1st probe Fort Detrick: China to WHO
BEIJING/SYDNEY: China has hit back at the United States over the investigation into the origin of the Covid-19 virus, with Zhao Lijian, spokesperson of the country’s foreign affairs ministry, suggesting that if laboratories are to be investigated, then the World Health Organization (WHO) should also probe Fort Detrick, which is a military base in Maryland, US.
“If labs are to be investigated, then the WHO experts should go to Fort Detrick. The US should act transparently and responsibly as soon as possible and invite WHO experts for an inquiry into the Fort Detrick lab. Only in this way can truth be revealed to the world,” Zhao had tweeted on Monday.
The remark was apparently in response to calls for a second round of investigation into the origin of the Covid-19 pandemic.
While a debate rages globally about whether the coronavirus leaked from a lab in the Chinese city of Wuhan, the first epicentre of the outbreak, many in China speculate if the virus originated from the lab in Fort Detrick.
Separately, the city of Nanjing in eastern China has been virtually sealed off and residents advised to stay indoors after 31 new Covid-19 cases were reported on Tuesday in the past 24 hours, pushing the total number of coronavirus infections up to 112 in the ongoing outbreak.
Local health authorities said the genetic sequencing of the virus from the cluster turned out to be of the fast-spreading Delta variant.
Ding Jie from Nanjing Centre for Disease Control and Prevention said that judging from the previous related outbreaks, the Delta strain has some shown new characteristics. It has increased adaptability, can spread faster, has higher virus load, treatment time is longer, and it is easier to contract a severe form of the illness.
First detected among the city’s airport workers, the new outbreak has triggered two rounds of citywide nucleic acid testing of Nanjing’s nine million residents.
Victoria to lift curbs, but infections in NSW rise Australia’s Victoria state said on Tuesday it will lift a strict lockdown after curtailing the spread of Covid-19, but neighbouring New South Wales faces an extension of restrictions after daily new infections spiked to a 16-month peak.
More than half of Australia’s near 26 million population has been in lockdown in recent weeks after an outbreak of the highly infectious Delta variant took hold in the New South Wales capital of Sydney and spread to three states.
New South Wales reported 172 Covid-19 cases over the past 24 hours, up from 145 reported a day earlier, with at least 60 spending time in the community while infectious.
New South Wales premier Gladys Berejiklian said a decision whether to extend the fiveweek lockdown will be taken this week. But with less than 13% of the state’s population fully vaccinated, curbs are expected to remain.
“We know we’ve put in the hard yards for five weeks and we don’t want to waste all the good work that we’ve done by opening too early and then having the virus spread again,” Berejiklian told a media conference.
In contrast, Victoria state said most restrictions imposed on July 15 will be removed after recording just 10 infections of people already in quarantine.