Chindia Alert: You’ll be Living in their World Very Soon
aims to alert you to the threats and opportunities that China and India present. China and India require serious attention; case of ‘hidden dragon and crouching tiger’.
Without this attention, governments, businesses and, indeed, individuals may find themselves at a great disadvantage sooner rather than later.
The POSTs (front webpages) are mainly 'cuttings' from reliable sources, updated continuously.
The PAGEs (see Tabs, above) attempt to make the information more meaningful by putting some structure to the information we have researched and assembled since 2006.
The plight of these workers, many of whom have been walking for days without adequate food and water, has caused widespread anger in the country.
Train and bus services were shut during the lockdown and even though some have been restarted for migrants, many say they cannot afford the fare and are unsure if they will be accommodated on them due to social distancing norms.
Several have died in making the journey, including 16 migrants who were run over by a train while they were sleeping on the railway tracks.
Media caption Coronavirus: Heartbreaking scenes as India lockdown sparks mass migration
Ms Sitharaman also announced that workers would be able to use ration cards – usually only valid at village level – anywhere in the country regardless of where it was issued.
The ration cards usually entitle holders to subsidised food.
She added that the move towards portable cards would benefit nearly 670 million people and will be completed by March next year.
The government will also provide affordable housing for migrant labour by converting existing vacant government funded housing complexes, among other things.
The announcements on Thursday – the second tranche of a series of economic stimulus measures – were aimed at migrant workers, street hawkers, small traders and small farmers.
The full details of the economic package, which is equivalent to 10% of India’s gross domestic product, will be known in some days as the government is announcing a different tranche every day.
Ms Sitharaman’s announcements also included details of “special credit” to be provided to five million street hawkers who have been forced to cease working over the last month and a half.
To help farmers, the government also announced an emergency $4bn “working capital funding” which would benefit some 30 million small farmers to meet crop requirements in May and June
In March, India said it would provide around 1.7 trillion rupees in direct cash transfers and food security measures, mainly for the poor.
However, Mr Modi’s administration had been accused in some quarters of not having done enough.
KOLKATA (Reuters) – Indian and Chinese troops on border patrol duties had a brief skirmish in Sikkim, a northeastern Indian state bordering China, the Indian Defence Ministry said on Sunday, blaming both sides for the incident.
“Aggressive behaviour by the two sides resulted in minor injuries to troops. The two sides disengaged after dialogue and interaction at the local level,” the ministry said in a statement.
The Indian daily Hindustan Times, citing a military source, said four Indian soldiers and seven Chinese troops were injured when some of the soldiers exchanged blows during the confrontation, which it said took place on Saturday and involved some 150 soldiers.
The Defence Ministry said the incident took place in the Nakula area but did not give details of how it started, or what caused the injuries.
China’s Ministry of Defense could not be immediately reached for comment on Sunday.
India and China have often accused each other of intrusions into each other’s territories, but clashes are rare.
There is still deep mistrust between the two countries over their festering border dispute, which triggered a brief war in 1962.
Hundreds of troops from both sides were deployed in 2017 on the Doklam plateau, near the borders of India, Bhutan, and China after India objected to Chinese construction of a road in the Himalayan area, in the most serious standoff in years.
Indian security forces have killed a prominent militant leader in disputed Kashmir, officials say.
Riyaz Naikoo had taken over command of the banned Hizbul Mujahideen group, succeeding Burhan Wani who was killed by security forces in 2016.
Wani’s death triggered massive protests in the region, which is claimed in its entirety by both India and Pakistan.
The region has seen an armed insurgency against Indian rule since 1989, which has flared following Wani’s killing.
Naikoo was shot dead in his home village of Beigh Pora in Pulwama district after militants killed eight security personnel in two separate attacks, part of a recent surge of violence in Indian-administered Kashmir.
Locals said the militant leader had been trapped in a joint siege laid by army, paramilitary and police forces. He had been on the run for eight years.
“At least 76 militants including Naikoo have been killed since January this year. But we also lost 20 soldiers including senior army and police officers,” a security official told BBC Urdu on condition of anonymity.
Under a new policy, militants who are killed are not identified and their bodies are not handed over to their families.
Officials had accused Riyaz Naikoo of plotting attacks against the security establishment in the valley.
Disputed Kashmir has been a flashpoint for more than 60 years, sparking two wars between India and Pakistan.
In August 2019, the Indian government stripped the region of its semi-autonomous status and split it into two federally-run territories.
Thousands of people were detained and the region remains under severe security restrictions.
CHENNAI (Reuters) – At least 11 people were killed in India in a gas leak at a South Korean-owned factory making polystyrene products that made hundreds of people sick and led to the evacuation of villagers living nearby, officials said.
The accident occurred some 14 km (9 miles) inland from the east coast city of Visakhapatnam, in Andhra Pradesh state, at a plant operated by LG Polymers, a unit of South Korea’s biggest petrochemical maker, LG Chem Ltd.
Srijana Gummalla, commissioner of the Greater Visakhapatnam Municipal Corporation, said gas from styrene, a principal raw materials at the plant, leaked during the early hours of the morning, when families in the surrounding villages were asleep.
RELATED COVERAGE
LG Chem share price falls nearly 2% after deadly gas leak in India
Yashwanth Saikumar Ambati, 23, who lives about 300 metres away from the plant, said he woke up around 4.30 a.m. because of a strong smell.
“I went back to sleep and I woke up around 6 because the smell got stronger. My eyes were itchy, and I was feeling drowsy, light-headed and slightly breathless,” he told Reuters, adding that neighbours also complained of eye irritation and stomach aches.
In a statement issued from Seoul, LG Chem said that the gas emitted in the leak can cause nausea and dizziness when inhaled, adding that it was seeking to ensure casualties received treatment quickly.
Video from Reuters partner ANI shot later on Thursday showed emergency workers in the area rushing to help victims, some of whom appeared to be listless and disoriented.
A number of victims lay unconscious on the streetside, as volunteers fanned them and others carried them to ambulances.
A spokesman for LG Chem in Seoul said the leak was discovered by a night shift maintenance worker and has been brought under control.
According to both the company spokesman and Gummalla, the plant was being reopened after India relaxed a nationwide lockdown that had been imposed on March 25 to contain the spread of the new coronavirus.
Thursday’s incident brought back bad memories of a gas leak at an factory of U.S. chemical firm Union Carbide that killed thousands in the central Indian city of Bhopal in 1984, but thankfully it was on a far smaller scale.
“I pray for everyone’s safety and well-being in Visakhapatnam,” Prime Minister Narendra Modi said in a tweet.
S.N. Pradhan, director general of the National Disaster Response Force, said that at least 11 had died after around 1,000 people living near the plant were exposed to the gas.
FALLING, RUNNING AWAY
B.V. Rani, a revenue official in the district, said she received a call at around 4 a.m. from a police officer near the facility, who sounded panicky. “He asked me to come to the spot immediately,” Rani told Reuters.
When Rani went there, she saw that people had collapsed unconscious in the village adjoining the 60-acre site of the plant.
“I personally helped more than 15 people get to an ambulance who had tried to run away from the village but dropped down within a few metres,” she said.
At least one child was among the dead, a policeman at the site told ANI, whose video showed at least two other children being lifted into an ambulance.
Between 300-400 people were hospitalised, Swarupa Rani, an Assistant Commissioner of Police in Visakhapatnam told Reuters. Another 1,500 people had been evacuated, mostly from a neighbouring village.
Areas within approximately 3-kilometre (nearly 2-mile) radius of the plant were evacuated, he said, with emergency services going from door-to-door to find anyone left behind.
TOP PETROCHEMICAL MAKER
Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Jagan Mohan Reddy said in a televised address that the gas leak occurred because raw material was stored for a long period of time.
The state government will give 10 million rupees ($131,900) compensation to the families to those who died, and it will also form a panel to investigate the cause of the accident, said P.V. Ramesh, a senior aide to the chief minister.
“Obviously something has gone wrong,” Ramesh told Reuters. “Nobody will be spared.”
LG Chem’s share priced closed nearly 2% weaker on Thursday, in a Seoul market that was broadly flat.
South Korea’s top petrochemical maker by capacity, LG Chem acquired the plant in 1997 and established LG Polymers India Private Limited (LGPI), according to a company website.
The LG Polymers plant makes polystyrene products which are used in manufacturing electric fan blades, cups and cutlery and containers for cosmetic products such as make up.
“LG Polymers is a multi national, reputed company, and it is sad that the incident has happened in their plant,” Chief Minister Reddy said in a televised media address.
Beijing ‘carefully considering’ unveiling the plane at the Zhuhai Airshow in November at a time of heightened regional tension
H-20 will give China the nuclear triad of submarines, ballistic missiles and bombers
An artist’s impression of what the H-20 may look like. Photo: Weibo
China’s new generation strategic bomber is likely to be ready for delivery this year, but Beijing is said to be weighing the impact of its unveiling at a complex time in regional relations due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Military sources said the Xian H-20 supersonic stealth bomber – expected to double the country’s strike range – could make its first public appearance at this year’s Zhuhai Airshow in November, if the pandemic was sufficiently under control.
“The Zhuhai Airshow is expected to become a platform to promote China’s image and its success in pandemic control – telling the outside world that the contagion did not have any big impacts on Chinese defence industry enterprises,” a source said.
But the appearance of the bomber at this year’s air show could heighten tensions by directly threatening countries within its strike range, especially Australia, Japan and the Korean peninsula.
Thrilling aerobatics fill the skies to open air show in central China
“The Beijing leadership is still carefully considering whether its commission will affect regional balance, especially as regional tensions have been escalating over the Covid-19 pandemic,” another source said.
“Like intercontinental ballistic missiles, all strategic bombers can be used for delivering nuclear weapons … if China claimed it had pursued a national defence policy which is purely defensive in nature, why would it need such an offensive weapon?”
Tensions in the region have worsened in the past month with a war of words between Beijing and Washington over the pandemic, and both sides increasing naval patrols.
The US defence department has estimated a cruising distance of more than 8,500km (5,300 miles) for the H-20, the last in China’s 20 series of new generation warplanes, which includes the J-20 stealth fighter jet, the Y-20 giant transporter and the Z-20 medium-lift utility helicopter.
The arrival of the H-20 would mark the completion of China’s “nuclear triad” of ground-based intercontinental ballistic missiles, submarine-launched missiles and air-launched weapons.
An H-6K bomber, or China’s B-52, flies over the South China Sea. Photo: AP
Chinese state television has said the H-20 could alter the strategic calculus between the US and China by doubling the strike range of its current H-6K, dubbed the country’s B-52.
The H-20 has reportedly been designed to strike targets beyond the second island ring – which includes US bases in Japan, Guam, the Philippines and other countries – from bases in mainland China. The third island chain extends to Hawaii and coastal Australia.
It will be equipped with nuclear and conventional missiles with a maximum take-off weight of at least 200 tonnes and a payload of up to 45 tonnes. The bomber is expected to fly at subsonic speeds and could potentially unleash four powerful hypersonic stealth cruise missiles.
However, like China’s first active stealth fighter jet, the J-20, engine development of the H-20 bomber has fallen behind schedule, according to sources.
For the J-20, engineers were developing high-thrust turbofan WS-15 engines, but the jet is understood to be using either Chinese WS-10B or Russian-built AL-31FM2/3 engines, which compromise its manoeuvrability and stealth capabilities at subsonic speeds.
Military enthusiasts have speculated the H-20 might use the NK-321 Russian engine but two independent military sources said it would be equipped with an upgraded WS-10 engine.
“The WS-10 is still a transitional engine for the H-20 because it is not powerful enough. The eligible replacement may take two to three years for development,” one of the sources said.
China must meet air force demand for J-20 stealth jets, say analysts
17 Feb 2020
The second said the speed of the H-20 would be slower than its original design, with some of its original combat capability being reduced.
“That’s why the American air force doesn’t care about the H-20, because it is not strong and powerful enough to cause any challenge to their B-2 and B-21 bombers.”
If the US decided to deploy more F-35 supersonic fighter jets – it has already sold about 200 to Japan and South Korea – it could push China to bring forward the unveiling of the new bomber, the second source said.
“For example, if some US decision makers decided to deploy up to 500 F-35s to Japan, South Korea, and even Singapore, India and Taiwan – making almost all of China’s neighbours in the Indo-Pacific region use F-35s to contain China – that would pushBeijing to launch the H-20 as soon as possible.”
The H-20 is believed to have been in development since the early 2000s. The project to develop a strategic bomber was first announced by the People’s Liberation Army in 2016.
An antibody engineered from the animal’s immune system was found to neutralise the virus that causes Covid-19
American and Belgian researchers hope the discovery may help protect humans from the deadly illness
Winter the llama (front) lives on a farm operated by Ghent University’s Vlaams Institute for Biotechnology. Photo: Tim Coppens
A Belgian llama could hold the key to producing an antibody that neutralises the coronavirus that causes Covid-19.
More studies and clinical trials are needed to see if it can be used in humans to treat Covid-19, but the team of American and Belgian scientists who engineered the antibody said they were encouraged by their preliminary findings, which will be published in the journal Cell next week.
Jason McLellan, from the University of Texas at Austin and co-author of the study, described it as one of the “first antibodies known to neutralise Sars-CoV-2”, the official name for the virus.
“With antibody therapies, you’re directly giving somebody the protective antibodies and so, immediately after treatment, they should be protected,” he wrote in a press release.
“The antibodies could also be used to treat somebody who is already sick to lessen the severity of the disease.”
Winter the llama produced antibodies that proved effective against the Sars-CoV-2 virus. Photo: Tim Coppens
The scientists have been working on coronaviruses – including severe acute respiratory syndrome (Sars) and Middle East respiratory syndrome (Mers) – for years.
In 2016 they injected the llama, named Winter, with Sars and Mers in the hope of developing a treatment for the diseases.
“I thought this would be a small side project,” said Dorien De Vlieger from Ghent University in Belgium, who helped to isolate antibodies against coronaviruses from the llamas.
China’s race for a Covid-19 vaccine hits a hurdle – no outbreak at home
1 May 2020
“Now the scientific impact of this project became bigger than I could ever expect. It’s amazing how unpredictable viruses can be.”
A llama’s immune system produces two types of antibodies when it detects pathogens, one similar to human antibodies and one that is about a quarter of the size.
The antibodies produced by Winter were found to be effective in targeting the Sars virus’s spike protein, which allows it to bind to human cells.
Chinese firm ready to make 100 million Coronavirus vaccine doses if trials are successful
This year they decided to test the antibodies Winter had produced during the Sars experiment to see if it could prove effective against Covid-19.
Although it did bind itself to the Sars-CoV-2 virus it did so “weakly”, so the team then linked two copies of the antibody together to make it bind more effectively.
Oxford vaccine effective in monkeys, heading for mass production in India
30 Apr 2020
“That was exciting to me because I’d been working on this for years. But there wasn’t a big need for a coronavirus treatment then. This was just basic research,” said Daniel Wrapp from the University of Texas, a co-author of the study.
The smaller type of antibodies produced by llamas, called single-domain antibodies or nanobodies, can be used in an inhaler, according to Wrapp.
“That makes them potentially really interesting as a drug for a respiratory pathogen because you’re delivering it right to the site of infection,” said Wrapp.
Researchers created an antibody dubbed VHH-72Fc (blue) that binds tightly to the Sars-CoV-2 spike protein (pink, green and orange), blocking the virus from infecting cells. Photo: University of Texas at Austin
The researchers are preparing for more trials with hamsters or primates to further test the antibody, before taking it to human trials.
The main subject of the study, Winter the llama, is now four years old and lives on a farm operated by Ghent University’s Vlaams Institute for Biotechnologym which said it has around 130 other llamas and alpacas at the facility.
Image copyright ANIImage caption Millions of people across India have been stranded by the lockdown
The first train carrying migrant workers stranded by a nationwide lockdown in India has left the southern state of Telangana.
The 24-coach train, carrying 1,200 passengers, is travelling non-stop to eastern Jharkhand state.
Earlier this week, India said millions of people stranded by the lockdown can return to their home states.
The country has been in lockdown to curb the spread of coronavirus since 24 March.
However, the movement of people will be only possible through state government facilitation, which means people cannot attempt to cross state borders on their own.
This train is a “one-off special train” to transport the workers on the request of the Telangana state government, Rakesh Ch, the chief public relations officer of South-Central Railways, told the BBC.
The train left Lingampally, a suburb of the southern city of Hyderabad, early on Friday and is expected to reach Hatia in Jharkhand on Saturday.
Mr Rakesh said that adequate social distancing precautions had been taken and food was being served to the passengers.
Image copyright ANIImage caption Railways officials said that adequate social distancing precautions had been taken and food was being served to the passengers.
He said each carriage was carrying 54 passengers instead of its 72-seat capacity.
“The middle berth is not being used in the sleeper coaches and only two people are sitting in the general coaches,” Mr Rakesh said.
Before the train pulled out of the station, all the passengers were screened for fever and other symptoms.
They had all been employed at a construction site at the Indian Institute of Technology, a top engineering school, in Hyderabad city.
The workers had earlier protested at the site against the non-payment of wages by their contractor.
Senior official M Hanumantha Rao said the contractor was asked to pay their salaries and arrangement made to send them back home.
The journey was organised at “very short notice”, senior police official S Chandra Shekar Reddy told BBC Telugu.
“We screened them at the labour camp itself and transported them to the railway station in buses,” he said.
India’s migrant workers are the backbone of the big city economy, constructing houses, cooking food, serving in eateries, delivering takeaways, cutting hair in salons, making automobiles, plumbing toilets and delivering newspapers, among other things.
Image copyright ANIImage caption Before the train pulled out of the station, all the passengers were screened for fever and other symptoms.
Most of the country’s estimated 100 million migrant workers live in squalid conditions.
When industries shut down overnight, many of them feared they would starve.
For days, they walked – sometimes hundreds of kilometres – to reach their villages because bus and train services were shut down overnight. Several died trying to make the journey.
Some state governments tried to facilitate buses, but these were quickly overrun. Thousands of others have been placed in quarantine centres and relief camps.
NEW DELHI (Reuters) – Hundreds of foreign companies are actively procuring components for India and Pakistan’s nuclear programmes, taking advantage of gaps in the global regulation of the industry, according to a report by a U.S.-based research group.
Using open-source data, the nonprofit Centre For Advanced Defense Studies (C4ADS) report provides one of the most comprehensive overviews of networks supplying the rivals, in a region regarded as one of the world’s most dangerous nuclear flashpoints.
“India and Pakistan are taking advantage of gaps in global non-proliferation regimes and export controls to get what they need,” said Jack Margolin, a C4ADS analyst and co-author of the report.
It is seldom possible to determine whether individual transactions are illegal by using publicly available data, Margolin said, and the report does not suggest that companies mentioned broke national or international laws or regulations.
But past reports by the think tank, whose financial backers include the Carnegie Corporation and the Wyss Foundation, have often led to action by law enforcement agencies.
Spokesmen from the offices of India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and Pakistan’s Prime Minister Imran Khan did not respond to requests for comment. Pakistan’s military, which plays a major role in decision-making for the nuclear weapons programme, also declined to comment.
To identify companies involved, C4ADS analysed more than 125 million records of public trade and tender data and documents, and then checked them against already-identified entities listed by export control authorities in the United States and Japan.
Pakistan, which is subject to strict international export controls on its programme, has 113 suspected foreign suppliers listed by the United States and Japan. But the C4ADS report found an additional 46, many in shipment hubs like Hong Kong, Singapore and the United Arab Emirates.
“In Pakistan’s case, they have a lot more stringent controls, and they get around these by using transnational networks… and exploiting opaque jurisdictions,” Margolin said.
The father of Pakistan’s atomic bomb, AQ Khan, admitted in 2004 to selling nuclear technology to North Korea, Iran and Libya. He was pardoned a day later by Pakistani authorities, which have refused requests from international investigators to question him.
India has a waiver that allows it to buy nuclear technology from international markets. The Indian government allows inspections of some nuclear facilities by the International Atomic Energy Agency, but not all of them.
Neither India or Pakistan have signed the international Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, adhered to by most nuclear powers. Consequently, they are not obliged to submit to IAEA oversight over all of their facilities.
C4ADS identified 222 companies that did business with the nuclear facilities in India that had no IAEA oversight. Of these, 86 companies did business with more than one such nuclear facility in India.
“It’s evidence that more needs to be done, and that there needs to be a more sophisticated approach taken to India,” Margolin said. “Just because the product is not explicitly bound for a military facility, that doesn’t mean that the due diligence process ends there.”
India and Pakistan have gone to war three times – twice over the disputed Kashmir region – since they won independence from British colonial rule in 1947.
Having for years secretly developed nuclear weapons capability, the two declared themselves nuclear powers following tit-for-tat atomic tests in 1998.
A few years later, in 2002, the two foes almost went to war for a fourth time, following an attack by Pakistan-based militants on the parliament in New Delhi. And a year ago, a suicide attack by a Pakistan-based militant group in a part of Kashmir controlled by India sparked another flare up in tensions.
Both countries are estimated to have around 150 useable nuclear warheads apiece, according to the Federation of American Scientists, a nonprofit group tracking stockpiles of nuclear weapons.
Researchers conclude that the virus was circulating undetected in France in February
Findings highlight the difficulties governments face in tracing the source of coronavirus outbreaks
Researchers in France have carried out genetic analysis and found that the dominant types of the viral strains in the country did not come from China or Italy. Photo: AP
The coronavirus outbreak in France was not caused by cases imported from China, but from a locally circulating strain of unknown origin, according to a new study by French scientists at the Institut Pasteur in Paris.
Genetic analysis showed that the dominant types of the viral strains in France belonged to a clade – or group with a common ancestor – that did not come from China or Italy, the earliest hotspot in Europe.
“The French outbreak has been mainly seeded by one or several variants of this clade … we can infer that the virus was silently circulating in France in February,” said researchers led by Dr Sylvie van der Werf and Etienne Simon-Loriere in a non-peer reviewed paper released on bioRxiv.org last week.
The Covid-19 pandemic has infected more than 128,000 people in France and caused more than 23,000 deaths.
France detected the virus in late January, before any other country in Europe. A few patients with a travel history that included China’s Hubei province were sampled on January 24 and tested positive.
The Covid-19 pandemic has infected more than 128,000 people in France and caused more than 23,000 deaths. Photo: AFP
The French government took quick and decisive measures to trace contacts of the infected people and shut down the chance of further infection.
However, these strains were not found in patients tested after the initial imported cases, suggesting “the quarantine imposed on the initial Covid-19 cases in France appears to have prevented local transmission”, the researchers said.
The Pasteur institute collected samples from more than 90 other patients across France and found the strains all came from one genetic line. Strains following this unique path of evolution had so far only been detected in Europe and the Americas.
Singapore Covid-19 cases to rise as not all migrant workers being tested
28 Apr 2020
The earliest sample in the French clade was collected on February 19 from a patient who had no history of travel and no known contact with returned travellers.
Several patients had recently travelled to other European countries, the United Arab Emirates, Madagascar and Egypt but there was no direct evidence that they contracted the disease in these destinations.
To the researchers’ surprise, some of the later strains collected were genetically older – or closer to the ancestral root – than the first sample in this clade.
Spanish official cries reading names of health workers killed by coronavirus
A possible explanation, according to the authors, was that local transmission had been occurring in France for some time without being detected by health authorities.
The French government may have missed detecting the transmission. According to the researchers, a large proportion of those patients might have had mild symptoms or none at all.
The researchers also found that three sequences later sampled in Algeria were closely related to those in France, suggesting that travellers from France might have introduced the virus to the African country and caused an outbreak.
China says US politicians are lying as Trump calls for Covid-19 damages
29 Apr 2020
Benjamin Neuman, professor and chair of biological sciences with the Texas A&M University-Texarkana, said the French strains might have come from Belgium, where some sequences most closely related to the original strain from China were clustered.
“Since the earliest European strains of [the coronavirus] Sars-CoV-2 seem to be associated with Belgium, the idea that the virus spread from Belgium to both Italy and France at around the same time seems plausible, as this paper contends,” he said.
France is the latest in a growing number of countries and areas where no direct link between China and local outbreaks could be established.
The dominant strains in Russia and Australia, for instance, came from Europe and the United States, respectively, according to some studies.
These findings have drawn fire from some politicians who have tried to deflect domestic anger over their handling of the crisis by blaming China.
Is this the next big hotspot for the ‘little flu’?
28 Apr 2020
“So now the Fake News @nytimes is tracing the CoronaVirus origins back to Europe, NOT China. This is a first!” he tweeted on April 11, referring to a story about the studies in the The New York Times’ science section.
The findings also highlight the difficulties governments face in tracing the source of coronavirus outbreaks.
Less-developed countries may never know where their strains came from due to inadequate testing and sequencing capability.
India, for example, has released the genetic sequence of fewer than 40 samples to the public so far, a small number considering its huge population.
Most of the strains sampled in 35 early cases came from clades that could be traced to Italy and Iran, with only a few from China, according to a recent study. But researchers were not able to track further because of the lack of data.
A scientist on the study, Dr Mukesh Thakur, of the Zoological Survey of India, said it was too early to rule out China as the source of outbreaks in India because the number of samples at hand was limited.
A 20-year-old student studying medicine in Wuhan, for instance, might have come in contact with many people on the way home before she was tested positive on January 30.
Thakur said local media reported that the Indian government quarantined 3,500 people possibly linked to three positive cases imported from Wuhan.
“God knows how many of them tested positive in the subsequent stages,” Thakur said in an email response to the Post’s queries on Tuesday.
Some prominent scientists, including Francis Collins, director of the US National Institutes of Health, said the virus might have been spreading quietly in humans for years, or even decades, without causing a detectable outbreak.
The virus had thus adapted well to the human body. Some genes regulating its binding to host cells were similar, or even identical, to those found in some other highly infectious human viruses, such as HIV and Ebola.
According to some estimates, the ancestor of Sars-CoV-2, the virus causing Covid-19, might have left bats between 50 and 70 years ago. A recent study by a team of geneticists in Oxford University estimated the first outbreak of the current pandemic could have occurred as early as September last year.
They found that the dominant strains circulating in China and Asia were genetically younger than some popular strains in the United States.
Six animals inoculated with vaccine candidate then exposed to virus did not catch Covid-19 after 28 days
Up to 60 million doses could be produced by Serum Institute of India this year
Microbiologist Elisa Granato gets an injection on Thursday as part of the first human trials in Britain for a potential coronavirus vaccine. Photo: University of Oxford via AP
A leading candidate for a Covid-19 vaccine has shown promising results in animal trials, and is expected to see mass production in India within months.
The Serum Institute of India, the world’s largest maker of vaccines by volume, said on Tuesday that it plans this year to produce up to 60 million doses of a potential vaccine developed by the University of Oxford, which is under clinical trial in Britain.
While the vaccine candidate, called “ChAdOx1 nCoV-19”, is yet to be proven to work against Covid-19, Serum decided to start manufacturing it as it had shown success in animal trials and had progressed to tests on humans, Serum Chief Executive Adar Poonawalla said.
Six rhesus macaque monkeys were inoculated with the vaccine candidate at the National Institutes of Health’s Rocky Mountain Laboratory in Montana last month, according to The New York Times.
Covid-19 vaccine trial starts in Oxford, but remdesivir treatment reportedly flops in China tests
The subjects were exposed afterwards to large quantities of the novel coronavirus, but all six remained healthy after more than 28 days, the newspaper reported, citing researcher Vincent Munster, who conducted the test.
More than 3 million people have been reported to be infected globally and over 210,000 have died from Covid-19, the respiratory disease caused by the coronavirus.
“They are a bunch of very qualified, great scientists [at Oxford] … That’s why we said we will go with this and that’s why we are confident,” Poonawalla told Reuters in a phone interview.
“Being a private limited company, not accountable to public investors or bankers, I can take a little risk and sideline some of the other commercial products and projects that I had planned in my existing facility,” Poonawalla said.
Bill Gates hopes his virus vaccine ‘manufacturing within a year’
27 Apr 2020
As many as 100 potential Covid-19 candidate vaccines are now under development by biotech and research teams around the world, and at least five of these are in preliminary testing in people in what are known as phase one clinical trials.
Poonawalla said he hoped trials of the Oxford vaccine, due to finish in about September, would be successful. Oxford scientists said last week the main focus of initial tests was to ascertain not only whether the vaccine worked but that it induced good immune responses and no unacceptable side effects.
Serum, owned by the Indian billionaire Cyrus Poonawalla, plans to make the vaccine at its two manufacturing plants in the western city of Pune, aiming to produce up to 400 million doses next year if all goes well, Poonawalla said.
“A majority of the vaccine, at least initially, would have to go to our countrymen before it goes abroad,” he said, adding that Serum would leave it to the Indian government to decide which countries would get how much of the vaccine and when.
Rhesus macaque monkeys are often used in animal testing because of their similarity to humans. Photo: AFP
Serum envisages a price of 1,000 rupees (US$14.70) per vaccine, but governments would give it to people without charge, he said.
He said Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s office was “very closely” involved in the vaccine production and the company is hoping the government will help foot the cost of making it.
Over roughly the next five months, Serum will spend some 300 million to 400 million rupees (US$4.4 million to US$5.9 million) on making around 3-5 million doses per month, he said. “[The government] are very happy to share some risk and fund something with us, but we haven’t really pencilled anything down yet,” Poonawalla said.
Coronavirus: clinical trial begins on third vaccine candidate in China
22 Apr 2020
Serum has also partnered with the US biotech firm Codagenix and Austria’s Themis on two other Covid-19 vaccine candidates and plans to announce a fourth alliance in a couple of weeks, he said.
Serum’s board last week also agreed to invest roughly 6 billion rupees (US$8.8 billion) on making a new manufacturing unit to solely produce coronavirus vaccines, Poonawalla said.
Image copyright EPA
CHINDIA ALERT: You'll be living in their world, very soon 
Indian, Chinese border troops in brief skirmish on northeast Indian border, India says
KOLKATA (Reuters) – Indian and Chinese troops on border patrol duties had a brief skirmish in Sikkim, a northeastern Indian state bordering China, the Indian Defence Ministry said on Sunday, blaming both sides for the incident.
“Aggressive behaviour by the two sides resulted in minor injuries to troops. The two sides disengaged after dialogue and interaction at the local level,” the ministry said in a statement.
The Indian daily Hindustan Times, citing a military source, said four Indian soldiers and seven Chinese troops were injured when some of the soldiers exchanged blows during the confrontation, which it said took place on Saturday and involved some 150 soldiers.
The Defence Ministry said the incident took place in the Nakula area but did not give details of how it started, or what caused the injuries.
China’s Ministry of Defense could not be immediately reached for comment on Sunday.
India and China have often accused each other of intrusions into each other’s territories, but clashes are rare.
There is still deep mistrust between the two countries over their festering border dispute, which triggered a brief war in 1962.
Hundreds of troops from both sides were deployed in 2017 on the Doklam plateau, near the borders of India, Bhutan, and China after India objected to Chinese construction of a road in the Himalayan area, in the most serious standoff in years.
Source: Reuters
Posted in 1962, 2017, accused, aggressive, behaviour, Bhutan, blaming, border, bordering, both, brief, China, China’s, Chinese, citing, clashes, comment, confrontations, Construction, countries, daily, deep, defence ministry, deployed, details, dialogue, disengaged, dispute, duties, festering, four, Himalayan, Hindustan Times, hundreds, immediately, incident, India, Indian, Indian soldiers, injured, injuries, interaction, intrusions, involved, Kolkata, level, local, Military, ministry, Ministry of Defense, minor, mistrust, Nakula, Northeast, Northeastern, patrol, rare, reached, resulted, roads, Saturday, serious, seven, sides, Sikkim, skirmish, source, standoff, state, statement, Sunday, territories, triggered, troops, two, Uncategorized, war, years | Leave a Comment »