Covid outbreak in Beijing could have begun in April, says China’s CDC
nBEIJING/NEWYORK: While Chinese officials claimed to have brought under control the new Covid-19 outbreak in Beijing, infections continued to rise in other parts of the world. Gao Fu, the director of the Chinese CDC, said the outbreak probably did not occur in early June or late May, but a month earlier.
Beijing recorded 158 infections since June 11 in its worst outbreak since February. The new cases have been traced to the sprawling Xinfadi market.
GLOBAL DEATHS (BY CASES)
phone conversation with his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi on Wednesday, that Chinese troops entered the Indian side in Galwan Valley and sought to erect a structure.
“Given its responsible approach to border management, India is very clear that all its activities are always within the Indian side of the LAC. We expect the Chinese side to also confine its activities to its side of the LAC,” external affairs ministry spokesperson Anurag Srivastava told a weekly media briefing.
Earlier in the day, Srivastava dismissed the Chinese military’s claim of sovereignty over Galwan Valley, which is at the heart of the stand-off. He pointed to the June 6 agreement reached at a meeting of senior military commanders for de-escalation and disengagement along the LAC, and said: “Making exaggerated and untenable claims is contrary to this understanding.”
After the clash of June 15, a statement in Mandarin issued by thewesterncommandofchina’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) said: “The sovereignty of the Galwan River Valley has always been ours.”
The Indian Army also asserted that no soldiers were missing in action after the June 15 brawl in Galwan Valley, in which the Chinese side also purportedly suffered casualties.
“It is clarified that there are no Indian troops missing in action,” the army said in a terse statement, responding to reports that some troops were unaccounted for after the seven-hour clash that involved more than 500 rival troops.
The June 15 clash marked the first Indian casualties in a border skirmish with PLA since October 1975, when Chinese troops ambushed an Indian patrol in Arunachal Pradesh’s Tulung La sector and shot four soldiers dead.
The soldiers exchanged blows, threw stones at each other, and Chinese troops attacked Indian soldiers with iron rods and nailstudded clubs. Some soldiers from both sides fell into the river and their bodies were retrieved on Tuesday morning, Indian Army officials said on condition of anonymity.
The brawl left 76 Indian soldiers injured, including 18 with serious injuries who are now said to be stable. Indian Army officials claimed 43 Chinese were killed or seriously injured, citing radio intercepts and other intelligence. Fatal casualties on the Chinese side reportedly include a colonel, but HT could not independently verify this.
The external affairs ministry said India had expected de-escalation and disengagement along the LAC in Eastern Ladakh to “unfold smoothly” after senior military commanders of both sides reached a consensus on these efforts during the meeting in Chushul-moldo region on June 6.
External affairs ministry spokesperson Srivastava reiterated India’s assertion the Chinese side was to blame for the violence as it “departed from the consensus to respect the LAC in Galwan Valley”.
The violent face-off of June 15, he said, occurred “when the Chinese side unilaterally attempted to change the status quo there” and took “premeditated and planned action that was directly responsible for the resulting violence and casualties suffered by both sides”. He added: “This could have been avoided had the agreement at the higher level been scrupulously followed by the Chinese side.”
Srivastava said that during his phone conversation with Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi on Wednesday, Jaishankar “conveyed that the need of the hour was for the Chinese side to reassess its actions and take corrective steps”.
He added: “They should strictly respect and observe the LAC and not take any unilateral action to alter it. It was agreed that both sides would implement the dis-engagement understanding of June 6 sincerely. Neither side would take any action to escalate matters and instead, ensure peace and tranquillity as per bilateral agreements and protocols.”
The two sides are in regular touch through their embassies and foreign offices, and have maintained communication at the military commanders’ level on the ground. Meetings of other established diplomatic mechanisms such as the Working Mechanism for Consultation and Coordination (WMCC) on border affairs are being discussed, Srivastava said.
“While we remain firmly convinced of the need for maintenance of peace and tranquillity in the borders areas and the resolution of differences through dialogue, at the same time, as [Prime Minister Narendra Modi] stated [on Wednesday], we are also strongly committed to ensuring India’s sovereignty and territorial integrity,” Srivastava added.
Former ambassador Rajiv Bhatia, distinguished fellow for foreign policy studies at Gateway House, said: “We aren’t out of the woods as yet. The foreign ministers of the two sides had a candid conversation and the crux of the matter was outlined in India’s readout – that the consensus reached on June 6 was broken by the Chinese side.”
“Things are very fluid and there is trouble at other points of the LAC though we are not focusing on them. We have made our position clear, but whether the Chinese side adheres to the consensus at the diplomatic or military levels remains to be seen. A solution won’t come at the military level, and that’s why the diplomatic and political levels become important,” he added. the containment zones,” tweeted acting health minister Manish Sisodia on Thursday.
The new programme is part of the Union and state government’s effort to ramp up the number of tests in Delhi by six times by the end of this week.
The city administration has asked district teams to test those who live in the 242 containment zones in Delhi and are willing to be tested. The new test, developed by a South Korean company and manufactured in Manesar, is highly specific (99.3% to 100%) -- meaning a positive result on the test is a “true positive” and does not need any confirmatory test.
The sensitivity is between 50.6% to 84% depending on the viral load, meaning those who test negative might still have the infection and are advised to go for a test through the more reliable RT-PCR method if they show symptoms of the disease.
The tests began on a day the government announced that lab tests will be capped at ₹2,400, a day after it was suggested by a committee formed by the Union government.
“Two important decisions have been taken in connection with Covid-19 testing in Delhi: The rate for testing has been reduced to ₹2,400 and from today, rapid antigen testing has begun by which results will be available in 15 minutes,” said chief minister Arvind Kejriwal in a tweet, adding that he hoped the decisions will address problems faced by the people.
Apart from being quicker than lab-based RT-PCR tests, antigen tests are cheaper – one kit costs ₹450 – and differ in technology as they look for specific protein associated with the Sars-cov-2 virus, the pathogen that causes Covid-19. The lab tests look for the exact nucleic signatures of the virus.
A third mechanism that can give quick results is the antibody test that checks for the presence of disease-fighting antibodies in a person’s blood, but these have proven to be unreliable and scientists are not sure when and for how long the antibodies can be detected.
When antibody tests were rolled out on April 21, only 62 people were tested in one district on the first day. The test was discontinued from the following day after several states reported wide variation in results from the China-sourced kits.
“This is certainly a good way of ramping up testing – these tests are cheaper and faster. And at the community level, the test will enable us to identify more cases of Covid-19, they can then be asked to remain in isolation at home preventing further spread of the infection,” said Dr Jugal Kishore, head of the department of community medicine at Safdarjung hospital.
“The test is not very sensitive, meaning it can give false negative reports. If it’s a false positive, all we would be doing is keeping more people in isolation. Since there is a chance of false negatives with this test, it will have to be reconfirmed. Having said that, the sensitivity of the RT-PCR test is also about 67% and not very different from this test,” he added.
On Thursday, people in containment zones began reaching the testing facilities – set up mostly in neighbourhood government schools, dispensaries and mohalla clinics – where they were seated at 1m distance before they were administered the test.
At the Sarvodaya Kanya Vidyalaya in Naraina in west Delhi, around 50 people gathered after community volunteers reached out and persuaded people living in a nearby containment area to come to get diagnosed.
Four people in a full-body suit in an air-conditioned room called people one by one. One paramedic collected naso-pharyngeal swabs, before a second one took it and inserted into a tube. This process is meant to inactivate the virus, and dissolve it in a solution that was then put on the main test strip that would give the final result.
A third person numbered the antigen kits with a permanent marker and wrote down the name of the tested person along with the kit number on another sheet. The fourth entered this data to an online portal.
“There were teething troubles on Thursday, with a lot of the time being wasted on setting up the centres. It will be streamlined in a couple of days,” said a district-level health official, asking not to be named.
“The antigen testing is very beneficial for district teams as we get a result immediately and ask people to remain in quarantine if they have the infection. This prevents further spread. It also ensures that people who do need to be admitted to hospitals, reach there in a timely manner,” this person added.
Apart from the containment zones, the antigen tests are likely to be rolled out in Delhi’s hospitals within a couple of days. In a hospital setting, the ICMR recommends the test be used for those who develop influenza-like symptoms, are immune-compromised because of an existing condition, or are undergoing procedures such as chemotherapy and dialysis.
“We have already ordered the tests and should get it within a couple of days. Once that happens, we will start testing patients who fit the ICMR criteria with the antigen kits. Those who test negative will be tested using RT-PCR. In the absence of the antigen test, we would have had to test all the people using RT-PCR, which is time and resource-intensive,” said Dr DK Sharma, medical superintendent of AIIMS.
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