CORONA China Reimposes Covid-19 Lockdowns as It Battles Worst Outbreak in Months

[Housecarl]

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China Reimposes Covid-19 Lockdowns as It Battles Worst Outbreak in Months

More than 20 million people have been placed under quarantine, and authorities have cautioned against travel, just weeks ahead of the biggest holiday of the year.

www.wsj.com

China Reimposes Covid-19 Lockdowns as It Battles Worst Outbreak in Months
More than 20 million people have been quarantined just weeks ahead of biggest holiday of the year
By Sha Hua


Updated Jan. 12, 2021 9:39 am ET

HONG KONG—China is battling its biggest coronavirus outbreak in months, imposing lockdowns on hard-hit areas, quarantining more than 20 million people and urging citizens to forgo unnecessary travel as the Lunar New Year holiday approaches in February.


The tightening, which comes during northern China’s coldest winter in a generation, underscores official skittishness nearly a year after authorities shut down the city of Wuhan to contain the initial outbreak.


On Tuesday, China’s National Health Commission reported 42 new cases of locally transmitted symptomatic infection, a day after recording 85 such cases—its highest daily count in six months.


The bulk of the recent cases have been detected in the northern province of Hebei, which surrounds China’s capital city of Beijing.


Local authorities in the city of Langfang on Tuesday placed its five million residents in home quarantine for seven days while rolling out citywide testing. Authorities had imposed similar measures on the provincial capital of Shijiazhuang last week, barring people and vehicles f

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[Housecarl]

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Chinese city of Langfang goes into lockdown amid new COVID-19 threat

The Chinese city of Langfang near Beijing went into lockdown on Tuesday as new coronavirus infections raised worries about a second wave in a country that has mostly contained COVID-19.

www.reuters.com

Healthcare & Pharma
January 11, 20216:08 PM Updated 15 hours ago

Chinese city of Langfang goes into lockdown amid new COVID-19 threat
By Reuters Staff
3 Min Read

BEIJING (Reuters) - The Chinese city of Langfang near Beijing went into lockdown on Tuesday as new coronavirus infections raised worries about a second wave in a country that has mostly contained COVID-19.

The number of new cases in mainland China reported on Tuesday remained a small fraction of those seen at the height of the outbreak in early 2020. However, authorities are implementing strict curbs whenever new cases emerge.

The National Health Commission reported 55 new cases on Tuesday, down from 103 on Monday. Hebei province, which surrounds Beijing, accounted for 40 of the 42 locally transmitted infections.

In a village in the south of Beijing that shares a border with Hebei, residents were stopping vehicles and asking to see health-tracking codes on mobile phones.

“We have to be careful as we’re near Guan, where COVID cases were reported today,” said a volunteer security officer surnamed Wang.

At a highway checkpoint, police in protective gowns ordered a car entering Beijing to return to Hebei after the driver was unable to show proof of a negative coronavirus test.

China’s state planning agency said it expected travel during next month’s Lunar New Year period to be markedly down on normal years, with a bigger share of people choosing cars over other transport. Many provinces have urged migrant workers to stay put for the festival.

HOME QUARANTINE
Langfang, southeast of Beijing, said its 4.9 million residents would be put under home quarantine for seven days and tested for the virus.

The government in Beijing said a World Health Organization team investigating the origin of the coronavirus would arrive on Thursday in the city of Wuhan, where the virus emerged in late 2019, after a delay that Beijing has called a “misunderstanding”.

Shijiazhuang, Hebei’s capital, has been hardest hit in the latest surge and has already placed its 11 million people under lockdown. The province has shut sections of highway and is ordering vehicles to turn back.

A new guideline from the Beijing Center for Disease Prevention and Control recommended that taxi and ride-hailing operators suspend car-pooling services, and that drivers should get weekly DNA tests and be vaccinated in order to work, the ruling Communist Party-backed Beijing Daily reported.

As of Jan. 9, China had administered more than 9 million vaccine doses.

Across the country, the number of new asymptomatic cases rose to 81 from 76 the previous day. China does not classify asymptomatic cases as confirmed coronavirus infections.

The total number of confirmed cases reported in mainland China stands at 87,591, with an official death toll of 4,634.

Reporting by Jing Wang and Andrew Galbraith in Shanghai and Sophie Yu, Roxanne Liu and Lusha Zhang in Beijing; writing by Se Young Lee and Ryan Woo; Editing by Sam Holmes and Kevin Liffey

 

[Krayola]

Isn't that "convenient" timing that they would have a another breakout right before millions of Chinese travel the globe for Chinese New Year. I think I'm having deja vu.

 

[Housecarl]

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Bloomberg - Are you a robot?

www.bloomberg.com

China’s Covid Shot Has Four Wildly Different Efficacy Rates
By
Jinshan Hong

January 11, 2021, 11:16 PM PST Updated on January 12, 2021, 11:26 AM PST

• Dueling data from trials in Brazil, Turkey, Indonesia
• Indonesian President to receive shot Wednesday amid confusion

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Days before a global rollout kicks off with the President of Indonesia receiving the Sinovac Biotech Ltd. vaccine on live television, uncertainty swirls over the efficacy of the leading Chinese shot, for which four different protection rate numbers have been released in recent weeks.



Indonesia, which is moving the fastest on distributing the Sinovac shot to its population, said that a local trial showed an efficacy of 65% against Covid-19. But only 1,620 people in Indonesia took part in that trial -- too small for meaningful data.

Boxes of the Sinovac Covid-19 vaccine in Bogor, Indonesia, on Jan. 12.
Photographer: Adriana Adie/NurPhoto/Getty Images
Turkey said last month that the same vaccine showed efficacy of 91.25% in its local trial, which was similarly too small to draw a sufficient conclusion.








In Brazil, where Sinovac’s biggest trial of more than 13,000 people is being conducted, dueling efficacy rates have been publicized. The company’s local trial partner, Butantan Institute, said last week that the vaccine was 78% effective in preventing mild cases of Covid-19 and 100% effective against severe and moderate infections.





Yet on Tuesday, Butantan said the overall rate, which also includes very mild cases that didn’t require medical help, is actually 50.38%.


Overlapping efficacy data is not unprecedented in the Covid-19 vaccine race -- AstraZeneca Plc released two separate protection rates based on different dosage regimes last month -- and all the findings are above the threshold of 50% efficacy required by regulators for approval.


China Is Struggling to Get the World to Trust Its Vaccines

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Yet the confusion, which comes as several governments commit to inoculating their citizens with Sinovac’s shot, is fueling skepticism over Chinese vaccines, which have disclosed less safety and testing information than western front-runners. The data kerfuffle risks further undermining trust in shots that President Xi Jinping has promised to share with the rest of the world as a global public good.


“There is enormous financial and prestige pressure for these trials to massively overstate their results,” said Nikolai Petrovsky, a professor at the College of Medicine and Public Health at Flinders University.

“In many cases, such overstatements are also politically motivated, as countries that have failed to properly control the pandemic now want to overstate the benefits of the vaccines to win votes and appease local unrest.”

A Sinovac spokesman declined to comment on the numbers from its trials in Brazil, Turkey and Indonesia and said more data would be released by its Brazil partner this week.

The data issue appears to already be holding up regulatory approval for Sinovac’s vaccine in some places.

“Initially, Sinovac was going to ship the vaccine supply to Hong Kong in January. But they delayed the announcement of the Phase III clinical trial data three times,” said David Hui, a professor of respiratory medicine at the Chinese University of Hong Kong who sits on the Asian financial hub’s Covid-19 advisory panel. “That would delay the assessment of their application.”

Calculation Confusion
The massive Brazil trial, which Sinovac has said will be where it gets its definitive efficacy data, has received intense scrutiny.

The CoronaVac vaccine, developed by Sinovac.
Photographer: Nelson Almeida/AFP/Getty Images
Observers were flummoxed by the first efficacy rate of 78% announced by Butantan Institute. According to the information disclosed, the trial saw about 220 participants infected: 160 in the placebo group and almost 60 in the vaccinated group.






If trial participants were evenly split between the vaccine and placebo group, then the efficacy rate should come out to 62.5%, said Petrovsky, who’s also a research director for Vaxine Pty Ltd., a company that is developing a Covid-19 vaccine.


External calculations remain speculative unless more data, like the total number of people in the placebo group and vaccinated group, is released in peer-reviewed scientific journals, said Raina MacIntyre, head of the Biosecurity Program at the Kirby Institute at the University of New South Wales.

Overall Efficacy of Sinovac Vaccine in Brazil Just Above 50%

On Tuesday, Butantan explained the 78% was calculated considering the mild, moderate and severe cases, officials said. When very mild cases are included among the 13,000 volunteers, the figure is 50.4% -- 167 infected volunteers in the placebo arm, and 85 in the vaccine arm. The shot proved 100% effective in preventing severe cases.

Brazilian health regulator Anvisa requested additional data from the Butantan Institute on the Sinovac trial before deciding whether to approve the vaccine for use.

— With assistance by Julia Leite

(Updates with Brazil data starting in fifth paragraph.)

 

[Housecarl]

Isn't that "convenient" timing that they would have a another breakout right before millions of Chinese travel the globe for Chinese New Year. I think I'm having deja vu.

You're not the only one......