China Quarantines Millions After Thousands Exposed To Mutating Virus That Has Killed Many
By Ryan Saavedra - The Daily Wire
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China is essentially quarantining Wuhan, a city of more than 11 million people, in response to up to 4,000 people that have been exposed to a mutating Coronavirus that has killed at least 17 people.
“To combat the spread of the virus, which first appeared at the end of December and has killed at least 17 people and sickened more than 500, the Chinese government said it would cancel planes and trains leaving Wuhan beginning Thursday, and suspend buses, subways and ferries within it,” The New York Times reported. “In Beijing, at least 4,000 residents who had been exposed to the virus were kept in isolation, and 300 college students who had had contact with infected people were sequestered in a military camp for two weeks.”
Experts told The New York Times that a shut down of this scale was unprecedented in human history.
Several cases have been reported outside of China in the United States, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and Thailand.
“Chinese health officials said they had ascertained that the virus started in an unsanitary food market that was selling wild and exotic animals for consumption,” The Washington Post reported. “Snakes were the most likely cause of the virus, five Chinese scientists concluded in a paper published Wednesday in the Journal of Medical Virology.”
Tom Inglesby, *director of the Center for Health Security at Johns Hopkins, said, “In past outbreaks, we haven’t seen evidence that large-scale quarantine diminishes spread of disease. It runs the risk of people losing confidence in government. And it places enormous responsibilities on government to make sure that people can continue to get food, basic necessities, medicines.”
Viral Pandemic Starts in Chinese City with Research Lab for ‘World’s Most Dangerous‘ Pathogens
By Shane Trejo - Big League Politics
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A deadly coronavirus, called the Wuhan virus based on the Chinese city it emanated from, has spread to the United States with a man in his 30s being declared patient zero in Washington state.
The patient came back to the U.S. from Wuhan, China on Jan. 15. He was displaying no symptoms at the time, according to the local and federal officials who made the public announcement, but became sick the days after he initially returned.
Dr. Scott Lindquist, who works as Washington’s state epidemiologist for communicable diseases, said the patient is in stable condition but is still being isolated in a hospital “out of an abundance of precaution and monitoring.” Passengers at several airports are going to be screened for the virus moving forward in an attempt to prevent its spread. Six people have already been reported dead worldwide from the coronavirus that can cause pneumonia.
This comes years after it was announced that a controversial facility would be opened in Wuhan where Chinese scientists would study the world’s most dangerous pathogens:
A laboratory in Wuhan is on the cusp of being cleared to work with the world’s most dangerous pathogens. The move is part of a plan to build between five and seven biosafety level-4 (BSL-4) labs across the Chinese mainland by 2025, and has generated much excitement, as well as some concerns.
Some scientists outside China worry about pathogens escaping, and the addition of a biological dimension to geopolitical tensions between China and other nations. But Chinese microbiologists are celebrating their entrance to the elite cadre empowered to wrestle with the world’s greatest biological threats.
“It will offer more opportunities for Chinese researchers, and our contribution on the BSL‑4-level pathogens will benefit the world,” says George Gao, director of the Chinese Academy of Sciences Key Laboratory of Pathogenic Microbiology and Immunology in Beijing. There are already two BSL-4 labs in Taiwan, but the National Bio-safety Laboratory, Wuhan, would be the first on the Chinese mainland…
Many staff from the Wuhan lab have been training at a BSL-4 lab in Lyon, which some scientists find reassuring. And the facility has already carried out a test-run using a low-risk virus.
But worries surround the Chinese lab, too. The SARS virus has escaped from high-level containment facilities in Beijing multiple times, notes Richard Ebright, a molecular biologist at Rutgers University in Piscataway, New Jersey. Tim Trevan, founder of CHROME Biosafety and Biosecurity Consulting in Damascus, Maryland, says that an open culture is important to keeping BSL-4 labs safe, and he questions how easy this will be in China, where society emphasizes hierarchy. “Diversity of viewpoint, flat structures where everyone feels free to speak up and openness of information are important,” he says.
Yuan says that he has worked to address this issue with staff. “We tell them the most important thing is that they report what they have or haven’t done,” he says. And the lab’s inter*national collaborations will increase openness. “Transparency is the basis of the lab,” he adds.
The reckless behavior of the Chinese communists very well may have caused a worldwide health crisis.
Woman reportedly bragged about using medicine to lower temperature at airport’s coronavirus screening
By Brie Stimson | Fox News
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The Chinse embassy in Paris has reportedly tracked down a woman who bragged on social media that she was able to get through coronavirus screening at the airport by taking medicine to lower her fever.
The woman left Wuhan, China, where the virus was first detected, before the city was quarantined and later posted pictures on her Instagram, claiming to be at a restaurant in Lyon, France, BBC News reported.
"Just before I left, I had a low fever and cough. I was scared to death and rushed to eat [fever-reducing] medicine," the woman tweeted, according to BBC. "I kept on checking my temperature. Luckily I managed to get it down and my exit was smooth."
On Thursday, the embassy said she no longer had a fever or cough but she would get further tests.
The case highlights the problem with temperature screenings, the main way major airports are testing travelers for the virus to prevent its spread.
As the number of coronavirus patients increases, doctors are also reportedly noticing that some of those infected show little or no fever, a fact that could complicate detection.
China’s National Health Commission told local governments that along with some patients not getting a fever they could also go as long as two weeks without showing any symptoms, Bloomberg reported, sourcing people familiar with the matter.
”The whole airport screening exercise is to simply give people comfort that there is some government action to protect the public,” Ramanan Laxminarayan, director of the Center for Disease Dynamics, Economics & Policy in Washington, D.C., said, according to Bloomberg. “It has no real public health utility in the case of coronaviruses. What really matters is surveillance, infection control and isolation.”
While all of the patients who have died from the virus exhibited some symptoms, including a cough, shortness of breath and chest tightness, some of them did not have a fever.
"People can cross borders without a fever then get sick after their arrival and taking paracetamol or aspirin can bring a fever down so it isn’t detected,” World Health Organization adviser David Heymann said, according to Bloomberg.
In the last week, the Chinese government quarantined the city of Wuhan, where the virus was first detected, and restricted travel in cities nearby, affecting millions of people just before the Lunar New Year.
The most effective way to detect the virus is through kits that use the genetic makeup of the virus, according to Bloomberg. Public health officials around the world have access to the test kits but they’re in low supply and Wuhan has already run out.
At least 25 people have died from the pneumonia-like disease and 800 patients have been sickened, Bloomberg reported.
2 new potential US cases of the Wuhan coronavirus are being monitored in Texas and Los Angeles
Lauren Frias - Business Insider
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Two new suspected cases of the deadly Wuhan coronavirus are being tested in Texas and Los Angeles.
Two people who had recently traveled to Wuhan, China, were taken to the hospital after displaying flu-like symptoms during airport screenings Wednesday night.
The Texas patient was identified as a student at Texas A&M University. The university said in a statement that the immediate health risk to the campus is "low," according to a Reuters report.
"The patient is being monitored," Dr. Erik Wilke from the Brazos County Health District, said at a Thursday afternoon press conference. "We've been in contact with the patient today as well, and are tracking. And again, fortunately, his symptoms are not severe and he's doing well."
The Centers for Disease Control added that, given that it is cold and flu season, more people may display similar symptoms to the novel coronavirus but may not necessarily be infected, Reuters reported.
"Health care providers were aware of public health guidance on novel coronavirus and quickly recognized that the patient met the criteria for coronavirus testing and is being kept isolated at home, while the precautionary testing is done," the Brazos County Health District said in a statement on Twitter on Thursday.
The California patient landed in Los Angeles International Airport, one of soon-to-be five US international airports where the CDC had set up screening procedures. The passenger had just arrived to LAX from Mexico City, and he was taken to the hospital as a precautionary measure, KTLA reported.
"To date, there has been no identified coronavirus cases in LA County and currently the risk of local transmission is low," Los Angeles county health officials told Insider in an emailed statement, adding that "when a suspected case of novel coronavirus is identified, Public Health works with the CDC and the healthcare facilities to assess and test."
The CDC did not immediately respond to Insider's emails for comment regarding the California patient.
The two new potential cases followed the first confirmed US patient in Washington — a man in his 30s who arrived in the US before screening procedures began last week. On an international scale, the coronavirus has killed at least 18 and infected more than 600 people as of Friday morning local time.
The World Health Organization has yet to declare the Wuhan coronavirus outbreak as a global health emergency after a Wednesday meeting, despite the entire city of Wuhan going under quarantine to contain the spread of the coronavirus.
"There is no evidence of human to human transmission outside China, but that doesn't mean it won't happen," director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said at a press conference. "WHO is following this outbreak every minute of every day."
Videos show ‘dire’ situations at Chinese hospitals amid coronavirus outbreak
By Lia Eustachewich - The New York Post
New videos show “dire” situations at Chinese hospitals as health officials continue to grapple with the deadly coronavirus outbreak.
One clip tweeted by a South China Morning Post video producer shows an overflow of patients in blue face masks in a hospital corridor in Wuhan — as a doctor shouts something at the crowd.
“Video from a chat group shows the dire situation in Wuhan’s overcrowded hospitals,” the reporter, Xinyan Yu, wrote. “All concerned citizens, sick or not, have been waiting for confirmation on whether they’ve caught the #WuhanCoronavirus. Imagine how easily people can get sick from standing in these lines.”
Another video apparently shot at a Wuhan hospital shows a patient writhing around on the floor, while a disturbing clip that was also circulating on social media appeared to show covered dead bodies lining hospital hallways.
Wuhan, a city of 11 million, is the epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak, which is believed to have originated from a seafood market that sold live wildlife for human consumption.
The coronavirus has claimed more than two dozen lives and sickened hundreds worldwide.
