As the coronavirus continued its rapid spread throughout China and the rest of the world this past week, one thing became increasingly certain: There’s a lot that’s still unknown about the newly discovered and sometimes deadly pathogen.
A new report by biological scientists from the prestigious South China University of Technology in Guangzhou, China, contradicts Beijing, who said that Coroanvirus spread from contaminated bats being sold at a food market.
Biologists Botao Xiao and Lei Xiao, published a pre-print entitled “The possible origins of 2019-nCoV coronavirus”, in the report they described how “the killer coronavirus probably originated from a laboratory in Wuhan”. The report added: “We noted two laboratories conducting research on bat coronavirus in Wuhan, one of which was only 280 metres from the seafood market.
“Our proposal provided an alternative origin of the coronavirus in addition to natural recombination and intermediate host.” The scientists in the alarming report contested official findings that the pathogen first made the jump from bats to humans in the Wuhan wet market. They said: “The probability was very low for the bats to fly to the market. “According to municipal reports and the testimonies of 31 residents and 28 visitors, the bat was never a food source in the city, and no bat was traded in the market.
The paper claimed: “In one of their studies, 155 bats including Rhinolophus affinis were captured in Hubei province, and another 450 bats were captured in Zhejiang province.
The expert who studied the collection of bats at the laboratory had described how he was once “attacked by bats and the blood of a bat shot onto his skin”. The paper added: “He knew the extreme danger of the infection so he quarantined himself for fourteen days. In another accident, he quarantined himself again because bats urinated on him. The scientists claim the laboratory is beside the Union Hospital where the first group of doctors were infected during this epidemic. The paper concluded: “It is plausible that the virus leaked out and contaminated the initial patients in this epidemic, though solid proofs are needed in future studies.” A second laboratory was identified around seven miles from the seafood market, belonging to Wuhan Institute of Virology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. This laboratory reported the Chinese horseshoe bats are a natural reservoir for the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus, SARS-CoV, which caused the 2002 to 2003 pandemic.
As of early Sunday, the number of those infected rose to nearly 70,000, the tally of the dead surpassed 1,660, and the number of “severe” cases of the disease in China alone topped 11,000. In the U.S. the official infection count remained at 15 — but that appears increasingly in question, especially after it was discovered that tourists to Hawaii who recently returned to Japan reported they likely had the virus during their stay on the stat
Meanwhile it’s possible to get infected by the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) a second time, according to doctors on the frontline in China’s city of Wuhan, leading to death from heart failure in some cases. The claim is made by doctors working in the Hubei Province capital that is at the center of the epidemic.
Meanwhile two Maltese nationals have been quarantined as a precautionary measure, the government announced on Sunday afternoon.
The two passengers were on the cruise liner MS Westerdam which disembarked in Cambodia. American passengers were taken off a cruise liner on Sunday to fly home after being quarantined for two weeks off Japan, while China said the rate of new coronavirus cases had slowed, calling that proof its steps to fight the outbreak were working. An announcement on the tannoy aboard the Diamond Princess, where 3,700 passengers and crew have been held since Feb. 3, told Americans to get ready to disembark on Sunday evening for charter flights home. Passengers wearing masks could later be seen waving through the windows of buses parked near the ship.
Canadian, Italian, South Korean and Hong Kong passengers were expected to follow soon, after their governments also announced plans to repatriate passengers. “Leaving in a few hours. No details. Might be going to Texas or Nebraska,” Gay Courter, one of the American passengers on board, told Reuters. She said she expected to spend another two weeks in quarantine on U.S. soil.
Seventy new coronavirus cases were confirmed on board the Diamond Princess, bringing the total on the ship to 355, by far the largest cluster of cases outside China.
Within China, authorities reported 2,009 new cases on Sunday, noting that this was down from more than 2,600 the previous day. They said this showed their efforts to halt the spread of the virus were bearing fruit.
“The effect of the coronavirus controls is appearing,” Mi Feng, spokesman for the Health Commission, told reporters.
Mail / Star / Taiwan News / Newsbook / Reuters
