New Coronavirus News from 3 Oct 2022

Outcry as British researcher is given ANOTHER US grant to investigate COVID - despite fears his initial work at Wuhan lab triggered pandemic: Peter Daszak is paid $650,000 to study bat coronaviruses - and 'assess their ability to infect humans' [Daily Mail, 3 Oct 2022]

by PAUL FARRELL

US health officials have given a hugely controversial research organization another $650,000 (£580k) grant to experiment on Covid-like viruses – despite fears similar risky work may have actually sparked the pandemic.

EcoHealth Alliance, run by British zoologist Peter Daszak, funded studies in Wuhan – the Chinese city where the pandemic began – on manipulated coronaviruses.

Such research, known as 'gain of function', can see viruses deliberately engineered to become more dangerous to humans.

EcoHealth Alliance's five-year experiment will investigate 'the potential for future bat coronavirus emergence' in Asia, with scientists set to trawl caves in Myanmar, Laos and Vietnam in the hunt to prevent another viral crisis.

The grant was awarded last month by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), which is still ran by Dr Anthony Fauci.

Dr Fauci is known to be close to Dr Daszak, who thanked the American Government's departing chief medical adviser for downplaying theories that Covid may have been created in a lab.

EcoHealth Alliance is said to have received $60million (£53.5m) in federal cash over the past decade. Some of this money was funneled straight to the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

The justification for the grant says that previous research in this field 'identifies the border region of Southern China, Myanmar, Laos, and Vietnam as a high risk for future emergence of novel coronaviruses and the potential site where SARS-CoV-2 first 'spilled over' from bats to people'.

The research will also include testing communities that live in close proximity to wildlife in south east Asia for coronaviruses.

According to the NIH's website, the research will include supplying 'viral sequences and isolates for use in vaccine development'.

The main aim of the research is described as conducting 'community-based surveys and biological sampling of people frequently exposed to wildlife in Myanmar, Laos, and Vietnam, to find serological evidence of spillover'.

The other primary aim will include 'sampling and PCR screening of bats and other wildlife at community surveillance sites'.

The new research may 'also provide data on wildlife reservoirs and community spillover events of relevance to the origin of COVID-19,' according to a section of the NIH report.

Another section reads: 'Finally, we will rapidly supply viral sequences and isolates for use in vaccine and therapeutic development.'

The long-term goal of projects such as this one is to help aid global preparedness in case of another global pandemic, the NIH said.

Further details of British researcher Daszak's role in facilitating risky coronavirus research in China were revealed in a report back in April.

They outlined how his EcoHealth Alliance raked in millions in federal grants.

Daszak's group, which bizarrely evolved from a save-the-manatees non-profit to a top champion of viral gain-of-function research as it chased federal funding, has long been at the center of questions about the origins of Covid.

The lengthy report that was published in Vanity Fair, based on dozens of interviews and more than 100,000 leaked internal documents, detailed how EcoHealth operated in a world of 'murky grant agreements, flimsy oversight, and the pursuit of government funds for scientific advancement, in part by pitching research of steeply escalating risk'.

The report did not offer conclusive evidence as to whether Covid leaked from the Wuhan lab that worked closely with EcoHealth, or was transmitted to humans by an animal in a 'natural spillover' event, as Daszak has long insisted.

But it does outline the lengths to which Daszak - and Dr Fauci, whose agency helped fund his research - went to try to cast doubt on the lab-origin theory and downplay the potential role of risky research that EcoHealth supported in Wuhan.

In 2014, the National Institute of Health approved a $3.7million grant to EcoHealth titled Understanding the Risk of Bat Coronavirus Emergence, the purpose of which was to create a sort of pandemic early-warning system.

The research involved gathering bat coronaviruses in China and studying them at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV), as well as mixing components of SARS-like viruses from different species to create a novel chimera that was able to directly infect human cells.

Allowing such risky research to go forward at the Wuhan lab was 'simply crazy, in my opinion,' Jack Nunberg, director of the Montana Biotechnology Center, told Vanity Fair.

'Reasons are lack of oversight, lack of regulation, the environment in China,' he said. 'So that is what really elevates it to the realm of, 'No, this shouldn't happen.'

Facing a funding shortfall when certain grants expired, EcoHealth in 2018 submitted an even more ambitious research proposal to the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA.

The plan titled Project DEFUSE involved partnering with WIV to engineer bat coronaviruses to be more deadly, by inserting genetic features that are similar to those found in SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid.

In their response, DARPA officials slammed the plan as risky for failing to address significant ethical legal and social concerns, refusing to issue the $14.2million grant.

Daszak has also been accused of being relentless in his pursuit of obtaining NIH grant money from Fauci for EcoHealth's research.

He would invite Fauci to EcoHealth events that were described on invitations as 'educational' despite the fact that nonprofit officials referred to them as 'cultivation events' in which they should network with 'prospective federal funders'.

The group would spend approximately $8,000 on each 'cultivation' event.

'These kinds of events are common among many nongovernmental organizations and nonprofits, which depend upon both public and private donors for support,' Daszak told the magazine, defending the parties.

Daszak also repeatedly lauded Fauci, requesting he serve as a 'panel speaker' at select EcoHealth events.

In April 2020, Daszak came under scrutiny in April 2020 when theories about the origin of COVID surfaced.

A reporter asked then-President Donald Trump during a Covid press briefing why the U.S. government would support a $3.7million grant to a Chinese lab.

'We will end that grant very quickly,' Trump replied, prompting a follow-up question, from another reporter, directed at Fauci about whether a lab could be responsibly for Covid.

Dr Fauci, answered, alleging a 'group of highly qualified evolutionary virologists' determined the virus was 'totally consistent with a jump of a species from an animal to a human.'

The next day, Daszak reportedly emailed Dr Fauci to thank him for 'publicly standing up and stating that the scientific evidence supports a natural origin for Covid from a bat-to-human spillover, not a lab release from the Wuhan Institute of Virology'.

Dr Fauci reportedly thanked the scientist back.

New Coronavirus News from 4 Oct 2022

Covid-19 public inquiry opens amid anger from bereaved over testimony [The Guardian, 4 Oct 2022]

by Robert Booth

Chair Lady Hallett tells families upset their evidence will not be heard directly that they will be ‘at the heart’ of hearing

The bereaved will be “at the heart” of the Covid-19 public inquiry, its chair, Lady Hallett, has pledged at the first public hearing in the investigation into the UK’s handling of the pandemic, which the inquiry’s counsel described as an “unprecedented and vastly difficult undertaking”.

Opening the first module to a sprawling inquiry expected to run for several years, Hallett addressed anger from some of the bereaved that their testimonies may not be heard as direct evidence, by saying: “We shall ensure that those most affected, particularly the bereaved, will be properly consulted.”

But she said if they were consulted on every stage of the inquiry it “would go on forever”. She insisted her priority was to reach conclusions “before another disaster strikes the four nations of the United Kingdom” and would not allow the inquiry to “drag on for decades”.

The Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice group is upset Hallett is planning only a “listening exercise” to capture a cross-section of views among the hundreds of thousands of bereaved people in the UK. They want their evidence to be heard directly.

“There is a balance to be struck between making timely recommendations and the extent to which we explore every issue,” Hallett said.

Hugo Keith KC, counsel to the inquiry, also said it would need to be “ruthless” in its focus.

It is already set to consider the performance of the public health system, care homes, lockdowns, schooling, children, minorities, mental health, the economy and border controls among other issues.

A communications company is being sought to handle the listening exercise, which some of the bereaved have described as an attempt to “outsource the grief of bereaved families”.

In previous public inquiries, such as those into the Grenfell Tower fire and Manchester Arena bombing, family and friends provided “pen portraits” of victims at the start of the formal hearings. However, the UK pandemic toll of 204,776 people with Covid on their death certificate, is far higher.

“We feel very strongly that this inquiry should be focusing on the impact on the bereaved families and to do that our voices need to be heard inside the inquiry and taken as evidence,” said Fran Hall, who lost her husband, Steve Mead, 65, to Covid in October 2020.

Matt Fowler, a co-founder of the group, whose father, Ian, died in hospital in April 2020, said: “Anything less [than hearing the bereaved’s stories directly] would be devastating for families like mine who have worked so tirelessly to get here and could cost lives in the future.”

Hallett used her opening remarks to argue the listening exercise would “ensure everyone across the UK who wishes to contribute to the inquiry can do so in a less formal setting … their contributions will inform the inquiry about the impact of the pandemic”. She denied anyone had been barred from giving evidence.

Keith said the listening exercise would take accounts from tens or hundreds of thousands of people, which would be “analysed and summarised before being provided to the inquiry teams and the core participants” as written evidence.

Pete Weatherby KC, representing the Covid-19 bereaved group, said the inquiry’s terms of reference were “to listen to and consider carefully the experiences of bereaved families”. But, he said the listening exercise, “as cast up to now, does not do this”. He said that it marginalises “the bereaved and their voices”.

Hallett responded: “There is absolutely no question that the bereaved will be marginalised and I really don’t want to hear that expression again.”

Before starting proceedings with a minute’s silence, Hallett said: “There is one word that sums up the pandemic for so many and that is the word loss … millions of people suffered loss, including the loss of friends and family members, the loss of good health both mental and physical, economic loss, the loss of educational opportunities and the loss of social interaction.

Those who were bereaved lost the most.”

The inquiry is divided into numerous modules to run in sequence. The first module, which opened on Tuesday, will examine the UK’s resilience and preparedness for the coronavirus pandemic. Evidence hearings will not start until next year.

Covid-19: New wave could begin before Xmas - modeller [New Zealand Herald, 4 Oct 2022]

By Jamie Morton

A Covid-19 modeller is urging eligible Kiwis to get boosted if they haven't been, amid the growing probability New Zealand could get another coronavirus wave before Christmas.

Professor Michael Plank told the Herald it was possible that wave – expected to come on the back of building surges in the Northern Hemisphere – might even compare with July's.

Cases and hospitalisations already appear to be on the rise in Denmark, Belgium and the UK.
In Germany, where reported cases tripled in three weeks to reach 96,000 on September 29, the country's federal minister of health Karl Lauterbach told media another wave had begun.

Plank said this could be because of a combination of factors, such as people in Europe heading back to school, waning immunity, and a raft of troublesome new Omicron sub-variants.

BA.5 descendant BQ.1.1 has been popping up around the world and indicating its own potential at evading immune antibodies – but it's so new that little is known about it.
Another sub-type, BA.2.75.2, makes up just 1 per cent of Covid-19 cases, but has now been detected in nearly 50 countries – including New Zealand.

It's thought to be nearly seven times tougher for our immune systems to block than BA.5 - and is now considered the most resistant variant seen yet.

Scientists have pinpointed two specific mutations that make it better able to latch onto our cells and infect us: even if we'd already been exposed to its relatives.

In one recent study, Chinese researchers estimated it to be, on average, more than six times more likely to reinfect someone who'd had BA.2 - and 2.7 times more likely to cause a reinfection in a person who'd had BA.5.

Another Swedish study has also indicated virus-fighting antibody levels may be five-fold lower against BA.2.75.2 than BA.5.

While ESR has tracked a slight uptick in New Zealand cases recently, there still wasn't any indication that new variants were already beginning to drive a fresh surge here.

While the removal of border testing had left the picture somewhat less clear, importantly, the latest surveillance data from wastewater sampling hadn't shown any tell-tale shifts in variant activity.

And across hospitals, the most recent sequencing data showed BA.5 making up 87 per cent of samples, followed by BA.4.6 (5 per cent), BA.4 (2 per cent), B.A2.75 (2 per cent) and BA.2 (2 per cent).

"But as these variants become more widespread, this could actually accelerate things a little bit," Plank said.

"So whatever happens in the Northern Hemisphere, I'd expect something similar to happen here – maybe in a matter of weeks."

It remained to be seen what effect open borders, dropped mandates and open borders would have in the next wave.

While increasingly warmer temperatures might play in our favour, Plank pointed out many Kiwis were no longer masking up.

"It's very difficult to predict, but it could be that we see something comparable with the recent July wave we had, in terms of the number of potential cases."

That surge topped out at just over 10,000 daily reported cases in mid-July, before dropping away to between 1000 and 2000 now.

"There's also uncertainty about how this will translate to health impacts and hospitalisations, because we do now have very levels of immunity."

Modellers estimate as much as two-thirds of the population now might have been exposed to the virus, giving them extra immunity on top of that conferred by the vaccine, against severe illness and death.

"But we can't say exactly how this might blunt the impacts of another wave."

Plank urged people to ensure they were up to date with their vaccinations and boosters.

"If you're eligible, it's definitely a good time to go out and get one, because you of course want to have that extra immunity before another wave really takes off."