“As part of that report, I have asked for areas of further inquiry that may be required, including specific questions for China,” Biden said in a statement.
Zhao fired back at a daily briefing Thursday and called on the United States “to do the same as China and immediately cooperate with the World Health Organization on origin tracing research in a scientific manner,” the Associated Press reported.
Here are some significant developments:
Maryland adds hundreds of previously uncounted covid deaths to official tally
Maryland on Thursday announced it is adding 517 previously uncounted covid-19 deaths to its official tally, bringing its total toll above 9,500.
Officials said they are also reclassifying 21 cases to list covid-19 as a probable cause of death. This accounting change caused a sudden spike in the state’s daily fatality numbers, which have averaged between nine and 12 in recent weeks.
The Maryland Department of Health said these deaths were inaccurately classified by medical certifiers during the past year. The errors were caught during “maintenance exercises” by the department’s statistics administrators.
“When necessary, our epidemiologists make adjustments to reported health data as information is reviewed, verified, and corrected,” Jinlene Chan, Maryland deputy secretary for public health services, said in a statement. “It is important for medical certifiers to closely follow CDC guidance when reporting COVID-19 deaths.”
Celebrity Cruises gets CDC approval for a June comeback, marking the first sailing from U.S. waters
Cruising from the U.S. is officially coming back.
While several lines have announced plans to return to service after a 15-month halt due to the pandemic, those have all been missing approval from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
On Wednesday, Miami-based Celebrity Cruises said it had everything it needed: plans to cruise with paying passengers and the go-ahead from the public health agency. The CDC confirmed the approval.
“For the past 15 months our conversations with friends and loved ones about seeing the world have been accompanied by the phrase ‘someday,’” Celebrity president and CEO Lisa Lutoff-Perlo said in a statement. “I’m beyond proud and excited to say that day has arrived.”
Scientists are figuring out if fully vaccinated people will need booster shots — and which one
U.S. scientists are expanding efforts to evaluate when fully vaccinated people will need booster shots — and, if so, whether people can switch brands — in the latest chapter of the global quest to stop the pandemic.
For people eager to put the health crisis behind them, the relief of being vaccinated is being replaced by a new worry. Is immunity a ticking clock? Should they plan a family wedding this fall? Will everyone need booster shots? When? Are people locked into the same brand or vaccine technology for their next shot?
“As we know, covid is not going to go away anytime soon, and we know that the antibodies decrease over time, so that a boost will be needed at some juncture. I can’t predict when,” said John Beigel, associate director for clinical research in the Division of Microbiology and Infectious Diseases at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
Britain’s health secretary rejects ‘Dom’s bombs’ over how the pandemic response was bungled
LONDON — British Health Secretary Matt Hancock on Thursday rejected allegations that he lied to the British public about the coronavirus pandemic and defended the government’s handling of the crisis.
During incendiary testimony Wednesday, Dominic Cummings, Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s former top adviser, accused the health secretary of “criminal, disgraceful behavior” that he said should result in his “sacking.”
Speaking to Parliament on Thursday after he was called on to answer lawmakers’ questions, Hancock said, “I’ve been straight with people in public and in private throughout.” He plans to answer questions from reporters later at a Downing Street news conference.
The story dominated British newspapers, which widely reported on the “Domshells” and “Dom’s bombs.”
Sanofi and GlaxoSmithKline announce Phase 3 trials for new coronavirus vaccine candidate
Paris-based Sanofi said that production would begin in the “coming weeks to enable rapid access to the vaccine should it be approved.” Pending positive results from the trial, the company said that it expects approval for the vaccine, which it is developing with British firm GlaxoSmithKline, before the end of the year.
The Phase 3 trial would include more than 35,000 adults across the United States, Asia, Africa and Latin America. It will measure the vaccine candidate’s efficacy against the original coronavirus strain that emerged in Wuhan, as well as the B.1.351 variant that was discovered in South Africa.
The shot is a recombinant protein vaccine that uses the same technology as one of Sanofi’s seasonal influenza injections, the company said, adding that Phase 2 results “demonstrated strong immune responses across all adult age groups.”
Sanofi said that because recent scientific evidence shows that antibodies created against the B.1.351 variant “may provide broad cross-protection” against other variants, the trial design will allow “evolution of the efficacy of the candidate against a variety of circulating variants.”
Beijing slams Biden’s call for harder look into origins of coronavirus
China reacted angrily to the Biden administration’s move to look harder into the origins of the coronavirus pandemic on Thursday, with one of the country’s more hawkish diplomats saying it showed that United States “does not care about facts and truth, nor is it interested in serious scientific origin tracing.”
Instead, Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian referenced a baseless claim that the U.S. military created the coronavirus and urged it “to do the same as China and immediately cooperate with the World Health Organization on origin tracing research in a scientific manner,” according to the Associated Press.
Biden on Wednesday ordered U.S. intelligence agencies to “redouble their efforts” in examining the chain of events that led to the global pandemic. While noting there was no “definitive conclusion,” the president said some members of the intelligence community “lean” toward the belief that the coronavirus could have emerged from a laboratory incident.
The Trump administration had suggested without evidence that the virus originated from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, which boasts the highest level of biosecurity clearance. The virus that has gone on to kill at least 3.48 million people worldwide was first detected in the city located in central China.
Many scientists believe the coronavirus probably jumped to humans through an intermediate animal host and a joint report released by China and the World Health Organization in March said it was “extremely unlikely” that the coronavirus leaked from a lab. But the report was widely criticized and WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus also said data had been withheld from his investigators, who were only given highly restricted access to Chinese resources.
No relevant new evidence has been made public since March, but a recent article from the Wall Street Journal disclosed that a U.S. intelligence report claimed three researchers from the Wuhan Institute of Virology had been ill enough to require hospital care before the coronavirus was first detected.
Olympic Games could create an ‘Olympic strain,’ warns head of Japan Doctors Union
The chairman of the Japan Doctors Union, a lead critic of the holding of the Olympic Games amid the pandemic, warned Thursday about the possible emergence of an “Olympic strain” of the coronavirus if the sports event goes forward.
Naoto Ueyama has repeatedly sounded the alarm about the Japanese government and International Olympic Committee’s decision to hold the Tokyo Olympics in July despite rising cases in the country and an increasingly burdened health-care system.
“It is dangerous to hold the Olympics here in Tokyo this July,” he warned in a news conference, saying that with people coming into Japan from over 200 nations around the world, “all of the different mutant strains of the virus that exist in different places will be concentrated and gathered here in Tokyo.”
Ueyama said that “a Tokyo Olympic strain of the virus” could develop as a result.
Japan has one of the slowest coronavirus vaccine rollouts among developed countries with only 2.3 percent of a population of 125 million fully vaccinated.
With overwhelmed hospitals and an inevitable extension of the state of emergency expected just eight weeks before the Games, the medical community has been vocal in their opposition.
The Tokyo Medical Practitioners Association, representing 6,000 primary care doctors, posted an open letter addressed to Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga earlier this month, stating, “We strongly request that the authorities convince the IOC that holding the Olympics is difficult and obtain its decision to cancel the Games.”
With Tokyo’s intense heat and humidity expected for the Olympic months putting even more strain on the medical system, the association warned of a system collapse. As doctors and nurses are already exhausted, the letter added, “there is absolutely no extra manpower or facility for treatment.”
Bahrain, one of the world’s most highly inoculated countries, goes back into lockdown
Bahrain will impose a two-week lockdown starting Thursday night as covid-19 infections surge in the Persian Gulf country.
The island nation of around 1.5 million people has one of the world’s highest coronavirus inoculation rates, with 54 percent of its residents having received at least one dose of a vaccine. But it reported a record 28 deaths on Monday and on Wednesday registered a seven-day rolling average of 2,791 new infections.
Malls, shops, cinemas and gyms will be shut, while restaurants will be limited to takeaway and delivery orders, state media said. Gatherings in residences will be banned, the vast majority of state employees will be asked to work from home and most students have been moved to distance learning.
Bahrain was an early adopter of the Sinopharm vaccine, which has since been authorized by the World Health Organization for emergency use. Last week, it joined the United Arab Emirates in making available third dose booster shots of the Chinese-developed vaccine for large groups of people who were fully inoculated more than six months ago.
“We have observed in a select group of people that the booster shot does amplify antibody response even above the levels of the prime dosage,” wrote Nawal Al Kaabi, a researcher who worked on coronavirus vaccine trials in the UAE, in response to queries from The Washington Post at that time.
“With the already high safety protocols of the WHO-approved Sinopharm vaccine, the booster shot gives the necessary protection during this really important phase with a new wave and variants developing in various nations.”
The Seychelles and the Maldives, two other highly inoculated nations that used the Sinopharm vaccine along with other shots, also recently had to reintroduce social-distancing curbs.
A study published in JAMA this week indicated that the Sinopharm shots are between 72.8 percent and 78.1 percent effective in preventing symptomatic infection, or roughly what its developer had previously flagged.
Bahrain has recorded over 226,000 infections and 880 deaths since the start of the pandemic.
German scientists say they have figured out why some vaccines could cause rare blood clots
German scientists believe that they have discovered the cause of the rare blood clots appearing in some people who received the Oxford-AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson coronavirus vaccines, according to a non-peer-reviewed study posted online.
The extremely rare but potentially deadly blood clot disorders in immunized individuals prompted several European nations and the United States to pause or scrap the use of the two coronavirus vaccines earlier this year. The pauses have been lifted.
The scientists say that lab research shows that coronavirus vaccines that use adenovirus vectors — or common cold viruses to transfer the vaccine’s components — also transmit some of the material into the nucleus of the cell, a suboptimal place for the virus to make proteins.
The substandard proteins, some of which appear to split apart inside the body, can then provoke rare blood clots events in a small number of vaccinated individuals, according to the researchers.
Russia’s Sputnik V coronavirus vaccine also uses an adenovirus vector.
The preprint paper, funded by the Corona Task Force at the Goethe-University Frankfurt, says that coronavirus vaccines using mRNA technology, including Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna, send the vaccine material to the cellular fluid rather than the nucleus cells, avoiding the conditions that trigger the blood disorders.
“All mRNA-based vaccines should represent safe products,” the paper said.
Johnson & Johnson “is trying to optimize its vaccine now,” Marschalek said. “With the data we have in our hands, we can tell the companies how to mutate these sequences, coding for the spike protein in a way that prevents unintended splice reactions.”
Opposition in Tokyo grows over Olympics viewing venue to be built in popular park
As a final decision on Olympic spectators is set to be announced in June, public criticism is growing over plans for a public viewing venue that will be constructed in Yoyogi Park in central Tokyo.
According to plans made before the pandemic, the venue will host up to 35,000 people on a large stage with a huge screen, surrounded by souvenir kiosks and display spaces for sponsors. In building the venue, according to notices posted in the park, 35 trees will have their branches cut away to the height of 26 feet (8 meters).
After a growing outcry on Twitter, an online petition “Protect Yoyogi Park: Stop the Tokyo Olympics 2020 Live Site Project!” began on Saturday and has gained nearly 100,000 signatures. The petition asks: “Why actively create a place to gather thousands of people, where crowding and density will surely occur, at a time like this?”
There were also concerns about the damage the project will have on the park, and the petition said, “such drastic pruning will significantly impact the trees, changing their shape and destroying their beauty.”
Shigeru Omi, head of the government coronavirus panel also expressed concerns Wednesday, stating that organizers need to carefully think about such public viewing venues, which will “increase the flow of people, and thus increase the risk of infection.”
Construction of the venue is scheduled to begin June 1, and many are questioning the timing, before any decision has been made about spectators. Under the current state of emergency, visitors to the park are being asked to limit gatherings to be less than five people for less than two hours.
The controversy is the latest sign of public opposition to the already-postponed Games that authorities have said will definitely move forward, even though polls have shown many people are concerned about the Olympics taking place during the pandemic.
Dubai police drones issue more than 500 fines for not wearing masks
DUBAI — Using drones armed with cameras and facial recognition software, a police station here has issued 518 fines for not wearing masks in the first quarter of 2021, local media reported Thursday.
According to the Gulf News, two drones were used to scan the Naif neighborhood in a “first of its kind” initiative. In addition to policing mask-wearing, the drones helped the station issue 2,933 fines for traffic violations.
“The drones have the latest face recognition technology and can record in narrow streets and alleys,” Brig. Gen. Tarik Tahlak, director of Naif’s police station, told the paper. The Naif neighborhood is in Dubai’s old quarter and characterized by densely populated buildings and narrow streets, not far from the renowned gold and spice souqs.
“The drones can identify the faces, plate numbers of cars as well as take close-up shots of streets in a way that can’t be felt by people,” Tahlak added.
During lockdown in April 2020, the city’s extensive network of speed cameras monitored whether cars driving on the streets were authorized to be out.
While the United Arab Emirates, and especially its most populous city Dubai, has been rolling back covid restrictions on restaurants and public gatherings, a strict mask policy both indoors and outdoors remains in place.
In addition to regular announcements about the number of beggars taken off the streets and runaway maids apprehended, Dubai police often shares with the public its latest technological achievements.
Last spring, they said police were now using a new face-encompassing helmet equipped with body-temperature sensors and facial recognition software to combat the coronavirus. In January, police said they solved a crime using P300 wave machine to measure suspects’ brain wave activity when shown the scene of the crime. Police also announced in 2017 a new “police robot” to help with public awareness missions.
FDA adds antibody therapy believed effective on B.1.617.2 strain to treatment arsenal
The Food and Drug Administration on Wednesday granted emergency-use authorization to a monoclonal antibody therapy that researchers believe is effective on the B.1.617.2 coronavirus variant discovered in India.
Interim results from an advanced-stage trial indicate that sotrovimab, which is developed by Britain’s GlaxoSmithKline and the U.S.-based company Vir Biotechnology, reduces the risk of hospitalization or death by up to 85 percent on patients that received it.
The FDA has only authorized the therapy, which is administered via an intravenous infusion, on covid-19 patients above the age of 12 who physicians believe are at elevated risk of hospitalization or death. The U.S. regulator said in a statement that sotrovimab didn’t demonstrate benefits for patients ill enough to be in a hospital and that there are suggestions other antibody treatments could worsen the health of people who are already on oxygen support.
A European Medicines Agency committee last week concluded that sotrovimab could be used for similar categories of patients. GlaxoSmithKline and Vir said that sotrovimab would be available in the United States in the coming weeks and that they were in “continuing discussions” with regulators elsewhere about the status of the treatment.
“Sotrovimab is a critical new treatment option in the fight against the current pandemic and potentially for future coronavirus outbreaks as well,” said George Scangos, Vir’s chief executive, adding that lab tests point to the therapy retaining “activity against all known variants of concern, including the emerging variant from India.”
Separately, a new study published in the journal Nature suggests that people who have recovered from covid-19 may have some immunity to the disease for longer than researchers had expected. “The implications are that vaccines will have the same durable effect,” Menno van Zelm, a professor at Australia’s Monash University, told the journal.
Australia’s Victoria state returns to strict lockdown as variant discovered in India spreads
Victoria state in Australia will order more than 6.6 million people into a seven-day lockdown from Thursday night as a fresh cluster of coronavirus infections continues to spread.
The country’s second-most populous state, which is home to Melbourne, registered 26 new coronavirus cases this week after going nearly three months without community transmission. Over 10,000 possible primary and secondary contacts have been identified and contact tracers are still at work, authorities said.
“We will demonstrate again how well Australia deals not only with the day-to-day issues, but when challenges come,” said Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison at a news conference, adding that his government would help to reopen Victoria, which is run by the opposition Labor Party, as soon as possible.
The sweeping restrictions mean Victorians are only allowed to leave their homes for a small number of reasons; they will also have to wear a mask in most circumstances. Most students will move to distance learning, and restaurants will be restricted to takeaway orders. There are also limitations, including mandatory hotel quarantine, on people who leave Victoria to travel within Australia.
The country of about 25 million has been praised for its containment of the pandemic: It has registered just over 30,000 cases and under 1,000 deaths. That success, however, has come at the expense of border restrictions, which mean many Australians living abroad have struggled to return home. There has been increased criticism in recent months, even by allies of Morrison, of the country’s “fortress mentality.”
The Wuhan lab-leak theory is getting more attention. That’s because key evidence is still missing.
A new surge of interest has revived the lab-leak theory. Well over a year since a novel coronavirus began to spread in Wuhan, the idea that the deadly outbreak could be linked to a virus research center in the Chinese city has lingered, unproven but not eliminated.
Although the resurgent chatter may suggest new clues or proof, the inverse is in fact true. It is the persistent absence of any convincing evidence either for or against the theory that has prompted calls for more investigation.
Most obviously, a new U.S. administration that is not so openly anti-China has led some former skeptics to reconsider the existing evidence. And public health experts — most of whom never ruled out the lab theory outright — have expressed disappointment with a World Health Organization-backed investigation that dismissed a link between the Wuhan Institute of Virology and the outbreak.
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