Coronavirus strain in the Philippines didn't originate from China, expert says

The Covid-19 Pandemic News - Philippines

Manila - The Philippines ranks 3rd as far as the Covid-19 cases in the South East Asia.  At first, the WHO commended the Philippine government for successfully containing the outbreak on March but all of the sudden, the cases have blown out of proportion in April when the cases spiked.  The opposition, the procommunists and the yellow community blamed President Duterte for not immediately imposing travel ban from China.   Many think that the Covid-19 virus was acquired from Chinese who traveled to the Philippines.  But the latest finding contradict this perception and says otherwise.

   The strain of Covid-19 may originated from India and not from Wuhan, China, a health expert said on Wednesday ( May 20 ).  According to Edsel Salvaña, a member of Inter-Agency Task Force on Emerging Infectious Disease ( IAFT-EID ), using publicly shared genome, the most genetically related virus found in the Philippines came from a South Asian nation.  India is the most ravaged country in the South Asia and has the highest confirmed cases of Covid-19.

     " It is not certain if the Coronavirus really came from an Indian, or it may have also been acquired by traveling to India.  But the most related virus like a mother virus that we have here in the Philippines actually originated from India." Salvaña told the media.

     The Coronavirus virus strain from India could have caused the outbreak in the Philippines that started in March, he added.  Dr. Salvaña said that it could be a Filipino or non Filipino who had  travel to India then came to the Philippines and started spreading the disease.

     Dr. Salvaña also stressed that the virus' family tree appeared in China. It traveled to Australia before stopping in India. " The one who visited india, came from Australia but before coming to Australia, he traveled to China, so he traveled to those places before coming here to the Philippines," Dr. Salvaña said.

     Health experts say that genetic sequencing can help researchers and pathologists understand the mutation  of the virus strain,  it's orogin and discovery of cure.

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Source: ABS-CBN News

As India being ravaged by Covid-19, a powerful cyclone is heading towards it

A powerful cyclone that formed in the Bay of Bengal is headed directly for the India-Bangladesh border, bringing with it the potential for major destruction and upheaval in two countries that are still battling the Covid-19 pandemic.

Cyclone Amphan has strengthened to the equivalent of a strong Category 4 Atlantic hurricane, or a super typhoon in the West Pacific. Amphan is packing winds of 150 mile per hour (240 kilometers per hour), though forecasters expect the storm will weaken before making landfall late Wednesday near the Ganges River Delta.

Even if the storm hits after weakening, it could cause significant damage. Amphan is forecast to make landfall near poor, densely populated areas with notoriously unreliable infrastructure. If it lands in the low-lying delta, there is also the potential for major storm surges, perhaps even as high as 30 feet (9 meters).

Natural disasters are tragically common in this part of the world, but this could be the first powerful storm ever to hit India and Bangladesh amid a global health emergency.

As of Monday morning, Bangladesh had identified at least 22,268 Covid-19 cases and 328 virus-related deaths, while India had counted at least 96,169 patients and 3,029 fatalities, according to the global list compiled by Johns Hopkins University.

Both countries have not yet slowed their rates of new infections.

Indian authorities said Monday the country identified more than 5,000 new coronavirus cases in the previous 24 hours, the highest number of cases identified in a single day since the pandemic began. Bangladesh recorded 1,273 new cases in the previous 24 hours, according to the country's Ministry of Health and Family Welfare.

Juggling two disasters will be hard, especially when the measures for saving lives during a storm -- such as setting up densely packed evacuation centers -- are difficult to do while following social distancing measures.

The Indian state of Odisha has put 12 coastal districts on high alert, while neighboring West Bengal -- which sits on India's border with Bangladesh -- has sounded a cyclone alert in its six coastal districts, including in Kolkata, one of India's most populous cities with more than 4.4 million inhabitants.

SN Pradhan, the director general of India's National Disaster Response Force (NDRF), said authorities are deploying 10 teams to Odisha and seven to West Bengal to start evacuation efforts. Twenty NDRF teams are on standby, Pradhan said.

The storm could also bring heavy rains to the world's largest refugee camp in Cox's Bazar, where almost 1 million Rohingya refugees live after fleeing violence in Myanmar's Rakhine state.

A storm could be particularly devastating in the camp, especially when considering that the first known Covid-19 cases were confirmed there just last week. One human rights advocate said that a novel coronavirus outbreak in the camp would be a "nightmare scenario."

"The prevalence of underlying health conditions among refugees and the deteriorating sanitary conditions sure to come with the looming monsoon and flooding season make for a witch's brew of conditions in which the virus is sure to thrive," said Daniel P. Sullivan, who works for the US-based organization Refugees International.

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Source: CNN 

72 got Covid-19 after the April 24 anti-lockdown protests in Wisconsin

The Covid-19 Pandemic News - USA

Madison, WI - Around 72 individuals were found positive of the corona virus after the April 24 anti-lockdown protests at the Capitol state in Madison, Wisconsin. This indicates that these individuals contracted the virus after attending a large social gathering, but the state Department of Health Services didn't specify if they were at the anti-lockdown rally.

     Department spokesperson Elizabeth Goodsitt said on May 8 that  when someone was tested positive for Covid-19, they were asked if they attended any large social gathering or event.  But the department didn't add the anti-lockdown protests on April 24 which attracted around 1500 American conservatives and Trump supporters.

     The rally was organized and attended by those who opposed the stay-at-home order and wanted businesses to reopen so many can go back to work.  These participants were mostly Trump supporters and conservatives, they didn't believe in the Coronavirus pandemic and they claimed that the Coronavirus cases and fatalities were all made up.

     The Wisconsin police didn't permit the anti-lockdown rally because this would surely go against the stay-at-home order which strictly prohibits social gathering at any size. The protesters didn't adhere to the social distancing guidelines, they were too close to each other and were not even wearing masks.  The stay-at-home order is still ongoing and is expiring on the 26th of May.

     Before the anti-lockdown rally sparked across the United States, the country only had more than 70,000 cases of Coronavirus and the fatalities were around 35,000 but the cases and death toll skyrocketed as the protests went on.  As of May 16, the United States has a total of 1,443,235 confirmed cases of Covid-19 and 87,245 deaths.  In Wisconsin, it has a total of 11,573 confirmed cases and fatalities of 435.

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China to carry out test on 11 million residents of Wuhan after new Covid-19 cases emerged

Wuhan, where the global coronavirus epidemic first started, has ordered officials to prepare to test its entire 11 million population after the central Chinese city reported a handful of new infections for the first time since its lockdown was lifted, according to state media reports.

All districts in the city have been told to submit a plan which should lay out how they will prepare within ten days to conduct testing of everyone under their purview, said a document cited by local media reports as being released by Wuhan’s anti-virus department. The plan should prioritize the testing of vulnerable groups and areas like residential compounds, the document said.

Six locally transmitted cases, reported on May 10 and 11, were found in people already under quarantine who were asymptomatic before testing positive, according to the local government. All six cases emerged from a single residential compound and were the first new infections found in Wuhan since its lockdown was lifted on April 8.

The ambitious move to test everyone in Wuhan reflects China’s anxiety over a resurgence of the epidemic, which it managed to stamp out through draconian restrictions that locked down hundreds of millions of people at its peak in February. Wuhan was sealed off from Jan. 23 until April 8 in a months-long ordeal that saw scores die as the local health system collapsed.

Even as its people cautiously return to normal life, the city has come under the global spotlight again after U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration charged that the virus is linked to a laboratory in the Wuhan Institute of Virology. China has denied any link and the laboratory’s director said that no staff have been infected, which he said disproves the theory.

Although the new cases in Wuhan are few and appear under control, they serve as a reminder of the risk China faces as it tries to reopen an economy that has seen its worst contraction since 1992.

“Seven provinces reported new infections over the past 14 days, and clustered cases were continuing to increase,” Mi Feng, spokesman for the National Health Commission, said on Monday. China reported only one confirmed case on Tuesday, with no new infections in Wuhan.

Fears of resurgence in other parts of China were highlighted on Sunday when the northeastern city of Shulan, which borders North Korea, was partially locked down after 11 new infections were discovered. Many cities in China still don’t allow cinemas and bars to operate, and heavy restrictions against social gatherings remain in place. Face masks are required for public transport and entering stores and public facilities.

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6 die after plane carrying Coronavirus equipment crashes in Somalia

Six people, including two pilots, were killed when a plane carrying medical supplies crashed in south-western Somalia on Monday.

“The cause of the accident is not yet known,” government spokesman Ismael Mukhtar Omar told the Germany’s news agency dpa.

The plane, which was carrying medical supplies needed in the fight against the coronavirus, took off from Baidoa airport in the Bay region.

It crashed shortly after, near the town of Bardaale where it was meant to land, Omar said.

Gilbert Kibe, director general of the Kenya Civil Aviation Authority, confirmed to dpa that the plane belonged to Kenya’s African Express Airways.

But he said there was no official reports about the casualties or cause of the accident.

Some reports later said the son of Muse Bulhan, the owner of the African Express Airways was one of the pilots, who died.

Speculation in local media also was that the crash was caused by a missile from Ethiopian troops stationed in the area.

Ethiopian authorities were not available for comment.

Ethiopian, Somalian, and African Union forces operate in the area because of the threat posed by the Islamist militant group al-Shabaab.

The group, which is affiliated with the international al-Qaeda terrorist network, wants to establish an Islamist state in Somalia.

It repeatedly attacks security forces and civilians.

Although based in Somalia, it also regularly carries out attacks in neighbouring Kenya.

Islamic State has also gained an increasing foothold in the Horn of Africa

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Early Herd Immunity against COVID-19: A Dangerous Misconception

David Dowdy, Department of Epidemiology, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
Gypsyamber D’Souza, Department of Epidemiology, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health

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We have listened with concern to voices erroneously suggesting that herd immunity may “soon slow the spread”1 of COVID-19. For example, Rush Limbaugh2 recently claimed that “herd immunity has occurred in California.” As infectious disease epidemiologists, we wish to state clearly that herd immunity against COVID-19 will not be achieved at a population level in 2020, barring a public health catastrophe.

Although more than 2.5 million confirmed cases of COVID-19 have been reported worldwide, studies suggest that (as of early April 2020) no more than 2-4%3–5 of any country’s population has been infected with SARS-CoV-2 (the coronavirus that causes COVID-19). Even in hotspots like New York City that have been hit hardest by the pandemic, initial studies suggest that perhaps 15-21%6,7 of people have been exposed so far. In getting to that level of exposure, more than 17,500 of the 8.4 million people in New York City (about 1 in every 500 New Yorkers) have died, with the overall death rate in the city suggesting deaths may be undercounted and mortality may be even higher.8

Some have entertained the idea of “controlled voluntary infection,”9 akin to the “chickenpox parties” of the 1980s. However, COVID-19 is 100 times more lethal than the chickenpox. For example, on the Diamond Princess cruise ship, the mortality rate among those infected with SARS-CoV-2 was 1%. Someone who goes to a “coronavirus party” to get infected would not only be substantially increasing their own chance of dying in the next month, they would also be putting their families and friends at risk. COVID-19 is now the leading cause of death in the United States, killing almost 2,000 Americans every day.8 Chickenpox never killed more than 150 Americans in a year.9

To reach herd immunity for COVID-19, likely 70% or more of the population would need to be immune. Without a vaccine, over 200 million Americans would have to get infected before we reach this threshold. Put another way, even if the current pace of the COVID-19 pandemic continues in the United States – with over 25,000 confirmed cases a day – it will be well into 2021 before we reach herd immunity. If current daily death rates continue, over half a million Americans would be dead from COVID-19 by that time.

As we discuss when and how to phase in re-opening,10 it is important to understand how vulnerable we remain. Increased testing will help us better understand the scope of infection, but it is clear this pandemic is still only beginning to unfold.