amid US-China row on virus origin

And now, Chinese authorities appear to be tightening their grip on the publication of Covid-19 research.

A Chinese researcher who spoke on condition of anonymity due to fear of retaliation said the move was a worrying development that would likely obstruct important scientific research.

 

"I think it is a coordinated effort from (the) Chinese government to control (the) narrative, and paint it as if the outbreak did not originate in China," the researcher told CNN. "And I don't think they will really tolerate any objective study to investigate the origination of this disease."

 

CNN has reached out to China's Foreign Ministry for comment.

 

 

Chinese President Xi Jinping inspects scientific research on the coronavirus during his visit to the Academy of Military Medical Sciences in Beijing on March 2.

Increased scrutiny

According to the directive issued by the Ministry of Education's science and technology department, "academic papers about tracing the origin of the virus must be strictly and tightly managed."

 

The directive lays out layers of approval for these papers, starting with the academic committees at universities. They are then required to be sent to the Education Ministry's science and technology department, which then forwards the papers to a task force under the State Council for vetting. Only after the universities hear back from the task force can the papers be submitted to journals.

Other papers on Covid-19 will be vetted by universities' academic committees, based on conditions such as the "academic value" of the study, and whether the "timing for publishing" is right.

The directive is based on instructions issued during a March 25 meeting held by the State Council's task force on the prevention and control of Covid-19, it said.

 

The document was first posted Friday morning on the website of the Fudan University in Shanghai, one of China's leading universities.

 

When CNN called a contact number left at the end of the notice, a staff member of the Education ministry's science and technology department confirmed they had issued the directive.

 

"It is not supposed to be made public -- it is an internal document," said the person, who refused to reveal his name.

A few hours later, the Fudan University page was taken down.

 

The China University of Geoscience in Wuhan also posted a similar notice about the extra vetting on Covid-19 papers on its website. The page has since been deleted, but a cached version of it remains accessible.

The Chinese researcher who spoke to CNN said the notice was issued a few days ago, adding that only Covid-19 research was subject to the additional checks.

 

David Hui Shu-cheong, a respiratory medicine expert at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, said he did not encounter any additional vetting when he and a team of mainland Chinese researchers published a clinical analysis of Covid-19 cases in the New England Journal of Medicine in February.

 

"The process was really simple then," he told CNN over the phone.

Hui said he was still revising the draft of the paper until 3 a.m. on the day it was due for submission, and the paper was sent to the NEJM by midday.

 

"There was completely no restriction at all," he said.

"I don't know if it is because some researchers published something that is considered sensitive domestically in China. (I'm) not sure if it is because of the controversy about the origin of the virus later, and the non-sensitive stuff becomes sensitive too."

 

 

Laboratory technicians test samples of the coronavirus at a lab in Hengyang in China's central Henan province.

Origin of the virus

In late December, Wuhan reported the first cases of the coronavirus, linked by authorities to a seafood market in the city. Scientists in China and the West have said the virus is likely to have originated in bats and jumped to humans from an intermediate host -- just like its cousin that caused the SARS epidemic in 2002 and 2003.

However, parts of Chinese social media and even the country's government appear to have launched a concerted campaign to question the origin of the virus.

 

Chinese officials and state media have repeatedly stressed that there has been no conclusion on the exact origin of the virus. Last month, Zhao Lijian, a spokesperson of the Chinese Foreign Ministry, promoted a conspiracy on Twitter that the virus had originated in the US and was brought to China by the US military.

 

Yanzhong Huang, a senior fellow for global health at the Washington-based Council on Foreign Relations, said the origin of the coronavirus has become a politically sensitive topic in China.

 

"It is no surprise that the government seeks to control related scientific research so that the findings do not challenge its own narrative on the origin of the virus and the government response to the crisis," Professor Huang told CNN.

 

"The danger is that when scientific research is subject to the needs of those in power, it further undermines the credibility of the government narrative, making accusations of underreporting and misinformation more convincing."

 

In China, research papers on the coronavirus are already subjected to layers of vetting after they are submitted to Chinese academic journals, according to an editor at a Chinese medical journal.

 

Wang Lan, the editorial director of the Chinese Journal of Epidemiology, said all Covid-19 papers have to go through an approval process for "major topics" after being submitted to her journal.

 

"It has always been the case," she told CNN. "They have to be approved by three levels of organizations. It's a long process."

The Chinese researcher who requested anonymity said under the new restrictions, however, coronavirus research that contradicted the official narrative could be suppressed by Beijing.

 

"I think the importance is that the international scientific community must realize that any journal or manuscripts from (a) Chinese research institution has kind of been double-checked by the government," said the researcher. "It is important for them to know there are extra steps between independent scientific research and final publication."

 

 

CNN

The 15-year-old son of a Bauchi state medical doctor, Rilwanu Sadiq, has been killed by suspected kidnappers despite receiving N4.5 million ransom from his distraught father.

Abubakar who attends a Secondary school in Bauchi, was abducted in front of his father's house along Gombe road in Ningi local government area of the state on April 1st.

Dr Sadiq, who works at the Abubakar Tafawa University Teaching Hospital, Bauchi, said he was at work when he got the news of his son's abduction. He immediately reported the matter to the neighbourhood security outfit as well as the state police.

Sadiq said his son's abductors contacted him and initially demanded for N3 million ransom which he paid. Afterwards they demanded for another N1.5 million. He said he had to pay so he could get reunited with his son. 

“We were giving them at intervals. They got ?2 million hand-to-hand from me. The balance of ?2.5 was paid into about five bank accounts. But they kept asking for more. That was when I said I can’t bear it anymore, not knowing that they will even kill my son.” Dr Sadiq told Premiumtimes

The corpse of his son was exhumed from a shallow ditch inside an uncompleted building not far from their home on Sunday April 12. The distraught Father said he believes that his son’s killers, based on his kidnap and where his body was buried, are well acquainted with his family.

Commenting on the incident, the spokesperson of the state police command,  Kamal Datti, said two persons have been arrested in connection with the death.

“Two suspects have been arrested in relation to the death, and investigation is on'' Datti said

Africans in southern China's largest city say they have become targets of suspicion and subjected to forced evictions, arbitrary quarantines and mass coronavirus testing as the country steps up its fight against imported infections.

The World Health Organization (WHO) said it was looking into reports of some COVID-19 patients testing positive again after initially testing negative for the disease when discharged.

South Korean officials on Friday reported 91 patients thought cleared of the new coronavirus had tested positive again.

Jeong Eun-kyeong, director of the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told a briefing that the virus may have been “reactivated” rather than the patients being re-infected.

The Geneva-based WHO, asked about the report from Seoul, told Reuters in a brief statement: “We are aware of these reports of individuals who have tested negative for COVID-19 using PCR (polymerase chain reaction) testing and then after some days testing positive again. 

“We are closely liaising with our clinical experts and working hard to get more information on those individual cases. It is important to make sure that when samples are collected for testing on suspected patients, procedures are followed properly,” it said.

According to the WHO’s guidelines on clinical management, a patient can be discharged from hospital after two consecutive negative results in a clinically recovered patient at least 24 hours apart, it added.

Based on current studies, there is a period of about two weeks between the onset of symptoms and clinical recovery of patients with mild COVID-19 disease, the agency said.

“We are aware that some patients are PCR positive after they clinically recover, but we need systematic collection of samples from recovered patients to better understand how long they shed live virus,” it said.

South Korean health officials said on Friday that it remains unclear what is behind the trend, with epidemiological investigations still under way.

“As COVID-19 is a new disease, we need more epidemiological data to draw any conclusions of virus shedding profile,” the WHO said.

The number of deaths linked to the novel coronavirus reached 113,885 on Sunday, as reported cases passed 1.8 million.

A 55-year-old man, who was admitted to the Lagos University Teaching Hospital (LUTH), Idi-Araba, has died of complications from COVID-19.

The newspaper quoted a source as saying the patient died on Friday morning.

The deceased reportedly had underlying health issues. He was said to have been hypertensive and diabetic.

He reportedly arrived LUTH emergency unit on Thursday night complaining of “malaise, tremors, and fever” and was also diagnosed with acute chronic kidney disease and sepsis.

He was reportedly sent to the “spillover unit” of the hospital because of the unavailability of bed space.

But when he developed complications, a junior doctor at the accident & emergency unit was said to have reviewed his case and notified the senior registrar of his suspicion.

According to the source, the patient did not disclose his travel history to Holland and died “a few hours” after he was admitted.

The hospital was said to have discovered that the patient had COVID-19 when a polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test was conducted on his blood posthumously.

“Fingerprint antibody test was done on him, confirming his COVID-19 infection,” the source was quoted to have said.

“The man did not give his travel history or the fact that he had contact with someone who had travelled overseas.

“He told the doctors that he had no history of coughs, sore throat, joint pains or diarrhea. After the Senior Registrar reviewed his case and confronted him with their findings, the man revealed the true story about his travels and his fear that he might have contracted COVID-19 and died shortly afterward.

“He confessed that he had been coughing and that he had returned from Holland two weeks ago, where he had gone for follow-up treatment after a renal transplant he also had there.

“When confronted after the man’s death, his family members said they withheld the information about his likely COVID-19 infection because they were afraid that LUTH would reject him if they disclosed his true state.”

The state coronavirus emergency workers have reportedly taken the remains of the deceased away.

The deadly coronavirus may be spread through mere breathing or speaking and not just coughing and sneezing.

This is the new scientific view of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences (NAS).

In a letter sent to the White House on April 1, the academy said that though research isn’t yet conclusive, “the results of available studies are consistent with aerosolization of virus from normal breathing.”

Dr Anthony Fauci, head of infectious diseases at the U.S. National Institutes of Health, cited the report when he spoke with Fox News on Thursday.

He used it to recommend that Americans should wear the face mask when outdoor.

Until now, US health agencies had said the primary pathway of transmission is respiratory droplets, about one millimetre in diameter.

The droplets are expelled by sick people when they sneeze or cough.

These quickly fall to the ground around a meter (three feet) away.

But if the virus can be suspended in the ultrafine mist people expel when exhaling — in other words, an aerosol — it becomes much harder to prevent its spread.

A recent NIH-funded study published in the New England Journal of Medicine found that the SARS-CoV-2 virus could become an aerosol and remain airborne for up to three hours.

The paper received widespread attention even as critics said the findings were overblown because researchers had used a medical device called a nebulizer to deliberately create a viral mist, something they argued would not occur naturally.

The NAS letter pointed to preliminary research by the University of Nebraska Medical Center that found the genetic code of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, its RNA, in hard-to-reach areas of patients’ isolation rooms.

The NAS scientists also cited two other studies — both not yet peer reviewed — from Hong Kong and mainland China.

The Hong Kong researchers had some patients with coronavirus and other viral respiratory illnesses wear masks, while other patients in the study didn’t cover their faces.

They found fewer droplets and aerosols from coronavirus patients who wore masks.

The Chinese paper raised concerns that personal protective gear used by health workers could be a source of airborne virus.

The team studied hospitals in Wuhan and found two major areas where the virus was aerosolized: patient bathrooms and rooms where medical staff removed protective gear.

This may be because doffing protective gear causes particles to get re-suspended in the air. Even if these particles are not of breathable size, they could settle on people’s hands and bodies, the NAS panel said.

So far, the World Health Organisation has been more cautious on the airborne threat.

In an analysis published on March 29, it wrote that aerosol transmission was only known to occur during particular medical treatments that required assisted breathing.

The Kwara government on Friday said there are no facts that UK returnee who died in Ilorin had coronavirus.

This was contained in a statement issued by the Chief Press Secretary to Governor, Mr. Rafiu Ajakaye, in Ilorin.

The statement noted that Kwara had not recorded a case of COVID-19 as all the six samples of suspected cases so far tested in the state had been negative.

The statement read: “The Kwara Technical Committee on COVID-19 wishes to clarify that the state has not recorded any confirmed case of COVID-19 as of now. All the six samples tested from Kwara have returned negative.

“The committee states that there is no fact, at this moment to support suggestions that a male patient who died on Wednesday night at the University of Ilorin Teaching Hospital was a COVID-19 patient.

“Findings by the medical advisory subcommittee revealed that the patient and his wife arrived from the United Kingdom and reportedly came to Ilorin on March 20.

“The patient went into self-quarantine without reaching out to the government or the technical committee.

“On the 13th day of the self-quarantine, he suddenly had difficulties breathing after reportedly eating dinner and was rushed to the University of Ilorin Teaching Hospital.

” Efforts to resuscitate him proved abortive and he was pronounced dead.

“The deceased, a Muslim, was promptly taken to Offa, his hometown, where he was interred on Thursday.

“Owing to the travel history of the deceased, all the medics who attended to him at the UITH have gone into self-quarantine.

” Similarly, family members who have had contact with the deceased and his wife have been directed to do same.

“For abundance of caution, samples have been taken from his wife and four others and results are expected in the coming days.

“The committee hereby repeats that there is no record that the UITH patient ever tested positive for the virus,’’ Ajakaye said.

The Nigeria Center for Disease Control (NCDC) has announced two deaths from complications of COVID-19 and 20 fresh cases.

The agency broke the news in a tweet on Friday night.

A breakdown of the new cases showed that 11 were in Lagos, three in the federal capital territory, three in Edo, Two in Osun and one in Ondo.

“Twenty new cases of #COVID19 have been reported in Nigeria; 11 in Lagos, 3 in the FCT, 3 in Edo, 2 in Osun & 1 in Ondo. Two new deaths have been recorded in Lagos and Edo State,” the tweet read.

“As at 10:30 pm 3rd April there are 210 confirmed cases of #COVID19 reported in Nigeria.”

Twenty new cases of #COVID19 have been reported in Nigeria; 11 in Lagos, 3 in the FCT, 3 in Edo, 2 in Osun & 1 in Ondo

Two new deaths have been recorded in Lagos and Edo State

As at 10:30 pm 3rd April there are 210 confirmed cases of #COVID19 reported in Nigeria. pic.twitter.com/YzXdfxXPTe

— NCDC (@NCDCgov) April 3, 2020

Richard Akindele, sacked lecturer of Obafemi Awolowo University (OAU), Ile-Ife, has been released from prison after serving a two-year term. 

TheCable learnt that the lecturer, who is a professor of management accounting, was released on March 19 and now back home to his family.

In 2018, Maureen Onyetenu, judge of a federal high court in Osogbo, Osun state, sentenced Akindele to prison after he pleaded guilty to a four-count charge filed against him by the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC).

She sentenced Akindele to 24 months jail-term for asking Monica for a sexual benefit and handed him another 24 months jail-term for soliciting from the victim, sexual benefit to pass her.

The judge also sentenced Akindele to 12 months jail-term for deleting parts of the WhatsApp conversation between him and Osagie to conceal evidence against him and sentenced him to another 12 months jail-term for falsification of age. She had held that the six-year jail terms would run concurrently.

In an audio which went viral online, Akindele was heard demanding five rounds of sex from Osagie to award her a pass mark in a course she failed.

Akindele, a clergyman at the Anglican Diocese of Ife, was a member of the church’s marriage committee before the scandal.

TheCable also learnt that his appeal against his conviction is scheduled for hearing at the court of appeal, Akure, on May 19.

In his new book, “Naked Abuse: Sex for Grades in African Universities”, Olusegun Adeniyi addressed the menace of sexual harassment in tertiary institutions across Africa.

The Lagos State Commissioner for Health, Prof. Akin Abayomi, says Eti-Osa Local Government Area has the highest numbers of confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the state.

Abayomi, during an update of COVID-19 situation in the state on Friday, said that Eti-Osa has 47 out of the 98 confirmed cases.

The commissioner said that Ikeja has 24 cases, Lagos Mainland- 11, while Alimosho, Agege and Ikorodu has one case respectively.

According to him, out of the 98 confirmed cases in the state, 74 are still active cases, while 24 has recovered and has been discharged.

He noted that most of the patients fell between 30 and 59 years, adding that two patients over 60 years and another two over 70 years were among the patients currently receiving treatment at the facility.

Abayomi said 64 per cent of the patients were males, 36 per cent females; noting that 68 per cent of the cases were imported in the first four weeks of confirmation of the index case in the state

According to him, 91 per cent of the cases are Nigerians, stating that since the closure of the air and land borders imported cases had reduced, while the state has started experiencing local transmission of the virus.

He said most of the patients were experiencing a mild to moderate degree of the illness, adding that two of the patients were presently on oxygen.

The commissioner, said that if the oxygen does not work for them, they would change it to ventilators.

According to him, there are about 20 ventilators in the state hospitals, and another 20 in the private hospitals which the state can access if the need arises.

The commissioner said that the state has three molecular laboratories for COVID-19 test, and was conducting between 200 and 300 COVID-19 tests daily.

He said there was an ongoing training of medical personnel and volunteers, stressing that the state has adequate personal protective equipment for its staffs.

Abayomi disclosed that the state was curently tracing 2, 450 contacts.

He advised the public to continue to practice social distancing and adhere to the stay at home order toward reducing the spread of COVID-19 in the state.

NAN