Several Chinese cities went on high COVID-19 alert as the Lunar New Year holiday travel season started on Monday, requiring travellers to report their trips days before their arrival, as the Omicron variant reached more areas including Beijing.

Authorities have warned the highly contagious Omicron adds to the increased risk of COVID-19 transmission as hundreds of millions of people travel around China for the Lunar New Year on Feb. 1.

Cities such as Luoyang in central China and Jieyang in the south said on Sunday travellers need to report to communities, employers or hotels their trips three days ahead of arrival.

The southwestern city of Yulin said on Saturday those who want to enter should fill in an online form, including their health credentials and trip details, one day in advance.

Over the weekend, the capital Beijing and the southern technology hub Shenzhen each detected one domestically transmitted Omicron case.

The possibility that the Omicron case in Beijing was infected through imported goods can’t be ruled out, Pang Xinghuo, an official at the city’s disease control authority, said on Monday.

Li Ang, vice director at the Beijing Municipal Health Commission, said a local hospital had admitted nine Omicron infections, with six still being treated. He did not say when the infections arrived or why they hadn’t been disclosed earlier.

The city of Meizhou in Guangdong province found one Omicron infection linked to an outbreak in Zhuhai, state television said on Monday.

So far, at least five provinces and municipalities reported local Omicron infections, while 14 provincial areas found the variant among travellers arriving from overseas.

Run-up to Winter Olympics

China is yet to show any solid sign of shifting its guideline of quickly containing any local infections, despite a high vaccination rate of 86.6%. The strategy has taken on extra urgency in the run-up to the Winter Olympics, to be staged in Beijing and neighbouring Hebei province starting Feb. 4.

Many local governments have already advised residents not to leave town unnecessarily for trips during the holiday, while dozens of international and domestic flights have been suspended.

China’s aviation regulator said on Monday it would suspend two flights from the United States over COVID-19 cases, bringing the total number of cancelled flights this year from the country, where Omicron is spreading, to 76.

For Sunday, China reported 163 locally transmitted infections with confirmed symptoms,  official data showed on Monday, up from 65 a day earlier.

Sunday’s increase in infections was mainly driven by more cases in the cities of Tianjin and Anyang, where Omicron has been found in local clusters.

Tianjin and Anyang reported slightly more than 600 local symptomatic infections from the current outbreaks, smaller than many clusters overseas, but authorities there still have limited movement within the cities and trips to outside.

Source:  REUTERS

Burkina Faso captain Bertrand Traore has deplored as “a scandal” coronavirus testing procedures at the Africa Cup of Nations after up to five players and coach Kamou Malo tested positive in the run-up to Sunday’s opener against hosts Cameroon.

The Aston Villa forward told a press conference in Yaounde on Saturday: “It’s a scandal, we cannot be deprived of first team players 24 hours before the match.”

Assistant coach Firmin Sanou, standing in for Malo, said: “We have four or five Covid cases, mainly first team players, we’re not going to name names.”

“It calls everything into question, but we have confidence in the players who will replace them,” continued Sanou, who hit out at the organisation with two different medical teams arriving to test the team.

“Yesterday morning (Friday) a medical team showed up at our hotel for tests, when we tried to understand who had sent them, the CAF (African Football Confederation) clearly told us that they hadn’t sent them so we refused to do the tests,” said Sanou.

“Another team arrived at 10 p.m., apparently the CAF team, we carried out the tests which informed us of 4 to 5 cases of Covid.

“I say 4 or 5 because they say that our first player tested did not carry out the test … ” he continued.

The Burkinabè delegation are disputing the fact that the tests were not PCR tests, which must be carried out 48 hours before the match, and have requested a second opinion.

Traore said: “The authorities must review the organisation. We cannot accept this decision. We can redo tests of our positive players.”

Source: AFP

The seriousness of a stagnant COVID-19 variant identified in France in November was downplayed by global health officials, who said they were still watching it closely on Tuesday.

The variant, nicknamed IHU after the research hospital it was discovered in, “probably” originated in Cameroon, scientists said last week. It was identified in 12 patients in the Southern Alps around the same time the highly transmissible Omicron variant was surging in South Africa, officials said.

The variant “has been on our radar,” Abdi Mahamud, a WHO incident manager on COVID, said at a press briefing in Geneva on Tuesday, according to Bloomberg. “That virus had a lot of chances to pick up.”

The news came as France saw its average daily caseload more than double in a week, with a record 271,686 COVID-19 cases recorded there Tuesday.

IHU’s patient zero had just returned from Africa when scientists at IHU Méditerranée Infection in Marseilles discovered he was infected with an atypical mutation of the virus. The vaccinated man “developed mild respiratory symptoms the day before diagnosis,” researchers wrote in their non-peer-reviewed article published in medRxiv.

Source: New York Post

The US, Britain, France and Australia have all announced record numbers of daily Covid-19 cases as the WHO warned Tuesday that Omicron’s dizzying spread increased the risk of newer, more dangerous variants emerging.

Britain breached 200,000 cases for the first time on Tuesday, Australia posted almost 50,000 and France registered more than 270,000, all three countries easily topping their previous records.

But dwarfing even those numbers was the 1,080,211 reported by the United States on Monday, a global record.

The country’s Monday figures are usually higher due to delays in weekend tallying – and were likely inflated further after a three-day New Year’s holiday weekend.

The rolling average over seven days – which experts see as more reliable – was 486,000 cases per day as of Monday evening, Johns Hopkins University said.

The heavily mutated Omicron variant, the most transmissible to date, accounted for around 59 percent of US cases near the end of last year.

Omicron’s rates of deaths and hospitalisations have been lower across the world, raising hopes the virus could be evolving into a relatively benign seasonal illness.

But the World Health Organization in Europe sounded an ominous note of caution on Tuesday, warning the soaring infection rates could have the opposite effect.

“The more Omicron spreads, the more it transmits and the more it replicates, the more likely it is to throw out a new variant,” WHO senior emergencies officer Catherine Smallwood told AFP in an interview.

“Now, Omicron is lethal, it can cause death… maybe a little bit less than Delta, but who’s to say what the next variant might throw out,” she added.

“Even in well-capacitated, sophisticated health systems there are real struggles that are happening at the moment.”

‘War footing’

Such a scenario was feared in Britain, where the government said Tuesday that hospitals have switched to “war footing” due to staff shortages.

After the UK hit a record 218,724 cases in 24-hours, Prime Minister Boris Johnson promised action to plug staffing gaps in the worst-hit areas, including drafting medical volunteers backed by army support.

Johnson also defended his decision not to increase restrictions over Christmas in England – unlike in other parts of the UK – and ruled out another nationwide lockdown.

Australia, which had previously successfully suppressed infections for much of the pandemic, also smashed its previous caseload record with 47,738.

The surging infections have driven a rush on increasingly scarce self-administered rapid antigen kits and created hours-long queues at centres providing more reliable PCR tests.

“I think at this point we all know somebody who has either got Covid or we have got coworkers off work because they are quarantining or isolating,” Australia’s deputy chief medical officer Sonya Bennett said.

Cyprus also posted a new record of 5,457 cases on Tuesady and now has the highest infection rate per capita, according to AFP figures.

Wealthy nations have rushed to give their population third booster shots to counteract the rising cases, while many in poorer nations have not yet been able to receive a first.

Ahead of the pack, Israel began rolling out fourth doses last week. Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said Tuesday that a small Israeli study indicated that fourth coronavirus vaccinations increased antibodies “fivefold”.

More restrictions

In China, which has pursued a “zero Covid” approach, just three asymptomatic cases prompted 1.2 million people in the central city of Yuzhou to be confined to their homes.

Daily infections have hit a two-month high in the Philippines, which will expand restrictions in Manila from Wednesday to include more than 11 million people living near the capital.

Omicron is also fuelling surging cases in India, where authorities said the capital will lock down over the weekend.

The sprawling megacity’s new restrictions came the same day as its chief minister, Arvind Kejriwal, announced he had been infected and was suffering “mild symptoms”.

Also testing positive on Tuesday were Sweden’s king and queen, as well as Mauritanian President Mohamed Ould Ghazouani, none suffering serious symptoms.

Omicron has also sent the sports world – only just back on its feet after previous Covid restrictions – reeling, with many leagues forced to cancel or postpone games.

Tennis world number Novak Djokovic – who has repeatedly refused to confirm whether he has been vaccinated – said Tuesday that he was heading to the Australian Open after being granted a medical exemption.

Source: AFP

The risk posed by the Omicron variant is still “very high,” the World Health Organization said Wednesday, after Covid-19 case numbers shot up by 11 percent globally last week.

Omicron is behind rapid virus spikes in several countries, including those where it has already overtaken the previously-dominant Delta variant, the WHO said in its Covid-19 weekly epidemiological update.

“The overall risk related to the new variant of concern Omicron remains very high,” the UN health agency said.

“Consistent evidence shows that the Omicron variant has a growth advantage over the Delta variant with a doubling time of two to three days and rapid increases in the incidence of cases is seen in a number of countries,” including Britain and the United States, where it has become the dominant variant.

“The rapid growth rate is likely to be a combination of both immune evasion and intrinsic increased transmissibility of the Omicron variant.”

However, the WHO highlighted the 29 percent decrease in the incidence of cases observed in South Africa, the country which first reported the variant to the WHO on November 24.

It said early data from Britain, South Africa and Denmark — which currently has the world’s highest rate of infection per person — suggested there was a reduced risk of hospitalization for Omicron compared to Delta.

However, further data was needed to understand Omicron’s severity in terms of clinical markers, including the use of oxygen, mechanical ventilation and death.

More data was also required on how the severity might be being impacted by previous Covid infection, or vaccination.

“It is also expected that corticosteroids and interleukin 6 receptor blockers will remain effective in the management of patients with severe disease,” the WHO said. “However, preliminary data suggest that monoclonal antibodies may be less able to neutralize the Omicron variant.”

Rise in cases

The WHO said that in the week ending Sunday, following a gradual increase since October, the global number of new cases rose by 11 percent compared to the previous week, while the number of new deaths dipped by four percent.

“This corresponds to just under five million new cases and over 44,000 new deaths,” the Geneva-based organization said.

The highest numbers of new cases were reported from the United States, Britain, France and Italy.

Source: AFP

The World Health Organization chief warned Wednesday that the rush in wealthy countries to roll out additional Covid-19 vaccine doses was deepening the global inequity in access to jabs and thereby prolonging the pandemic.

The UN health agency has long warned about the glaring inequity in access to Covid vaccines, which has left many vulnerable people in poorer nations without a single jab as richer countries roll out booster programmes.

“Blanket booster programmes are likely to prolong the Covid-19 pandemic, rather than ending it, by diverting supply to countries that already have high levels of vaccination coverage, giving the virus more opportunity to spread and mutate,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told reporters.

“No country can boost its way out of the pandemic,” Tedros added.

The WHO’s Strategic Advisory Group of Experts (SAGE) on Immunisation said Wednesday that at least 126 countries around the world have already issued recommendations on boosters or additional vaccine doses, and 120 had started implementing those programmes.

“No low-income country has yet introduced a booster vaccination programme,” it said in a statement.

Without ‘coordinated strategy’, world will ‘always be chasing’ Covid-19 variants

Health experts have long warned that failure to expand vaccinations globally would pave the way for more variants of the coronavirus to develop.

Tedros’s comments came as the Omicron variant’s lightning dash around the globe since it was first detected in South Africa last month has dampened hopes the worst of the pandemic is over.

The new variant is spreading at unprecedented speed and has already been detected in 106 countries, the WHO said.

Early data indicates that the heavily-mutated variant is not only more transmissible than previous strains, but could be better at dodging some vaccine protections, although additional doses appear to push protection levels higher.

Tedros said Wednesday that the existing vaccines continue to provide significant protection against severe disease from Omicron.

“It’s important to remember that the vast majority of hospitalisations and deaths are in unvaccinated people, not un-boosted people,” he said.

He also stressed that we all must take all necessary precautions to halt the spread of Covid as we head into the Christmas holiday.

“Boosters cannot be seen as a ticket to go ahead with planned celebrations,” he said.

Earlier this week, the WHO chief urged people to postpone holiday gatherings, warning that festivities would in many places lead to “increased cases, overwhelmed health systems and more deaths”.

“An event cancelled is better than a life cancelled,” he added.

Source: REUTERS