Tag Archives: COVID-19

China bat caves need exploring in search for COVID origins, WHO team member says

By David Kirton and David Stanway

WUHAN, China (Reuters) – A member of the World Health Organization-led team searching for clues to the origins of COVID-19 in the central Chinese city of Wuhan said work was needed to try to trace genetic elements of the virus in bat caves.

Peter Daszak, a zoologist and animal disease expert, said the team in Wuhan had been receiving new information about how the virus, first identified in the city in late 2019, led to a pandemic. He did not elaborate but said there was no evidence to suggest it emerged from a lab.

The origin of the coronavirus has become highly politicized following accusations, especially by the United States, that China was not transparent in its early handling of the outbreak. Beijing has pushed the idea that the virus originated elsewhere.

Daszak was involved in research into the origins of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) in 2002-2003, tracing its roots to bats living in a cave in southwest Yunnan province.

“Similar research needs to be done if we are going to find the true wildlife origin” of COVID-19, said Daszak, president of the New York-based EcoHealth Alliance.

“That sort of work to find the likely bat source is important because if you can find the sources of these lethal viruses you can reduce the contact with those animals,” he told Reuters in an interview.

It is unclear whether China is currently sampling its many bat caves, but viruses similar to SARS-CoV-2 had previously been found in the southwest province of Yunnan.

He said the team in Wuhan had been receiving new information about how the virus led to a pandemic, but did not elaborate.

“I’m seeing a picture coming through of some of the scenarios looking more plausible than before,” he said.

One scenario being scrutinized more closely by the team is the possibility that the virus could have been circulating long before it was first identified in Wuhan.

“That’s something our group is looking at very intensely to see what level of community transmission could have been happening earlier,” Daszak said.

“The real work we are doing here is to trace back from the first cases back to an animal reservoir, and that’s a much more convoluted path, and may have happened over a number of months or even years.”

The investigators have visited hospitals, research facilities and the seafood market where the first outbreak was identified, although their contacts in Wuhan are limited to visits organized by their Chinese hosts.

Daszak said Chinese authorities had not refused any of the team’s requests to visit facilities or meet with key figures.

“It is of course impossible to know what you are not being told, but what I am seeing in China, and what this group is seeing in China, is that what we asked for, we are being allowed to do,” Daszak said.

(Reporting by David Stanway in Shanghai and David Kirton in Wuhan; Editing by Nick Macfie)

U.S. community health centers say they have given more vaccines than government data show

By Rebecca Spalding

(Reuters) – Some U.S. community health centers say they are doling out COVID-19 shots far faster than government data suggests, likely accounting for some of a gap between how states and the federal government describe the availability of vaccine doses.

The federal government said only about 60% of nearly 56 million doses of vaccines from Pfizer Inc or Moderna Inc that have shipped have been used. Yet states such as New York have said that their supplies are stretched thin.

Community health centers, which often serve people of color and those with low incomes, are an important piece of the Biden Administration’s plan for equitable COVID-19 vaccine distribution, which also includes pharmacies, mass vaccination sites, and hospitals.

Experts said data reporting issues at community health centers and other small providers likely represent some of the disparity, which has also been attributed to the slower-than-expected rollout pace at hospitals and nursing homes.

St. John’s Well Child and Family Center was allocated thousands of COVID-19 vaccines for their south Los Angeles community health centers. But weeks into their vaccination campaign, California state officials threatened to cut future deliveries for not administering doses fast enough.

The state’s data suggested the center had only given out 700 doses. St. John’s records showed it had administered shots into ten times that many arms.

“They think we’re sitting on thousands and thousands of doses,” St. John’s Chief Executive Jim Mangia said in an interview.

He has since begun working with officials and put 12 staffers on data entry – an expensive proposition for a center losing more than $100 on every shot due to mushrooming administrative costs, he said.

Four community health centers in New York and North Carolina said their experience has been was similar. Staff members spend hours each week entering data to meet state requirements, while juggling running vaccine clinics. Given the priority of protecting people from a deadly disease, keeping up with data entry sometimes fails.

The four centers said state reporting requirements were labor intensive and often involved manual data entry. Three said government registries have indicated they had doses on shelves at times when their supply had run out.

Six states including California, Pennsylvania, and Maryland told Reuters they had identified data reporting lags from some vaccinators. The states said they were working on measures to make their data more accurate.

New U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Rochelle Walensky said at a January White House media briefing that national data reflects a delay between when shots are given and when they are reported to states. She said the agency was working to better understand that delay.

MANY RULES TO FOLLOW

Beth Blauer, an executive director at Johns Hopkins University who has been tracking COVID-19 vaccines, said data is not being released in a way that can explain the “persistent deltas” between doses shipped and those used.

Blauer said an estimated 10% or less of doses distributed have gone to smaller providers, including community health centers. Their data reporting issues could account for only a small part of the gap, she said.

Rebecca Coyle, executive director at American Immunization Registry Association – a group for public health officials who track vaccination data – said it was no surprise community health centers and other small providers, like mom-and-pop pharmacies, would have greater data reporting challenges than large, well-resourced hospitals.

“It’s taking time to get folks up to speed in terms of what is required,” she said.

Roberta Kelly, chief nursing officer of Sun River Health, a community health center network in New York City, Long Island, and New York’s Hudson Valley, said she and other staff spend hours each week manually entering missing data to both the state’s and city’s vaccine registries.

The databases are both cumbersome to use and distinct, meaning much of the same information must be entered twice for shots given at their city locations, Kelly said, adding: “It’s like two different countries.”

A Sun River center in the New York City borough of Staten Island was highlighted at a Jan. 18 news conference by Governor Andrew Cuomo as one of the lowest-performing vaccinators in the city.

Kelly was puzzled by that conclusion. Doses are gone within days even when data suggests otherwise, she said.

Recently for instance, the city’s registry showed they had 250 doses available when in fact those doses had been given out days before.

“The system’s just not caught up with what’s actually happening on the ground,” Kelly said. “We’re following the rules and there are many of them.”

(Reporting by Rebecca Spalding; Editing by Caroline Humer and Bill Berkrot)

German sniffer dogs detect COVID-19 with 94% accuracy

HANOVER, Germany (Reuters) – A German veterinary clinic has trained sniffer dogs to detect the novel coronavirus in human saliva samples with 94% accuracy.

The dogs are conditioned to scent out the “corona odor” that comes from cells in infected people, said Esther Schalke, a vet at Germany’s armed forces school for service dogs.

Filou, a 3-year-old Belgian Shepherd, and Joe Cocker, a 1-year-old Cocker Spaniel, are two of the dogs being trained at Hanover’s University of Veterinary Medicine.

“We did a study where we had dogs sniffing samples from COVID-positive patients and we can say that they have a 94% probability in our study … that they can sniff them out,” said Holger Volk, head of the veterinary clinic.

“So dogs can really sniff out people with infections and without infections, as well as asymptomatic and symptomatic COVID patients,” he added.

Stephan Weil, premier of Lower Saxony, the state of which Hanover is the capital, said he was impressed with the study and called for a feasibility tests before the sniffer dogs are put to use in everyday life, such as on people attending concerts.

“We now need tests in selected events,” Weil said.

In Finland, dogs trained to detect the novel coronavirus began sniffing passenger samples at Finland’s Helsinki-Vantaa airport last September, in a pilot project alongside more usual testing at the airport.

Chile’s Santiago international airport is also using canine detectors.

(Reporting by Leon Malherbe and Fanny Brodersen; Writing by Paul Carrel; Editing by Lisa Shumaker)

‘We’ve lost so many’: Brazil starts vaccinating Amazon river dwellers

By Bruno Kelly

MANACAPURU, Brazil (Reuters) – Health workers sped along the Amazon river this week to start vaccinating riverside communities, bringing hope to a region hard hit by COVID-19 and now facing a lethal surge driven by a new Brazilian variant of coronavirus.

Wearing protective masks and gowns, they traveled by open motorboat from Manacapuru, a town two hours from the jungle city of Manaus, where hospitals ran out of beds and oxygen last month and cemeteries could not dig graves fast enough to deal with Brazil’s highest death rate.

“I am happy you’ve come. We have lost so many old people and young ones too,” said 83-year-old Maria Araujo after receiving a dose of a British vaccine made by India’s Serum Institute.

“This has given us hope that things will change, they will improve,” she said. Brazil is scrambling to get access to more vaccines to fight the world’s most deadly coronavirus outbreak outside the United States. So far, it has vaccinated 2 million people, mostly health workers and elderly Brazilians, with vaccines made by China’s Sinovac Biotech Ltd and AstraZeneca Plc.

More than 9.2 million Brazilians have been infected by the virus and 225,000 have died. In Manaus, the capital of Amazonas state with 2.1 million inhabitants, more than 5,500 have died, or 261 per 100,000, the highest rate in Brazil, according to Health Ministry data.

Researchers say the aggressive surge in Manaus is largely due to a new variant of the virus discovered there, called P1, which has quickly become the dominant variant, leading scientists to believe it is more contagious. Genome sequencing indicates that 91% of new COVID-19 cases in January in Amazonas state involved the new variant, said Felipe Naveca, a virologist at the ILMD/Fiocruz Amazônia biomedical research center. That is up from 51% of cases sequenced in December and none in November.

The variant was first detected early last month on four travelers who arrived in Japan coming from the Amazon. Scientists have not yet determined whether P1, derived from the B.1.1.28 lineage of SARS-CoV-2, is more lethal than earlier variants. Naveca said it clearly spreads faster, although cases also increased due to less social distancing over the holiday season.

(Reporting by Bruno Kelly; Writing by Anthony Boadle; Editing by Brad Haynes and Lisa Shumaker)

COVID-19 cases falling in U.S., Canada, but still rising in Mexico, Colombia, Brazil: PAHO

BRASILIA (Reuters) – COVID-19 infections are finally decreasing in the United States and Canada after weeks of unrelenting rise, but in Mexico cases and deaths continue to increase, particularly in states that drew tourism in the holiday season, the Pan American Health Organization said on Wednesday.

In South America, Colombia reported the highest incidence of cases, followed by Brazil, where the city of Manaus is still seeing exponential increases in both cases and deaths, PAHO director Carissa Etienne said. Three new variants have been detected in 20 countries of the Americas, though their frequency is still limited, she said in a briefing.

(Reporting by Anthony Boadle, Editing by Franklin Paul)

Crossing the COVID chasm between Israel and the Palestinian Territories

By Zainah El-Haroun and Adel Abu Nimeh

JERICHO, West Bank (Reuters) – As a Palestinian living in Jerusalem, Ismail Daiq is used to negotiating the dividing lines between communities: the daily commute to his Jordan Valley date farm involves crossing a checkpoint on his way home.

Now the coronavirus pandemic has created another fault line for him to navigate: the stark difference between access to vaccines in Israel and in the Palestinian territories.

Living within the Israeli health system, Daiq, 62, has already received his second COVID-19 vaccination in a country that is a leader in the world’s inoculation drive.

But his Palestinian siblings and 95-year-old mother in Jericho are still awaiting a vaccine rollout that has only just begun under the Palestinian Authority, which exercises limited sovereignty in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

Daiq is eligible for vaccination because he became a Jerusalem resident two decades ago when he married a woman from the city.

The rest of his family, friends and employees do not qualify, because they only have West Bank identity papers that do not let them pass through the Israeli checkpoints that control entry to the city.

So when the date farmer travels each day into the Palestinian territories, he is uncomfortably aware that while he feels safe, his loved ones are still at risk from the virus.

“I feel guilty, I feel very sad, because I want all my family safe,” Daiq told Reuters.

“When you see that you can get these services, the vaccination, and all of the family, they can’t get this vaccination, you feel that there is a difference between you and your family.”

Although Israel and the Palestinian Authority coordinate on security issues, political relations have foundered. Negotiations last broke down in 2014.

In January, the Palestinian Foreign Ministry accused Israel of ignoring its duties as an occupying power by not including Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip in their inoculation program.

Israeli officials have said that this is the job of the Palestinian authorities.

“If it is the responsibility of the Israeli health minister to take care of the Palestinians, what exactly is the responsibility of the Palestinian health minister?” Israeli Health Minister Yuli Edelstein told the BBC last month.

While Israel has so far vaccinated a third of its 9 million citizens, the Palestinian Authority received its first batch of 2,000 vaccines – supplied by Israel – on Monday. West Bank health workers received the first shots.

Daiq said he tried to avoid the subject with his family, because his mother kept asking him when she would be inoculated.

His brother Ibrahim, 60, said that he wished good health to “every person on this land” but that there was a sense of unfairness among Palestinians.

“Because of this, my natural rights as a human being, me and the rest of the people living in the West Bank and Gaza, considering we are a country living under occupation, we should also have the right to benefit from this vaccination.”

The West Bank, where 3.1 million Palestinians live, has reported 101,221 coronavirus cases, with 1,271 deaths. Gaza, with a population of two million, has registered more than 51,000 cases with 523 deaths. Israel has reported 663,665 coronavirus cases and 4,888 deaths.

(Reporting by Zainah El-Haroun and Adel Abu Nimeh in Jericho; Additional reporting by Estelle Shirbon in London; Editing by Mike Collett-White)

U.S. private hiring rebounds solidly in January

By Lucia Mutikani

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. private payrolls rebounded more than expected in January, suggesting the labor market recovery was back on track after the economy shed jobs in December as soaring COVID-19 infections hurt operations in the leisure and hospitality industry.

The ADP National Employment Report on Wednesday showed broad gains in hiring last month, though the pace was half of the monthly average job growth in the last six months of 2020. The stronger-than-expected rise in hiring was likely driven by the nearly $900 billion in additional pandemic relief provided by the government in late December.

“Recovery in payrolls is ongoing, albeit at a slow pace,” said Rubeela Farooqi, chief U.S. economist at High Frequency Economics in White Plains, New York. “However, contact-facing businesses continue to face downside risks from virus-related restrictions.”

Private payrolls increased by 174,000 jobs last month after dropping by 78,000 in December. Economists polled by Reuters had forecast private payrolls would rebound by 49,000 in January.

The ADP report is jointly developed with Moody’s Analytics.

Goods producers added 19,000 jobs in January, with employment in the construction industry rising 18,000. Manufacturing payrolls gained only 1,000. Hiring in the services sector rebounded by 156,000 jobs after falling 73,000 in December. The leisure and hospitality industry added 35,000 jobs after shedding 79,000 positions in December.

January was the worst month of the coronavirus pandemic since it started in the United States, according to data from Johns Hopkins University, forcing consumers to hunker down.

The bounce back in hiring last month as authorities started to ease restrictions on businesses has offered hope of faster job growth in the months ahead as the boost from recent stimulus package fully kicks in and the vaccines rollout speeds up.

“The rebounds suggest that demand rebounded quickly once the latest coronavirus wave passed its peak,” said Paul Ashworth, chief U.S. economist at Capital Economics in Toronto.

U.S. stocks opened higher after strong quarterly results from Alphabet and Amazon, and hopes of more stimulus. The dollar was steady against a basket of currencies. U.S. Treasury prices were lower.

SPOTTY RECORD

President Joe Biden has unveiled a recovery plan worth $1.9 trillion, though resistance from some lawmakers worried about the ballooning national debt could see the package trimmed. The Biden administration has pledged to speed up and simplify the distribution of vaccines.

Moody’s Analytics chief economist Mark Zandi said vaccines and fiscal stimulus could help to spur faster job growth.

The ADP report was published ahead of the government’s closely watched, and comprehensive, monthly employment report on Friday. Despite the solid ADP number, economists did not change their estimates for January nonfarm payrolls, noting its spotty record predicting the private payrolls count in the government’s employment report.

“We don’t think that the ADP report gives a very reliable signal about the Labor Department data,” said Daniel Silver, an economist at JPMorgan in New York.

According to a Reuters poll of economists payrolls likely increased by 50,000 jobs in January after declining by 140,000 in December, the first drop in employment in eight months.

Expectations for a rebound in hiring were bolstered by a report on Monday from the Institute for Supply Management showing that manufacturers hired more workers in January, though a flare-up in COVID-19 infections caused labor shortages at factories and their suppliers.

But the Conference Board’s survey last week showed consumers’ perceptions of labor market conditions deteriorated further in January.

The economy has recouped 12.5 million of the 22.2 million jobs lost in March and April. The Congressional Budget Office estimated on Monday that employment would not return to its pre-pandemic level before 2024.

(Reporting By Lucia Mutikani; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama)

WHO team probing COVID-19 visits Wuhan lab, meets ‘Bat Woman’

By Martin Quin Pollard and Thomas Peter

WUHAN, China (Reuters) -A team of investigators led by the World Health Organization visited a virus research laboratory in China’s central city of Wuhan and met with a prominent virologist there in its search for clues to the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The experts spent about 3-1/2 hours at the heavily-guarded Wuhan Institute of Virology, which has been at the center of some conspiracy theories that claim a laboratory leak caused the city’s first coronavirus outbreak at the end of 2019.

“Extremely important meeting today with staff at WIV including Dr. Shi Zhengli. Frank, open discussion. Key questions asked & answered,” team member Peter Daszak said on Twitter.

Shi, a well-known virus hunter who has long focused on bat coronaviruses – earning her the nickname “Bat Woman” – was among the first last year to isolate the novel coronavirus that causes COVID-19.

Most scientists, including Shi, reject the hypothesis of a lab leak. However, some experts speculate that a virus captured from the wild could have figured in lab experiments to test the risks of a human spillover and then escaped via an infected staff member.

“Very interesting. Many questions,” Thea Fischer, a Danish member of the team, called from her car as it sped away from the lab following Wednesday’s visit, in response to a question whether the team had found anything.

Some scientists have called for China to release details of all coronavirus samples studied at the lab, to see which most closely resembles SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes the respiratory disease.

The WHO, which has sought to manage expectations for the Wuhan mission, has said its members would be limited to visits organized by their Chinese hosts and have no contact with community members, because of health restrictions.

While the novel coronavirus that sparked the pandemic was first identified in Wuhan, Beijing has sought to cast doubt on the notion that it originated in China, pointing to imported frozen food as a possible conduit.

The team will spend two weeks conducting field work after having completed two weeks in hotel quarantine after arrival in Wuhan.

(Reporting by Thomas Peter and Martin Quin in Wuhan; Writing by David Stanway and Tony Munroe; Editing by Clarence Fernandez and Pravin Char)

“A symbol of hope” – German military aid arrives in Portugal

By Catarina Demony and Michael Nienaber

LISBON (Reuters) – A German military plane carrying over 20 doctors and nurses together with ventilators and hospital beds arrived on Wednesday in coronavirus-stricken Portugal, where a severe rise in cases has prompted several European nations to offer help.

The German team will manage a new unit of eight ICU beds in a private hospital in Lisbon, Hospital da Luz, which was equipped but lacked the staff to operate, Health Minister Marta Temido said at the military base where the plane landed.

“Eight beds may not sound like much, but it is a lot for a health system under significant pressure,” Temido said. “The help Germany extended is of great use for a health system facing the challenges we are – highly specialized health professionals.”

The medical team, consisting of eight doctors and 18 nurses, left the military base in northern Lisbon by bus shortly after arrival. The cargo, which includes 150 hospital beds and 50 ventilators, was unloaded after their departure.

“This is a vivid sign of European solidarity and a symbol of hope,” German ambassador Martin Ney told reporters at the military base.

Austria has offered to take in 10 to 15 COVID-19 intensive care patients who would be distributed in various hospitals across the country, its ambassador in Portugal, Robert Zischg, told Reuters.

The two countries’ health and defense ministries were in regular contact and it was up to Portugal to decide whether it would accept the offer, he said.

Hospitals across Portugal, a nation of about 10 million people, appear on the verge of collapse, with ambulances sometimes queuing for hours because of a lack of beds while some health units are struggling to find enough refrigerated space to preserve the bodies of the deceased.

Although daily infections and deaths from COVID-19 in the country on Tuesday retreated further from last week’s records and fewer patients were in intensive care, doctors and nurses are still over-stretched.

The island of Madeira, an autonomous region of Portugal which took in three COVID-19 intensive care patients last Friday, will also take in another three, its regional government told news agency Lusa.

Portugal, which has so far reported a total of 13,017 COVID-19 deaths and 731,861 cases, reported close to half of all its COVID-19 deaths last month as cases accelerated.

(Reporting by Michael Nienaber in Berlin, Catarina Demony and Victoria Waldersee in Lisbon; editing by Emma Thomasson and Angus MacSwan)

Essential yet under vaccinated, some California farmworkers get their vaccines

By Norma Galeana and Alan Devall

MECCA, Calif. (Reuters) – Deemed an essential workforce during the pandemic, California’s mostly Latino farmworkers are also under represented in the state’s vaccination program, health officials and activists say, prompting the delivery of shots in the fields.

In one such campaign, public health officials vaccinated about 250 workers on Monday, including about 150 from Hadley’s Date Gardens, in the first of what they hope will be a weekly visit to agricultural lands.

“We’re essential for the country, to be able to feed the other families,” Maria Razo, 45, a date sorter, said from the vaccination site in Mecca, California, about 140 miles (225 km) east of Los Angeles.

“Now that we have it, we’re going to work a little safer,” Razo said after getting her first of two shots of the vaccine developed by Pfizer Inc and German partner BioNTech SE.

Though falling behind health workers and first responders in vaccination priority, farmworkers are critical to California’s agricultural industry, which accounts for a large chunk of the country’s food supply. Many lack the internet connectivity and transportation most Americans take for granted and use to get their shots.

With or without a vaccine, their jobs are dangerous enough. Date-pruners climb atop the fronds of the date palms with an extra long ladder, chopping away with a recurved machete to de-thorn the trees in preparation for harvest.

Early data shows Blacks and Latinos have been underrepresented in COVID-19 inoculations given to healthcare workers and nursing home residents, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said.

Moreover, California has lagged most other states in vaccinations administered per capita, CDC data show.

“We knew that this was going to be a community that was going to be disproportionately affected by COVID-19. So we designed this community-based strategy to bring resources to them,” said Conrado Bargaza, chief executive of Desert Healthcare, a public entity that provides healthcare services.

Riverside County health officials have worked with the Todec Legal Center, which provides legal advice and education for Latino immigrants in the inland area of Southern California, to take vaccines to the workforce.

“COVID has shed a light to all these inequalities that we have,” said Todec Executive Director Luz Gallegos, who has been combing the fields making sure farm workers get tested and vaccinated. “We’re talking about the most vulnerable workers.”

(Reporting by Norma Galeana and Alan Devall; Writing by Daniel Trotta; Editing by Bill Berkrot)