Tag: Wuhan

  • Wuhan officially bans eating wild animals

    Wuhan officially bans eating wild animals

    The city at the centre of the coronavirus crisis — Wuhan — has banned the eating of wild animals and Chinese farmers are being offered cash to quit breeding exotic animals. Both moves come amid mounting pressure for China to crack down on the illegal wildlife trade blamed by many for the pandemic that has killed more than 330,000 people and left over 5 million infected.

    The local administration in Wuhan, the city of about 11 million people in China’s central Hubei province where cases of the new coronavirus were first recorded late last year, announced that the eating of all wild animals was officially banned.

    The city also banned virtually all hunting of wild animals within its limits, declaring Wuhan “a wildlife sanctuary,” with the exception of government-sanctioned hunting for “scientific research, population regulation, monitoring of epidemic diseases and other special circumstances”.

    Wuhan also imposed strict new controls on the breeding of all wild animals, making it clear that none could be reared as food. City officials said the local administration would take part in the wider national scheme to buy wild animal breeders out.

    The national plan is the first time Chinese authorities have pledged to buy out breeders in an attempt to curb exotic animal breeding, animal rights activists say.

    China had already banned the sale of wild animals for food as the new coronavirus — COVID-19 — spread around the world, citing the risk of diseases spreading to humans, but the trade remains legal for other purposes, including research and traditional medicine.

    The virus that causes COVID-19 is widely believed to have passed from bats to people, possibly via another species, before spreading worldwide.

  • PIA flight to bring students back from Wuhan

    PIA flight to bring students back from Wuhan

     A day after the government announced to repatriate students from the Chinese city of Wuhan, Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) spokesperson Abdullah Hafeez on Saturday confirmed that a special flight of the national flag carrier will bring back stranded nationals on May 18.

    According to Hafeez, some 250 students will be brought back on the first flight which will land in Islamabad.

    The schedule for three more flights will be announced next week, he added.

    The announcement was originally made by Special Assistant to Prime Minister for Overseas Pakistani Syed Zulfikar Abbas Bukhari on Twitter. “I’m very happy for the 1st flight going to Wuhan to bring back our Pakistani students on 18/05/2020,” he wrote.

    “You guys have been the bravest soldiers, PM Imran Khan & Pakistan are proud of you,” he added.

  • Broken seals at Wuhan lab holding 1,500 different strains of virus, including bat coronavirus

    Broken seals at Wuhan lab holding 1,500 different strains of virus, including bat coronavirus

    In a rare glimpse inside a Chinese laboratory in Wuhan amid global suspicions about the COVID-19 pandemic, scenes from the “secretive” Institute of Virology have sent shockwaves over the internet.

    According to Mail Online, pictures from inside the laboratory show a broken seal on the door of one of the refrigerators used to hold 1,500 different strains of virus, including the bat coronavirus that has jumped to humans with over 2.4 million infections and over 165,000 deaths since the first case in November last year.

    The pictures, first released by a state-owned Chinese newspaper in 2018, were also published on Twitter last month, before being deleted.

    Meanwhile, according to New York Post, the director of the lab denies that the bug accidentally spread from his facility.

    “There’s no way this virus came from us,” Yuan Zhiming, director of the Wuhan Institute of Virology, told state media.

    Yuan admitted that the lab is studying “different areas related to the coronavirus,” but told the English-language state broadcaster CGTN that none of his staff has been infected.

    “As people who carry out viral studies we clearly know what kind of research is going on at the institute and how the institute manages viruses and samples,” he said.

    He said that since the lab is in Wuhan “people can’t help but make associations”, but claimed that some media outlets are “deliberately trying to mislead people”.

    But officials in the past have raised concerns over the safety conditions of the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

    In March 2018, US science diplomats dispatched to the lab issued two “sensitive” diplomatic cables about inadequate safety measures at the lab, the Washington Post reported, citing intelligence sources.

    The first cable warned the experiments conducted in the lab on coronavirus in bats “represented a risk of a new SARS-like pandemic,” according to the report.

    The cable, written by two US-China embassy officials, said there is a “serious shortage of appropriately trained technicians and investigators needed to safely operate this high-containment laboratory,” according to the report.

  • ‘China manipulated number of COVID-19 infections for president’s visit’

    ‘China manipulated number of COVID-19 infections for president’s visit’

    The number of novel coronavirus patients in Wuhan, the epicenter of China’s virus outbreak, was manipulated in time for President Xi Jinping’s visit last week, a local doctor was quoted as saying by Tokyo-based Kyodo News.

    According to the Japanese media outlet, a number of symptomatic patients were abruptly released from quarantine early while a portion of testing was suspended.

    China’s health authorities had last Thursday reported no new cases of coronavirus in Wuhan, marking the first time for the city to have no instances of local transmission since the viral epidemic began late last year.

    But the doctor, who works at a quarantine facility, said the government tally “cannot be trusted.”

    The number of patients currently undergoing treatment is deliberately being reduced in an effort to show the Xi government’s success in combatting the epidemic, he said.

    The doctor, whose responsibilities include determining whether a patient is discharged from a hospital, expressed strong concerns that if the truth remains hidden from the public, another outbreak could occur.

    Guidelines from the National Health Commission stipulate that patients must test negative for the virus twice and be cleared for pneumonia via a computerised tomography — imaging through X-rays or ultrasound — scan before being discharged.

    But according to the doctor, from around the time of Xi’s visit, even though his patients still exhibited signs of pneumonia, the patients were released from quarantine at the discretion of a “specialist” from the epidemic prevention and control authority.

    From then on, the criteria for discharging patients became loose, and “a mass release of infected patients began,” he said.

    Also, patient interviews with those exhibiting symptoms such as fever were simplified, and blood tests to detect antibodies produced during infection were discontinued. As a result, “suspected patients were released back into society,” he said.

    Xi, on March 10, made his first visit to the central Chinese city of Wuhan since the outbreak began, emphasizing the government’s achievements in its epidemic prevention and control efforts.

    According to the National Health Commission, nearly 58,000 people have been discharged from hospitals in Hubei Province, where Wuhan is the capital. Beginning in mid-March, the number of new infections in Wuhan has stayed below a dozen patients a day.

  • 103-year-old Chinese women recovers from coronavirus

    103-year-old Chinese women recovers from coronavirus

    Coronavirus has killed more than 8,000 people globally. What is more dangerous is the huge flow of non-scientific information coming from every corner of the world on how the disease can be cured.

    So far, scientists are experimenting with new methods to find the cure. However, they have not achieved this milestone yet.

    Amid this panic, it is being believed that the disease is lethal for people who have crossed the age of 40. However, Zhang Guangfen, a 103-year-old Chinese woman from Wuhan, has recovered from this disease and came back home just after spending six days in the hospital, Daily Watch Chutian reported.

    She was diagnosed at Liyuan Hospital, Tongji Media College, in Wuhan on the 1st of March.

  • Edhi Foundation wants to evacuate Pakistani students from China

    On the request of Pakistani students stranded in Wuhan, the Abdul Sattar Edhi Foundation had decided to evacuate them by arranging chartered flights.

    The Edhi Foundation on Sunday wrote a letter to Foreign Minister (FM) Shah Mehmood Qureshi asking for permission to evacuate students from China’s city of Wuhan.

    In the letter, Faisal Edhi, managing trustee of the foundation formally requested the foreign minister to grant them permission to evacuate Pakistani students that have been trapped in Wuhan of Hubei province of China.

    “The Pakistani students are in our contact and we want to evacuate them from China,” Edhi wrote in the letter.

    The letter states that coronavirus has been spreading fast and Pakistani students are suffering from stress and facing a serious food shortage.

    “Most of the Pakistani students are not infected and we can save them,” said the letter.

    The letter highlights that many countries such as America, Australia, New Zealand, Germany and India have already evacuated their citizens from Wuhan and are taking precautionary measures on their own.

    He not only asked the government for permission but also asked to assist in identifying the areas where students will be quarantined until they are tested and cleared.

    Once the government grants them permission, the Edhi Foundation will contact airlines and arrange chartered flights to evacuate the students at the earliest, elaborated Faisal Edhi.

  • ‘India offered to evacuate Pakistani students from coronavirus-hit China’

    ‘India offered to evacuate Pakistani students from coronavirus-hit China’

    India had offered to evacuate Pakistani students from China’s Wuhan — the epicentre of deadly coronavirus –, Minister of External Affairs S Jaishankar told Rajya Sabha [Upper House of Indian Parliament], India Today reported.

    According to reports, replying to a question posed by Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-nominated lawmaker Rupa Ganguly, S Jaishankar told the house that before the two Air India flights were sent in, India had offered ‘bring back all the people in our neighbourhood’.

    “At the time when two flights were going, we had told all the students and the larger community in Wuhan that we were prepared not only to bring back our own people but bring back all the people in our neighbourhood who would like to come back,” Jaishankar said.

    “This was an offer which was made to all our neighbours, but of them, seven nationals of Maldives chose to avail the offer. But the offer was made to everybody,” the minister clarified.

    Last week, two Air India flights had brought back 638 Indian nationals and seven nationals of Maldives. 80 Indian students left behind in Wuhan

    The minister of external affairs informed the fouse that despite an evacuation effort, 80 Indians — including 10 who were barred from boarding the evacuation flight as they showed symptoms of coronavirus — have remained back in Wuhan.

    Jaishankar said that the 70 Indians chose not to be evacuated, but the Indian Embassy is in constant touch with them all. “I want to assure the house and the families of those in Wuhan that the embassy is in touch with all students and is regularly monitoring their welfare,” he said.

    The minister also applauded the efforts of two embassy officials who risked their lives and traveled from Beijing to Wuhan to help in evacuation efforts.