The survivor from Thrissur, who returned from Wuhan -- the epicentre of the pandemic -- recounts her road to recovery and her future plans. Shine Jacob reports
The Chinese capital issued a fresh coronavirus alert on Thursday after it reported 21 local COVID-19 infections a day earlier, three of which were from a high school and the rest from a university, health officials said.
Even when China's widely-publicised exchange with the World Health Organisation (WHO) in response to the queries over the reports of surging cases of mycoplasma pneumonia and influenza flu triggered the worldwide alert, including in India, China said the spike in respiratory diseases was due to an 'immunity gap'.
Crowds carrying lighted candles in memory of those killed in the fire at an apartment block reported under COVID-19 lockdown in Urumqi in Xinjiang shouted slogans against the arbitrary lockdowns by the government to curb the spread of the virus and in solidarity with the weekend protests in Shanghai.
The yet-to-be peer-reviewed study, posted recently on the preprint repository BioRxiv, found that the Alpha, Beta, Delta, and Omicron variants exhibited more than two-fold longer survival on plastic and skin surfaces, than the Wuhan strain.
The woman, who tested positive, is a student of Wuhan university and is undergoing treatment at the Thrissur Medical College Hospital. 3 people have been arrested for spreading false information about those who had arrived in the state from coronavirus affected countries.
Seeking to address international concerns, foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said China has been adjusting the zero-COVID policy based on the changing circumstances.
The total deaths from the more than two-month-old outbreak as reported on Thursday stood at 1,367, with the total number of confirmed cases mounting to 59,804, health officials were quoted as saying by the state-run Xinhua news agency.
Trump had accused Pakistan of providing safe havens to terrorists.
In the travel advisory, the Health Ministry again asked people to refrain from travelling to China in view of the coronavirus outbreak in its Hubei province and said travellers on return from the neighbouring country could be quarantined.
There is confusion around the registration guidelines and the cut-off dates for acquiring the degrees.
People across the nation have been carrying out protests demanding the resignation of Xi Jinping over his strict COVID-19 measures.
Dr Tedros said the team has concluded that leak from the Wuhan Institute of Virology as alleged by former US president Donald Trump is the "least likely hypothesis" but it requires further probe.
China was also slammed by the panel for "lost opportunities to apply basic public health measures at the earliest opportunity."
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China's national health commission said 39,452 new cases were reported on Monday, including 36,304 local asymptomatic cases, as authorities scrambled to contain the fresh surge in infections.
This is the first time that the Indian government has made a comment on the origin of the deadly contagion.
Monday also saw the new confirmed infections of COVID-19 outside Hubei reduced to a number lower than 100 for the first time, Mi told the media..
'The Indian government evacuated its citizens from the clutches of the Taliban and Covid-hit Wuhan, so I am not worried.'
It has triggered a cause of concern for India too as many of the 700 odd Indian students studying in universities of Wuhan and Hubei provinces are still stuck up there.
Former Niti Aayog Vice Chairman Arvind Panagariya has opined that cutting trade with Beijing at this juncture would amount to sacrificing India's potential economic growth.
However, a total of 34 new COVID-19 cases were reported on the Chinese mainland.
The same team of scientists had last year dismissed the lab leak idea as a conspiracy theory in a report also published in The Lancet.
The average age of those who died was 80.3, and 90 per cent of the fatalities were aged 65 or over, the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post reported.
China's National Health Commission on Thursday said the country reported only four new confirmed COVID-19 cases on Wednesday, taking the total number to 82,862, while no death due to the disease was registered. The virus has claimed 4,633 lives in the country.
China's National Health Commission in its daily report on Monday said that 2,829 new cases of coronavirus were reported nationwide on February 2, taking the total number of infection to 17,205.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi and United States President Joe Biden have expressed 'deep pride' and appreciation about their nations' close cooperation to fight the deadly COVID-19 pandemic, as they noted that all sections of the society were mobilised in unprecedented ways to share emergency relief supplies during each country's times of need.
But that does not mean that we are lowering our guard. The (28-day) quarantine period will continue.
Photos circulating in social media on Thursday showed two banners hung on an overpass of a major thoroughfare in the northwest of the Chinese capital, protesting against Xi's unpopular zero-COVID policy and authoritarian rule.
Studies in China claim that traditional Chinese medicines seem to be working effectively on patients with mild or moderate symptoms of coronavirus.
The United States intelligence community has failed to reach any firm conclusion on the exact origin of COVID-19 and is split on whether it leaked from a lab in China or emerged in nature, even though it does not believe the virus was developed as a biological weapon, according to results of a detailed review ordered by President Joe Biden.
The coronavirus outbreak began in Wuhan, capital of China's Hubei province, in December and has now spread across the globe. The Chinese authorities are trying to contain the epidemic while other countries, including India, are working on plans to evacuate their citizens from Wuhan and other cities in Hubei province, the epicentre of the outbreak.
Eighty-six deaths were reported in mainland China with 3,399 fresh cases from 31 provincial-level regions, the country's National Health Commission said on Saturday.
''We had three positive cases, but our success was the three not going up to 30 or 100.' 'Also, all the three survived the virus,' says Kerala's Health Minister K K Shailaja.
The death toll climbed to 2,592 with 150 new fatalities while the total number of confirmed cases increased to over 77,000, health officials said on Monday.
It is a landmark in China's over two-month-long fight against the deadly virus as the country continued to report coronavirus deaths till Sunday, especially from the epicentre Hubei province.
The number of people, who were diagnosed with COVID-19, has reached 95,333, including 80,565 people in China
The paper also includes musing that SARS -- which hit China in 2003 -- could have been a man-made bioweapon deliberately unleashed by "terrorists".
A person from Kerala with a travel history to China has been tested positive. Health ministry said the patient is stable and is being closely monitored.
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