Shanghai plans to build a 3,250-bed COVID-19 quarantine facility on a small island close to its city centre as China stands by its stringent zero-COVID controls, rather than relaxing curbs as many other countries have done.
The city awarded a 1.38 billion yuan ($191 million) contract to build the centre on Fuxing Island, located in the Huangpu River, to state-owned builder China Communications Construction Corp, according to a government document.
The document said the site, which will take in positive cases and their close contacts, would be 140,000 square metres large and have 3,009 rooms. It did not give a timeline for the project's completion.
The Shanghai government did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Wednesday.
China has vowed to stick to its zero-COVID policy despite growing public pushback and its toll on the economy, especially in cities like Shanghai which endured a painful two month-long city-wide lockdown that was lifted on June 1.
Shanghai, like other Chinese cities, has continued to battle sporadic outbreaks with repeated mass testing and targeted lockdowns.
Other localities have built similar quarantine sites. The southern metropolis of Guangzhou has a 5,000-bed quarantine centre that is mainly meant for travellers entering China from abroad.
The World Health Organization said on Wednesday it will temporarily suspend the standard two-dose vaccination regimen for cholera, replacing it with a single dose due to vaccine shortages and rising outbreaks worldwide.
The U.N. agency said "the exceptional decision reflects the grave state of the cholera vaccine stockpile" at a time when countries like Haiti, Syria and Malawi are fighting large outbreaks of the deadly disease, which spreads through contact with contaminated water and food.
As of October 9, Haiti had confirmed 32 cases and 18 deaths from the disease, while many cases were still awaiting confirmation.
"The pivot in strategy will allow for the doses to be used in more countries, at a time of unprecedented rise in cholera outbreaks worldwide," WHO said in a statement on Wednesday.
The WHO's emergencies director Mike Ryan told reporters in a briefing that the change in strategy was a sign of the "scale of the crisis" caused by a lack of focus on safe sanitation and immunization for all at risk.
"It's a sad day for us to have to go backwards," he said.
The one-dose strategy had proved to be effective as a response to cholera outbreaks, the agency said, although the duration of protection is limited and appears to be much lower in children.
The disease often causes no or mild symptoms, but serious cases cause acute diarrhea and can kill within hours if untreated.
Cholera cases have surged this year, especially in places of poverty and conflict, with outbreaks reported in 29 countries and fatality rates rising sharply. The WHO also said that climate change means that cholera is a risk in an increasing number of countries, as the bacteria causing the illness multiplies faster in warmer waters.
A cholera outbreak in Syria has already killed at least 33 people, posing a danger across the frontlines of the country's 11-year war and stirring fears in crowded camps for the displaced.
A cholera outbreak in a north Cameroon refugee camp has killed three people and infected at least 36, the UN refugee agency said on Wednesday.
The first case was confirmed on Saturday in the Minawao refugee camp, which hosts around 75,000 people who fled Boko Haram insurgents in neighboring Nigeria.
Most HKMA summit attendees will stay at the Four Seasons
Summit details are still being discussed, subject to change
Hong Kong is unlikely to make any major changes to Covid restrictions for inbound travelers before abanking summitnext month, but is considering concessions including allowing attendees to leave the city via private jet should they test positive for the virus.
The health bureau is in discussions with the Hong Kong Monetary Authority to finalize details for the two-day summit set for early November, including what to do if a participant is infected.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott's "Operation Lone Star" has deployed thousands of Texas National Guard soldiers and Department of Public Safety troopers across the border this year despite the lack of effort from the Biden administration. In doing so, Texas has seized enough fentanyl to kill every American.
"In the past year, Texas law enforcement alone has seized over 342 million lethal doses of fentanyl—enough to kill every man, woman, and child in the United States," according to Abbott's office.
The announcement comes after Raul Ortiz, The Head of The US Border Patrol, testified under oath that the White House's border strategy of "no consequences" for illegal immigrants had caused one of the most significant border "crises" in years.
Since President Biden entered office, around 5 million illegal immigrants have crossed onto US soil -- that's almost equivalent to the entire population of Ireland. The crisis unfolded after Biden rolled back Trump-era policies.
FAIR President Dan Stein recently warned: "The endless flow of illegal aliens and the incursion of lethal narcotics pouring across our border will not end until this administration demonstrates a willingness to enforce our laws." FAIR is one of the largest immigration reform groups in the country.
The consequence of migrants and drugs flowing over the border has also led to a surge in fentanyl hitting American streets, triggering a tidal wave of overdose deaths.
"Fentanyl remains the single deadliest drug threat our state and nation has ever encountered, killing four Texans every day.
"Fentanyl is a clandestine killer, with Mexican drug cartels strategically manufacturing and distributing the drug disguised as painkillers, stimulants, anti-anxiety drugs, and even candy," Abbott said in a statement on Monday.
Under the Biden administration, teen overdose deaths have never been higher due to synthetic opiates. Last year, more than 100,000 Americans died of drug overdoses.
Monday's report in the Daily Mail that the University of Boston has engineered a chimeric COVID that has an 80% kill rate in humanized mice has caused quite the stir.
To review, in an effort to research what makes Omicron so transmissible - and funded in part by grants from the NIH and Anthony Fauci's NIAID - a team of researchers cobbled the Omicron spike protein to the original strain of Covid-19. The resulting virus was five times more infectious than Omicron.
"The Omicron spike (S) protein, with an unusually large number of mutations, is considered the major driver of these phenotypes. We generated chimeric recombinant SARS-CoV-2 encoding the S gene of Omicron in the backbone of an ancestral SARS-CoV-2 isolate and compared this virus with the naturally circulating Omicron variant," reads the pre-print.
The authors speculate that their chimeric strain is unlikely to be as deadly in humans as it was in the mice because the specific breed used in testing are more susceptible to severe Covid.
Gain of Function?
"The research is a clear example of gain of function research of concern and enhanced potential pandemic pathogen (ePPP) research," said Dr Richard Ebright, a chemist at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey, adding "'It is especially concerning that this new US-government ePPP research - like the previous US-government ePPP research on chimeric SARS-related coronaviruses at Wuhan Institute of Virology that may have caused the pandemic - appears not to have undergone the prior risk-benefit review mandated under US-government policies."
Gain of function research was largely restricted in the US until 2017, when the National Institutes of Health began to allow it to take place using government funds.
Previously it had been halted from 2014 to 2017 over concerns that it could lead to the inadvertent creation of a pandemic. -Daily Mail
The University of Boston refuted the notion that they were performing GoF research, adding that it was reviewed and approved by the Institutional Biosafety Committee (IBC) and the Boston Public Health Commission (don't you feel safer already?).
"This research mirrors and reinforces the findings of other, similar research performed by other organizations," said a spokesperson. "Ultimately, this research will provide a public benefit by leading to better, targeted therapeutic interventions to help fight against future pandemics."
Peter Daszak again?
Which leads us to today's report...
Just two months before the '80% mouse kill rate' SARS paper was published, EcoHealth Alliance - the NYC-based nonprofit headed by Peter Daszak (and was also funded by the NIH and Fauci's NIAID to genetically manipulate bat Covid in Wuhan, China) - bragged about a $1 million NSF grant to work with Boston University on a project to 'work towards predicting and preventing future pandemics."
NEW YORK – 30, AUGUST, 2022 – EcoHealth Alliance (EHA), in partnership with Boston University, was awarded a $1 million Predictive Intelligence for Pandemic Prevention Phase I (PIPP) grant by the National Science Foundation. The team of scientists will strategize methods of early infectious disease detection and intervention.
...
EHA researchers will focus on predictive models of location and likely pathogens. This will be accomplished by first compiling a list of mutagenic RNA viruses with a high risk of spillover based on their ability to spread, cause outbreak, and cause severe illness. Next, the team will identify locations at risk of spillover and localized spreadby assembling a list of animals known to host one or more of the focal viruses. -EHA
And from Boston University's press release announcing the partnership:
Of note, several researchers from the EcoHealth-allied National Emerging Infectious Diseases Laboratories (NEIDL) were involved in the creation of the 80% mouse death chimeric SARS-CoV-2.
Last year we reported that 18 months before the pandemic, scientists in Wuhan, China submitted a proposal to release enhanced airborne coronaviruses into the wild in an effort to inoculate them against diseases that could have otherwise jumped to humans, according to The Telegraph, citing leaked grant proposals from 2018.
The bid was submitted by Daszak, who was hoping to use genetic engineering to cobble "human-specific cleavage sites" onto bat Covid 'which would make it easier for the virus to enter human cells' - a method which would coincidentally answer a longstanding question among the scientific community as to howSARS-CoV-2 evolved to become so infectious to humans.
Perhaps Daszak is teaching BU scientists about sequencing spike proteins?
Six e-cigarette brands could be pulled from shelves in the US amid the Biden administration's crackdown on the devices.
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in conjunction with the Department of Justice filed suit against six e-cigarette companies — E-Cig Crib in Minnesota, Soul Vapor LLC in West Virginia, Super Vape’z LLC in Washington, Vapor Craft LLC in Georgia, Lucky’s Vape & Smoke Shop in Kansas, and Butt Out in Arizona.
The agencies behind the suits argued that all of the shops ignored previous warnings for failing to submit required applications to sell their products on the US market.
Under current rules vape manufacturers have to complete stringent pre-market applications to legally sell in the US.
These are in part to assure that the companies are not claiming to make a device that is a safe smoking alternative.
'We will not stand by as manufacturers repeatedly break the law, especially after being afforded multiple opportunities to comply,' said Dr Brian King, director of the FDA's Center for Tobacco Products.
The requested injunctions, if granted, would compel the companies to cease manufacturing, selling, and distributing their products permanently.
The Biden administration is cracking down on six different e-cigarette makers for illegally marketing their products despite numerous warnings from federal regulators.
The government's request for injunction against the six companies mark the latest move by the federal government to make a dent in e-cigarette use, which has exploded in recent years among youth.
The major players such as Juul and Puff Bar are not implicated in the administration's request for permanent injunctions - but have previous drawn FDA warnings.
The popular devices faulted for hooking teenagers thanks to slick marketing remain on store shelves, though fruit and mint flavors that appeal to children are banned.
Tuesday's move marks the administration's latest effort to curtail sales and distribution of risky nicotine vapes.
It may not make a dent in the staggering number of teens who have become dependent on the electronic devices, though.
'These cases are an important step in stopping the illegal sale of unauthorized electronic nicotine delivery system products,' said Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Brian M. Boynton, head of the Justice Department's Civil Division.
Mr Boynton added, 'The Department of Justice will continue to work closely with FDA to stop the distribution of illegal, unauthorized tobacco products.'
At least 2.5million US children were hooked on e-cigarettes in 2022, a jump of 500,000, or of 24 per cent, from 2021, according to federal tracking.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported earlier this month that high-strength disposable devices such as Elf bars were the most common type of device used (55 per cent).
Overall 14 per cent of high schoolers and three per cent of middle schoolers were estimated to be using the devices regularly.
The CDC's findings represent the first year-on-year increase in e-cigarette use among US youth since 2019. Just over two million reported use in 2021.
The vast majority of children — 85 per cent — had used flavored e-cigarettes that federal regulators have cracked down on in recent years amid concerns they are purposefully marketing themselves to children.
The FDA has historically been charged with letting bad actors in the vaping industry proceed with business as usual without regulatory oversight.
Under the former Trump administration, the FDA began cracking down on sales of flavored nicotine e-liquids made by major companies like Juul.
Former FDA Commissioner Dr Scott Gottlieb focused much of his tenure at the Trump administration on reducing the rates of teen e-cig use.
Under Dr Gottlieb, the FDA set up new barriers to sales of flavored e-liquids and cigarettes to teens, took flavors appealing to kids off shelves, and tightened regulations of vaping company marketing tactics.
The agency has only had jurisdiction over the vaping market since 2016, having expanded its oversight of combustible tobacco to include electronic nicotine delivery systems, including Juul products.
Pennsylvania Democratic Senate candidate John Fetterman released a letter Wednesday from a doctor who claimed the commonwealth’s lieutenant governor has “no work restrictions” after suffering a stroke in May — but failed to disclose he donated hundreds of dollars to the candidate after becoming his primary care physician.
Dr. Clifford Chen wrote in the letter, dated Oct. 15, that Fetterman was “recovering well from his stroke and his health has continued to improve” — and that he “can work full duty in public office.”
What Chen did not say, and what Federal Election Commission records show, is that he donated to Fetterman’s campaign on at least four separate occasions.
The first donation from Chen, of $500, was made back in June 2021, 11 months before Fetterman suffered his stroke in the same week he won a convincing victory in the Democratic primary.
Letter from Dr. Clifford Chen about John Fetterman’s recovery from a stroke the candidate suffered in May.
Chen donated another $500 to Fetterman’s campaign on July 8 of this year and ponied up another $230 on July 28. The fourth and final known donation from Chen, of $100, went through on Sept. 23.
FEC records also show that Chen has donated more than $2,000 to Democratic organizations this year, including the Democratic National Committee, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.
The letter noted that Chen became Fetterman’s primary care physician in May, though it was not clear whether that happened before or after the stroke.
Fetterman, the Democratic candidate for Senate from Pennsylvania, has questions about his fitness for office after suffering a stroke earlier this year.Getty Images
Fetterman’s Republican opponent, celebrity heart surgeon Dr. Mehmet Oz, has repeatedly pressed Fetterman to release his medical records, saying that Pennsylvania voters deserve to know whether his opponent is capable of carrying out the duties of a senator.
Rachel Tripp, Oz’s senior communications adviser, called Chen’s assessment of Fetterman “good news.”
“And now that he apparently is healthy, he can debate for 90 minutes, start taking live questions from voters and reporters, and do a second debate now too,” Tripp said in a statement.
Dr. Mehmet Oz, the Republican candidate for Senate from Pennsylvania, has challenged Fetterman’s health.Getty Images
The two candidates are scheduled to face off for the first — and possibly only time — on Tuesday.
The letter was released days after Fetterman granted an interview to NBC News in which he used a closed-captioning monitor to read questions, prompting fresh concern about his cognitive abilities.
In the interview, Fetterman at times stumbled over his words, at one point struggling to pronounce “empathetic” and using the moment as an example of the stroke’s lingering effects.
Democratic Senate candidate from Pennsylvania John Fetterman poses with supporters at a recent rally.Getty Images
NBC News’ Dasha Burns, who conducted the sit down, told MSNBC host Katy Tur that Fetterman could understand the questions once he read the monitor and noted he also had “some problems, some challenges with speech.”
“Just in some of the small talk prior to the interview, before the closed captioning was up and running, it did seem that he had a hard time understanding our conversation,” Burns said.
In response, Fetterman’s wife Gisele accused Burns of being “ableist” and called on her and NBC to apologize.
Dr. Mehmet Oz, the Republican Senate candidate from Pennsylvania, holds a news conference recently.AP
Chen said in his letter that Fetterman’s speech was normal, but he “continues to exhibit symptoms of an auditory processing disorder which can come across as hearing difficulty. Occasional words he will ‘miss’ which seems like he doesn’t hear the word but it is actually not processed properly.”
“His hearing of sound such as music is not affected,” the doctor added.
