Covid-19 News & Updates

[Big Boy]

No numbers issued yesterday.

Today's numbers (will replace with better version if/when it is published) - updated:

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[Nereus]

Grocery trucks get new life from coronavirus shutdown

https://www.bangkokpost.com/thailand/ge ... n#cxrecs_s

PATHUM THANI: Cries of "Food, here comes the food," echoed through a Bangkok neighbourhood as Wannapa Yarnsarn's truck arrived with everything from mangoes and dried chillies to fresh pork for sale.

People emerged from homes where they have been sheltering in an effort to stop the spread of the coronavirus, choosing their shopping from display racks packed with bags of produce on the back of the truck.

For generations such mobile shops were common in Thai neighbourhoods but new shopping malls with their big supermarkets and convenience stores with microwave-ready meals have nearly driven them out of business.

Now the coronavirus outbreak has given some of the back-of-a-truck shops a new lease of life.
"Although I'm scared of the virus, I still have to come out and sell, otherwise customers won't have anything to eat," said Ms Wannapa, as she weighed and bagged produce for her customers.

Ms Wannapa said business had been good since the coronavirus virus emerged in January with an average daily profit of 2,200 baht compared with about 1,800 baht before.

Panalee Phatraprasit, the director of a wholesale market that serves hundreds of trucks plying their trade in Bangkok, also said the virus outbreak was good for a business that had long been in decline.

"Over the years, customers have gradually changed their behaviour because they have more choices, more access to products than before," she said.
"But once Covid-19 hit, the trucks are doing better because more people are staying home, and they're buying more per household."

Thailand has reported 2,613 confirmed cases of the coronavirus and 41 fatalities.

The government is trying to limit social gatherings and is urging people to stay at home. Shopping malls have been ordered to close except for restaurant deliveries and supermarkets, and a six-hour curfew is in force at night.

"There are too many people at the supermarkets," said Thepparak Bankajee, 43, an industrial worker now staying at home.
"We don't want to go out anyway because we all know that the food truck will be here."

A worker loads fresh produce onto a mobile grocery truck at the Si Mum Muang Market, during the coronavirus disease (Covid-19) outbreak, in Bangkok, April 10, 2020. (Reuters photo)

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In addition to this there appears to be more and more "shopping online" at the big supermarkets. In fact, at the BigC that I use in Bangkok it has become a complete PITA! Not only have they 5 or 6 checkouts only for this, but some of the ignorant staff are blocking access to other customers while collecting products around the shop! Then, the full processed shopping trolleys are parked up blocking the checkout collection areas.

[PeteC]

As people have been saying, there is likely more of this disease out there than is being found.

Taxi driver dies from unknown cause

https://www.bangkokpost.com/thailand/ge ... nown-cause

SAMUT PRAKAN: An uninjured taxi driver was found dead on open ground beside a road in Muang district on Monday evening. An autopsy will determine whether he died of Covid-19 or some other illness.

Sriprai Thiansawang, 49, was lying near a cement safety barrier. A green-yellow Toyota taxi with the engine still running was parked on the road nearby, Pol Lt Purithat Sripottham, an investigator of Muang police station, said.

The body was discovered by a passer-by and reported to police about 6pm. The area is adjacent to a road to Chamni School in tambon Thai Mai.

There were no obvious injuries on the body.

A bottle containing hand sanitising gel and an alcohol sprayer for passengers were found in the taxi.

The body was sent to the Institute of Forensic Medicine for an autopsy to establish the cause of death.

The dead man's wife, Suchada Wanplaopring, 37, said she noticed her husband had a sore throat with dry coughing about two weeks ago, but he did not have a fever or show any signs of sickness. He usually left home in his taxi at 4am and returned home about 10am. He would go out again about 4pm and return home before the night curfew at 10pm.

While the cause of her husband's death was still not known, Ms Suchada was advised to self-isolate for 14 days.

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[handdrummer]

On last nights news there were palace employees delivering large bags of food and household items to the poor neighborhoods in Bangkok. They deliver 1500 bags a night and 60,000 to date. All contents are provided by the King. In the meantime Queen Elizabeth goes on TV to reassure her loyal subjects, that there will always be an England. I don't what the royalty of other countries are doing for their citizens. Not to mention what the American King has done for his loyal subjects.

[HHTel]

There was a huge banquet in Bangkok last week.

Reporting restrictions don't allow any further info.

[oakdale160]

Recent analysis of deaths in several European countries and Canada show that aprox 50% of deaths are of old people in long-term facilities. So you oldies in isolation in your HH housing-- you are the lucky ones.

[pharvey]

Further to earlier comments on the same subject, I just cannot comprehend this. Seriously, WTF? I was hoping that earlier attacks were just a few isolated incidents of utter stupidity, but his is just beyond all belief..... 40 INCIDENTS NOW!!

"A mobile phone mast serving the emergency NHS Nightingale hospital in Birmingham is one of the latest targeted by arsonists who wrongly believe 5G technology is linked to the spread of coronavirus.

Nick Jeffery, the chief executive of Vodafone UK, revealed that a mast providing connectivity to the hospital was attacked over the weekend – bringing the total to more than 40 nationwide."

Full Story: - https://www.theguardian.com/technology/ ... e-hospital

[STEVE G]

Recent analysis of deaths in several European countries and Canada show that aprox 50% of deaths are of old people in long-term facilities. So you oldies in isolation in your HH housing-- you are the lucky ones.

Understandably really, here where I am in Europe, the average age of fatalities from Covid is way over 80, so is it surprising if a lot of those happened in retirement homes?

[buksida]

Restrictions can be lifted, but very gradually, experts say
Experts suggest that restrictions can be eased in some areas, provided it is not done all at once and everywhere.

Owing to the drop in new confirmed Covid-19 cases, an informed source said that after Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha chaired a meeting with the government’s Centre for Covid-19 Situation Administration (CCSA) on Monday (April 13), the authorities signalled a chance of easing restrictions on businesses that have been forced to close. There were only 28 new cases on that day.

The governor of Nonthaburi province made the first move in easing restrictions, but reversed his position soon after he was hit by criticism. Also, on Tuesday, the number of cases rose to 34 and CCSA spokesman Taweesin Visanuyothin warned that the country should not let its guard down. He said the early easing of restrictions could lead to a spike in cases, citing Singapore and Japan, where infections rose sharply after being flat for a while.

A report on national security suggests that restrictions should be lifted very gradually, adding that only some provinces or some areas should reopen first. For instance, provincial governors may consider reopening hairdressing and beauty salons first provided the number of customers is kept limited and hand gel or steriliser is made available. Clients will also be required to wear face masks.

...

In the future, foreign tourists wanting to visit Thailand will have to apply a month ahead and must agree to a 14-day quarantine upon entering the country. He said this move may help the private sector arrange quarantine sites for visitors.


https://www.nationthailand.com/news/30386002

In other words: Thailand closes to tourism but girls can get their nails done so all is fine.

[HHTel]

A medical examiner in Thailand died after catching coronavirus from a dead patient, scientists suspect.

The forensic worker was infected in Bangkok in what is thought to be the first such case anywhere in the world.

Researchers warned in a letter published in the Journal of Forensic and Legal Medicine that forensic workers would have to guard themselves against infection.

Health organisations such as the WHO have urged people handling dead bodies to be careful because it is still not fully understood how the virus spreads.

Not the most reliable newspaper but still........

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/articl ... iland.html

[PeteC]

State Department cables warned of safety issues at Wuhan lab studying bat coronaviruses

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions ... onaviruses

Two years before the novel coronavirus pandemic upended the world, U.S. Embassy officials visited a Chinese research facility in the city of Wuhan several times and sent two official warnings back to Washington about inadequate safety at the lab, which was conducting risky studies on coronaviruses from bats. The cables have fueled discussions inside the U.S. government about whether this or another Wuhan lab was the source of the virus — even though conclusive proof has yet to emerge.

In January 2018, the U.S. Embassy in Beijing took the unusual step of repeatedly sending U.S. science diplomats to the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV), which had in 2015 become China’s first laboratory to achieve the highest level of international bioresearch safety (known as BSL-4). WIV issued a news release in English about the last of these visits, which occurred on March 27, 2018. The U.S. delegation was led by Jamison Fouss, the consul general in Wuhan, and Rick Switzer, the embassy’s counselor of environment, science, technology and health. Last week, WIV erased that statement from its website, though it remains archived on the Internet.

What the U.S. officials learned during their visits concerned them so much that they dispatched two diplomatic cables categorized as Sensitive But Unclassified back to Washington. The cables warned about safety and management weaknesses at the WIV lab and proposed more attention and help. The first cable, which I obtained, also warns that the lab’s work on bat coronaviruses and their potential human transmission represented a risk of a new SARS-like pandemic.

“During interactions with scientists at the WIV laboratory, they noted the new lab has a serious shortage of appropriately trained technicians and investigators needed to safely operate this high-containment laboratory,” states the Jan. 19, 2018, cable, which was drafted by two officials from the embassy’s environment, science and health sections who met with the WIV scientists. (The State Department declined to comment on this and other details of the story.)

The Chinese researchers at WIV were receiving assistance from the Galveston National Laboratory at the University of Texas Medical Branch and other U.S. organizations, but the Chinese requested additional help. The cables argued that the United States should give the Wuhan lab further support, mainly because its research on bat coronaviruses was important but also dangerous.

As the cable noted, the U.S. visitors met with Shi Zhengli, the head of the research project, who had been publishing studies related to bat coronaviruses for many years. In November 2017, just before the U.S. officials’ visit, Shi’s team had published research showing that horseshoe bats they had collected from a cave in Yunnan province were very likely from the same bat population that spawned the SARS coronavirus in 2003.

“Most importantly,” the cable states, “the researchers also showed that various SARS-like coronaviruses can interact with ACE2, the human receptor identified for SARS-coronavirus. This finding strongly suggests that SARS-like coronaviruses from bats can be transmitted to humans to cause SARS-like diseases. From a public health perspective, this makes the continued surveillance of SARS-like coronaviruses in bats and study of the animal-human interface critical to future emerging coronavirus outbreak prediction and prevention.”

The research was designed to prevent the next SARS-like pandemic by anticipating how it might emerge. But even in 2015, other scientists questioned whether Shi’s team was taking unnecessary risks. In October 2014, the U.S. government had imposed a moratorium on funding of any research that makes a virus more deadly or contagious, known as “gain-of-function” experiments.

As many have pointed out, there is no evidence that the virus now plaguing the world was engineered; scientists largely agree it came from animals. But that is not the same as saying it didn’t come from the lab, which spent years testing bat coronaviruses in animals, said Xiao Qiang, a research scientist at the School of Information at the University of California at Berkeley.

“The cable tells us that there have long been concerns about the possibility of the threat to public health that came from this lab’s research, if it was not being adequately conducted and protected,” he said.

There are similar concerns about the nearby Wuhan Center for Disease Control and Prevention lab, which operates at biosecurity level 2, a level significantly less secure than the level-4 standard claimed by the Wuhan Insititute of Virology lab, Xiao said. That’s important because the Chinese government still refuses to answer basic questions about the origin of the novel coronavirus while suppressing any attempts to examine whether either lab was involved.

Sources familiar with the cables said they were meant to sound an alarm about the grave safety concerns at the WIV lab, especially regarding its work with bat coronaviruses. The embassy officials were calling for more U.S. attention to this lab and more support for it, to help it fix its problems.

“The cable was a warning shot,” one U.S. official said. “They were begging people to pay attention to what was going on.”

No extra assistance to the labs was provided by the U.S. government in response to these cables. The cables began to circulate again inside the administration over the past two months as officials debated whether the lab could be the origin of the pandemic and what the implications would be for the U.S. pandemic response and relations with China.

Inside the Trump administration, many national security officials have long suspected either the WIV or the Wuhan Center for Disease Control and Prevention lab was the source of the novel coronavirus outbreak. According to the New York Times, the intelligence community has provided no evidence to confirm this. But one senior administration official told me that the cables provide one more piece of evidence to support the possibility that the pandemic is the result of a lab accident in Wuhan.

“The idea that it was just a totally natural occurrence is circumstantial. The evidence it leaked from the lab is circumstantial. Right now, the ledger on the side of it leaking from the lab is packed with bullet points and there’s almost nothing on the other side,” the official said.

As my colleague David Ignatius noted, the Chinese government’s original story — that the virus emerged from a seafood market in Wuhan — is shaky. Research by Chinese experts published in the Lancet in January showed the first known patient, identified on Dec. 1, had no connection to the market, nor did more than one-third of the cases in the first large cluster. Also, the market didn’t sell bats.

Shi and other WIV researchers have categorically denied this lab was the origin for the novel coronavirus. On Feb. 3, her team was the first to publicly report the virus known as 2019-nCoV was a bat-derived coronavirus.

The Chinese government, meanwhile, has put a total lockdown on information related to the virus origins. Beijing has yet to provide U.S. experts with samples of the novel coronavirus collected from the earliest cases. The Shanghai lab that published the novel coronavirus genome on Jan. 11 was quickly shut down by authorities for “rectification.” Several of the doctors and journalists who reported on the spread early on have disappeared.

On Feb. 14, Chinese President Xi Jinping called for a new biosecurity law to be accelerated. On Wednesday, CNN reported the Chinese government has placed severe restrictions requiring approval before any research institution publishes anything on the origin of the novel coronavirus.

The origin story is not just about blame. It’s crucial to understanding how the novel coronavirus pandemic started because that informs how to prevent the next one. The Chinese government must be transparent and answer the questions about the Wuhan labs because they are vital to our scientific understanding of the virus, said Xiao.

We don’t know whether the novel coronavirus originated in the Wuhan lab, but the cable pointed to the danger there and increases the impetus to find out, he said.

“I don’t think it’s a conspiracy theory. I think it’s a legitimate question that needs to be investigated and answered,” he said. “To understand exactly how this originated is critical knowledge for preventing this from happening in the future.”

[Nereus]

SARS-CoV-2: Virus able to survive in 60C temperatures

https://www.news.com.au/technology/scie ... 6e92928de2

The virus that causes COVID-19 can survive for long periods at relatively high temperatures, which has implications for researchers.

The coronavirus can survive long exposures to high temperatures, a new peer-reviewed study published on Biorxiv has shown.

Researchers had to bring the temperature to almost boiling point to kill the virus completely.

The finding could have implications for the safety of lab technicians working with the virus.
Most labs use a 60C, hour-long process to deactivate the virus before further processing. But Professor Remi Charrel and colleagues at Aix-Marsellie University in France found that after heating the virus to 60C for an hour it was still able to replicate.

Only heating the virus to 92C for 15 minutes was able to totally kill it.

COVID-19, the pandemic which has taken hold of the world, is a severe acute respiratory syndrome caused by the virus designated SARS-CoV-2.

While the world has gone into lockdown as a way to reduce person-to-person transmission of the disease, scientists around the globe have been working around the clock to study the virus, potentially putting researchers at risk of infection.

The French scientists noted there were few studies on the inactivation protocols aimed at mitigating the risk of exposure for medical and laboratory personnel.

Also, because using high temperatures can severely fragment the virus’s DNA, researchers suggested using chemicals instead of heat to kill the virus.

“The results presented in this study should help to choose the best protocol for inactivation in order to prevent exposure of laboratory personnel in charge of direct and indirect detection of SARS-CoV-2 for diagnostic purposes,” the authors of the study said, the SCMP reported.

It’s still unclear to what extent the virus is affected by temperatures.

There was some hope that the virus would not replicate as well in hotter climates with some studies suggesting tropical countries reported fewer COVID-19 cases.

But recent research shows the virus continues to spread in summer.

“The transmissibility of SARS-CoV-2 showed no signs of weakening in warm and humid conditions,” a Chinese study published in journal JAMA Network Open found earlier this month.

[Kraka's Dad]

Further to earlier comments on the same subject, I just cannot comprehend this. Seriously, WTF? I was hoping that earlier attacks were just a few isolated incidents of utter stupidity, but his is just beyond all belief..... 40 INCIDENTS NOW!!

"A mobile phone mast serving the emergency NHS Nightingale hospital in Birmingham is one of the latest targeted by arsonists who wrongly believe 5G technology is linked to the spread of coronavirus.

Nick Jeffery, the chief executive of Vodafone UK, revealed that a mast providing connectivity to the hospital was attacked over the weekend – bringing the total to more than 40 nationwide."

Full Story: - https://www.theguardian.com/technology/ ... e-hospital

This is clearly nuts.

But I am surprised that is all people are doing. Whilst we know the Covid19 virus needs to be got under control the governments worldwide have imposed measures that restrict peoples lives eg imposing businesses closures means no income for the business and no income for the workers, who have been told to stay at home. This situation is economically unsustainable worldwide. Yes measures must be taken but surely not to the extent that will inevitably mean business will become financially destitute. Isn't it about time the countries governments reconsider their stratagies in dealing with this virus.

[PeteC]

Taxi driver dies from unknown cause

https://www.bangkokpost.com/thailand/ge ... nown-cause

SAMUT PRAKAN: An uninjured taxi driver was found dead on open ground beside a road in Muang district on Monday evening. An autopsy will determine whether he died of Covid-19 or some other illness.

Sriprai Thiansawang, 49, was lying near a cement safety barrier. A green-yellow Toyota taxi with the engine still running was parked on the road nearby, Pol Lt Purithat Sripottham, an investigator of Muang police station, said.


There were no obvious injuries on the body.

A bottle containing hand sanitising gel and an alcohol sprayer for passengers were found in the taxi.......

Dead taxi driver not infected with Covid-19

https://www.bangkokpost.com/thailand/ge ... h-covid-19

Turned out to be a heart attack or similar. Details at link.

[Dannie Boy]

Further to earlier comments on the same subject, I just cannot comprehend this. Seriously, WTF? I was hoping that earlier attacks were just a few isolated incidents of utter stupidity, but his is just beyond all belief..... 40 INCIDENTS NOW!!

"A mobile phone mast serving the emergency NHS Nightingale hospital in Birmingham is one of the latest targeted by arsonists who wrongly believe 5G technology is linked to the spread of coronavirus.

Nick Jeffery, the chief executive of Vodafone UK, revealed that a mast providing connectivity to the hospital was attacked over the weekend – bringing the total to more than 40 nationwide."

Full Story: - https://www.theguardian.com/technology/ ... e-hospital

This is clearly nuts.

But I am surprised that is all people are doing. Whilst we know the Covid19 virus needs to be got under control the governments worldwide have imposed measures that restrict peoples lives eg imposing businesses closures means no income for the business and no income for the workers, who have been told to stay at home. This situation is economically unsustainable worldwide. Yes measures must be taken but surely not to the extent that will inevitably mean business will become financially destitute. Isn't it about time the countries governments reconsider their stratagies in dealing with this virus.

I’m not sure what news reports you listen to, but the ones I watch/read all say that there has to be isolation to stop the spread of the virus - if not the rate of infection will rapidly pass what the health services are capable of dealing with and then you get into an ever increasingly worsening situation - the results of which do not bare thinking about, but certainly a hell of a lot worse than the current predictions of severe economic downturn.

As bad as it is and as drastic as it appears to be, relaxing the isolation rules too soon will almost certainly result in a much worse scenario