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Beware the Waking Dragon
A plane carrying returning medical staffers arrives at Kunming Changshui International Airport in Kunming, southwest China’s Yunnan Province, March 22, 2020. About 700 medical workers of Yunnan Province left Wuhan on Sunday after finishing their tasks in Hubei Province. (Xinhua/Jiang Wenyao)
Source: Xinhua
As countries ranging from the United States to Italy and Iran struggle to manage the virus, Seoul’s handling of the outbreak – involving a highly coordinated government response that has emphasised transparency and relied heavily on public cooperation in place of hardline measures such as lockdowns – is increasingly viewed by public health experts as a model to emulate for authorities desperate to keep the virus under control.
Whereas China, where the virus originated, and more recently Italy have placed millions of their citizens on lockdown, South Korea has not restricted people’s movements – not even in Daegu, the southeastern city at the centre of the country’s outbreak.
Instead, authorities have focused mandatory quarantine on infected patients and those with whom they have come into close contact, while advising the public to stay indoors, avoid public events, wear masks and practise good hygiene.
“More than a week of downward-trending case counts shows that the approach in South Korea has turned around an epidemic,” said Ian Mackay, a virologist at the University of Queensland, Australia. “This approach seems less dramatic and more usable by other countries, compared with that used in mainland China. If these trends continue, they will have managed to stop the growth of their epidemic.”
‘A SPECTACULAR FEAT’
The linchpin of South Korea’s response has been a testing programme that has screened more people per capita for the virus than any other country by far. By carrying out up to 15,000 tests per day, health officials have been able to screen some 250,000 people – about one in every 200 South Koreans – since January.
To encourage participation, testing is free for anyone referred by a doctor or displaying symptoms after recent contact with a confirmed case or travel to China. For anyone simply concerned about the risk of infection, the cost is a relatively affordable 160,000 won (US$135). Testing is available at hundreds of clinics, as well as some 50 drive-through testing stations that took their inspiration from past counterterrorism drills and can screen suspected patients in minutes.
“This country has a universal health-coverage system for the whole population and the economic burden for testing is very low,” said Kim Dong-hyun, president of the Korean Society of Epidemiology. “Tests are conducted for free if you have proper symptoms.”
The massive volume of data collected has enabled the authorities to pinpoint clusters of infection to better target their quarantine and disinfection efforts, and send members of the public text-message alerts to inform them of the past movements of infected patients in their area – even down to the names of shops and restaurants they visited.
“South Korea’s capability to test for early detection of viruses has developed greatly as it went through the 2009 new influenza outbreak and 2015 Mers [Middle East respiratory syndrome] outbreak,” said Kim Woo-joo, a professor of medicine at Korea University’s College of Medicine. “It ranks among the world’s top countries in this field.”
By comparison, in neighbouring Japan – which has confirmed more than 600 cases, not including the virus-stricken Diamond Princess cruise ship – the authorities had as of Friday tested over 10,000 people.
In the United States, where the authorities are unable to confirm the number of tests since they are being carried out by a patchwork of federal, state and private laboratories, the total was estimated to be fewer than 5,000 in a survey of available data by The Atlantic.
William Schaffner, a professor of preventive medicine and infectious diseases at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine in the US, said South Korea had pulled off a “spectacular” feat that was allowing health officials to track the virus and assess its intensity.
“We are unsure where our infection is and how intensely it is being transmitted in the US and we are only now starting to test,” he said.
Coronavirus is now classified as a pandemic
South Korea is not unique in claiming some success in its fight against the virus. Singapore, Taiwan and Hong Kong, informed by past outbreaks such as severe acute respiratory syndrome (Sars) and Mers, have managed to keep confirmed cases low while eschewing the sort of draconian measures implemented in mainland China.
Early on, Hong Kong took some of the most comprehensive steps to implement “social distancing” – in which events are cancelled and venues closed to minimise contact between people – by shutting schools in late January, while the authorities produced a digital map of confirmed cases to allow people to avoid potentially infected areas.
In Taiwan, officials have pooled information from immigration and health insurance databases to track people’s travel histories and symptoms, and used phone tracking to ensure compliance with quarantine. Singapore has similarly tracked infected patients and traced their contacts, with stiff penalties for those who disobey quarantine or mislead the authorities about where they have travelled.
“South Korea’s experience suggests that a country can contain the spread of the virus in a relatively short period of time without relying on draconian, at-all-costs containment measures,” said Yanzhong Huang, a senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York.
“For countries like the US, the Korean experience offers an acceptable, likely more viable, alternative to addressing the outbreak. In addressing the Covid-19 outbreak, sound decision-making should not be about making a choice between maximised protection and minimal disruption.”
China effectively barred 60 million people in Wuhan – ground zero of the outbreak – and the rest of the province of Hubei from leaving their homes, while restricting the movements of hundreds of millions of others across the country by shutting down public transport, banning private cars and setting up roadblocks.
‘I was stupidly overconfident’: a Korean coronavirus survivor’s tale
The country claims to have effectively halted the spread of the virus after recording more than 80,000 cases and 3,100 deaths, and its daily updates have in recent weeks fallen from thousands of new cases to dozens. However, scepticism lingers over official figures after local and provincial officials in Hubei initially tried to hide the extent of the outbreak.
In a move widely seen to be aimed at touting the success of Beijing’s hardline measures, Chinese President Xi Jinping on Tuesday made his first visit to Wuhan, during which he called for businesses and factories to return to work as normal and for the country to refocus on economic growth.
“While China has been able to control Covid-19, I don’t think its draconian methods are worth copying in liberal democracies,” said Lawrence Gostin, director of the O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law at Georgetown University Law Centre in Washington. “Most democracies value human rights and freedoms … [not] the degree of social control we’ve seen in China. South Korea offers a better model.”
Even as Beijing touted its success at fighting the virus, with state media recently insisting the “world owes China a ‘thank you’”, South Korea – which democratised in the late 1980s following decades of military dictatorship – has made no secret of its desire to promote a more liberal alternative.
At a press conference with foreign media this week, vice-health minister Kim Gang-lip said that while drastic measures such as locking down affected areas had demonstrated “modest effectiveness”, they suffered from being “coercive and inflexible”.
“Korea, as a democratic country, values globalisation and a pluralistic society,” he said.
“Therefore we believe we must transcend the limitations of the conventional approach to fighting infectious disease.”
Kim stressed that public trust was crucial to the government’s strategy. “The more transparently and quickly accurate information is provided, the more the people will trust the government,” he said. “They will act rationally for the good of the community at large.”
Some experts suggest South Korean society’s emphasis on discipline and community may have given it room to avoid implementing more draconian measures.
“This measure appears to have been very successful but is reliant on the local population working with the response,” said Jeremy Rossman, an honorary senior lecturer in virology at the University of Kent. “It is not clear how effective this approach would be in other cultures and it does require effective communication with the local population.”
However, South Korea’s response has not been without missteps or critics.
In mid-February, before it emerged that the virus had spread rapidly among Shincheonji followers, Moon made the ill-fated prediction that the outbreak would “disappear before long”.
The Korean Medical Association – the country’s largest association of doctors – and conservative media have criticised the president for not outright banning travel from China.
Nearly 1.5 million South Koreans have signed an online petition calling for Moon’s impeachment over his handling of the outbreak, and his approval rating this week dropped to just under 45 per cent – although, in a sign of reviving fortunes, an opinion poll released on Friday saw the president’s response rated favourably.
In the face of uncertainty, South Korea appears determined to hold firm to its strategy. During a visit to the Korea Centres for Disease Control and Prevention on Wednesday, Moon said the country’s response had received international recognition and allowed it to avoid the “extreme choice” of sweeping travel bans.
The next day, responding to the World Health Organisation’s decision to declare the virus a global pandemic, the president called on South Koreans to maintain hope that the virus would be overcome.
“It might take more time than we thought,” Moon said. “Everyone, please don’t become fatigued.”
Source: SCMP
Scientists have been trying to map the pattern of the early transmission of Covid-19 since an epidemic was reported in the central China city of Wuhan in January, two months before the outbreak became a global health crisis.
Understanding how the disease spread and determining how undetected and undocumented cases contributed to its transmission will greatly improve their understanding of the size of that threat.
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.
On December 27, Zhang Jixian, a doctor from Hubei Provincial Hospital of Integrated Chinese and Western Medicine, told China’s health authorities that the disease was caused by a new coronavirus. By that date, more than 180 people had been infected, though doctors might not have been aware of all of them at the time.
With pandemic declared, the race is on to develop a coronavirus vaccine
By the final day of 2019, the number of confirmed cases had risen to 266, On the first day of 2020 it stood at 381.
While the government records have not been released to the public, they provide valuable clues about how the disease spread in its early days and the speed of its transmission, as well as how many confirmed cases Beijing has recorded.
Scientists are now keen to identify the so-called patient zero, which could help them to trace the source of the coronavirus, which is generally thought to have jumped to humans from a wild animal, possibly a bat.
Of the first nine cases to be reported in November – four men and five women – none has been confirmed as being “patient zero”. They were all aged between 39 and 79, but it is unknown how many were residents of Wuhan, the capital of Hubei and the epicentre of the outbreak.
It is possible that there were reported cases dating back even earlier than those seen by the Post.
Accounts by other doctors seem to suggest the medical community in Wuhan became aware of the disease in late December.
Previous reports said that although doctors in the city collected samples from suspected cases in late December, they could not confirm their findings because they were bogged down by bureaucracy, such as having to get approval from the Chinese Centre for Disease Control and Prevention, which could take days. They were also ordered not to disclose any information about the new disease to the public.
As late as January 11, Wuhan’s health authorities were still claiming there were just 41 confirmed cases.
Source: SCMP
Image copyright AFPChinese officials have given figures for health workers infected with coronavirus, amid concerns about shortages of protective equipment.
Six health workers have died and 1,716 have been infected since the outbreak, they said.
The death a week ago of Doctor Li Wenliang, who tried to warn authorities early on about the virus, provoked a burst of public anger and grief.
More than 1,300 people are now known to have died from the virus.
The latest figures show 122 new deaths in China, bringing the toll to 1,381.
The total number of infections has jumped to 63,922 cases, according to the National Health Commission.
The World Health Organization said there was no major shift in the virus’s pattern of mortality or severity, despite a spike in cases in Hubei, the epicentre of the disease, on Tuesday.
Most of this was down to Hubei using a broader definition to diagnose people, said Mike Ryan, head of WHO’s health emergencies programme.
There was also no significant rise in cases outside China, the WHO said.
However, a cruise ship docked in Japan, the Diamond Princess, saw 44 new cases, bringing the total there to 218.
Zeng Yixin, vice minister of China’s National Health Commission, said 1,102 medical workers had been infected in Wuhan, where the outbreak began, and another 400 in other parts of Hubei province.
He said the number of infections among staff was increasing.
“The duties of medical workers at the front are indeed extremely heavy; their working and resting circumstances are limited, the psychological pressures are great, and the risk of infection is high,” Mr Zeng said, quoted by Reuters.
Local authorities have struggled to provide protective equipment such as respiratory masks, goggles and protective suits in hospitals in the area.
One doctor told AFP news agency that he and 16 colleagues were showing possible symptoms of the virus.
Another medical worker said she and more than 100 other staff at her hospital had been quarantined. A further 30 had been confirmed to have been infected there out of a staff of 500 she told CNN.
On 7 February the plight of medical workers was highlighted by the death of Li Wenliang, a doctor at Wuhan Central Hospital who had tried to issue the first warning about the virus on 30 December.
Image copyright LI WENLIANGHe had sent out a warning to fellow medics but police told him to stop “making false comments”.
A wave of anger and grief flooded Chinese social media site Weibo when news of Dr Li’s death broke.
Image copyright AFPThe vessel is in quarantine in Yokohama, in southern Japan. Not all the 3,700 people on board have been tested yet.
People with the virus are taken to hospitals on land to be treated, while those on board are largely confined to their cabins.
Image copyright AFPHowever on Thursday Japan said it would allow those aged 80 or over who have tested negative for the coronavirus to disembark.
Health Minister Katsunobu Kato said they could be allowed off the ship as early as Friday but would have to stay in accommodation provided by the government, the Japan Times reported.
Meanwhile another cruise ship – the MS Westerdam, carrying more than 2,000 people – docked in Cambodia after being turned away by ports in Japan, Taiwan, Guam, the Philippines and Thailand despite having no sick patients on board.
Source: The BBC
Chen Dechang, a doctor from Ruijin Hospital in Shanghai who is among those sent to Hubei, said it was important there were more medical staff on the scene.
“We can help save more patients in the intensive care unit if we are on the front line,” he said.
Authorities in Shanghai have also sent 81 ECMO (extracorporeal membrane oxygenation) life-support machines to Jinyintan Hospital, which is one of the designated facilities treating patients in Wuhan.
The ECMO technique – which involves removing blood from a person’s body, removing the carbon dioxide and oxygenating red blood cells before pumping them back into the patient – has already been used on one critically ill patient at Wuhan University’s Zhongnan Hospital, according to Shanghai-based news outlet Thepaper.cn.
Though the report did not say how effective the treatment had been.
“We are a team of experienced practitioners who fought Sars,” they said in the petition, a copy of which was posted on the social media accounts of Communist Party mouthpiece People’s Daily.
“We cannot back away from our responsibility to help 17 years later as people are facing the outbreak of a new coronavirus. We are willing to be deployed to the front line to make our contributions.”
A team of 135 doctors from Chongqing arrived in Wuhan on Friday evening, the NHC said, without elaborating.
Aside from the support from the private sector, state lender China Development Bank on Friday issued a 2 billion yuan emergency loan to Wuhan, while a day earlier, China’s finance ministry said it had allocated 1 billion yuan to authorities in Hubei to help tackle the epidemic.
Across the country, authorities have introduced a number of measures to help prevent the further spread of the coronavirus, including the closure of all cinemas in Shanghai.
Also on Saturday it was reported that Liang Wudong, a doctor at Xinhua Hospital in Wuhan, had become the first medical professional to die after treating people infected with the virus.
Liang, 62, was suspected of having contracted the virus last week and had been transferred to Jinyintan Hospital for treatment. He died at 7am on Saturday, Thepaper.cn reported.
According to official figures, 41 people have been killed by the coronavirus and there have been more than 1,280 confirmed cases. The vast majority are in the Chinese mainland, but there have also been confirmed cases in Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan and eight other countries, including the United States and Europe.
Tens of millions of people in cities across Hubei are effectively on lockdown after the introduction of travel bans to help control the spread of the virus.
Source: SCMP
The consulate could not be reached for comment on Saturday.
France, the United States, Britain and South Korea all have consulates in Wuhan, according to China’s foreign ministry.
The South Korean consulate said in a post on its website that it would suspend all visa applications “indefinitely until further notice”.
A diplomatic source said several foreign embassies in China were considering plans to evacuate their nationals from Wuhan.
First coronavirus case ‘had no links to seafood market’
It is not known how many foreigners remain in the city, which has a population of about 11 million and has been under a government-imposed lockdown since Thursday morning.
French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said in a statement on Friday that Paris was monitoring the crisis and “can increase the power [to respond] if necessary”.
There have so far been three confirmed cases of the new coronavirus in France, in Paris and Bordeaux.
An emailed inquiry to the British consulate in the city received only an automated reply, saying: “Wuhan is now in crisis mode. We may not be able to answer your emails for some time.”
The consulate would be closed for the Lunar New Year holiday until January 31, it said.
Meanwhile, British citizen Kharn Lambert told the BBC on Thursday how he had been “trapped” in Wuhan.
The PE teacher said he was afraid to leave his house for fear of catching the deadly virus.
“If you saw the street behind me at night time where I normally live … if I show you out there now, it’s dead,” he said.
More than 1,280 confirmed cases have been reported across China, of which more than 700 were in Hubei, according to local government figures released on Saturday.
The death toll in Hubei stands at 39, with two other fatalities reported in the provinces of Hebei and Heilongjiang.
Tens of millions of people in Hubei are effectively on lockdown since a travel ban was imposed on most of the province.
Flights, trains, buses and ferries connecting Wuhan to other cities in Hubei have been suspended. Rail authorities in Wuhan, which is a hub for several major high-speed lines, said operations at 61 stations and more than 400 train services had been suspended until further notice.
Source: SCMP
A letter to the public by the Xinzhou district government on Wednesday had urged people “not to listen to or spread rumours”, and said that a location had yet to be finalised for the plant.
“What is rumoured online to be the garbage burning project that has already started is in fact demolition work for a railway construction project,” the letter said.
Converting waste to energy by burning it has been adopted in China as an alternative to burying rubbish in landfill sites – which causes pollution and requires a lot of land – but it has been widely resisted because of fears that it is a health hazard. Large protests against incinerators have been held in recent years in Zhejiang, Jiangsu, Hubei, Beijing and Guangdong.
“We understand the need to dispose of garbage in an environmentally friendly way, but does it have to be that close to our homes? Two universities and more than 10 residential areas are within a 3km (1.86 miles) radius,” said the man, referring to the Wuhan University of Bioengineering and Wuhan Engineering Institute.
Yangluo, designated as an economic and technology development area, is 30km northeast of downtown Wuhan and has a population of 300,000. The incineration plant would handle 2,000 tonnes of waste per day, the Wuhan urban management committee said last month.
Residents asked about the progress of the project in early June and were told that the authorities were still choosing a site.
Protests broke out last Friday after rumours spread that the project had already started – forcing the district government to say on Saturday that it would “not start without approval from the public”.
Nonetheless, thousands of protesters – about 10,000, according to one source – marched on Saturday and Sunday, leading to some arrests, although those detained at the weekend had since been released, protesters said.
After minor protests on Monday and Tuesday, residents gathered in greater numbers in Yangluo on Wednesday and Thursday nights, met by a heavy police presence.
Videos seen by the South China Morning Post show hundreds of riot police marching through the streets, equipped with helmets, shields and batons
The crowd dispersed at about 10pm as police began to round up some protesters. They were taken aboard a coach and two men were handled roughly, the videos showed.
Chinese Vice Premier Hu Chunhua (C, rear), also a member of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee, addresses a national spring agricultural production work conference in Xiangyang, central China’s Hubei Province, March 16, 2019. (Xinhua/Xiao Yijiu)BEIJING, Feb. 24 (Xinhua) — China’s national observatory on Sunday forecast that some northern and eastern parts of the country would be shrouded in smog in the coming days while snow will hit western regions.
Thick smog will envelop northern and eastern areas including Hebei and Shandong provinces until Thursday, according to the National Meteorological Center (NMC).
From Sunday night to Monday morning, thick fog will be seen in the provinces of Henan, Anhui, Jiangsu, Shanghai and Hubei, reducing visibility in some areas to less than 200 meters, the NMC said.
From Sunday night to Tuesday, snow will hit west China’s Tibet, Qinghai and Gansu, while rain will soak the south from Tuesday to Wednesday.
Bad weather could disrupt traffic after the Spring Festival holiday when many people are returning to work after the break.
China’s Spring Festival travel rush started from Jan. 21 and will last till March 1.
Source: Xinhua
ZHENGZHOU, Feb. 15 (Xinhua) — The middle route of China’s South-to-North Water Diversion Project has transferred 20 billion cubic meters of water, benefiting over 53 million residents along the route.
The Construction and Administration Bureau of South-to-North Water Diversion Middle Route Project said that, as of Friday, the project has transferred 20 billion cubic meters of water since the project started in December 2014.
Thanks to the project, over 53 million residents in central China’s Henan Province, northern China’s Hebei Province, Beijing and Tianjin have bid farewell to unsafe drinking water.
So far, 37 cities and counties and 83 waterworks in Henan have received transferred water as planned, while 11 new waterworks have been built up, with the beneficiaries in the province increasing by nearly one million.
Aimed at increasing water safety and improving the water ecology and environment along the route, the middle route project has been carrying water through canals and pipes from the Danjiangkou reservoir in central China’s Hubei Province to Henan, Hebei, Beijing and Tianjin since 2014.
The project has also helped prevent the falling of underground water levels in the North China Plain. Meanwhile, test results have shown that the good water quality of the source of the middle route project has also ensured drinking water safety for residents.
Source: Xinhua
continuously updated blog about China & India
continuously updated blog about China & India
continuously updated blog about China & India
CHINDIA ALERT: You'll be living in their world, very soon 