China locks down 5 cities over virus
Coronavirus outbreak mars China’s NY fete
Beijing, Jan, 23: China on Thursday locked down five cities, including Wuhan, suspending all public transport in an unprecedented move to contain the coronavirus that has infected over 630 people and left 18 others dead, dampening the celebrations of the Lunar New Year.
On Thursday evening, Chinese officials announced suspension of public transport in five cities — Huanggang, Ezhou, Zhijiang, Qianjiang and Wuhan in Hubei province, official media reported.
Wuhan, the city of 11 million people where the virus is believed to have first emerged, has no trains or planes in or out.
Nationwide, a total of 18 people have died. While 17 of them died in and around Wuhan, one death was reported from outside Hubei — the virus epicentre.
According to the health commission in northern Hebei province, which borders Beijing, an 80-year-old man diagnosed with the new virus died on January
22. The victims’ average age was 73, with the oldest
89 and the youngest 48. So far 631 cases have been confirmed in 25 provinciallevel regions in the country.
The government has sealed Wuhan and Huanggang, a prefecture level city with over 7.4 million people, in an unprecedented
We are feeling as though it is the end of the world, — A RESIDENT OF WUHAN WROTE
effort to curb the spread of the deadly novel coronavirus. The other three cities too have substantial population.
From 10 am on Thursday, all public transportation, including city buses, subways, ferries and long-distance coaches in Wuhan were suspended, and outbound channels at airports and railway stations closed until further notice.
The city officials have asked people in both the cities not to leave. Wuhan is a major transportation hub and home to many universities.
The Wuhan lockdown is a cause of concern for Indian students who still remained there. The city has about 700 Indian students, majority of them studying medicine.
Beijing, Jan. 23: The novel Chinese coronavirus, which has so far claimed 17 lives and infected over 550 people, likely resided in snakes before being transmitted to humans, according to a new study that may help design better defensive strategies against future outbreaks of the deadly pathogen.
The researchers, including Wei Ji from Peking University Health Science Centre in China, said patients who became infected with the coronavirus — named 2019-nCoV by the World Health Organisation (WHO) —were exposed to wildlife animals at a wholesale market, where seafood, poultry, snakes, bats, and farm animals were sold.
The study, published in the Journal of Medical Virology, offers insights on the origins of the most recent outbreak of pneumonia caused by the virus, which started in the middle of December 2019
■ RESEARCHERS SAID patients who became infected with the coronavirus — named 2019nCoV by the WHO — were exposed to wildlife animals at a wholesale market, where seafood, poultry, snakes, bats, and farm animals were sold
in the city of Wuhan, China, and has now spread to Hong Kong, Singapore, Thailand, and Japan. Conducting a detailed genetic analysis of the 2019-nCoV, and comparing it with those of different coronaviruses from various geographic locations and host species, the study found that the new virus formed from a combination of CoV found in bats, and another of unknown origin. “It is critical to determine the animal reservoir of the 2019-nCoV in order to understand the molecular mechanism of its crossspecies spread,” the scientists reported in the study.
The new virus, the scientists said, developed a mix, or “recombination”, of a viral protein which recognises and binds to host cells. This recognition is key to allowing viruses to enter host cells, and cause infection and disease. On further analysis, the researchers found evidence that the 2019-nCoV may have resided in snakes before being transmitted to humans. “Additionally, our findings suggest that snake is the most probable wildlife animal reservoir for the 2019-nCoV,” they said.