WUHAN - China is recasting Wuhan as a heroic coronavirus victim and trying to throw doubt on the pandemic's origin story as it aims to seize the narrative at a time of growing global distrust of Beijing.
The PR blitz plays out daily in comments by Chinese officials and lavish state media coverage of a "reborn" Wuhan that trumpets China's epidemic-control efforts and economic recovery while the United States struggles.
The drive peaked in the past week as Chinese primary schools welcomed back students with considerable fanfare and Wuhan hosted executives from dozens of multinationals, from Panasonic to Dow and Nokia, on a highly choreographed tour of the central Chinese city.
"There are few places in the world today where you don't need a mask and can gather," a Chinese official, Lin Songtian, told the executives, implying that Wuhan was one of those places.
"This testifies to Wuhan's triumph over the virus and that (the city) is back in business."
Lost in this retelling, however, is that a wet market in Wuhan is widely believed to be ground zero for the pandemic.
China's foreign minister suggested on August 28 during a European outreach trip that the virus might not have emerged in China.
The drive indicates China recognizes COVID-19's damage to its brand and wants to leverage its relatively successful recovery to counter growing international challenges, analysts said.
China faces foreign bitterness over the virus and an initial cover-up attempt by Wuhan officials, plus criticism of Beijing's tightening grip on Hong Kong and generally more aggressive international posture.
"Beijing wants the narrative to be: we handled it, we can help you handle it and (hopefully) we're the first to have a vaccine that works," said Kelsey Broderick, Asia analyst with Eurasia Group.
"That's really the only way China can come out ahead of the idea that a wet market in Wuhan started this crisis."
'ABSOLUTELY SAFE'
The fumbling US pandemic response provides a clear opening, said Yun Jiang, director of Australian National University's China Policy Center.
"The fact that the US is not only not doing enough, but actually doing things that go against American interests, is a big help to China," she said.
The three-day Wuhan tour also included foreign media outlets and ended Saturday.
It featured primary-school students performing traditional Chinese opera and ballet, a renovated food market presented as a model of sanitation, and a Yangtze riverfront cruise underneath a skyline ablaze with towering light displays referencing the virus recovery.
The city of 11 million -- which suffered more than 80 percent of China's 4,634 COVID-19 deaths -- has come a long way since the pandemic's grim early days, when a suffocating weeks-long lockdown rendered it a ghost town.
No new local transmissions have been reported in months, traffic jams are back, shoppers cram malls, and al fresco diners gobble up the city's signature spicy crayfish dish.
Face masks sag from the neck or are abandoned altogether.
The growing confidence was displayed at a Wuhan pool party attended by thousands of mask-less people last month that prompted overseas accusations of recklessness after images of the event went viral.
China countered that the party indicated the nation's success in taming the coronavirus.
"What risks can there be?" asked Wuhan factory worker Xie Ailiang while speaking to AFP.
"I think now Wuhan should be absolutely safe."
'WINTER IS COMING'
But not everyone is taking a victory lap.
Many Wuhan citizens express persistent concern over an uneven recovery and fear of new outbreaks.
"The economy has really declined. The benefit of even coming to work is questionable," said Yi Xinhua, 51, who sells tofu from her stall at a Wuhan wet market.
Blocks of tofu were neatly arranged by shape and size, but there few buyers -- Yi says her sales are only half of the pre-pandemic level.
It's a common complaint in Wuhan, blamed by many business owners on lingering fear of going out in public and the widely expressed belief that millions who fled the city early in the pandemic have still not returned.
Wuhan employers complain online that the exodus has also reduced the local labor pool.
And memories of a subsequent virus cluster in May, which triggered a citywide effort to test millions, remain fresh.
"Everyone is afraid the epidemic will return, you know? The summer is over, and winter is coming," said Yi.
"We've recovered a bit. But if the virus comes back, we'll be hit again."
Agence France-Presse
Does a face mask protect me, or just the people around me?
It likely provides protection for both.
Studies on the new coronavirus and other germs show wearing a mask helps stop infected people from spreading disease to others. Evidence also suggests that masks may offer some protection for the people wearing them.
The virus spreads from droplets people spray when they cough, sneeze or talk. Surgical or cloth face masks can block most of those particles from spreading.
While some droplets may still spread out, wearing a mask could reduce the amount, providing a benefit to others. Research shows people don’t get as sick when exposed to smaller amounts of virus, said Dr. Monica Gandhi, a virus expert at University of California, San Francisco.
And masks may protect the people wearing them by reducing the amount of droplets from others that might make contact with them.
In two U.S. food processing plants where masks were required and infection clusters occurred, Gandhi noted that most workers who developed COVID-19 had mild illness or no symptoms.
Research on a different coronavirus has also found low infection rates among people who frequently wore masks in public.
Experts say masks are particularly important with the new coronavirus because infected people can be contagious even if they don’t have symptoms.
Associated Press
TOKYO — Japanese leaders are grappling with how to contain flareups in coronavirus cases while trying to avoid shutdowns that might push the economy deeper into recession.
Tokyo Gov. Yuriko Koike said the confirmed number of new cases hit a daily record of 463 on Friday, up nearly 100 from Thursday’s 367. Nationwide, cases have recently topped 1,000 a day, and some areas that had avoided any cases at all, such as Iwate prefecture in the northeast and Sado island off the Japan Sea coast, have confirmed cases.
Koike says, “You might have plans or events for summer, but unfortunately this summer will be different from last summer. We cannot loosen our grips on (anti-infection) measures and I want to share this mindset with you all.”
Earlier this week, Koike asked bars and restaurants to close by 10 p.m. Legal limits on what the government can demand of the private sector and individuals mean authorities largely must rely on social pressure and persuasion to compel people to comply with anti-disease precautions.
___
HERE’S WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT THE VIRUS OUTBREAK:
— Asia-Pacific tourism makes patchy restart, and some missteps
— Final days of hajj and Eid festival impacted by coronavirus
— Virus testing turnaround times reveal wide disparity
— Dr. Anthony Fauci returns to Capitol Hill on Friday to testify before a special House panel investigating the coronavirus pandemic. His testimony comes at a time when early progress on combating the virus seems to have been lost and uncertainty clouds the nation’s path forward.
— Scientists at Imperial College London say they are immunizing hundreds of people with an experimental coronavirus vaccine in an early trial after seeing no worrying safety problems in a small number vaccinated so far.
— Champagne is losing its fizz. For months, the lockdown put the cork on weddings, dining out, parties and international travel — all key sales components for the French luxury wine marketed for decades as a sparkling must at any celebration.
The Associated Press
Almost a quarter of people in New Delhi have had the coronavirus, according to a study that cast serious doubt on the official numbers both in the megacity and across India.
India last week became the third country after the United States and Brazil to hit one million cases but many experts have long said that with testing rates low, the true number could be much higher.
Blood tests on 21,387 randomly selected people across Delhi conducted by the National Center for Disease Control found that 23.48 percent of them had IgG antibodies -- indicating past exposure to the virus.
With Delhi's population of more than 20 million, the findings published Tuesday by the federal health ministry suggest that 4.7 million people have had the virus, almost 40 times the official tally of 125,000.
While praising government restrictions that have limited the spread of the virus, the ministry said the study "indicates that a large number of infected persons remain asymptomatic".
The survey was conducted between June 27 and July 10.
And more than 75 percent are still vulnerable, including those at higher risk, Sujeet Kumar Singh, head of the National Centre for Disease Control, told a news conference.
On Wednesday, India's health ministry reported a total of 1.19 million coronavirus cases so far with almost 29,000 deaths.
Maharashtra, Delhi and Tamil Nadu states are the worst affected.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government imposed one of the world's strictest lockdowns in late March, but it has been steadily eased in recent months to lessen the devastating economic impact.
But, independently from the federal government, states have been tightening restrictions as case numbers have soared -- including in Bangalore, Bihar, West Bengal and parts of Kerala and Tamil Nadu.
Daily new cases have been steadily falling in recent weeks, with fewer than 1,000 new infections recorded on Tuesday -- the first time in 49 days -- down from a peak of almost 4,000 in late June.
Agence France-Presse
WASHINGTON — Billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates on Thursday pushed back against some of the conspiracy theories spreading online accusing him of creating the coronavirus outbreak.
"It's a bad combination of pandemic and social media and people looking for a very simple explanation," the Microsoft founder said during a CNN Town Hall interview.
Doctored photos and fabricated news articles crafted by conspiracy theorists -- shared thousands of times on social media platforms and messaging apps, in various languages -- targeting Gates have gained traction online since the start of the pandemic.
A video accusing Gates of wanting "to eliminate 15 percent of the population" through vaccination and electronic microchips has racked up millions of views on YouTube.
"Our foundation has given more money to buy vaccines to save lives than any group," Gates said, referring to his eponymous foundation.
He has pledged $250 million in efforts to fight the pandemic, and his foundation has spent billions of dollars improving health care in developing countries over the past 20 years.
"So you just turn that around. You say, ok, we're making money and we're trying to kill people with vaccines or by inventing something," Gates continued.
"And at least it's true, we're associated with vaccines, but you actually have sort of flipped the connection," he said, adding he hopes the conspiracies don't generate "vaccine hesitancy."
Since the start of the crisis, AFP Fact Check has debunked dozens of anti-Gates rumors circulating on platforms like Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram in languages including English, French, Spanish, Polish and Czech.
A number of accusations, including posts claiming that the FBI arrested Gates for biological terrorism or that he supports a Western plot to poison Africans, share a common thread.
They accuse the tycoon of exploiting the crisis, whether it is to "control people" or make money from selling vaccines.
"I'm a big believer in getting the truth out," Gates told CNN.
It is not the first time Gates has found himself targeted by conspiracy theorists. When Zika virus broke out in 2015 in Brazil, he was one of several powerful Western figures blamed for the disease.
Other rumors claim he is secretly a lizard, an old favorite among online trolls.
Agence France-Presse
SACRAMENTO, Calif. — California’s confirmed coronavirus cases have topped 409,000, surpassing New York for most in the nation.
Johns Hopkins University data shows California has about 1,200 more cases than New York.
However, New York’s 32,520 confirmed deaths outnumber California’s tally of nearly 8,000 deaths.
California is by far the most populous U.S. state, at nearly 40 million people, while New York has about 19.5 million.
Scientists say reported coronavirus cases vastly underestimate the true number of infections because of the small number of tests.
A recent Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study says COVID-19 cases were more than 10 times higher than reported in most U.S. regions from late March to early May. It’s based on COVID-19 antibody tests performed on routine blood samples in 16,000 people in 10 U.S. regions that showed many with the virus antibody.
(The item has been corrected to show New York state has 32,520 confirmed deaths, according to a tally be Johns Hopkins University.)
HERE’S WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT THE VIRUS OUTBREAK:
— Brazil president still tests positive for virus
— Trump says virus in US will get worse before it gets better
— Crisis hits Lebanon’s hospitals, among the best in Mideast
— Silent spread of virus keeps scientists grasping for clues
— California’s confirmed coronavirus cases have topped 409,000, surpassing New York for most in the nation. However, California has nearly 8,000 deaths compared to New York’s 32,000.
— With the coronavirus rebounding in parts of Spain, it appears Catalonia and other regions have not adequately prepared to trace new infections in what was supposed to be an early detection system to prevent a new cascade of cases.
— More than one in five people in Delhi have been infected with the coronavirus, according to a study, indicating that most cases in the Indian capital region have gone undetected.
Associated Press
WASHINGTON — The girlfriend of President Donald Trump's eldest son has tested positive for coronavirus, US media reported Friday.
Kimberly Guilfoyle, a former Fox News television personality who is dating Donald Trump Jr, had traveled to South Dakota to see the US president’s Fourth of July speech and celebration fireworks at Mount Rushmore.
Guilfoyle, 51, was immediately isolated after discovering she had the virus in a routine test conducted on anyone expected to come in close contact with the president, the New York Times reported.
In a statement to the newspaper, Sergio Gor, chief of staff to the Trump campaign's finance committee, said: "She's doing well, and will be retested to ensure the diagnosis is correct since she's asymptomatic."
He added: "As a precaution (she) will cancel all upcoming events. Donald Trump Jr was tested negative, but as a precaution is also self-isolating and is canceling all public events."
Guilfoyle is the third person close to the US president to return a positive COVID-19 test, US media reported.
Others include Trump's personal valet and the US vice president's press secretary.
The pandemic has claimed nearly 130,000 American lives and a recent resurgence "puts the entire country at risk," top infectious disease expert Anthony Fauci has said.
Agence France-Presse
They are itching for a good time after months of lockdown, coronavirus be damned: young adults in Florida are fueling a dangerous rise in COVID-19 infections.
Seemingly feeling immortal, these fun-crazed people began gathering in bars, nightclubs and elsewhere after the Sunshine State reopened its economy this month -- though the state has now had to put a hold on alcohol-fueled nightlife.
Check out Instagram, and there's always a party on a beach somewhere, or at a swimming pool, or on a rented yacht in south Florida, where nightlife spots other than restaurants are still closed.
Plus, buses are hired for bachelorette parties teeming with folks drinking beer, dancing to reggaeton music -- and spreading the coronavirus.
Infection rates were stable as Florida joined the rest of America in lockdown from March through May. But they shot up in June after the state moved to reopen and tourists from all over the country started pouring in.
On Ocean Drive, which is a kind of party central in Miami Beach, visitors from Missouri, Texas, Georgia and elsewhere stroll by the sea.
Round about midnight Mike Olivera, a 25-year-old visiting from New York, sits on a wall on the oceanfront promenade and sneaks sips of vodka with a buddy, watching a steady flow of fresh-faced young humanity saunter by.
And listen to how concerned Olivera is about mask-wearing and social distancing: "I wanted to get laid," he said, explaining why he came to Miami.
Olivera chuckles, then clarifies. He is from New York, the former COVID epicenter of America, with its tight social distancing restrictions.
"So I wanted a break and actually to be able to do things, meet nice people and hang out," said Olivera.
With that kind of attitude common, Florida has set records for new cases almost every day for the past two weeks -- more than 5,000 on Wednesday and Thursday as infection rates rise ominously here and elsewhere in the South and West of the country.
On Monday, Florida surpassed 100,000 known coronavirus cases, and the average age of the people infected is now 33 -- down from 65 two months ago.
Governor Ron DeSantis said this week the state is seeing a "real explosion" of virus cases among young people, and he warned that places serving booze without enforcing social distancing rules could be stripped of their liquor licenses.
On Friday, the state abruptly halted on-site alcohol consumption in bars because of the surging infection rate.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation's leading infectious disease expert, said young people nationwide, many of them asymptomatic and spreading the virus unknowingly, are now driving a "paradigm shift" in the dynamics of the pandemic. In stern terms, he warned them to think about the health of others.
"If you get infected you will infect someone else," he told a news briefing after a meeting of the national coronavirus task force, the first in two months. "And then ultimately you'll infect someone who's vulnerable.
"The only way we're going to end it is by ending it together."
In Florida, servers braving crushing heat sweat through their face masks and wear plastic gloves as they wait on customers.
Some restaurants have been shut down or closed voluntarily to try to contain the spread of the virus in a state heavily dependent on tourism revenue.
- Life is not normal -
Olivera shrugs off the threat of the virus.
"No, I don't feel like it's going to affect me. I'm 25 years old, I don't feel like I have anything to worry about," he said.
"I faced uglier things. I come from the Bronx, you know what I mean. If I survived that I can survive Miami," he said, then downed a shot of vodka.
But Annalisa Torres, a data analyst newly graduated from the University of Florida, said it irks her to see people her age behave this way.
"It’s important to recognize that as young adults, the actions we take throughout this pandemic don’t only affect us, but the people around us," she said from self-quarantine in her home in Miami.
"In my case, I live with my parents and younger brother. I stay home not for me, but for them," said Torres.
The problem is that when young people are told they are less vulnerable to the coronavirus they feel impervious to it, said Mary Jo Trepka, an epidemiologist at Florida International University.
"The message has been that it's primarily severe for older people, and that young people are less likely to get sick," she told AFP.
"That's very true, but once you start getting so many young people that are sick, there will be some that are going to get very sick and will end up being hospitalized," Trepka added.
And many families in south Florida are multi-generational, so younger people are often in contact with elderly relatives at home, she added.
Agence France-Presse
India now has more than 500,000 confirmed coronavirus cases, according to government figures released Saturday that showed a record daily leap of 18,500 new infections.
Authorities said a total of 15,685 people had died after another 385 fatalities were added to the toll in 24 hours.
The pandemic is not expected to peak in India for several more weeks and experts say the number of cases could pass one million before the end of July.
Some state governments are considering imposing new lockdowns. A hard-hitting nationwide lockdown that started March 25 is gradually being eased because of the damage caused to the economy.
The virus has particularly hit India's densely populated cities and there are now major concerns for New Delhi which has overtaken Mumbai with nearly 80,000 cases.
The city's government has predicted it would have 500,000 infections by the end of July. It is already using railway carriages to house patients and has taken over hotels and banquet halls to relieve the pressure on hard-pressed hospitals.
The government has been criticized over a lack of testing that experts say has hidden the true number of cases in India, which now stands at 509,000.
The country is currently fourth in the world for the number of infections, behind the United States, Brazil and Russia, though it has a much lower death toll.
In a bid to boost tracing efforts, Delhi authorities have called in 33,000 health workers to screen about 2 million people in sealed off zones across the city of 20 million people.
But cities across the nation of 1.3 billion people are braced for a huge wave of new cases in coming weeks.
"It is likely that we're going into a state, unless we are able to reinforce a strict physical distancing mechanism or a hard lockdown, where the rate of infection will continue to increase," said Anant Bhan, a leading public health expert.
"Unlike China, where the pandemic was relatively more concentrated around Wuhan and a few other cities, India has a more diffused spread that makes it a bit more challenging for the healthcare system," he told AFP.
Bhan said India might see several peaks in coming months because the spread of the virus "is variable across the country."
Agence France-Presse
World No.1 Novak Djokovic on Tuesday said he had tested positive for coronavirus, the Serb star becoming the fourth player to contract the virus after taking part in his exhibition tennis tournament in the Balkans.
Djokovic, who is "not showing any symptoms" according to a statement from his spokesperson, joined Grigor Dimitrov, Borna Coric and Viktor Troicki in testing positive for COVID-19.
Djokovic said his wife Jelena also tested positive while the results of their children were negative.
"I am extremely sorry for each individual case of infection," the 33-year-old Serb said in a statement.
"I hope that it will not complicate anyone's health situation and that everyone will be fine," the 17-time Grand Slam winner added, saying he would go into self-isolation for the next 14 days.
Bulgaria's Dimitrov, the world No. 19, announced on Sunday he had tested positive after pulling out of the event, the biggest since the tennis season was halted because of the pandemic.
Croatia's Coric and Troicki of Serbia also followed suit on Monday, revealing they also had tested positive.
Sunday's final in the Croatian coastal town of Zadar, which was supposed to feature Djokovic and Russia's Andrey Rublev, was cancelled.
Some 4,000 fans watched the first leg of the tournament in Belgrade earlier this month.
The slew of positive tests raises questions over the sport's planned return in August.
Agence France-Presse
WASHINGTON, United States - The US Navy said Friday it would not reinstate the captain of a coronavirus-stricken aircraft carrier, saying he was in part to blame for the severity of the crisis on the warship.
Brett Crozier, who was fired as captain of the USS Theodore Roosevelt in April, was guilty of "questionable judgment" in handling an outbreak of COVID-19 aboard the nuclear-powered ship in March, said Admiral Michael Gilday, chief of naval operations.
Gilday likewise faulted Rear Admiral Stuart Baker, Crozier's direct supervisor as the carrier's strike group commander, for poor leadership.
"It is my belief that both Admiral Baker and Captain Crozier fell well short of what we expect of those in command," Gilday said.
"In reviewing both Admiral Baker's and Captain Crozier's actions, they did not do enough, soon enough, to fulfill their primary obligation" to keep the ship's 5,000 crew safe.
After a two-month investigation, the Navy decided that Crozier would not return to the Roosevelt and not be eligible to captain another ship.
Baker's expected promotion, meanwhile, has been placed on hold, pending further review.
The coronavirus outbreak on board the Roosevelt was one of the first US crises of the pandemic, crippling the massive ship and forcing it to hold for more than a month in port in Guam.
It raised questions about US war-fighting readiness and worries about potential outbreaks on other ships.
More than 1,000 of the crew, including Crozier, ultimately tested positive for the disease, though few showed serious symptoms and only one died.
The case broke into the news after a letter written by Crozier complaining of lack of support in dealing with the outbreak was leaked to the media at the end of March.
While an initial probe seemed to support Crozier's complaints, a deeper investigation showed Crozier and Baker both failed to take good command in the face of the crisis, Gilday said.
They "failed" in evacuating sailors off the ship into sequestered facilities in Guam quickly, he said.
Crozier was focused more on the sailors' comfort, arranging hotel rooms rather than accepting facilities already prepared in gyms, Gilday said.
"Get them off quickly was the primary thing," he said.
"The issue here is really standards of performance particularly in crisis."
Questions Raised
The Roosevelt episode raised questions about the US government's and Pentagon's readiness to deal with the coronavirus pandemic.
Crozier's communications suggested that he was being prevented from evacuating the ship in Guam for cleaning and quarantine.
"The spread of the disease is ongoing and accelerating," Crozier wrote on March 30. "We are not at war. Sailors do not need to die."
The publication of the letter sparked a backlash. Then-acting Navy secretary Thomas Modly fired Crozier and flew to Guam to deliver a defiant speech to the ship's crew, in which he accused Crozier of "betrayal."
When that became public, Modly himself was forced to resign.
Gilday's criticisms of Crozier Friday sparked questions of whether the Pentagon leadership was covering for other officials' mistakes, including the order to have the Roosevelt visit Vietnam in early March, where many suspect the shipboard COVID-19 outbreak originated.
"Everyone up and down the chain of command had a role to play in the inadequate response – including then-Acting Secretary of the Navy Modly said Congressman Adam Smith, chairman of the House Armed Services Committee.
"The Department's civilian leadership portrayed Captain Crozier's decision-making aboard the Roosevelt as the critical weakness in the Navy’s response, but the truth is that civilian leadership was also to blame."
Agence France-Presse
Major League Baseball's Philadelphia Phillies have closed their Florida training base after eight COVID-19 positives and multiple reports say MLB's Toronto Blue Jays and the NHL Tampa Bay Lightning also shuttered training facilities.
Friday's moves came as state officials announced a record one-day spike of COVID-19 cases, with nearly 4,000 new record infections in Florida.
The NBA and Major League Soccer plan to gather in quarantine areas near Orlando to resume their virus-halted campaigns in July after play was stopped in March.
The Phillies said five players and three staff members tested positive for COVID-19 at the club's Clearwater training facility, which MLB said was being shuttered indefinitely.
The team said a further 12 staff members and 20 players from the club's major league and minor league rosters were awaiting results of tests.
The Tampa Bay Times and ESPN reported the NHL Lightning closed its training facility, just 23 miles (37km) from Clearwater, after multiple players and staff members tested positive for COVID-19.
The Lightning facility is closed until at least July 6, the Times reported.
Also on Friday, Toronto Maple Leafs star Auston Matthews went into quarantine at his home in Arizona after testing positive for COVID-19, the Toronto Sun reported.
The 22-year-old Matthews is hoping to be healthy enough to attend the Leafs' training camp which begins on July 10. Arizona, and especially the Phoenix area where Matthews grew up, has also seen a spike in cases.
The Blue Jays closed their spring training facility in Dunedin, four miles north of Clearwater, after a player exhibited coronavirus symptoms, ESPN reported, saying the player had recently spent time with Phillies players. He is awaiting results of a COVID-19 test.
Phillies managing partner John Middleton said all the team's facilities were being closed as a precaution.
"The Phillies are committed to the health and welfare of our players, coaches and staff as our highest priority, and as a result of these confirmed tests, all facilities in Clearwater have been closed indefinitely to all players, coaches and staff and will remain closed until medical authorities are confident that the virus is under control and our facilities are disinfected," Middleton said in a statement.
The club said it was "too early to know" how the Clearwater outbreak could impact the Phillies' 2020 season.
Major League Baseball is currently locked in bitter negotiations with the league's players union over the terms of a shortened season.
Agence France-Presse
WASHINGTON - The United States lost another 687 people to the new coronavirus in the 24 hours leading up to 8:30 pm (0030 GMT) Thursday, according a tally by Johns Hopkins University.
It marks the eighth day in which the daily toll from the virus has been fewer than 1,000, even as the US remains the country hardest-hit by the pandemic with a total of 118,381 deaths out of a total of 2,187,876 official cases.
Some 20 states have seen a rebound in infections as the epicenter of the country's outbreak has moved from New York and the country's Northeast to the South and West.
But the White House's chief infectious disease expert said Thursday he does not think new widespread containment measures will be necessary.
"I don't think we're going to be talking about going back to lockdown," said Anthony Fauci of the National Institutes of Health, when asked if some states should re-issue stay-at-home orders.
"I think we're going to be talking about trying to better control those areas of the country that seem to be having a surge of cases."
Agence France-Presse
STOCKHOLM - Deaths in Sweden from COVID-19 passed 5,000 on Wednesday, the Public Health Agency said, far more than in neighboring Nordic countries.
The official death toll has now reached 5,041, up from 4,939 on Tuesday.
Sweden has taken a softer approach to fighting the coronavirus, leaving most schools, shops and restaurants open and relying on voluntary measures focused on physical distancing and good hygiene.
Deaths in Sweden has been far higher relative to the size of the population than in Denmark, Norway and Finland, where authorities have taken a stricter approach. But they have been lower than in Britain, Italy and Spain, where there have also been lockdowns.
(Reporting by Johan Ahlander; editing by Johannes Hellstrom)
-reuters-
OSLO - Chinese and Norwegian authorities have concluded that Norwegian salmon was likely not the source of the novel coronavirus that was found at cutting boards in a Beijing food market, the Norwegian fisheries and seafood minister said on Wednesday.
Following a meeting between Chinese and Norwegian officials on Tuesday, both countries have concluded that the source of the outbreak did not originate with fish from the Nordic country, Odd Emil Ingebrigtsen said.
"We can clear away uncertainty and the halt in salmon export to China," he told a video conference including journalists.
The resurgence of COVID-19 in the Chinese capital over the past six days has upended daily life for many, with some fearing the entire city is headed for a lockdown as the number of new cases mounts.
-reuters-
DAKAR, Senegal — When Daniel Khan Mbuh died in a hospital in northern Cameroon, the hospital declared the cause of death to be COVID-19 — then released the body to the family instead of arranging for a safe burial, his daughter Stella said.
Mbuh said she was told the house where she had been caring for her father in the city of Bamenda would be disinfected. Nobody came. When she tried to get tested, the hospital refused, saying there were not enough test kits. And she was never advised to self-isolate, so she simply imposed her own two-week quarantine on herself and her siblings.
“They said they are following contacts,” Mbuh said of health officials, “but I am one of the contacts. And I am not being followed.”
The spread of the new coronavirus is now accelerating in many countries in Africa, where medical resources are stretched, rumors are rife and efforts to stop the pandemic are sometimes haphazard.
Public health experts have warned that Africa could become the next epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The World Health Organization said last week that confirmed cases in Africa had doubled in 18 days to reach 200,000; the first 100,000 took 98 days.
“Even though these cases in Africa account for less than 3% of the global total, it’s clear that this pandemic is accelerating,” Dr. Matshidiso Moeti, the WHO’s regional director for Africa, said in a video briefing last week.
She said that until there was a vaccine available, the continent would have to live with a steady increase of cases.
Most African nations staved off the initial spread of the virus for several months, partly by closing borders early, banning public gatherings and, in some countries, effectively tracing contacts using past experience of infectious diseases.
But the time this bought was not enough to bolster weak health care systems and to prepare for the predicted explosion of cases.
And now that many African countries, like others across the globe, are lifting their restrictions in order to restart their economies, the virus has new opportunity to spread and potentially, to overwhelm health care systems.
Nigerian doctors announced a nationwide strike starting on Monday over the lack of personal protective equipment in government hospitals and hazard pay for treating COVID-19 patients. Dozens of Nigerian health care workers have been infected, partly because they had no protective gear.
Epidemiologists at the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warned of a “catastrophic shortage” of health care professionals, and a drastic reduction of medical supplies because of border closures, price increases and restrictions on exports imposed during the pandemic.
“Africa needs to intensify its efforts to slow the spread of the pandemic,” they said in an article published last week in the journal Nature. They said that the continent needed financial support to stop the pandemic and tackle its economic and humanitarian effects.
The early spread of the pandemic in many African countries was driven by foreigners and the economic elite: people from Europe, and those with the means to travel there.
It has continued to spread among elites. Ghana’s health minister caught the virus “in the line of duty,” the country’s president, Nana Akufo-Addo, said on Sunday. Four people in the Kenyan president’s office tested positive and have been taken to the hospital, according to a statement from the office.
However, what has often been perceived in Africa as a foreigners’ disease is increasingly reaching all sections of society. Testing is still extremely limited in most countries, so it is impossible to know how widely the pandemic has taken hold. But a month ago, the WHO predicted that between 29 and 44 million Africans could become infected in the first year.
Truckers are carrying the coronavirus across borders, just as truckers had also spread HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. Countries now have set up border controls, which can intensify the points of contact and possible spread of infection.
In the border town of Garoua-Boulaï in the Central African Republic, dozens of truck drivers jostled outside a tarpaulin tent waiting to get tested for the coronavirus. Some wore masks, but many did not, or had pulled them down below their chins.
They had to wait for many days for results until their samples could be driven 370 miles across the country to the capital, Bangui. But as they waited, other citizens crossed back and forth at the border without being checked. No truck, no problem.
Rumors and lack of information have also contributed to the spread. In Tanzania, President John Magufuli said that the country had eradicated coronavirus “by the grace of God.” His government stopped releasing any data on cases after April 29.
In Nigeria, most of the public health messages have been released in English, which many Hausa speakers in the north do not understand.
-Ruth Maclean, The New York Times-
BANGKOK - Thailand on Monday lifted a nationwide curfew after more than two months and allowed restaurants to resume selling alcohol as the coronavirus crisis eased, with 21 days since a recorded case of local transmission.
The Southeast Asian nation of about 70 million people was the first country outside China to report a case of coronavirus, on Jan. 13, and has been a relative success story in containing it, with just 3,135 confirmed cases and 58 fatalities. Some 2,987 patients have recovered.
Officials have credited Thais' early adoption of wearing masks - ubiquitous in public since January - as well as its border closure, shuttering of many business and the curfew for the retreat of the new virus that has infected 7.9 million worldwide and killed more than 430,000.
Other establishments allowed to reopen on Monday were schools with less than 120 students, exhibition halls, music concerts, film productions, playgrounds, amusement parks and sports competitions without spectators.
Pubs, bars and karaoke outlets will remain closed, but restaurants that reopened two weeks ago with social distancing will now be able to serve alcohol.
Monday was the second time in five days that Thailand reported no new cases.
All new cases in the past three weeks have been found in quarantine among Thais returning from abroad, said Taweesin Wisanuyothin, a spokesman for the government's COVID-19 task force.
(Reporting by Panarat Thepgumpanat; Editing by Martin Petty)
-reuters-
The coronavirus won’t be loosening its grip on the United States any time soon, leading infectious disease experts said Sunday. They are also uncertain how the viral spread will be affected by the patchwork of states reopening businesses and by large events like protests and President Donald Trump’s upcoming campaign rallies.
“This virus is not going to rest” until it infects about 60 percent to 70 percent of the population, Dr. Michael T. Osterholm, the director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, said on “Fox News Sunday.”
Experts have estimated that without a vaccine, about 70 percent of the population will need to be infected and develop immunity in order to stop the virus’ spread, a concept called herd immunity. The number of confirmed US cases now exceeds 2 million, less than 1 percent of the US population, according to the Johns Hopkins COVID-19 Dashboard and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Joseph Fair, a virologist and epidemiologist who recently recovered from a serious bout of COVID-19, echoed that view on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
“Once it gets so ingrained in the population, there’s not a point where we can come back from that other than having a vaccine in place,” said Fair, who is a medical contributor to NBC News.
Osterholm said that recent data show the rate of new cases has been level in eight states, increasing in 22 states and decreasing in the rest. The increase is not simply because of more widely available testing, the experts said, noting that an especially worrisome development is a rise in hospitalizations in several states.
“At this point, hospitals are at risk of getting overwhelmed and that is basically signaling to me that those states are already behind,” said Dr. Nahid Bhadelia, medical director of the special pathogens unit at Boston University School of Medicine, who also appeared on the NBC News program Sunday.
The CDC recently projected that by July 4, US coronavirus deaths will likely jump from the current level of about 115,000 to somewhere between 124,000 and 140,000.
Bhadelia said the rise in cases in some states, especially in the South and West, suggested that “we opened too early in those states. We didn’t have the ability to basically trace down those chains of transmission and stop them once people started mingling again.”
-Pam Belluck, The New York Times-
ROME - Yellow police tape -- a familiar sight across Italy since the coronavirus began sweeping the country in March -- reappeared at the weekend outside a Rome squat where around 15 new cases have emerged.
Health workers insist the outbreak among squatters including a Peruvian family is under control, at a time when Italy is cautiously relaxing measures to contain the disease that has claimed more than 34,000 lives.
A second outbreak was far bigger and occurred at a hospital on the western edge of Rome, with 109 cases and five deaths.
Rome's regional COVID-19 crisis center said all those who tested positive for the virus at the illegally occupied building had been transferred. All their contacts were identified and 108 tests were carried out.
After the uproar of blaring ambulances to handle the new cluster of cases, the southern working-class district of Garbatella returned to normal on Sunday, apart from the police tape and a squad car outside the building, as well as a posse of journalists.
Mask-wearing shoppers could be seen buying groceries, a man walking his dog, another throwing garbage into an overflowing bin.
"Occupants who are still in the building are confined there," a police officer told AFP, adding that the Red Cross was delivering food to them.
Many of the windows were shuttered in the orange brick block of flats, typical of the buildings that sprang up in the outskirts of Rome during the 1970s.
The squatters also receive aid from an NGO.
An employee at a nearby grocery store who gave his name only as Ion said the inhabitants were both South American and Italian, "working people, mainly families".
He added that some of the flats share toilets.
"This doesn't worry us very much," he said. "We're wearing masks and being careful."
But Raffaele, a 77-year-old who lives nearby, complained that "there is absolutely no check (on) constant comings and goings of people from all over the world."
He said he feared that such transience could help spread the coronavirus. "Let's say we are being very careful, we are disinfecting non-stop."
'NO ILLUSIONS' Meanwhile two army vehicles were stationed outside the San Raffaele Pisana hospital on Sunday, but the situation appeared under control.
Health officials said rigorous contact tracing was under way, with some 200 recent patients being tested.
The two new outbreaks of COVID-19 came as Italy was re-emerging from lockdown in a phased process that began in early May.
The epidemic appeared under control even in its epicenter in the northern Lombardy region.
"No one had any illusions that the problems were over," WHO deputy director Ranieri Guerra told Italian journalists. "It means the virus hasn't lost its infectiousness, it isn't weakening... we shouldn’t let down our guard."
However, the Italian immunologist added: "Such micro-outbreaks were inevitable, but they are limited in time and space. And today we have the tools to intercept them and confine them."
Italy, which went under nationwide quarantine on March 10, has been one of the hardest-hit countries in the world by COVID-19, mostly in the north.
Agence France-Presse
CHICAGO - A series of studies in mice of Moderna Inc's COVID-19 vaccine lent some assurance that it may not increase the risk of more severe disease, and that one dose may provide protection against the novel coronavirus, according to preliminary data released on Friday.
Prior studies on a vaccine for SARS - a close cousin to the new virus that causes COVID-19 - suggests vaccines against this type of virus might have the unintended effect of causing more severe disease when the vaccinated person is later exposed to the pathogen, especially in individuals who do not produce an adequately strong immune response.
Scientists have seen this risk as a hurdle to clear before vaccines can be safely tested in thousands of healthy people.
While the data released by the US National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Disease (NIAID) and Moderna offered some assurance, the studies do not fully answer the question.
"This is the barest beginning of preliminary information," said Dr. Gregory Poland, an immunologist and vaccine researcher at the Mayo Clinic who has seen the paper, which has yet to undergo peer review.
Poland said the paper was incomplete and disorganized, and the numbers of animals tested were small.
The authors said they have submitted the work to a top-tier journal. Moderna's vaccine is in midstage testing in healthy volunteers. Moderna said on Thursday it plans to begin final-stage trials enrolling 30,000 people in July.
In the animal studies, mice received one or two shots of a variety of doses of Moderna's vaccine, including doses considered not strong enough to elicit a protective immune response. Researchers then exposed the mice to the virus.
Subsequent analyses suggest "sub-protective" immune responses do not cause what is known as vaccine-associated enhanced respiratory disease, a susceptibility to more severe disease in the lungs.
"Subprotective doses did not prime mice for enhanced immunopathology following (exposure)," Dr. Barney Graham of the Vaccine Research Center at NIAID and colleagues wrote in the manuscript, posted on the bioRxiv website.
Further testing suggested the vaccine induces antibody responses to block the virus from infecting cells.
The vaccine also appeared to protect against infection by the coronavirus in the lungs and noses without evidence of toxic effects, the team wrote.
They noted the mice that received just one dose before exposure to the virus seven weeks later were "completely protected against lung viral replication," suggesting a single vaccination prevented the virus from replicating in the lungs.
"At first glance, it looks promising in inducing neutralizing antibody protection in mice," Dr. Peter Hotez, a researcher at Baylor College of Medicine said in an email. He had not reviewed the paper in detail.
Poland, who was not involved with the research, said the paper leaves out "important parameters" that could help scientists judge the work.
"The results, such as they are presented, provide interesting data that are reassuring... This needs to be replicated and it needs to be peer-reviewed," he said.
-reuters-
