Category: World

ALJAZEERA

Stark warning from state TV comes as death toll in the country nears 1,000, with at least 16,000 confirmed cases.

Iran has issued its most dire warning yet about the new coronavirus outbreak ravaging the country, suggesting “millions” could die in the Islamic Republic if people keep travelling and ignore health advisories.
A state television journalist, who is also a medical doctor, gave the warning on Tuesday citing a study by Tehran’s prestigious Sharif University of Technology, which offered three scenarios regarding the COVID-19 outbreak in Iran, one of the deadliest outside China, where the illness originated.

On Tuesday, 135 new coronavirus deaths took the country’s overall toll to 988, as it curtailed celebrations for a fire festival in a bid to contain the disease.

Dr Afruz Eslami said if people begin to cooperate now, Iran will see 120,000 infections and 12,000 deaths before the outbreak is over. If they offer medium cooperation, there will be 300,000 cases and 110,000 deaths, she added.

But if people fail to follow any guidance, it could collapse Iran’s already-strained medical system, Eslami said. If the “medical facilities are not sufficient, there will be four million cases, and 3.5 million people will die,” she said. 

Eslami did not elaborate what metrics the study used, but reporting it on Iran’s tightly controlled state TV represented a major change for a country whose officials had for days denied the severity of the crisis.

At least 12 Iranian politicians and officials, both sitting and former, have now died of the illness, and 13 more have been infected and are either in quarantine or being treated. 

No ‘unnecessary’ travel 

Iran has been scrambling to contain the rapid spread of the coronavirus which so far has infected some 16,000, including 1,178 new confirmed cases in the past 24 hours, according to the health ministry.

It came as the public ignored repeated warnings and pleas from security forces. Iran has been urging people to stay home, but many have ignored the call.

Late on Monday night, angry crowds stormed into the courtyards of Mashhad’s Imam Reza shrine and Qom’s Fatima Masumeh shrine.

Crowds typically pray there 24 hours a day, seven days a week, touching and kissing the shrine. That has worried health officials, who for weeks ordered Iran’s Shia clergy to close them.

On Monday, the state TV had announced the shrines’ closure, sparking the demonstrations.

Police later dispersed the crowds, state media reported. Religious authorities and a prominent Qom seminary called the demonstration an “insult” to the shrine in a statement, urging the faithful to rely on “wisdom and patience” amid the closure.

Iran’s shrines draw Shias from all over the Middle East for pilgrimages, likely contributing to the spread of the virus across the region. Saudi Arabia earlier closed off Islam’s holiest sites over fear of the virus spreading.

In its latest attempt to contain the virus, Iranian police banned celebrations marking the traditional fire festival that comes before Nowruz – the Persian New Year.

However, since it announced its first two deaths in the holy city of Qom last month, Iran has yet to impose any lockdowns and the outbreak has spread to all 31 of the country’s provinces.

15 million screened State TV reported that Iran had deployed teams to screen travellers leaving major cities in 13 provinces, including the capital, Tehran.

The teams will check travellers’ temperatures and send those with fever to quarantine centres.

Apparently, in a bid to curb the spread of the virus, Iran released 85,000 prisoners on temporary leave, judiciary spokesman Gholamhossein Esmaili said on Tuesday. He said that the order included half of all “security-related” prisoners, without elaborating.

Among those released is Mohammad Hossein Karroubi, son of opposition leader Mehdi Karroubi, who was in jail for nearly two months.

Health ministry spokesman Kianoush Jahanpour said more than 15 million Iranians have been screened for symptoms,

According to the health ministry, the trend of rising reported infections is due to the increasing number of tests being carried out.

Roughly nine out of 10 of the more than 18,000 cases of the new virus confirmed across the Middle East have come from Iran.

Countries across the Middle East have imposed sweeping travel restrictions, cancelled public events and called on non-essential businesses to close for the coming weeks.

(This story has not been edited by Kashmir Today staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

GK News Network

Turkey has confirmed its first novel coronavirus-related death as the number of cases in the country rose to 98.

“Today, I lost my first patient in our fight against coronavirus,” Health Minister Fahrettin Koca told a televised press conference on Tuesday, adding that the victim was an 89-year-old man who contracted the virus from an employee with connections to China.

The minister also said the number of cases had risen from 47 to 98.

“The big majority of those who tested positive are recovering,” Koca said.

Turkey has announced a series of preventive measures in an effort to contain the spread of the coronavirus, including travel restrictions on 20 countries and the closure of schools and universities.

Authorities on Monday suspended collective mosque prayers until further notice and ordered the closure of public spaces, including cinemas.

(This story has not been edited by Kashmir Today staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

GK News Network

“They conclude that the virus is the product of natural evolution,” Goulding said.

Ending speculations about deliberate genetic engineering of new coronavirus, scientists from the Scripps Research Institute, a non-profit research organization, have claimed that the COVID-19 pandemic is not from a lab-created virus but has a natural origin.

The novel SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus that emerged in the city of Wuhan, China last year and has since caused a large scale COVID-19 epidemic is the product of natural evolution.

The analysis of public genome sequence data from SARS-CoV-2 and related viruses found no evidence that the virus was made in a laboratory or otherwise engineered, according to findings published today in the journal Nature Medicine.

“By comparing the available genome sequence data for known coronavirus strains, we can firmly determine that SARS-CoV-2 originated through natural processes,” said Kristian Andersen, an associate professor of immunology and microbiology at Scripps Research and corresponding author on the paper.

The first known severe illness caused by a coronavirus emerged with the 2003 Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) epidemic in China. A second outbreak of severe illness began in 2012 in Saudi Arabia with the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS).

On December 31 last year, Chinese authorities alerted the World Health Organization of an outbreak of a novel strain of coronavirus causing severe illness, which was subsequently named SARS-CoV-2.

The coronavirus has now spread to more than 150 countries, infecting more than 184,000 and killing over 7,500 people.

Shortly after the epidemic began, Chinese scientists sequenced the genome of SARS-CoV-2 and made the data available to researchers worldwide.

The resulting genomic sequence data has shown that Chinese authorities rapidly detected the epidemic and that the number of COVID-19 cases have been increasing because of human to human transmission after a single introduction into the human population.

Andersen and collaborators at several other research institutions used this sequencing data to explore the origins and evolution of SARS-CoV-2 by focusing in on several tell-tale features of the virus.

The scientists analyzed the genetic template for spike proteins, armatures on the outside of the virus that it uses to grab and penetrate the outer walls of human and animal cells.

This evidence for natural evolution was supported by data on SARS-CoV-2’s backbone – its overall molecular structure.

If someone were seeking to engineer a new coronavirus as a pathogen, they would have constructed it from the backbone of a virus known to cause illness.

But the scientists found that the SARS-CoV-2 backbone differed substantially from those of already known coronaviruses and mostly resembled related viruses found in bats and pangolins.

Josie Golding, PhD, epidemics lead at UK-based Wellcome Trust, said the findings by Andersen and his colleagues are “crucially important to bring an evidence-based view to the rumors that have been circulating about the origins of the virus (SARS-CoV-2) causing COVID-19.”

“They conclude that the virus is the product of natural evolution,” Goulding said.

Based on their genomic sequencing analysis, Andersen and his collaborators concluded that the most likely origins for SARS-CoV-2 followed one of two possible scenarios.

In one scenario, the virus evolved to its current pathogenic state through natural selection in a non-human host and then jumped to humans.

This is how previous coronavirus outbreaks have emerged, with humans contracting the virus after direct exposure to civets (SARS) and camels (MERS).

The researchers proposed bats as the most likely reservoir for SARS-CoV-2 as it is very similar to a bat coronavirus.

“There are no documented cases of direct bat-human transmission, however, suggesting that an intermediate host was likely involved between bats and humans,” the authors noted.

In this case, the current pandemic would probably have emerged rapidly as soon as humans were infected, as the virus would have already evolved the features that make it pathogenic and able to spread between people.

In the other proposed scenario, a non-pathogenic version of the virus jumped from an animal host into humans and then evolved to its current pathogenic state within the human population.

If the SARS-CoV-2 entered humans in its current pathogenic form from an animal source, it raises the probability of future outbreaks, as the illness-causing strain of the virus could still be circulating in the animal population and might once again jump into humans.

(This story has not been edited by Kashmir Today staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Saudi Arabia suspended prayers inside all but the holiest two mosques in Islam as the kingdom steps up efforts to contain the new coronavirus, state media reported

Geospatial Media & Communications

By: Aditya Chaturvedi

The Wuhan coronavirus outbreak has become a global calamity, leaving thousands dead, millions vulnerable, supply lines collapsed, economies derailed, factories shunted and cities under lockdown. It is an unanticipated disaster of epic proportions that has exposed human fragility in an interconnected world. China, from where the novel virus originated, has been the worst hit. By mustering resources at its disposal and deploying the latest technology, the country has mitigated the spread to a significant extent and profiled people at risk. During the time of the SARS ( Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) outbreak in 2002, it took scientists more than a year to decode the genome of the virus, whereas thanks to tech advancements, the Covind-19 or the coronavirus genome was identified in a month’s time. These are the various ways through which China is waging war against this deadly strain.

Color Coding

Utilizing its sophisticated and expansive surveillance network for the public good, Chinese government joined hands with tech giants Alibaba and Tencent to develop a color-coded health rating system that is tracking millions of people daily. The smartphone app was first deployed in Hangzhou with collaboration from Alibaba. It assigns three colors to people — green, yellow or red — on the basis of their travel and medical histories. In the industrial hub Shenzhen, similar software was created by Tencent.

Whether a person should be quarantined or allowed in public spaces is decided based on the color code. Citizens have to mandatorily log in to the app using pay wallet services like Alibaba’s Alipay, Ant’s wallet etc. Only those people who have been given a green color code are allowed in public spheres after using the designated QR code at metro stations, offices, stations. There are checkpoints at most public places where the code and person’s body temperature is checked. More than 200 Chinese cities are using this system, and soon it will be extended nationwide.

Robotics

From preparing meals at hospitals, doubling up as waiters in restaurants, spraying disinfectants and cleaning, to vending rice and dispensing hand sanitizers, robots are on the frontlines everywhere to prevent the spread of coronavirus. In many hospitals, robots are also performing diagnosis and conducting thermal imaging. Shenzhen based company Multicopter is using robots to transport medical samples.

As per a Reuters report, a small robot called Little Peanut is delivering food to Passengers who were on a flight from Singapore to Hangzhou, China, and are currently being quarantined in a hotel.

Drones

In some of the severely affected areas, drones have come to the rescue by transporting both medical equipment and patient samples. This is saving time, enhancing the speed of delivery and preventing the risk of samples being contaminated. Drones are also flying with QR code placards that can be scanned to register health information. There are also agricultural drones that are spraying disinfectants in the countryside. Drones, powered with facial recognition, are also being used to broadcast warnings to the citizens to not step out of their homes and chide them for not wearing facemasks.

Big Data and Facial recognition

Access to public information has led to the creation of dashboards that are continuously monitoring the virus. A lot of organizations are developing dashboards using Big Data. Face recognition and infrared temperature detection techniques have been installed in all leading cities. Chinese AI companies like SenseTime and Hanwang Technology have claimed to come up with a special facial recognition technology that can accurately recognise people even if they are masked. Smartphone apps are also being used to keep a tab on people’s movements and ascertain whether or not they have been in contact with an infected person. Al Jazeera reported that the telecom company China Mobile sent text messages to state media agencies, informing them about the people who have been infected. The messages included all the details about the persons travel history. CCTV cameras have also been installed at most locations to ensure that those who are quarantined don’t step out.

Artificial Intelligence

AI is playing a leading role in healthcare these days. With the help of data analytics and predictive models, medical professionals are able to understand more about a lot of diseases.

Baidu, the Chinese internet giant, has made its Lineatrfold algorithm available to teams that are fighting the outbreak, as per the MIT Technological Review. Unlike Ebola, HIV and Influenza, Covind-19 has only a single strand RNA, so it is able to rapidly mutate. The algorithm is a lot faster than other algorithms that help predict the structure of a virus.

Baidu has also made tools to build effectively screen large populations. It has also built Ai-powered infrared system that can detect a change in a person’s body temperature. It is currently being used in Beijing’s Qinghe Railway Station to identify passengers who are potentially infected where it can examine up to 200 people in one minute without disrupting passenger flow, says the MIT Review.

Autonomous Vehicles

At a time of severe crunch of healthcare professionals and the risk that people-to-people contact holds, autonomous vehicles are proving to be of great utility in delivering essential goods like medicines and foodstuffs. Apollo, which is Baidu’s autonomous vehicle platform, has joined hands with self-driving startup  Neolix to deliver supplies and food to a big hospital in Beijing. Baidu Apollo has also made its micro-car kits and autonomous driving cloud services available for free to companies fighting the virus.

Idriverplus, a Chinese self-driving company that operates electric street cleaning vehicles, is also a part of the mission. The company’s flagship vehicles are being used to disinfect hospitals.

(This story has not been edited by Kashmir Today staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Russian scientists have also begun to test vaccine prototypes for the new coronavirus

Gulf News

BEIJING: China has authorised clinical trials on its first vaccine developed to combat the new coronavirus, according to a report in the ruling Communist Party’s People’s Daily.

The researchers are led by Chen Wei, of China’s Academy of Military Medical Sciences, it said.

Russia begins testing potential coronavirus vaccine

Russian scientists have begun to test vaccine prototypes for the new coronavirus, and plan to present the most effective one by June, a laboratory chief at a state biotech institute said.

Russia has reported 93 cases of infection but no deaths, according to official numbers published Tuesday.

“The prototypes have been created. We are starting laboratory testing on animals, to ensure effectiveness and safety,” Ilnaz Imatdinov of the Vector Institute in Siberia told the Vesti Novosibirsk television channel on Monday.

“In June we will present one or two showing the best results.”

Vector Institute is a state virology and biotechnology centre in Novosibirsk, which previously worked on vaccines for the Ebola virus.

According to the state health watchdog, which oversees the institute, Russia has tested about 116,000 people for the coronavirus since March 16.

plasma-derived therapy against coronavirus currently in development has the potential to be among the first approved treatments for the deadly pathogen.

The Japanese pharmaceutical company could have an edge because the treatment involves a process that already has approval from regulators. The key point in negotiations with regulators for approval is whether it has the necessary concentration of the antibody, or titer, needed to fight the Covid-19 disease, said Julie Kim, Zurich-based president of Takeda’s plasma-derived therapies unit.

The process to manufacture the therapy, using antibodies from recovered patients, is the same as Takeda’s other immunoglobulin products, which have approval from regulatory bodies around the world including the U.S. Food & Drug Administration, Kim said.

“We don’t have to demonstrate safety, we just have to agree with the regulatory agencies on how to demonstrate that the titer of antibody present in the final product is sufficient to be effective against the disease,” Kim told Bloomberg in a phone interview. She said the response from the FDA and European Medicines Agency would be key to the timing for approval, which could be as early as in nine months.

Takeda shares rose as much as 1.3% in afternoon trading in Tokyo, erasing an earlier drop of as much as 4.6% amid a broader market rebound.

Takeda is one of many pharmaceutical companies racing to find a treatment for the coronavirus that has swept across the globe, killing more than 7,000. The U.S. has been granting fast-track approvals for drugmakers developing therapies, and Gilead Sciences Inc. and AbbVie Inc. have emerged as front-runners for potential treatments.

A roundtable of pharmaceutical executives told U.S. President Donald Trump this month that antiviral medications could be available for patients in a matter of months. Vaccines, which would prevent healthy people from contracting the disease, are further from reaching doctors’ offices and pharmacy shelves.

(This story has not been edited by Kashmir Today staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Iran: CoronaVirus death toll rises to 988. 135 new deaths reported in the last 24 hours.

Total COVID2019 cases in Iran stand at 16,169.

Iran Health Ministry Statement.

Gulf News

Dubai: Prayers at mosques and all other places of worship in the UAE have been suspended as of 9pm on Monday as a precautionary measure against coronavirus.

The National Emergency of Crisis and Disasters Management Authority and the General Authority of Islamic Affairs and Awqaf temporarily suspended prayers at mosques and places of worship in the country as of 9pm Monday for four weeks as a precautionary measure amid global COVID-19 outbreak.

The decision to suspend prayers in mosques, chapels, places of worship and their facilities will be reviewed after four weeks from now.

The decision is part of the precautionary and preventive measures taken by the UAE against coronavirus, COVID- 19, and based on the instructions of the Ministry of Health Prevention and the Fatwa of the Emirates Fatwa Council in coordination with the federal and local religious and health authorities.

The UAE’s concerned authorities called on citizens, residents and visitors to comply with this announcement, which is in the interest of the people.

(This story has not been edited by Kashmir Today staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Fox News

Iran reported more than 100 coronavirus deaths Sunday, the nation’s biggest single-day jump in fatalities since the outbreak began, while Iranian President Hassan Rouhani ruled out a general quarantine amid the spreading global pandemic.

Iran’s Health Ministry reported 113 new deaths, bringing the death toll to 724, and confirmed COVID-19 cases reached nearly 14,000. There are concerns the number of infections in Iran – considered the epicenter of the pandemic in the Middle East – is much higher than the confirmed cases reported by the government.

In addition to ruling out a general quarantine, Rouhani on Sunday said the government was working to keep the nation’s borders open.

Iran has been slow to adopt measures to slow the virus’ spread, citing the crippling U.S. sanctions. Other countries across the Middle East have already imposed sweeping travel restrictions, canceled public events and called on non-essential businesses to close for the coming weeks. Many have temporarily closed schools and universities.

Iranian health officials have voiced concerns that if the rapid rise in cases continues, health facilities might not be able to accommodate all patients.

“If the trend continues, there will not be enough capacity,” Ali Reza Zali, who is leading the campaign against the outbreak, was quoted as saying earlier by the state-run IRNA news agency.

IRAN DIGS MASSIVE TRENCHES TO BURY CORONAVIRUS DEAD, REPORT SAYS

Iran is believed to have around 110,000 hospital beds, including 30,000 in the capital, Tehran. Authorities have pledged to set up mobile clinics as needed.

Zali also acknowledged that “many” of those who have died from the COVID-19 illness caused by the virus were otherwise healthy, a rare admission by local authorities that the virus does not only prey on the sick and elderly.

Health Ministry figures show that while 55 percent of fatalities were in their 60s, some 15 percent were younger than 40.

The virus has infected more than 150,000 people worldwide and killed more than 5,800. More than 70,000 people worldwide have recovered after being infected.

For most people, the virus causes only mild or moderate symptoms, such as fever and cough. For some, especially older adults and people with existing health problems, it can cause more severe illness, including pneumonia. Most people recover in a matter of weeks.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

(This story has not been edited by Kashmir Today staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)