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.