province could have been the first person to have contracted Covid-19 on November 17. From that date onwards, one to five new cases were reported each day. By December 15, the total number of infections stood at 27 – the first double-digit daily rise was reported on December 17 – and by December 20, the total number of confirmed cases had reached 60.
South China Morning Post report on 13th March 2020
A Bayesian analysis concludes beyond a reasonable doubt that SARS-CoV-2 is not a natural zoonosis but instead is laboratory derived
“Based on this evidence, [bats] would have been hibernating at the time of the first human outbreak in the fall of 2019. Since this evidence is cumulative to the prior evidence from Dr. Shi that the bat host species for CoV-2 does not live in Hubei Province it will not be used to change the Bayesian analysis.”
Likelihood from prior state is unchanged following this evidence analysis: Zoonotic origin (0.2%) and laboratory origin (99.8%)
Research paper on Zenodo A Bayesian analysis concludes beyond a reasonable doubt that SARS-CoV-2 is not a natural zoonosis but instead is laboratory derived (Version 3). Quay MD PhD, Steven Carl. (2021, March 29).
China’s first mRNA #coronavirus vaccine ready for final stage trials overseas
China’s first domestically developed mRNA vaccine is ready to start its final stage trials overseas next month.The vaccine – which uses the same advanced revolutionary techniques as the drugs developed by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna – is at the end of phase 2 human trials and will start large-scale phase 3 trials next month, Ying Bo, founder and chief executive of Suzhou Abogen Biosciences, told China National Radio.
The vaccine, known as ARCoV, has been jointly developed by Abogen, the Academy of Military Science and Walvax Biotechnology.
China: Our vaccines “don’t have very high protection rates,” says the director of Chinese CCDC
China’s top disease control official says the effectiveness of Chinese vaccines is low and the government is considering mixing them to give them a boost. Chinese vaccines “don’t have very high protection rates,” said the director of the China Centers for Disease Control, Gao Fu, at a conference Saturday in the southwestern city of Chengdu.
Beijing has distributed hundreds of millions of doses in other countries while also trying to promote doubt about the effectiveness of Western vaccines.
“It’s now under formal consideration whether we should use different vaccines from different technical lines for the immunization process,” Gao said.
The effectiveness rate of a coronavirus vaccine from Sinovac, a Chinese developer, at preventing symptomatic infections has been found to be as low as 50.4% by researchers in Brazil. By comparison, the vaccine made by Pfizer has been found to be 97% effective.
Image by Willfried Wende from Pixabay