As a microbiologist and infectious disease clinician, it has been tough to watch the recent devolution of public discourse on Covid-19 origins. It has been especially difficult for me to read the comments of Anthony Fauci about the origins debate in his now-public diary. And it has been painful to watch the televised spectacle hosted by the US senator Rand Paul on 29 July involving a hostile interrogation of Fauci. Despite many early pleas, including my own, for a dispassionate, objective assessment of what we know, don’t know and need…
Tag: Infectious diseases
Anthony Fauci’s diaries take aim at News Corp journalist Sharri Markson’s ‘nonsense’ Covid-19 investigation
Dr Anthony Fauci, the US’s chief medical adviser at the start of the pandemic, has described a book by News Corp investigative journalist Sharri Markson backing the “lab leak” theory of Covid-19’s origins as a “bunch of nonsense” in his newly released diaries. This week, Fauci, 85, was subpoenaed by the Republican senator Rand Paul to appear at a Senate hearing into Covid-19 and his handling of the pandemic. The physician and veteran former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, who retired in 2022, accused Paul…
Chinese scientist charged with smuggling pathogen into US to be deported
A Chinese scientist charged in Michigan with smuggling biological materials pleaded guilty on Wednesday, but was given no additional time in jail beyond the five months she already spent in custody. Yunqing Jian, who was a temporary researcher at a University of Michigan lab, will be released and quickly deported. A judge called it a “very strange” case involving an “incredibly accomplished researcher”. Jian, 33, was arrested in June and accused of conspiring with a boyfriend to study and nurse a toxic fungus at a campus lab. A pathogen known…
Alarm in China that efforts to control Chikungunya virus are infringing on rights
There is growing alarm in China that official efforts to control the spread of Chikungunya virus, a non-fatal mosquito-borne disease that has been spreading in the south of the country, are infringing on people’s personal rights. A single mother living in Zhanjiang, a port city in Guangdong province, posted a video on social media this week showing a group of people, including a uniformed police officer, entering her children’s bedroom in the middle of the night and taking blood samples from the boy and the girl, without their mother’s presence…
Child respiratory sickness overloads China’s paediatric clinics – reports
A surge in respiratory illnesses in China, particularly among children, has reportedly swamped paediatric units in city hospitals, while authorities have urged calm, attributing it to a post-lockdown wave of illness. Many hospital wards are full, according to state and other media reports in China. The Global Times reported on Tuesday that the Beijing Children’s hospital was receiving up to 9,378 patients a day and had been at full capacity during the past two months. It also said outpatient clinics, paediatric clinics, and respiratory departments at several Beijing hospitals were…
Respiratory infection clusters in China not caused by novel virus, says health ministry
A surge in respiratory illnesses across China that has drawn the attention of the World Health Organization is caused by the flu and other known pathogens and not by a novel virus, the country’s health ministry said on Sunday. Recent clusters of respiratory infections are caused by an overlap of common viruses such as the influenza virus, rhinoviruses, respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) and adenovirus, as well as bacteria such as mycoplasma pneumoniae, which is a common culprit for respiratory tract infections, a National Health Commission spokesperson said. The ministry called…
WHO requests details about respiratory illness clusters in parts of China
The World Health Organization has asked China for details about a rise in respiratory illnesses that has been reported in northern parts of the country, particularly among children. Epidemiologists have warned that as China heads into its first winter since the lifting of zero-Covid restrictions, natural levels of immunity to respiratory viruses may be lower than normal, leading to an increase in infections. Several countries, including the US and the UK, experienced large waves of respiratory viral infections in the first winter after Covid restrictions were lifted as people had…
China fuels global surge in mpox cases as LGBTQ+ stigma hampers response
China is fuelling a global surge in mpox cases, accounting for the majority of new cases reported in September, according to the World Health Organization. The number of weekly cases reported globally increased by 328% in the week to 10 September, data shows. Most of that rise came from China, where more than 500 new cases were reported in August. The WHO said China was experiencing “sustained community transmission” of the virus, which was first detected as an imported case in September last year. Mpox was previously known as Monkeypox…
No direct proof Covid-19 stemmed from Wuhan lab leak, US intelligence says
US intelligence agencies found no direct evidence that the Covid-19 pandemic stemmed from an incident at China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology, a report declassified on Friday said. The four-page report by the office of the director of national intelligence (ODNI) said the US intelligence community still could not rule out the possibility that the virus came from a laboratory, however, and had not been able to discover the origins of the pandemic. “The Central Intelligence Agency and another agency remain unable to determine the precise origin of the Covid-19 pandemic,…
Covid lab leak theory should not be ruled out, top Chinese scientist says
The former director of China’s Center for Disease Control and Protection (CDC) has said the lab leak theory for the origins of Covid-19 should not be discounted. George Gao, an internationally respected virologist, also said another branch of the Chinese government had investigated the lab leak theory – the first such acknowledgment that some kind of official investigation took place. “They haven’t found wrongdoing,” he said. Gao served as the CDC head until July 2022, putting him at the forefront of China’s investigations into the origins of Covid. The virus…