Covid-19 in China

[Randy W]

This is what happens in China when a case or two are discovered in your town. This is in Nanning, about 100 miles to the west of us. Notice that they aren't doing a very good job of social distancing - if any more cases are discovered, they will need to do more rounds of testing.

 

[Randy W]

from the Sixth Tone

‘Superspreader’ Infected Over 100 in Jilin, Authorities Say
Recent coronavirus outbreaks in northern and northeastern China have raised concerns over asymptomatic patients, as the country’s peak holiday travel season draws near.

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A salesperson who traveled to China’s northeastern Jilin province is said to have infected more than 100 people with the coronavirus, raising concerns about its transmission via asymptomatic carriers.

The man had attended four health-related marketing events in multiple cities in Jilin, infecting at least 102 people, the provincial health commission said Sunday. The 45-year-old asymptomatic “superspreader” had traveled from the neighboring Heilongjiang province, which last week declared a state of emergency following a spike in COVID-19 cases.

 

 

[Martin B]

16 hours ago, Randy W said:

This is what happens in China when a case or two are discovered in your town. This is in Nanning, about 100 miles to the west of us. Notice that they aren't doing a very good job of social distancing - if any more cases are discovered, they will need to do more rounds of testing.

 

 

My wife's family is preparing for another potential lockdown - it seems inevitable at this point according to them since vaccine distribution still hasn't ramped up, and there are questions about the efficacy of the Chinese vaccines. China did a great job in the second half of last year, but it's just so hard to completely eliminate the virus with a non-stop stream of returning nationals, and the fact that the virus (possibly?) can survive on things like frozen food. At some point something is going to slip through the cracks. 

Regarding the social distancing, it's interesting, but it seems like the risk of transmission outdoors is fairly low, especially given everyone is wearing a mask and relatively calm. In the US last year May/June there were protests where the streets were absolutely packed with people shouting and no masks. There was no subsequent spike in cases or deaths according to researchers. 

Hopefully Gweilo's got his beer cool filled to the brim in case they need to lock down. 🤣

[Randy W]

from the Sixth Tone on Facebook

https://www.facebook.com/1570821646570023/posts/2861100910875417/

 

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China’s National Health Commission announced Wednesday that people traveling over the Lunar New Year holiday in February will need to show a negative coronavirus test issued up to seven days before their departure.

 

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Even diminished by ongoing COVID-19 outbreaks in northern and northeastern China, the world’s largest human migration is expected to put great pressure on the hospitals administering tests and the laboratories processing them. National Health Commission official Wang Bin described the situation as a “race against time,” and urged testing companies to return results within 12 hours of receiving samples.

Some would-be travelers are already starting to worry about whether the just-announced policy could lead to overcrowding at hospitals.

 

 

Edited January 20, 2021 by Randy W (see edit history)

[Randy W]

Hong Kong lockdowns

 

[Randy W]

from China Daily on Facebook

https://www.facebook.com/chinadaily/posts/10159185226861291

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Medical workers from Henan province and Tianjin municipality to aid the virus-hit city of Shijiazhuang, Hebei province, have finished their tasks and left for home on Sunday. #COVID_19

[Randy W]

from the SCMP on Facebook

https://www.facebook.com/scmp/videos/3780579888700253/

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China confirmed 124 new Covid-19 cases on January 24. As infections 
climb, the nation has rushed to build more quarantine sites. 

[Randy W]

from the SCMP on Facebook

https://www.facebook.com/355665009819/videos/456704908837663/

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Hong Kong ends second lockdown in Yau Ma Tei, finds one Covid-19 case

Hong Kong's second Covid-19 lockdown has ended, with one new case found after mandatory testing.

 

[Randy W]

An interesting read from the Sixth Tone about the early days of the coronavirus epidemic in Hubei

Dispatches From Hubei: Two Weeks Between Life and Death
A Hubei resident recounts his wife’s final days, and his battle to save her.

The following is Chen Yong’s story, as told to Sixth Tone’s sister publication, The Paper, and edited for brevity and clarity.

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On Jan. 7, my wife went to a wet market to buy a fish head, chicken, and some vegetables to make hot pot. We all had dinner together and her appetite was good; she ate plenty.

The next day was our daughter’s last day of school before the Lunar New Year holiday. My wife said she wasn’t feeling well, and asked me to pick our daughter up. On the 9th, the two of them spent all day at home. Around noon, my wife messaged me and said she had a cold. She asked me to pick up some cold medication on my way home from work, as well as a pregnancy test.

I got off work a little after 5 p.m., and came home with the medicine and the test. A few hours later, at around 6 or 7 o’clock, she told me she was pregnant. I was happy. I made dinner that night: fried pork liver, pickled vegetables, and some greens. She had a big bowl of rice, but seemed a little off. Afterward, I went to wash the dishes and she returned to our room to sleep. I figured she had a cold and just needed some rest, and I soon followed her to bed.

But at about 3 a.m., she suddenly shook me awake and told me she didn’t feel well. Her head and throat hurt, and she had a fever of 38 degrees Celsius. I quickly took her to Huanggang Hospital of TCM — one of the city’s top-rated medical institutions. There was no one to watch our daughter, so we took her with us rather than leave her at home alone.

 

 

[Randy W]

. . . and back to the present, from the Washington Post

China rolls out anal swab coronavirus test, saying it’s more accurate than throat method

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Months-long lockdowns. Entire city populations herded through the streets for mandatory testing. The people of China could be forgiven for thinking they had seen it all during the coronavirus pandemic.

But now they face a new indignity: the addition of anal swabs — yes, you read that right — to the testing regimen for those in quarantine.

 . . .

China is seeking to vaccinate 50 million people before the holiday, but that’s less than 4 percent of its population, far too low a rate to prevent mass transmission.

Officials have tightened restrictions in recent weeks, with tens of millions of people returned to lockdown in areas with isolated outbreaks. As before, travelers arriving from overseas go straight into two weeks of hotel quarantine — but now a week of home quarantine has been added, as well as a week of daily reports to health officials.

 . . .

China is seeking to vaccinate 50 million people before the holiday, but that’s less than 4 percent of its population, far too low a rate to prevent mass transmission.

Officials have tightened restrictions in recent weeks, with tens of millions of people returned to lockdown in areas with isolated outbreaks. As before, travelers arriving from overseas go straight into two weeks of hotel quarantine — but now a week of home quarantine has been added, as well as a week of daily reports to health officials.

 . . .

China tried the testing procedure in small groups last year, with the results circulated in research journals. A group of Chinese researchers published a study in the Future Microbiology journal in August reporting that for some recovering coronavirus patients, anal swab samples still tested positive after they had tested negative through throat swabs.

Politics frustrate WHO mission to search for origins of coronavirus in China

“Intriguingly, SARS-CoV-2 detection was positive in the anal swab of two patients and negative in throat swab and sputum samples,” they wrote. “We propose anal swabs as the potentially optimal specimen for SARS-CoV-2 detection for evaluation of hospital discharge of covid-19 patients.”

As for how the test is conducted, the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention published instructions last March. It said that a stool sample should be taken from patients, and if that is not possible, to do an anal swab by inserting a cotton-tipped stick three to five centimeters (one to two inches) into the rectum.

 

 

[Randy W]

from the WSJ

Possible Early Covid-19 Cases in China Emerge During WHO Mission

WHO team scrutinizing cases of 90 patients with coronavirus-like symptoms in October 2019, two months before Beijing acknowledged first infections

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About 90 people were hospitalized with Covid-19-like symptoms in central China in the two months before the disease was first identified in Wuhan in late 2019, according to World Health Organization investigators, who said they pressed Beijing to allow further testing to determine whether the new virus was spreading earlier than previously known.

Chinese authorities performed antibody tests on about two-thirds of those patients in the past few months, according to the investigators, and said they found no trace of infection by the virus. But members of the WHO team probing the pandemic’s origins said any antibodies could have subsided to undetectable levels during the delay.

“Further studies are needed,” said Peter Ben Embarek, the food-safety scientist who led the WHO team, which wrapped up a four-week visit to China on Wednesday.

Team members said they urged China to conduct wider tests on blood samples collected in autumn 2019 around Hubei, the province that is home to Wuhan, to look for evidence about when the virus was first circulating. Chinese authorities said they hadn’t yet obtained necessary permissions to test samples, many of which are held in blood banks, WHO investigators said.

China’s disclosures to the WHO raise questions about the possibility that Covid-19—which has now killed more than 2.3 million people—was already spreading in China as far back as October 2019 and that earlier detection could have helped contain the outbreak before it became a global pandemic. Beijing says the first patient identified in China developed symptoms on Dec. 8, 2019.

 

 

[Randy W]

from the Sixth Tone

Why China’s Elderly Are Still Waiting to Get Vaccinated

• Even with two domestically developed COVID-19 vaccines approved for public use, only adults under 60 are currently eligible for inoculation.

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With 40 million injections administered as of Tuesday, China is in the midst of its largest-ever vaccination drive.

But the guidelines for the two domestically developed vaccines the country’s drug authority approved in recent months state that only people 18 to 59 years old can sign up to be inoculated, meaning the country’s elderly — the demographic most at risk of developing dangerous COVID-19 symptoms — are left in limbo.

 . . .

This was once again borne out during the latest coronavirus flare-up in northern China, which started in mid-December and, with zero new local infections reported in recent days, appears to be nearly over. The outbreak began among people mostly over the age of 60, who also made up the bulk of cases classified as “severe” or worse. The two people who died from COVID-19 during this stretch were 68 and 87 years old.

So far, however, China has prioritized vaccinations for people in occupations that put them at higher risk of exposure to the virus, such as health care workers and customs officials. This decision makes sense, experts told Sixth Tone, given that China’s outbreaks have been few, and have proved manageable in recent months — unlike many Western countries that started inoculating seniors amid high daily infection figures.

 

 

[Randy W]

from a March, 2018 post - http://candleforlove.com/forums/topic/49227-those-chinese-videos/

 

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Panic gripped Hong Kong in March 2003 as the deadly Sars virus spread through the city. Many of the survivors are still feeling the after-effects

Edited February 23, 2021 by Randy W (see edit history)

[Randy W]

Some feedback from the WHO team sent to Wuhan - a good read

from Wikipedia - "Scroll.in, simply referred to as Scroll,[1] is an Indian Hindi and English language digital news publication owned by the Scroll Media Incorporation.[2] Founded in 2014, the website and its journalists have won several national and international awards including four Ramnath Goenka Excellence in Journalism Awards and the CPJ International Press Freedom Awards."

 . . . and the author of this article - "Dominic Dwyer is the Director of Public Health Pathology, NSW Health Pathology at the Westmead Hospital and University of Sydney."

I was on the WHO team that went to Wuhan to study the origins of coronavirus. Here’s what we found
Our investigations concluded the virus was most likely of animal origin. It probably crossed over to humans from bats, via an as-yet-unknown animal.

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A summary of modelling studies of the time to the most recent common ancestor of SARS-CoV-2 sequences estimated the start of the pandemic between mid-November and early December. There are also publications suggesting SARS-CoV-2 circulation in various countries earlier than the first case in Wuhan, although these require confirmation.

The market in Wuhan, in the end, was more of an amplifying event rather than necessarily a true ground zero. So we need to look elsewhere for the viral origins.

 . . .

We spoke to the scientists there. We heard that scientists’ blood samples, which are routinely taken and stored, were tested for signs they had been infected. No evidence of antibodies to the coronavirus was found. We looked at their biosecurity audits. No evidence.

We looked at the closest virus to SARS-CoV-2 they were working on – the virus RaTG13 – which had been detected in caves in southern China where some miners had died seven years previously.

But all the scientists had was a genetic sequence for this virus. They had not managed to grow it in culture. While viruses certainly do escape from laboratories, this is rare. So, we concluded it was extremely unlikely this had happened in Wuhan.

 . . .

Our mission to China was only phase one. We are due to publish our official report in the coming weeks. Investigators will also look further afield for data, to investigate evidence the virus was circulating in Europe, for instance, earlier in 2019.

Investigators will continue to test wildlife and other animals in the region for signs of the virus. And we will continue to learn from our experiences to improve how we investigate the next pandemic.

 

 

[Randy W]

from the Sixth Tone on Facebook 
https://www.facebook.com/1570821646570023/posts/2894705734181601/?substory_index=0

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In a peer-reviewed paper published Thursday, Chinese researchers identified at least 44 species of animals — those with red stains in the graphic below — that may be susceptible to coronavirus infection.

Read more: http://ow.ly/4iwv50DQYHX