China lockdown may have blocked 700,000 virus cases: researchers
WASHINGTON, United States — China's decision to lock down the city of Wuhan, ground zero for the global COVID-19 pandemic, may have prevented more than 700,000 new cases by delaying the spread of the virus, researchers said Tuesday.
Drastic Chinese control measures in the first 50 days of the epidemic bought other cities across the country valuable time to prepare and install their own restrictions, according to the paper by researchers in China, the United States and the UK, published in the journal Science.
By day 50 of the epidemic — February 19 — there were 30,000 confirmed cases in China, said Oxford fellow Christopher Dye, one of the paper's authors.
"Our analysis suggests that without the Wuhan travel ban and the national emergency response there would have been more than 700,000 confirmed COVID-19 cases outside of Wuhan by that date," he was quoted as saying in a press release.
"China's control measures appear to have worked by successfully breaking the chain of transmission -- preventing contact between infectious and susceptible people."
The researchers used a combination of case reports, public health information and mobile phone location tracking to investigate the spread of the virus.
The phone tracking provided a "fascinating" new stream of data, said another of the report's authors, Penn State biology professor Ottar Bjornstad.
The time period they studied encompassed China's biggest holiday, the Lunar New Year.
The researchers "were able to compare patterns of travel into and out of Wuhan during the outbreak with cell phone data from two previous spring festivals," Bjornstad said.
"The analysis revealed an extraordinary reduction in movement following the travel ban of January 23, 2020. Based on this data, we could also calculate the likely reduction in Wuhan-associated cases in other cities across China."
The Wuhan shutdown delayed the arrival of the virus in other cities, their model showed, giving them time to prepare by banning public gatherings and closing entertainment venues, among other measures.
Nearly half of humanity has now been told to stay home to curb the spread of the virus, and lockdowns are rapidly becoming normalized.
But when Beijing first shut down Wuhan more than two months ago, the decision was seen as a dramatic escalation in the fight against infection.
With the restrictions in the city slowly being lifted and life inching closer to normal, the question for China — and other countries around the globe — is what will happen once movement resumes.
"We are acutely aware that resident or imported infections could lead to a resurgence of transmission," said another of the report's authors, Huaiyu Tian, an associate professor of epidemiology at Beijing Normal University.
Follow this page for updates on a mysterious pneumonia outbreak that has struck dozens of people in China.
New Zealand Prime Minister Chris Hipkins says on Sunday that he had contracted COVID-19, testing positive at a key point in his flailing campaign for re-election.
Hipkins saYS on his official social media feed that he would need to isolate for up to five days -- less than two weeks before his country's general election.
The leader of the centre-left Labour Party said he started to experience cold symptoms on Saturday and had cancelled most of his weekend engagements. — AFP
The World Health Organization and US health authorities say Friday they are closely monitoring a new variant of COVID-19, although the potential impact of BA.2.86 is currently unknown.
The WHO classified the new variant as one under surveillance "due to the large number (more than 30) of spike gene mutations it carries", it wrote in a bulletin about the pandemic late Thursday.
So far, the variant has only been detected in Israel, Denmark and the United States. — AFP
The World Health Organization says on Friday that the number of new COVID-19 cases reported worldwide rose by 80% in the last month, days after designating a new "variant of interest".
The WHO declared in May that Covid is no longer a global health emergency, but has warned that the virus will continue to circulate and mutate, causing occasional spikes in infections, hospitalisations and deaths.
In its weekly update, the UN agency said that nations reported nearly 1.5 million new cases from July 10 to August 6, an 80% increase compared to the previous 28 days. — AFP
The head of US intelligence says that there was no evidence that the COVID-19 virus was created in the Chinese government's Wuhan research lab.
In a declassified report, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) says they had no information backing recent claims that three scientists at the lab were some of the very first infected with COVID-19 and may have created the virus themselves.
Drawing on intelligence collected by various member agencies of the US intelligence community (IC), the ODNI report says some scientists at the Wuhan lab had done genetic engineering of coronaviruses similar to COVID-19. — AFP
Boris Johnson deliberately misled MPs over Covid lockdown-breaking parties in Downing Street when he was prime minister, a UK parliament committee ruled on Thursday.
The cross-party Privileges Committee said Johnson, 58, would have been suspended as an MP for 90 days for "repeated contempts (of parliament) and for seeking to undermine the parliamentary process".
But he avoided any formal sanction by his peers in the House of Commons by resigning as an MP last week.
In his resignation statement last Friday, Johnson pre-empted publication of the committee's conclusions, claiming a political stitch-up, even though the body has a majority from his own party.
He was unrepentant again on Thursday, accusing the committee of being "anti-democratic... to bring about what is intended to be the final knife-thrust in a protracted political assassination".
Calling it "beneath contempt", he said it was "for the people of this to decide who sits in parliament, not Harriet Harman", the veteran opposition Labour MP who chaired the seven-person committee. — AFP
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