New Coronavirus News from 4 till 5 May 2022

'Stay vigilant': no let-up in North Korea's two-year Covid lockout [Financial Times, 5 May 2022]

by Christian Davies

Pyongyang claims to have avoided a big outbreak but experts warn its luck will eventually run out

Please use the sharing tools found via the share button at the top or side of articles. Copying articles to share with others is a breach of FT.com T&Cs and Copyright Policy. Email [e-mail] to buy additional rights. Subscribers may share up to 10 or 20 articles per month using the gift article service. More information can be found here.

https://www.ft.com/content/1116cb46-490a-47dc-9d81-70fc374e625c

North Koreans have been warned that “not even a tiny crack or mistake is allowed when it comes to emergency quarantining”, as the country persists with the extreme isolation policy that it imposed at the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic. “Stay vigilant and strictly abide by quarantine regulations,” said a report this week in state newspaper Rodong Sinmun, reminding citizens to wear face masks and ventilate indoor areas. “Even if the mistake was as negligible as the tip of a needle, it could deal a critical blow to the country’s quarantine bases.
Emergency quarantining is currently the foremost priority in our country,” it added. While in China, panicked local authorities have imposed lockdowns in response to Omicron outbreaks in several cities, Pyongyang maintains that it has kept its population Covid-free by sealing the country’s borders. Information from inside North Korea is scarce, but the government is not believed to have confined citizens across the country to their homes. North Korea and Eritrea are the only two countries that have not initiated a Covid-19 vaccination programme.
Pyongyang’s claims that it has not recorded a single case have been widely ridiculed. But experts have argued that while it was highly unlikely that the country had no infections at all, no evidence had emerged of any large-scale outbreaks. Kee Park, a lecturer at Harvard Medical School who has worked inside North Korea, said the country had proved successful in keeping the virus out but that its approach would ultimately prove unsustainable. “A prolonged lockdown will lead to increased excess deaths — caused by poor nutrition, food shortages, increasing poverty, degradation of health systems and the loss of humanitarian aid — that will eventually exceed the number of deaths caused by the virus itself,” said Park. “China shows you can’t have even a limited opening without the virus spreading,” Park added. “North Korea is going to have to open and I think they’re going to be able to manage it, but they will need an aggressive vaccination programme.” North Korea’s leader Kim Jong Un reacted decisively to the emergence of coronavirus in early 2020, sealing borders with China and Russia, tightening restrictions on internal movement and ejecting foreign diplomats and aid workers. Since then, the country has allowed only very limited transport of freight from China, which must pass through specially-constructed disinfection centres. Kim’s measures intensified the fallout from international sanctions imposed on North Korea in response to illicit nuclear and ballistic missile tests in 2017, as well as the effects of a series of droughts and floods. The North Korean regime has acknowledged the existence of a “food crisis”, even last year extolling the virtues of the meat of black swans reared in state-run duck farms. The country’s economy contracted 4.5 per cent in 2020, according to estimates from the Bank of Korea in Seoul, its sharpest decline since a famine killed millions of people in the 1990s. Andrei Lankov, a North Korea expert and professor of history at Kookmin University in Seoul, said that the regime’s approach to the pandemic reflected a rational appraisal of the limitations of its own health system. “North Korea is perhaps the best-placed country worldwide to do a quarantine-based policy because they have controlled the domestic movement of the population for decades,” said Lankov. “They can close their borders completely without the need to worry about domestic political discontent and they are doing it because they assume that if there is an outbreak then many people [will] die because their health system will be unable to cope.”

Please use the sharing tools found via the share button at the top or side of articles. Copying articles to share with others is a breach of FT.com T&Cs and Copyright Policy. Email [e-mail] to buy additional rights. Subscribers may share up to 10 or 20 articles per month using the gift article service. More information can be found here.
https://www.ft.com/content/1116cb46-490a-47dc-9d81-70fc374e625c

More than two years after imposing the border lockout, Kim has not initiated a Covid-19 vaccination programme and has refused deliveries of Russian and Chinese vaccines offered through the World Health Organization’s Covax programme. Park said that North Korea’s rejection of vaccines did not reflect hostility to inoculations but rather its scepticism over the efficacy and safety of the jabs offered through Covax. “They’re not turning down all vaccines, they’re turning down the vaccines they feel are inferior,” said Park, noting that North Korea had also expressed concerns over the safety of AstraZeneca jabs. Before the pandemic struck, between 95 and 97 per cent of North Korea’s 25mn people were routinely immunised against diseases, including measles and polio, he added.

Please use the sharing tools found via the share button at the top or side of articles. Copying articles to share with others is a breach of FT.com T&Cs and Copyright Policy. Email [e-mail] to buy additional rights. Subscribers may share up to 10 or 20 articles per month using the gift article service. More information can be found here.
https://www.ft.com/content/1116cb46-490a-47dc-9d81-70fc374e625c

I can say categorically that they do want vaccines,” he said. “If they’re provided with mRNA vaccines like Pfizer or Moderna and in a sufficient amount to vaccinate their population, including the booster dose, I think the reply will be different.” North Korea had the potential to develop its own vaccines, although it would struggle to test them on a Covid-free population, Park added. South Korean intelligence officials have accused North Korean hackers of attempting to steal information on coronavirus vaccines and treatments from companies such as Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson and Novavax. Even if it somehow acquired tens of millions of mRNA vaccines, North Korea probably did not have the “cold-chain” infrastructure for them to be stored and distributed around the country, said a western diplomat.

Please use the sharing tools found via the share button at the top or side of articles. Copying articles to share with others is a breach of FT.com T&Cs and Copyright Policy. Email [e-mail] to buy additional rights. Subscribers may share up to 10 or 20 articles per month using the gift article service. More information can be found here.
https://www.ft.com/content/1116cb46-490a-47dc-9d81-70fc374e625c

A recent report by the Center for Strategic and International Studies think-tank in Washington outlined several factors that could encourage Pyongyang to change course. These included the easing of restrictions in China and South Korea, a worsening food crisis and the emergence of a new coronavirus variant. “Rather than ending the lockdown, the regime may manage ongoing health and food crises through small and sporadic openings . . . with the release of some shipments of humanitarian aid and a limited resumption of trade with China,” said the report. Eric Feigl-Ding, an epidemiologist at the New England Complex Systems Institute, warned that however Pyongyang chose to proceed, it could not keep the virus out forever. “China’s experience shows that what used to work against a less contagious strain may not work any more,” he said. “The North Koreans could get lucky for another few months but their luck will eventually run out.”

Anthony Fauci: Why China's COVID-19 Situation Is a 'Disaster' [Foreign Policy, 4 May 2022]

By Ravi Agrawal

The White House’s chief medical advisor assesses the world’s response to the pandemic.

In his role as director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, Anthony Fauci has advised seven U.S. presidents on preventing the spread of a range of diseases. Over the last two years, amid the deadliest pandemic in our lifetimes, Fauci has also become the public face of the United States’ coronavirus response strategy, explaining rapidly changing developments and rules to an increasingly polarized nation.

Fauci mostly speaks about U.S. regulations but agreed to sit down with Foreign Policy for a more global look at the pandemic. I spoke with him on an episode of FP Live, the magazine’s platform for live journalism, on Monday, May 2. Some of the questions below were selected from submissions from FP subscribers. The following transcript has been edited for clarity.

Ravi Agrawal: You said last week that we are out of the “acute component” of the pandemic phase. In real terms, what does that mean for Americans?

Anthony Fauci: We are still in the middle of a pandemic, to be sure—there’s no confusion about that. But when I say we’re out of the acute fulminant stage right now, what I mean is that cases have gone down dramatically. Our numbers of deaths per day are down to one-tenth of what they were. We have many less hospitalizations, and the case numbers went way down from 900,000 to around 15,000 per day. Now, as we’ve seen before, we’re starting to see an uptick in cases, particularly with the new BA.2 variant. But what we are seeing is something that our colleagues in the United Kingdom and in some of the European countries have seen, where although the cases are starting to go up, they’re not going up in a very steep, fulminant way and they’re not associated with a concomitant increase in hospitalizations or the utilization of intensive care unit beds.

What that’s telling us is that 90-plus percent of our population has either been vaccinated and boosted or has gotten infected—or both. This is not protecting us specifically from infection, but it seems to be protecting us from that surge of hospitalizations that stressed the health care system during previous eras of this pandemic.

We hope that we don’t see a major uptick [in cases] as we get into the fall, but that remains to be seen. We’re going to have to wait and see, which is the reason why we’re still encouraging people to get vaccinated. If you’ve not been vaccinated or if you have been vaccinated and are eligible for a booster, make sure to get it. Now.

RA: Dr. Fauci, you chose not to go to the White House Correspondents’ Dinner last weekend. President Joe Biden made the opposite choice. I imagine there is no right or wrong here. But what does this example tell us about individual choice? What do regular Americans take away as they choose how much risk to take on in their everyday lives?

AF: As long as there is virus that is circulating, people need to evaluate either themselves or with the help of their physician or their health care provider what the level of risk would be if they get infected.

I made a decision because I was weighing the risk and the benefit. You know, I’ve been to several White House Correspondents’ Dinners for fun, but it’s not a big deal if I don’t go, which I didn’t go this year. I’m 81 years old, I have a number of very important commitments that are coming up in the next week or so, and if I wound up getting infected, even if I didn’t get terribly ill, I’d have to cancel all of those commitments. So I made a personal decision based on my own evaluation of my risk, and that decision was not to take the chance.

A woman looks at burning funeral pyres during the COVID-19 pandemic in India

India’s Official COVID-19 Death Toll Is Still an Undercount

As the World Health Organization seeks to revise global figures, politics in New Delhi stand in the way.

ANALYSIS

How China’s COVID-19 Lockdowns Will Impact the Global Economy

With China’s southern tech hub of Shenzhen effected, supply chain problems could get worse.
Q&A
CAMERON ABADI

RA: What’s your current guidance on mask-wearing? Is the United States easing up too quickly?

AF: Well, my guidance on that is really very much in parallel with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. When you are in what we call a “green zone,” the level of infections, hospitalization, and hospital capacity is such that masking is not required. So I would not necessarily wear a mask if I were in a room with a few people and I knew what their vaccination status was.

But if I go into an unknown place, an indoor setting where there are a lot of people around, and I have no idea what their status is—again, given my age and my risk aversion because of my other responsibilities—I would wear a mask.

So I wouldn’t say it’s absolutely necessary and you must regulate someone to wear a mask. But I would say you make a personal decision that if you’re in a setting like that, wear a mask.

RA: I’m going to channel some of the questions we’ve received from our subscribers here. It’s fair to say the United States performed relatively poorly on the pandemic despite having one of the world’s most advanced health care systems. Knowing what you now know, what would you recommend America did differently?

AF: Well, what America could have done differently would have taken decades to fix. It isn’t a one thing for this pandemic that was specific. Our health care system has a great deal of disparities.

We have a very heterogeneous population, many of whom have a much greater risk of developing severe disease—mostly minority populations or brown and Black populations. Not only are they in occupational situations that put them at greater risk of getting exposed, but they have underlying conditions that are much more likely than you see in the general population: hypertension, diabetes, obesity, chronic lung disease. And that’s why they’ve suffered desperately greater than the general population.

Also, we have an uneven health care system. The access to good health care isn’t evenly distributed throughout the country, where it is in other nations that have more uniform health care systems. They’ve done much, much better than we have. Those are just a few of the reasons why, even though we’re a very rich country, even though we were deemed to be as well or better prepared than anyone else for a pandemic, we did quite poorly. We have almost a million deaths over a two-and-a-half-year period. That is very serious.

RA: Dr. Fauci, we’re Foreign Policy, so it’s only natural that we’re going to try to get you to look at other parts of the world as well. And I want to ask you about China and its so-called “zero-COVID” policy. Quite frankly, is it too stringent?

AF: Well, I think so, because if you are going to shut down a country and lock down, the reason to lock down is first to realize that’s a temporary measure, to give you enough time to properly vaccinate the overwhelming proportion of your population with a good vaccine, particularly the vulnerable, such as the elderly.

China apparently did not do that. They locked down, but the vaccine uptake, particularly among their elderly, is very poor. And the vaccines that they used, quite frankly, are not as effective as vaccines that are used in other parts of the world. So I understand the strategy of locking down, but you’ve got to do it with a purpose. If you just lock down and wait for the virus to disappear, it’s not going to happen. There has to be a purpose for that. And that purpose is to prepare yourself for the inevitability that the virus will enter your community.

RA: Given what you say, Dr. Fauci, at some level the United States and the West failed to vaccinate the rest of the world—or at least failed to deliver on some of the promises that were made. The World Health Organization (WHO) had set a target of about 70 percent of the world being vaccinated by the middle of this year. It’s way behind those targets. What do you make of that? Do you have regrets in terms of America’s response?

AF: That is a much, much more complicated situation than people realize. It goes well beyond providing doses to the developing world. The United States, quite frankly, has done very well.
We’ve given now, you know, hundreds and hundreds of millions of doses to 114 countries. We’ve pledged and/or given 1.2 billion doses by the end of this year. We’ve given $4 billion to COVAX.

What we found out, much to our dismay, is that the vaccine doses that were made available to the developing world were not being utilized. We’re in the somewhat paradoxical situation where the countries that need the vaccine are saying, “Don’t send us any more because we’re not able to implement and get it into people’s arms.” So what we need to do is go well beyond a plan to get vaccines in numbers to people but to help them with their infrastructure, to be able to get those vaccines administered to people.

RA: But of course, the infrastructure you’re describing globally could take decades to build around the world.

AF: Exactly. That’s why I said it’s not a problem you’re going to solve overnight by giving more vaccines. The infrastructure situation is going to take much, much longer than one season.

RA: So let me ask you a related question then. Turning to Ukraine, given the relatively low vaccination rates there, are you now worried about the conditions of war acting as an incubator for the next dangerous variant? And this holds true not only for Ukraine but also many other parts of the world, such as Yemen or Afghanistan.

AF: Well, you’re absolutely correct. And that gets back to the saying that we in public health have said for so long that a global pandemic can only be solved by a global response. You can’t have just some countries responding because then you give the virus the opportunity to proliferate, expand, and mutate and develop variants.

Whenever you have the disruption of anything from a natural disaster to a disruption of society by conflict, in this case the Russian invasion of Ukraine, that always leads to a disruption of health care systems, including how one can respond to a pandemic. But it goes well beyond Ukraine. You mentioned some of the other countries, even in sub-Saharan Africa, where you have, you know, less than 20 percent of some countries vaccinating their people, particularly when you have a high level of other diseases such as HIV/AIDS, in which the virus can have a particularly greater impact on people. That has secondary effects throughout the world because it gives the virus the opportunity to continue to spread from person to person.
And the more the virus replicates, the greater the opportunity you give it to mutate. And when it mutates, that’s when you get new variants.

RA: What can the developed world and global bodies such as WHO do to ensure that if there is a new variant, it’s detected quickly?

AF: Well, that is part of the pandemic preparedness and response plan, to be able to communicate and provide throughout the world the capability of doing rapid, real-time, real-world sequencing of variants as they arise so that one can prepare by modifying the vaccines to get an appropriate response.

The South Africans are doing an incredibly good job of being able to pick up these variants in real time. I mean, they’re as good as anyone throughout the world. In doing that, they’ve been able to point out the evolution of the omicron variant as well as the sublineages of omicron.

Other southern African countries, maybe not so well, and maybe in other areas, the Middle East and other parts of the world, they don’t have that capability. And as you suggested, and I agree with you, it really is the responsibility of the developed world to be able to partner with those countries, to provide with them and for them the ability to do real-time sequencing and surveillance.

RA: It strikes me that assessments of various countries and how they’ve handled the pandemic are essentially judgments based on snapshots in time. I remember a couple of years ago there were early winners in Asia, but then they ended up with disasters in the second year of the pandemic. And now that we’re in year three, it seems as if the decks are moving around again.
Given that you’ve had so much time to take this 30,000-foot view of the performance of different countries at this point of time, which countries do you think have done best?

AF: I would have named a couple that are now in real trouble. China did well in the beginning. It’s a disaster now, in Shanghai and likely in Beijing. Same with Taiwan.

Singapore did very well in the beginning. I think Australia and New Zealand have done very well. But remember, they have very special circumstances. When you have an island, you can actually close things off and be self-sufficient for a while until you get your people vaccinated.

RA: Many of our subscribers have been asking about the role of partisan politics and the polarized media. How did that impact your role as a scientist?

AF: Terribly so. I think if there was one fact that when people ask me, what was the thing that got in the way of an adequate response, certainly in the United States, it is the profound divisiveness in our society, where we seem to have forgotten that the common enemy is the virus. It’s really the propagation of untruths. And that’s very disturbing, where normalization of untruths becomes something that’s accepted, that people can say things that are completely false and completely misleading. It hurts me to say it even here in my own country.

RA: What was it like to be undermined and often contradicted by your own boss, former President Donald Trump?

AF: Well, that was very uncomfortable, obviously. I would have hoped that there would have been cooperation in addressing it as opposed to opposition. I took no great pleasure in having to be at odds with the president of the United States, but I had no choice.

RA: Do you worry about his reelection?

AF: No, I don’t get involved in politics, so I don’t worry. I worry about public health, not people’s reelection.

New Coronavirus News from 12 May 2022a

At Biden’s Summit, Other Nations Pledge Billions to Bolster Pandemic Response [The New York Times, 12 May 2022]

By Sheryl Gay Stolberg

WASHINGTON — President Biden and other leaders issued an urgent call on Thursday for the world to step up its fight against Covid-19, and countries including Germany, Canada and Japan pledged large sums to finance tests, therapeutics and vaccines — a commitment Mr. Biden could not make because Congress has refused to authorize new pandemic aid.

As the United States approached a harrowing milestone — one million American lives lost to the virus — fear of another deadly variant loomed large over the president’s second global Covid-19 summit, a virtual gathering co-hosted by Belize, Germany, Indonesia and Senegal. But some countries were notably absent. China, in the thick of its own Covid crisis, did not attend. Russia, waging war against Ukraine, was not invited.

Senior Biden administration officials said the summit produced more than $3 billion in commitments toward the global response and toward efforts to prevent future pandemics. That is far short of the $15 billion that the World Health Organization says is needed. But the summit did lay the groundwork for a new global preparedness fund.

The gathering on Thursday unfolded in a very different climate compared with that of the first Covid summit in September. The war in Ukraine is sapping energy and money from donor nations. The global vaccination campaign has stalled. Testing has plummeted around the globe. Covid antiviral pills, available in the United States, are scarce in many low- and middle-income nations. Many attendees said Covid fatigue had become as big a danger as Covid itself.

“There’s still so much left to do; this pandemic isn’t over,” Mr. Biden said in his opening remarks, adding, “We have to prevent complacency.”

Global coronavirus cases by region
But the president’s tone was tepid compared with that of some of the other participants, who included heads of state, global health officials and philanthropic leaders. Several, including Dr. Joy St. John, the executive director of the Caribbean Public Health Agency, said climate change was speeding up the cycle of pandemics, making the next outbreak inevitable.

“The next virus may kill even more people and cause even greater economic disruption,” she warned.

Bill Gates, the software entrepreneur and philanthropist whose foundation has donated tens of millions of dollars to pandemic relief efforts — and who tested positive for the coronavirus this week — railed against global health inequities.

“We need to make more lifesaving tools and allocate them based on need rather than wealth,” Mr. Gates declared, adding, “We don’t have time to waste.”

There were some proverbial elephants in the room: China’s ongoing Covid crisis and the war in Ukraine were not discussed. But J. Stephen Morrison, an expert in global health at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said the commitments by Group of 7 nations reflected the strengthening of bonds between countries allied against Russia in the Ukraine war.

Those pledges, he said, will pave the way for the World Bank to create a new global pandemic preparedness fund. The fund will be similar to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, which was created two decades ago.

“It was the G7 that was the core of the H.I.V. response, and in some ways this is getting that same garage band back together,” Mr. Morrison said. Referring to the lack of congressional funding, he said, “Overall, not a bad outcome given the circumstances.”

Before the summit began, Mr. Biden ordered flags lowered to half-staff at the White House and all public buildings and military installations until Monday in commemoration of the nation’s death toll.

As of Wednesday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had reported more than 995,000 coronavirus deaths in the United States; a New York Times database put the figure at more than 997,000. But with heads of state, leaders of philanthropies and pharmaceutical executives attending the virtual gathering, Mr. Biden was ready to mark the coming moment.

Globally, the World Health Organization has said that nearly 15 million more people died during the first two years of the pandemic than would have been expected during normal times. That estimate far exceeds the official Covid death toll reported by countries.

Despite the gloomy predictions, summit participants did report some progress. Samantha Power, the administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development, told attendees that in Ghana, the percentage of eligible people fully vaccinated had doubled between December and April and now stood at 25.4 percent. Uganda has also seen a surge in vaccination.

“Now is not the time to back down; it is the time to push ahead,” she said, “even if this fight may drag on longer than any of us want.”

The White House instructed participants to come to Thursday’s summit with significant commitments — either financial or nonmonetary. One by one, over the course of four virtual sessions, philanthropies and drugmakers stepped up.

Chancellor Olaf Scholz of Germany pledged $1.5 billion, saying his country “wants to lead by example.” Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada said his country would donate $732 million. South Korea offered $300 million.

The Clinton Health Access Initiative said it had negotiated agreements with drug manufacturers to make generic versions of Pfizer’s Covid antiviral, Paxlovid, available for less than $25 per course. Merck, whose Covid antiviral, molnupiravir, has already been distributed in generic form in 15 countries, said it would make two million courses of the drug available at a “best access price” to low- and middle-income nations.

The United States, which has already committed $19 billion to the global response, did not come entirely empty-handed. The Biden administration put forth a relatively small amount of money at the meeting: $200 million for the World Bank fund to prepare for future pandemics and $20 million for pilot projects to bring coronavirus tests and treatments to poor nations.

But that is much less than Mr. Biden hoped for. The president has asked Congress for $22.5 billion — including $5 billion to fight the pandemic globally — in emergency coronavirus aid, but the proposal is stuck on Capitol Hill, even as Congress hurries to approve $40 billion in emergency aid for Ukraine.

Lawmakers are still struggling to figure out how to advance a pared-down $10 billion coronavirus package. A group of Nobel laureates and former heads of state, including former Prime Minister Gordon Brown of Britain, called this week for Congress to fulfill Mr. Biden’s request.

“We’ve got to puncture the complacency about this, to make sure that people realize that if we don’t act, another variant is a possibility — and we don’t know how lethal it could be,” Mr. Brown, who is now the World Health Organization’s ambassador for global health financing, said in an interview this week.

The United States also made a significant nonmonetary commitment: The National Institutes of Health has agreed to license its “stabilized spike protein technology” — a crucial component of Covid vaccines and treatments — to companies through the Medicines Patent Pool, a global nonprofit backed by the W.H.O. that works to bring medicines to low- and middle-income nations at low cost.

The move is significant because it may lay the groundwork for other countries and companies to share their technologies, said Peter Maybarduk, who directs the global access to medicines program for Public Citizen, a consumer advocacy group, and serves on the patent pool’s board.

While the United States has donated hundreds of millions of vaccine doses to poor nations, it has been less aggressive about sharing technology.

“One of the terrible injustices and major impediments in this pandemic has been the exclusive control of critical medical technology,” Mr. Maybarduk said. By working with the Medicines Patent Pool, he said, the Biden administration would be “not only sharing doses, but sharing knowledge, on the view that sharing doses is charity and sharing knowledge is justice.”

North Korea reports first Covid cases, Kim orders national lockdown [FRANCE 24 English, 12 May 2022]

The nuclear-armed country had never admitted to a case of Covid-19 and the government had imposed a rigid coronavirus blockade of its borders since the start of the pandemic in 2020.

But samples taken from patients sick with fever in Pyongyang "coincided with Omicron BA.2 variant", the official Korean Central News Agency reported.

Top officials, including leader Kim Jong Un, held a crisis politburo meeting on Thursday to discuss the outbreak and announced they would implement the "maximum emergency epidemic prevention system".

Kim "called on all the cities and counties of the whole country to thoroughly lock down their areas," KCNA reported, although details of the restrictions were not immediately given.

Kim told the meeting that the goal was to "quickly cure the infections in order to eradicate the source of the virus spread," according to KCNA.

Kim added that North Korea will "overcome the current sudden situation and win victory in the emergency epidemic prevention work".

It was unclear from the KCNA report how many Covid infections had been detected.

North Korea's crumbling health infrastructure would struggle to deal with a major outbreak, with its 25 million people not believed to be vaccinated, experts say.

"For Pyongyang to publicly admit omicron cases, the public health situation must be serious," Leif-Eric Easley, a professor at Ewha University in Seoul said.

"Pyongyang will likely double down on lockdowns, even though the failure of China's zero-Covid strategy suggests that approach won't work against the Omicron variant."

No vaccines
North Korea has turned down offers of vaccinations from the World Health Organization, and China and Russia.

Accepting vaccines through the WHO's Covax scheme "requires transparency over how vaccines are distributed," Go Myong-hyun, researcher at the Asan Institute for Policy Studies told AFP.

"That's why North Korea rejected it," Go said.

North Korea is surrounded by countries that have battled -- or are still fighting to control -- significant outbreaks of Omicron.

South Korea, which has high rates of vaccination, has recently eased almost all Covid-19 restrictions, with cases sharply down after an Omicron-fuelled spike in March.

Neighbouring China, the world's only major economy to still maintain a zero-Covid policy, is battling multiple Omicron outbreaks.

Major Chinese cities, including the financial capital Shanghai, have been under strict lockdowns for weeks.

It appears North Korea will try to avoid China's extreme measures like "virtually imprisoning residents in apartments", said Cheong Seong-chang of the Sejong Institute.

But even more limited lockdowns would create a "severe food shortage and the same chaos China is now facing," he said.

Seoul-based specialist site NK News reported that areas of Pyongyang had already been locked down for two days, with reports of panic buying.

Nuke test?
The public emergence of Covid in Pyongyang could also have repercussions on North Korea's nuclear programme.

South Korea's hawkish new President Yoon Suk-yeol, who was sworn in Tuesday, has vowed to get tough with Pyongyang, after five years of failed diplomacy.

After high-profile talks collapsed in 2019, North Korea has doubled-down on weapons testing, conducting a blitz of launches so far this year, including intercontinental ballistic missiles.

Satellite imagery indicates North Korea is preparing to conduct a nuclear test, and the United States has warned this could come as soon as this month.

But the Covid-19 outbreak could potentially disrupt their military program, analysts said.

"There is a possibility of delaying the nuclear test in order to focus on overcoming the coronavirus," Yang Moo-jin, a professor at the University of North Korean Studies, told AFP.

But he said if public fears over an outbreak were to spread, Kim might go ahead with a test "to divert this fear to another place".

[INTERVIEW] North Korea's COVID-free claim nonsensical: virologist [The Korea Times, 12 May 2022]

By Jung Min-ho

The COVID-19 pandemic has swept across the world for more than two years. North Korea, however, is still completely free of the disease, according to its official data.

The latest data available on the World Health Organization website shows "there have been 0 confirmed cases of COVID-19 with 0 deaths" in the isolated state between Jan. 3, 2020 and May 10 of this year.

Hakim Djaballah, former CEO of Institut Pasteur Korea and a virologist currently based in New York, believes that North Korea's COVID-free claim is most likely a lie.

"It is very hard to imagine any country being COVID free let alone North Korea," Djaballah told The Korea Times. "I do not believe their claim, given what has been happening near its borders."

Two weeks ago, China suspended railroad freight operations with North Korea "in light of the current epidemic situation" in the Chinese border city of Dandong. The city government ordered all residents to swiftly return home and stay there, but it did not give any other details.

North Korea has appeared to imitate China's zero-COVID strategy, which involves draconian lockdowns. But unlike China, North Korea lacks food supplies and government efficiency. Moreover, it is unclear how much of the country's population is vaccinated ― a critical factor for the pandemic to become endemic. Even if North Korea can pursue this strategy for a while, it would not be sustainable, Djaballah said.

"Given the current situation in North Korea, I doubt very much that they can successfully apply the zero-COVID policy as China has been doing," he said. "I find it counterproductive to continue with such policies for North Korea and even for China. I do not think that North Korea is capable of keeping the virus at bay, given what we know about its capabilities."

On Monday, North Korea called for making more efforts to prevent the spread of the virus amid a growing number of fever patients, though the possible cause of sickness has not been made clear. The Rodong Sinmun, the official mouthpiece of the Workers' Party, urged the public not to let its guard down.

There is little information about vaccination in North Korea, including how many people, if anyone at all, have been vaccinated and what kind of vaccines may have been administered. But based on the situations in other countries, it is reasonable to assume that the virus will not disappear without infecting a certain number of people.

"I imagine that, with Omicron, many countries should have had at least 50-60 percent of their population already infected and recovered from it due to its mild symptoms … They're now on their way to dampen down COVID with the only fearful exception of the appearance of a new and deadly variant," Djaballah said. "The circulating Omicron and its variants have been helpful in pushing toward an equilibrium with the virus, hopefully sending it into hibernation and we will not hear about it for many years to come."

"In any case, North Korea can open its doors to independent observers to visit and assess the situation."

'Yoon should pay attention to health issues in North Korea'

Viruses are not affected by national borders, so an infectious disease threat in North Korea or China today could become a threat to the South tomorrow. This is the message Djaballah has for Yoon Suk-yeol, the new president of South Korea.

"Given the geo-location of both countries, if the virus is active in one, the chance of moving to the other country is very high," he said. "The current COVID situation would be a great opportunity to enhance bilateral healthcare collaborations and support with the North."

"I hope there will be a good dialogue between Yoon and North Korea's Kim [Jong-un] to help ease inter-Korean tensions, and at least collaborate on the COVID health crisis."

Yoon, who was sworn in Tuesday, promised that the government would continue to provide humanitarian aid to the North.

North Korea raises alarm after confirming 1st COVID-19 case [CBS17.com, 12 May 2022]

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — North Korea announced its first coronavirus infection more than two years into the pandemic Thursday as leader Kim Jong Un called for raising COVID-19 preventive measures to maximum levels.

The North’s official Korean Central News Agency said tests from an unspecified number of people with fevers in the capital Pyongyang confirmed they were infected with the omicron variant. North Korea had previously claimed a perfect record in keeping out COVID-19, a claim widely doubted by outside experts.

The country’s population of 26 million is believed to be mostly unvaccinated, after its government shunned vaccines offered by the U.N.-backed COVAX distribution program, possibly because those have international monitoring requirements.
KCNA said Kim called a meeting of the ruling Korean Workers’ Party’s Politburo where members decided to raise its anti-virus measures. Kim, during the meeting, called for officials to stabilize transmissions and eliminate the infection source as fast as possible.

COVID-19 in NC: 17K new cases during past week; hospitalizations up 10%

Despite the decision to elevate anti-virus steps, Kim ordered officials to push ahead with scheduled construction, agricultural development and other state projects while bolstering the country’s defense postures to avoid any security vacuum.

Kim said officials must also formulate steps to ease any public inconveniences and other negative situations that could flare as a result of the boosted anti-pandemic measures. Kim said that “the single-minded public unity is the most powerful guarantee that can win in this anti-pandemic fight,” KCNA said.

North Korea’s announcement of the infections came after NK News, a North Korea-focused news site, cited unidentified sources who said authorities had imposed a lockdown on Pyongyang residents. South Korea’s government said it couldn’t confirm the report.

North Korea was one of the last places in the world without an acknowledged virus case. Turkmenistan, a similarly secretive and authoritarian nation in Central Asia, has reported no cases to the World Health Organization, though its claim also is widely doubted by outside experts. In recent months, some Pacific island nations that kept the virus out by their geographic isolation have recorded outbreaks.

Experts said a major COVID-19 outbreak would have devastating consequences because of North Korea’s poor health care system and could possibly trigger instability when combined with other problems like serious food shortages.

North Korea’s previous coronavirus-free claim had been disputed by many foreign experts. But South Korean officials have said North Korea had likely avoided a huge outbreak, in part because it instituted strict virus controls almost from the start of the pandemic.

Early in 2020 — before the coronavirus spread around the world — North Korea took severe steps to keep out the virus and described them as a matter of “national existence”. It quarantined people with symptoms resembling COVID-19 and all but halted cross-border traffic and trade for two years and is even believed to have ordered troops to shoot on sight any trespassers who crossed its borders.

Raleigh teen on his own after dad dies of COVID-19 as US nears 1M coronavirus deaths
The extreme border closures further shocked an economy already damaged by decades of mismanagement and crippling U.S.-led sanctions over its nuclear weapons and missile program, pushing Kim to perhaps the toughest moment of his rule since he took power in 2011.

North Korea in January tentatively reopened railroad freight traffic between its border town of Sinuiju and China’s Dandong, but China announced a halt to the trade last month as it deals with a spread of COVID-19 in Dandong.

It’s unusual for North Korea to admit the outbreak of any infectious disease though Kim has occasionally been candid about national and social problems and policy failures.

During a flu pandemic in 2009 when the country was ruled by his father, Kim Jong Il, North Korea said that nine people in Pyongyang and the northwestern border town of Sinuiju had contracted the flu. Some outside experts said at the time the admission was aimed at winning outside aid.

Experts say Kim Jong Un still hasn’t publicly asked for any aid, including COVID-19 vaccines, from the United States and South Korea amid the prolonged stalemate in nuclear diplomacy.

Copyright 2022 Nexstar Media Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

North Korea declares 'major national emergency' as first case of Covid-19 identified, state media reports [CNN, 12 May 2022]

By Gawon Bae and Helen Regan

(CNN)North Korea has identified its first ever case of Covid-19, according to state media, which called the situation a "major national emergency."

It's unclear how many infections have been detected but state-run news agency KCNA reported on Thursday that cases of the Omicron variant had been found in the capital Pyongyang.

Samples collected from a group of people experiencing fevers on May 8 tested positive for the highly contagious Omicron variant, KCNA reported.

An outbreak of Covid-19 could prove dire for North Korea. The country's dilapidated health care infrastructure is unlikely to be up to the task of treating a large number of patients with a highly infectious disease.

North Korea had not previously acknowledged any coronavirus cases, though few believe that a country of around 25 million people has been spared by a virus that has infected millions worldwide.

On Thursday, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un ordered lockdown measures in all cities and directed the distribution of medical supplies the party had reportedly stocked in case of a Covid emergency, according to KCNA.

Kim also chaired a meeting of the country's powerful politburo, which agreed to implement "maximum" emergency anti-epidemic measures, though it is unclear what they involve.

According to KCNA, the politburo criticized the country's anti-epidemic sector for "carelessness, laxity, irresponsibility and incompetence," saying it "failed to respond sensitively" to increasing Covid-19 cases across the world, including in neighboring regions.

Kim said the country would overcome the "unexpected Covid-19 outbreak," KCNA reported.
To date, North Korea has been able to prevent a major outbreak of Covid-19 cases thanks to a series of draconian public health measures.

North Korea's borders have been sealed since January 2020 to keep the virus at bay, despite the knock-on effects on trade with Beijing, an economic lifeline the impoverished country needs to keep its people from going hungry.

Isolated and impoverished North Korea is not known to have imported any coronavirus vaccines, though it is eligible for the global Covid-19 vaccine sharing program, Covax. In February, Covax reportedly scaled back the number of doses allocated to North Korea because the country failed to arrange for any shipments, according to Reuters.

Also in February, the UN Special Rapporteur on human rights in North Korea Tomás Ojea Quintana called on the international community to provide North Korea "with 60 million doses of vaccinations to cover at least two shots of the entire population."

North Korea confirms 1st COVID outbreak, Kim orders lockdown [ABC news, 12 May 2022]

By KIM TONG-HYUNG and HYUNG-JIN KIM

North Korea imposed a nationwide lockdown Thursday to control its first acknowledged COVID-19 outbreak of the pandemic

SEOUL, South Korea -- North Korea imposed a nationwide lockdown Thursday to control its first acknowledged COVID-19 outbreak after holding for more than two years to a widely doubted claim of a perfect record keeping out the virus that has spread to nearly every place in the world. The size of the outbreak wasn’t immediately known, but it could have serious consequences because the country has a poor health care system and its 26 million people are believed to be mostly unvaccinated. Some experts say the North, by its rare admission of an outbreak, may be seeking outside aid.

The official Korean Central News Agency said tests of samples collected Sunday from an unspecified number of people with fevers in the capital, Pyongyang, confirmed they were infected with the omicron variant.

In response, leader Kim Jong Un called for a thorough lockdown of cities and counties and said workplaces should be isolated by units to block the virus from spreading, KCNA said.

The North's government has shunned vaccines offered by the U.N.-backed COVAX distribution program, possibly because those have international monitoring requirements.

Kim during a ruling party Politburo meeting called for officials to stabilize transmissions and eliminate the infection source as fast as possible, while also easing the inconveniences to the public caused by the virus controls. Kim said “single-minded public unity is the most powerful guarantee that can win in this anti-pandemic fight,” KCNA said.

Despite the decision to elevate anti-virus steps, Kim ordered officials to push ahead with scheduled construction, agricultural development and other state projects while bolstering the country’s defense postures to avoid any security vacuum.

North Korea’s announcement of the infections came after NK News, a North Korea-focused news site, cited unidentified sources who said authorities had imposed a lockdown on Pyongyang residents. South Korea’s government said it couldn’t confirm the report.

The North will likely double down on lockdowns, even though the failure of China’s “zero-COVID” approach suggests that approach doesn’t work against the fast-moving omicron variant, said Leif-Eric Easley, a professor of international studies at Seoul’s Ewha Womans University.

“For Pyongyang to publicly admit omicron cases, the public health situation must be serious,” Easley said. “This does not mean North Korea is suddenly going to be open to humanitarian assistance and take a more conciliatory line toward Washington and Seoul. But the Kim regime’s domestic audience may be less interested in nuclear or missile tests when the urgent threat involves coronavirus rather than a foreign military.”

North Korea’s previous coronavirus-free claim had been disputed by many foreign experts. But South Korean officials have said North Korea had likely avoided a huge outbreak, in part because it instituted strict virus controls almost from the start of the pandemic.

Early in 2020 — before the coronavirus spread around the world — North Korea took severe steps to keep out the virus and described them as a matter of “national existence." It quarantined people with symptoms resembling COVID-19, all but halted cross-border traffic and trade for two years, and is even believed to have ordered troops to shoot on sight any trespassers who crossed its borders.

The extreme border closures further shocked an economy already damaged by decades of mismanagement and U.S.-led sanctions over its nuclear weapons and missile program, pushing Kim to perhaps the toughest moment of his rule since he took power in 2011.

North Korea had been one of the last places in the world without an acknowledged COVID-19 case after the virus first detected in the central Chinese city of Wuhan in late 2019 spread to every continent including Antarctica. Turkmenistan, a similarly secretive and authoritarian nation in Central Asia, has reported no cases to the World Health Organization, though its claim also is widely doubted by outside experts.

In recent months, some Pacific island nations that kept the virus out by their geographic isolation have recorded outbreaks. Only tiny Tuvalu, with a population around 12,000, has escaped the virus so far, while a few other nations – Nauru, Micronesia and Marshall Islands – have stopped cases at their borders and avoided community outbreaks.

North Korea's confirmed outbreak comes as China — its close ally and trading partner — battles its biggest outbreak of the pandemic.

North Korea in January tentatively reopened railroad freight traffic between its border town of Sinuiju and China’s Dandong for the first time in two years, but China halted the trade last month due to an outbreak in Liaoning province, which borders North Korea.

Most of the Liaoning city of Dandong has been under lockdown since late April, and in another city, Yingkou, 78 new cases were found Wednesday. Another border province, Jilin, had a major outbreak earlier with tens of thousands of cases, but that has largely receded.

The outbreaks in northeastern China have been overshadowed by the huge outbreak that has locked down Shanghai for weeks, as well as a small outbreak in Beijing that has prompted a raft of pandemic-related restrictions in the nation’s capital.

It’s unusual for North Korea to admit the outbreak of any infectious disease though Kim has occasionally been candid about national and social problems and policy failures.

During a flu pandemic in 2009 when the country was ruled by his father, Kim Jong Il, North Korea said that nine people in Pyongyang and the northwestern border town of Sinuiju had contracted the flu. Some outside experts said at the time the admission was aimed at winning outside aid.

Experts say Kim Jong Un still hasn’t publicly asked for any aid including COVID-19 vaccines from the United States and South Korea amid the prolonged stalemate in nuclear diplomacy.

New Coronavirus News from 11 May 2022

Dr. Fauci Just Said Something Every American Should Hear — Eat This Not That [PBS NewsHour 11 May 2022]

Future booster shots of the COVID-19 vaccine will probably be necessary, but how often a person will need to get the jab to be protected is not yet known, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Dr. Anthony Fauci said on Wednesday.

The hearing is expected to begin at 10 a.m. ET. Watch the event in the player above.

“It is very likely that all of us who’ve been vaccinated will have a diminution of the level of protection after a certain number of months, and it is likely that there will be recommended for everyone to get a boost then,” Fauci told the House Appropriations Committee on Wednesday.

Fauci said it wasn’t yet known whether boosters were necessary due to the introduction of new and different variants. But so far, in the “omicron era,” vaccines have worked, he said. A determination of whether more boosters were necessary and how often would come later.

“I think sometime in the middle of the summer, we’re going to know what the cadence is going to be about, how often we’re going to vaccinate.”

Fauci said that while immunity given by vaccines will wane, they have continued to protect recipients from serious illness. People over the age of 50 are already eligible for a fourth dose

England logs just 9,700 new Covid cases on first day of UK-wide daily stats being scrapped [Daily Mail, 11 May 2022]

By CONNOR BOYD and EMILY CRAIG

England logs just 9,700 new Covid cases day after UK-wide daily stats were scrapped - as experts urge health chiefs to ditch daily figures ENTIRELY because they are no longer accurate and worst of pandemic is over

Just 9,700 positive Covid tests were logged in England in the past 24 hours, as the Government dashboard stops reporting the UK-wide figure for the first time since early in the pandemic.

After weeks of experts calling for the daily statistics to be scrapped, infections, hospital admissions and deaths are now being updated only on a country-by-country basis.

While ministers have stopped short of ditching the daily stats completely, today marks another small step towards learning to live with Covid. The Government stopped publishing them at weekends in February.

Scientists welcomed the move today, telling MailOnline the daily infection numbers had become 'redundant' now that free testing has been stopped for the vast majority of people.

Health officials are now relying on the Office for National Statistics' weekly infection survey, which uses random sampling to get a more accurate picture of the virus' trajectory.

In total, there were 9,751 new infections in England today, which is technically a 66 per cent fall compared to last Tuesday. There were also 272 deaths today, down a quarter on last week.
And there was just 669 hospitalisations on Sunday — the most recent day figures are available for, down by 17 per cent on the week before.

Dr Simon Clarke, a microbiologist at the University of Reading, called for the daily stats to be ditched altogether.

'Those daily case numbers do not have any relationship to the actual number of infections in society, they don't tell us anything,' he said.

'Before they were an indication of how much Covid was in society but now they are redundant [because of mass testing being stopped]. From a medical point of view I suppose it is important to keep a record of Covid hospital admissions and deaths but we only need to focus on them if we see trends going up in the ONS.'

Northern Ireland today reported 394 cases, 60.7 per cent fewer than last week. The country logged nine Covid hospitalisations and three deaths within 28 days of a positive test.

Another 268 positive tests were logged in Wales, up 133 per cent compared to last Tuesday. Hospital data shows eight infected patients were admitted, while nine deaths within a month of testing positive were recorded.

The nation-level data is all that can be reported after Scotland yesterday announced it was moving to twice-a-week data releases for the rest of this month, before moving to weekly statistics in June.

In response, the UKHSA confirmed Covid statistics are changing, with the UK figures only available on Monday and Thursday.

Clare Griffiths, head of the UK Covid dashboard, said: 'As we move forward in the pandemic, changes to reporting across the four nations means Covid metrics will be updated on different dates and schedules.

'Variations in reporting schedules should be considered when looking at reported Covid figures and day-to-day comparisons may therefore be misleading.'

It adds to the fragmentation of the daily numbers, as Wales now only publishes its vaccine data on Monday, meaning UK-wide updated immunisation data is only available once a week.

It comes after Ireland's Department of Health last month confirmed it will 'no longer' publish daily Covid figures. Instead, outbreak figures will be 'updated regularly' on the country's Covid dashboard.

The country's health chiefs said they will continue to monitor all information relating to the epidemiology of the virus, including case numbers, local outbreaks and trends, as well as the emergence and detection of new variants in Ireland and abroad.

But UK health bosses have insisted that there are 'currently no plans' to scrap the daily numbers. Data for England continues to be published daily under each topic area — testing, cases, healthcare, vaccinations and deaths.

It follows pressure from both Tory MPs and top experts, who warned the infection numbers have become hugely unreliable now free Covid tests have been stopped for the majority of Britons.

Both hospitalisation and death numbers have been skewed for several months because they do not necessarily reflect people who are ill, only ones who have tested positive.

The UKHSA will still publish daily England figures but headline UK numbers — used throughout the pandemic to justify implementing restrictions — will be affected.

It comes after a study found pregnant women who were vaccinated against Covid were at a 'significantly' lower risk of a stillbirth compared to the unvaccinated.

There had been widespread safety concerns about the jabs among expectant mothers, which saw them become one of the least vaccinated groups in the country.

Their fears were seized upon by anti-vaxx conspiracy theorists, who claimed the jabs were linked to stillbirths and other problems during pregnancy.

But British researchers who reviewed the findings of more than 20 studies involving 120,000 pregnant women found those who had the Pfizer or Moderna vaccine had a 15 per cent decreased risk compared to un-jabbed women.

The researchers say this may be down to unvaccinated pregnant women becoming more severely unwell with the virus, which then raises the risk of harming their baby.

And there was no difference in the rate of miscarriages, premature births or heavy bleeding during pregnancy between the vaccinated and unvaccinated.

The findings provide 'much-needed assurance' to women on the safety and benefits of getting jabbed when pregnant, the experts said.

The meta-analysis looked at stillbirths when Delta was world-dominant, so it's not clear if the findings still apply to the milder Omicron variant.

In early 2021 pregnant women were not offered the jab in the UK out of caution because the original trials did not include them due to ethical reasons.

But by April last year the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) invited pregnant women to come forward after real world data from the US and Israel threw up no causes for concern.

But uptake has remained sluggish among expectant mothers, with only half of pregnant women in England being vaccinated, citing unfounded concerns about the effect of the jab on their baby.

Fourth Covid jab boosts immunity 'over and above' third dose, UK study finds
A fourth dose of Pfizer or Moderna's Covid jabs provide an 'substantial' boost to immunity against the virus, UK Government-funded research shows.

The study of around 160 Britons aged 50-80 found the quadruple-vaxxed had up to seven times more T cells and two times more antibodies 'over and above' triple-jabbed people.

There were also no clear signs vaccines are getting weaker with each dose, allaying fears that 'over-vaccinating' could cause the jabs to lose their potency.

The finding paves the way for millions more Britons to get a fourth dose later this year.

While countries like Israel and Germany have been rolling out fourth doses to their entire population since March, currently only over-75s, care home residents and severely ill patients are being invited in the UK.

British health chiefs have confirmed an autumn Covid vaccine scheme will go ahead, although they have not decided which groups will be eligible.

The study did, however, reveal people who had high levels of antibodies and T cells before they were given a fourth dose only got a small boost to immunity.

These people may have recently been infected recently or have had their third dose more recently, meaning their immunity had not had as long to wane.

Professor Saul Faust, chief investigator of the Cov-Boost study, said this suggests there is a 'ceiling effect' on 'how high you can go' with immunity which needs to be further studied.

The researchers said still have doubts about whether a fourth dose should be rolled out to younger groups, as they are at lower risk from the virus.

WHO chief says China's zero-COVID policy not 'sustainable' [Reuters.com, 11 May 2022]

By Jennifer Rigby and Josephine Mason

LONDON, May 10 (Reuters) - The head of the World Health Organization said on Tuesday China's zero-tolerance COVID-19 policy is not sustainable given what is known of the disease, in rare public comments by the U.N. agency on a government's handling of the virus.

"We don't think that it is sustainable considering the behaviour of the virus," WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told a media briefing.

Speaking after Tedros, WHO emergencies director Mike Ryan said the impact of a "zero-COVID" policy on human rights also needs to be taken into consideration alongside the effect on a country's economy from any COVID policy.

He also noted that China has registered 15,000 deaths since the virus first emerged in the city of Wuhan in late 2019 - a relatively low number compared with 999,475 in the United States and more than 500,000 in India.

With that in mind, it is understandable, Ryan said, that one of the world's most populous countries would want to take tough measures to curb coronavirus contagion.

Still, China's zero-COVID policy has drawn criticism ranging from scientists to its own citizens, leading to a cycle of lockdowns of many millions of people, anguish and anger.

The continued outbreaks also underscore how difficult it is to stop the spread of the highly transmissible Omicron variant.

Under zero-COVID, authorities lock down large population areas to stamp out viral spread in response to any coronavirus outbreak, even if just a small number of people test positive.

Shanghai's measures have been particularly strict, with residents allowed out of compounds only for exceptional reasons, such as a medical emergency. Many are not even allowed out of their front doors to mingle with neighbours.

Its quarantine policy has also been criticised for separating children from parents and putting asymptomatic cases among those with symptoms.

New Coronavirus News from 9 May 2022

Oil falls as China coronavirus lockdowns spark demand concerns [Al Jazeera English, 9 May 2022]

Global financial markets have been rattled by concerns over interest rate hikes and wider lockdowns in China.

Oil prices sank 4 percent on Monday alongside equities, as continued coronavirus lockdowns in China, the top oil importer, sparked demand concerns.

Brent crude fell $4.47, or 4 percent, to $107.92 a barrel at 11:14pm EDT (15:14 GMT). United States West Texas Intermediate crude fell, or 4.3 percent, $4.67 to $105.10 a barrel. Both contracts have gained more than 35 percent so far this year.

Global financial markets have been spooked by concerns over interest rate hikes and recession worries as tighter and wider COVID-19 lockdowns in China led to slower export growth in the world’s No. 2 economy in April.

“The COVID lockdowns in China are negatively impacting the oil market, which is selling off in conjunction with equities,” said Andrew Lipow, president of Lipow Oil Associated in Houston.

Crude imports by China in the first four months of 2022 fell 4.8 percent from a year ago, but April imports were up nearly 7 percent.

China’s Iranian oil imports in April came off peak volumes seen in late 2021 and early 2022 as demand from independent refiners weakened after COVID-19 lockdowns pummeled fuel margins and on growing imports of lower-priced Russian oil.

Wall Street stock indexes fell and the dollar hit a 20-year high, making oil more expensive for holders of other currencies.

Saudi Arabia, the world’s top oil exporter, lowered crude prices for Asia and Europe for June.
In Russia, oil output rose in early May from April and production has stabilized, Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak was cited as saying, after output fell in April as Western countries imposed sanctions over the Ukraine crisis.

EU Russia oil embargo
Last week, the European Commission proposed a phased embargo on Russian oil, boosting Brent and WTI prices for the second straight week. The proposal needs a unanimous vote by EU members this week to pass.

The European Commission is considering offering landlocked eastern European Union states more money to upgrade oil infrastructure in a bid to convince them to agree, an EU source told Reuters news agency.

Japan, top five crude importer, will ban Russian crude imports “in principle”, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said, adding this would take time.

New Coronavirus News from 10 Mar 2022

Covid entry rules for Spain, France, Portugal and Italy ahead of summer holidays [Daily Record, 10 May 2022]

By Daniel Morrow

Millions of holidaymakers in the UK are expected to catch up on missed holidays abroad from the past two years.

Millions of people across the UK are expected to catch up on holidays abroad as Covid restrictions lift across the globe.

HM Passport Office is expecting more than 9.5 million British applications to be submitted for their important travel documents.

Figures released by the body revealed that more than one million applications were processed in March this year - which is the highest monthly output on record.

And this is due to restrictions heading back into Scotland and the rest of the UK lifting entirely.

Passengers heading back into the UK are no longer required to fill in passenger locator form, quarantine, take tests or show evidence of their vaccination for entry into the country.

But while an almost normal pre-pandemic service resumes on the border in Scotland, restrictions are still in place elsewhere.

Here are the entry requirements for seven of the most popular holiday destinations for UK travellers.

Spain
Fully vaccinated holidaymakers and people who have recovered from Covid in the last six months are allowed to enter Spain from the UK.

Children under the age of 12 are not required to show proof of full vaccination status.
People who meet the above criteria are not required to fill in a Travel Health Control form, according to the Foreign Office.

France
Fully vaccinated passengers aged 12 and over can enter France without the need to test.
Unvaccinated travellers must provide evidence of a negative PCR test, taken within 72 hours, or an antigen test result, taken within 48 hours pre-departure.

The Foreign Office states that you may be asked to complete a EU-PLF form before boarding.

Portugal
Holidaymakers that are fully vaccinated are able to enter the mainland and the Azores without the need to test.

Unvaccinated travellers are required to show proof of a negative PCR test, taken no more than 72 hours before boarding, or a rapid lateral flow test, taken no more than 24 hours before boarding.

A passenger locator form is no longer required for entry to mainland Portugal and the Azores. However, one form per passenger must be completed for people heading to Madeira and Porto Santo.

Turkey
Fully vaccinated travellers are allowed to enter Turkey without the need to test or quarantine.

Passengers who are unable to show proof of their vaccination will need to test negative on a PCR test, taken no more than 72 hours before entry, or a rapid antigen test, taken no more than 48 hours before entry.

Unvaccinated travellers can also show proof of recent recovery from Covid in the last six months.

There is no information on the Foreign Office website in regards to a passenger locator form.

Cyprus
Holidaymakers are allowed to enter Cyprus without the need to test if they can show evidence of full vaccination or recent Covid recovery.

Anyone unable to provide this evidence must test negative on a recent PCR test or recent rapid antigen test.

Greece
All passengers arriving in Greece are no long required to show proof of Covid vaccination, negative Covid test or a certificate of recovery from Covid.

Passenger Locator Forms are also no longer required.

Italy
Passenger locator forms have been scrapped in Italy since May 1.

Until May 31, all passengers aged six and over must show proof of vaccination, evidence of a recent negative PCR or lateral flow test or proof of recent Covid recovery.

Anyone unable to provide any of these must self-isolate for five days and take a test at the end of the quarantine period.

WHO says China's zero-Covid strategy unsustainable [FRANCE 24 English, 10 May 2022]

Geneva (AFP) – China's flagship zero-Covid strategy to defeat the pandemic is unsustainable, the World Health Organization said Tuesday, adding that it had told Beijing so and called for a policy shift.

China has imposed draconian measures, trapping most of Shadnghai's 25 million people at home for weeks as the country combats its worst outbreak since the pandemic began.

The Shanghai lockdown has caused outrage and rare protest in the last major economy still glued to a zero-Covid policy, while movement in the capital Beijing has been slowly restricted.

"When we talk about the zero-Covid strategy, we don't think that it's sustainable, considering the behaviour of the virus now and what we anticipate in the future," WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told a press conference.

"We have discussed about this issue with Chinese experts and we indicated that the approach will not be sustainable.

"Transiting into another strategy will be very important."

There is a pressing political dynamic to China's virus response, with President Xi Jinping pegging the legitimacy of his leadership on protecting Chinese lives from Covid.

Xi has doubled down on the zero-Covid approach, despite mounting public frustration.

Rights, society and economy
Shanghai is China's economic dynamo and its biggest city. The zero-Covid policy has winded an economy which just months ago had been bouncing back from the pandemic.

"We need to balance the control measures against the impact they have on society, the impact they have on the economy, and that's not always an easy calibration," said WHO emergencies director Michael Ryan.

He said any measures to combat the Covid-19 pandemic should show "due respect to individual and human rights".

Calling for "dynamic, adjustable and agile policies", Ryan said early responses to the crisis in many countries showed that a lack of adaptability "resulted in a lot of harm".

He reflected on how the world's most populous nation had had relatively very few deaths officially ascribed to Covid, and therefore had "something to protect".

Given the rapid rise in deaths since February-March, "any government in that situation will take action to try and combat that", he told reporters.

Tedros has been discussing adjusting according to the circumstances to find an exit strategy, "in depth and in detail with Chinese colleagues", Ryan said.

Maria Van Kerkhove, the WHO's technical lead on Covid-19, said that worldwide, it was impossible to stop all transmission of the virus.

"Our goal, at a global level, is not to find all cases and stop all transmissions. It's really not possible at this present time," she said.

"But what we need to do is drive transmission down because the virus is circulating at such an intense level."

4th COVID vaccine dose significantly boosts immunity, UK study finds [POLITICO Europe, 10 May 2022]

BY HELEN COLLIS

The study results will help immunization committees decide whether to expand booster programs to wider populations.

LONDON — A fourth dose of an mRNA vaccine significantly boosts the immune protection from the coronavirus in all ages, according to new research published Tuesday in the Lancet Infectious Diseases journal.

Researchers tested the antibody and cellular immune responses in people who had previously had three doses of the BioNTech/Pfizer vaccine and those who had received two doses of the Oxford/AstraZeneca jab plus a third shot with BioNTech/Pfizer.

Half the people in each group were given another Pfizer jab, the others were given the Moderna half-dose booster, around 30 weeks after their third shot.

Results from the extended COV-BOOST study found that those who received the Moderna jab saw the highest boost to their immunity with around a 16-fold increase compared with before the fourth shot.

Also, compared with 28 days after their third jab (when the immune response is highest), the Moderna booster on average more than doubled the level of antibodies against the spike protein.

There was also a significant boost to immunity with a fourth dose of the BioNTech/Pfizer jab. Antibody levels increased on average 12-fold compared with before the dose, and by more than one-and-a-half times compared with 28 days after their third shot.

The data also hint at a ceiling of antibody levels from boosting with both mRNA vaccines, the researchers found.

The results come as countries continue to expand their booster programs to older and more vulnerable groups, in whom waning protection poses greater risks.

While the European Medicines Agency has endorsed a fourth dose in vulnerable and immunocompromised people, no vaccines have yet been authorized as a second booster in the general population.

Asked during a press briefing Monday whether the data supported boosting wider populations, Saul Faust, COV-BOOST chief investigator, said that decision would be for immunization committees and will be based on rates of hospitalizations and severe disease among those who’ve received two and three doses, as well as emerging variants.

He said current vaccines were continuing to protect people well from severe disease, even in people who have received three doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine, which has shown to generate lower antibody levels.

'Stop asking why': Shanghai intensifies Covid lockdown despite falling cases [CNN, 10 May 2022]

By Nectar Gan

Hong Kong (CNN)Shanghai is further tightening its stringent lockdown measures after China's top leader Xi Jinping pledged to "unswervingly" double down on the country's controversial zero-Covid policy, leaving millions confined to their homes with no end in sight.

Over the weekend, videos showing Shanghai residents arguing or scuffling with hazmat suit-clad workers and police officers while being forcefully taken away for government quarantine circulated widely on Chinese social media. Many have since been removed by censors after sparking public anger.

The outcry comes as authorities appear to have walked back efforts to ease restrictions in parts of the city, despite a drop in new infections, as local officials come under pressure to curb community transmission of the virus.

Under the new hardline policies, even residents with negative Covid tests can find themselves placed into centralized government quarantine. According to social media posts and local government notices circulating online, in several parts of the city, entire apartment blocks have been deemed a health risk, with all occupants forced from their homes and placed into quarantine on the back of one positive case.

One viral video shows residents arguing with police officers who showed up at their doors in hazmat suits to take them to quarantine after someone else on their floor tested positive.

"From now on, people who live on the same floor (as Covid cases) must be transported (into quarantine)," a police officer says in the video.

"It's not that you can do whatever you want -- unless you're in America. This is China," another police officer says sternly, waving a bottle of disinfectant in his hand. "Stop asking me why.
There is no why. We have to obey our country's regulations and epidemic control policies."
CNN cannot independently confirm any such policy has been issued and has reached out to the Shanghai municipal government for clarification. CNN has not been able to identify the people who took the video and does not know if they were later taken to quarantine.

According to notices online, some neighborhoods have imposed so called "silent periods" lasting for two or three days, during which residents are not permitted to leave their homes.
These residents have also been temporarily banned from ordering groceries and daily essentials online, leading to renewed fears of food shortages.

Public outrage were further inflamed after accounts emerged on social media that some residents had been forced to hand over their house keys so that health workers could disinfect their homes while they were away in quarantine.

Several videos circulating online showed workers in hazmat suits spraying clouds of disinfectant over furniture and appliances inside apartments, from couches, televisions, bookshelves, beds to wardrobes.

On China's internet, some questioned the scientific basis of the measure -- experts have transmission of the virus via contaminated surfaces is exceptionally low -- while others lamented the disregard for private property rights.

"The apartments are our private property, which we bought with millions or tens of millions of yuan. Why should we allow you in? This is no different than robbery!" a Shanghai resident said on China's Twitter-like Weibo.

The escalation follows the personal intervention of Xi, who on Thursday issued what many interpreted as a threat to opponents of the zero-Covid policy, making clear he would not tolerate "acts that distort, doubt or deny our country's epidemic prevention policies."

Xi also demanded officials demonstrate a "profound, complete and comprehensive understanding" of the policy and warned them against "inadequate awareness, inadequate preparation and insufficient work" in implementing it.

Hours after Xi's speech, the Shanghai municipal Communist Party committee met on Thursday evening to study his instructions. And at a press conference Sunday, the Shanghai municipal health commission said the city was at a "critical moment" for controlling the outbreak.

"It's like sailing against the current in a boat; we must forge ahead or be pushed downstream. We must not relax or slack off," said Zhao Dandan, a deputy director of the commission.

Zhao also vowed to "resolutely implement the requirement to 'take in everyone who should be taken in' and 'quarantine everyone who should be quarantined' to stop community spread of the epidemic as soon as possible."

The tightened quarantine requirements have led to despair among many residents in the financial hub, millions of whom have been subject to more than six weeks of harsh lockdown.

Tong Zhiwei, a law professor at the East China University of Political Science and Law in Shanghai, denounced such measures as unconstitutional in a widely shared essay on social media.

"Any action that forcefully sends residents into centralized quarantine is illegal and should stop immediately," Tong wrote.

"State of emergency is a legal status, and it can only exist after a rightful organization declares it according to the constitution; it absolutely cannot be randomly decided or recklessly declared by just any institution or official," Tong wrote.

Around the same time, Liu Dali, a Shanghai-based financial lawyer at a leading Chinese law firm, wrote a public letter demanding Shanghai's municipal People's Congress -- the city's rubber-stamp legislature -- come up with measures to protect citizen's rights against epidemic measures such as forced quarantine.

Screenshots of both letters have been scrubbed from the Chinese internet after drawing wide attention. On Weibo, Tong's verified account has been banned from posting since Monday. A hashtag of his name has also been censored.

In thinly veiled sarcasm, some internet users shared a 2015 article from the People's Daily, the official Communist Party newspaper, quoting Xi months after he took the helm of the Party in 2012: "No organization or individual has the privilege to be above the constitution and the law.
Any act that violates the constitution and the law must be investigated and accounted for."

As the post started making the rounds, users were soon greeted with a glaring message saying "the content has been removed by the author."

What has US done with bat coronavirus in Ukraine? World deserves explanation [Global Times, 10 Mar 2022]

The Russian Defense Ministry on Thursday announced that US-funded biological labs in Ukraine were conducting experiments with bat coronavirus samples.

There is no smoke without fire. Some netizens commented that the Americans seem to have a special preference for making vampire-themed movies, and the prototype of the vampire comes from bat. The Americans' experiments with bat coronavirus have cultural origins.

Discussions about US bio labs in Ukraine are turning heated. Earlier, the Kremlin revealed evidence that the US was involved in biological weapons research in Ukrainian labs. It also said that Ukraine had destroyed samples of various pathogens. On Tuesday, Victoria Nuland,
Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs of the US, told a congressional hearing that Ukraine has biological research facilities and that "we are working with the Ukrainians on how they can prevent any of those research materials from falling into the hands of the Russian forces."

Nonetheless, the US backtracked soon. On Wednesday, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki released eight continuous tweets, which not only accused Russia of making false claims about US biological weapons labs in Ukraine, but also blamed China of endorsing this propaganda. US media outlet Bloomberg ran an article titled "China Pushes Conspiracy Theory About US Labs in Ukraine."

The accusation against China came after Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian urged the US "to give a full account of its biological military activities at home and abroad and subject itself to multilateral verification."

The seemingly contradictory statements from different US officials only made the US' denial of its bio labs in Ukraine dubious. Li Haidong, a professor from the Institute of International Relations of China Foreign Affairs University, told the Global Times that during the US' foreign policymaking process, it is common that different departments hold different narratives, and such difference enables people to know the truth of the lie the US is trying to hide. The more the US contradicts itself, the more reasons the world has to question it.

US officials and media accused China of pushing conspiracy, but it is the US that is the No.1 player of conspiracy. In 2020, the Trump administration and conservative US media made the conspiracy theory of COVID-19 escaping from China's Wuhan Institute of Virology. The hype of the lab leak theory has been an integral part of the US' overall China containment strategy. With the revelation that US-funded biological labs in Ukraine were conducting experiments with bat coronavirus samples, the US owes the world an explanation.

Regarding US bio labs across the world, many questions remain to be answered. The international community has no idea whether the US' 336 overseas bio labs and the labs on its soil such as Fort Detrick conform to the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC), while what is conducted inside these bio labs involves human security. Why has the US been standing alone in obstructing the establishment of a BWC verification mechanism and refusing verification of its biological facilities at home and abroad for the past two decades? Remember that the US is the only country left that owns chemical weapons in the world, and its destruction of these weapons has been delayed twice.

These have all led to a deeper concern from the international community. Labeling international concern simply as disinformation can only be seen as a way for the US to divert attention and shirk responsibility.

The US should clarify its bio experiments within and outside its borders, receive verification and destroy its stockpiled chemical weapons as soon as possible.

New Coronavirus News from 18 Ferb2022

Ukraine Crisis: The Threat of War and COVID [Impakter, 18 Feb 2022]

by Richard Seifman

If the Russo-Ukrainian conflict escalates what to expect in terms of public health
For several weeks we have been on the edge of our chairs with worry about whether a major war will happen in Ukraine, with Russia and the West playing a frightening game of who will blink first, potentially on the brink of a major military conflict. As I write, events are accelerating. Russia has accumulated more than 150,000 troops around Ukraine and US Secretary Blinken went to the UN Security Council on February 17, leaving little room for optimism. On the same day, US President Biden issued an unusually dire warning that Washington saw no signs of the troop withdrawal promised by Russia and Moscow expelled the number 2 American diplomat. Today AP reports that Russia is staging “massive drills of its nuclear forces”, involving multiple practice missile launches.

A continuing concern is that the longtime separatist conflict simmering in eastern Ukraine could provide the pretext for an invasion.

All this is happening while globally we continue to struggle with the COVID pandemic, with dramatically different approaches and levels of infection. A new and more virulent Omicron variant (BA.2), has just been identified and with it likely other variants will emerge in the future.

According to the latest available information, since records have been kept in Ukraine, over 4.6 million COVID cases have been reported and 103,500 deaths, with new cases increasing significantly in January-February 2022, including nearly 30,000 new cases and 310 deaths on February 16th.

Russia, since data began being collected, has already had over 15 million COVID cases, over 340,000 deaths, and in the last two weeks nearly 2.5 million new cases.

Belarus, which is Russia’s ally and military training exercise partner threatening Ukraine, has a much smaller population than either Ukraine or Russia, yet it has had over 860,000 COVID cases, over 6, 300 deaths, and almost 99,000 cases in the last two weeks.

The trends in each suggest that neither vaccines nor conventional containment measures are working to good effect.

What we know about the impact of armed conflicts and infectious diseases
Armed conflict can be found in many parts of the world, caused mainly by ethnic, cultural, and religious factors. The majority are located in low- and middle-income countries in Africa, the Middle East, and Central Asia where socio-economic and health problems are closely linked.
Armed conflict has wide variations in terms of its impact on infectious disease transmission, often depending on the geography, limitations on travel, health system services, and duration. Sub-Saharan Africa in particular has experienced a number of infectious disease outbreaks such as HIV/AIDS and Ebola. Ironically, relatively short civil wars affect inter-country travel, and this can limit transmission because of reduced inter-personal contacts. Longer ongoing strife, such as in the Middle East and Syria/Lebanon, will have lingering negative effects.

What is essentially different with Ukraine is that it is Europe. While not without conflicts in its recent past (notably the war in the Balkans), this continent has not experienced an event with major civil disruption, destruction and casualties, and loss of human life – at least not since World War II. European countries along with Russia are modern societies with substantial health professionals and services, educated populations, good internet, and communications systems.

What is a certainty is that whatever the length or nature of any armed conflict in Ukraine, it will have a negative effect on health systems, disrupt surveillance and response systems, and result in an uptick in known, preventable infectious diseases; even more so with COVID and any future variants. The weakened infrastructure will prevent access to healthcare and ordinary emergencies, for both civilian and military populations.

That the military on both sides will be affected, we know from history.

During the Napoleonic Wars, infectious diseases were responsible for eight times more deaths among British soldiers than wounds suffered during the fighting. Infectious diseases were among the main causes of deaths among soldiers during the Swedish–Russian war in the late 1780s. Until World War I, infectious diseases rather than battle and non-battle injuries were the main causes of morbidity and mortality among soldiers, as well as in the affected civilian populations.

Indeed, infectious diseases were referred to as the “third army” during an armed conflict.
By World War II the impact of many infectious diseases as causes of mortality or morbidity within the military had changed; they had gone from presenting potentially lethal threats to being primarily curable illnesses

But with the advent of COVID, an infectious outbreak has returned as a major cause of morbidity and mortality for both the military and civilians.

What “If”?
With both Russian and Ukrainian populations showing increases in COVID infections, a significant military incursion would likely severely hamper Ukrainian Government efforts to contain further COVID spread.

Not only would the health system be less able to provide tests, vaccines, and medications, but there would be a heightened possibility of a spike in transmission as people spent significant time in underground bunkers in tight quarters such as the subway system in Kyiv.

For the Russian military, it is likely to have brought with it medical teams. There are reports that the Russians have set up field hospitals and facilities along the border with Ukraine and many observers see this as a further sign of an imminent Russian invasion.

So one might expect that COVID infection levels will be similar to the rest of the Russian military and population, unless contacts with Ukrainians translate into additional exposure. Belarus would probably be doing no better or worse than before the “training” exercise with Russia on the Ukrainian border.

In sum, in the event of war COVID variant case numbers are likely to worsen in all three places. To comment on possible seepage to other nearby European countries would be sheer speculation, but one could envisage it as a non-kinetic threat to NATO members. Hopefully, none of this will come to pass; recognizing the possibility, taking preventive and preparatory measures, nonetheless would make eminently good sense.