Health

Members of the Christian sect linked to a cluster of coronavirus cases in South Korea held meetings in Wuhan until December, only stopping when they realized that their community had been hit by Covid-19, the previously unknown disease caused by the virus. The South China Morning Post has learned that the Shincheonji Church of Jesus in Wuhan, the Chinese city at the center of the epidemic, has around 200 members, most of whom are currently under quarantine outside the city. “Rumors about a virus began to circulate in November but no one took them seriously,” said one member, a 28-year-old kindergarten teacher. “I was in Wuhan in December when our church suspended all gatherings as soon as we

The day after he avoided the Chinese government’s lockdown in Wuhan, Hubei province, Scott Liu was already planning how he could support his hometown’s fight against the coronavirus from abroad. Lucky enough to have boarded the last direct flight from Wuhan to New York on January 22 – just before travel bans were imposed to stop the spread of the virus that causes Covid-19 – Liu settled back into his home in Queens, New York, and began a 14-day period of self-quarantine. In solitude, while reports of thousands of coronavirus cases began to overtake the news cycle, he started organizing the overseas Wuhan-born community to donate to the city of 11 million people, the epicenter of the Covid-19

China said it will ban the trade and consumption of wild animals, a multibillion-dollar industry that employs millions of people, as part of efforts to curb virus outbreaks. The Covid-19 epidemic that has killed more than 2,660 people in China and spread overseas has been linked to wild animals carrying a coronavirus and sold in markets for food.  Most researchers believe the virus jumped from a market animal to a human host, mutated and then infected others “Since the Covid-19 outbreak, the eating of wild animals, and the huge hidden threat to public health from the practice, have attracted wide attention,” the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress said, state broadcaster CCT

The novel coronavirus that causes the infectious disease known as Covid-19 did not originate at a seafood market in the central China city of Wuhan as was first thought, a new study by a team of Chinese scientists suggests. The coronavirus, known as SARS-CoV-2, was imported from elsewhere, said researchers from Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden under the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Chinese Institute for Brain Research. The team, led by Dr Yu Wenbin, sequenced the genomic data of 93 SARS-CoV-2 samples provided by 12 countries in a bid to track down the source of the infection and understand how it spreads. What they found was that while the virus had spread rapidly within the H

Chinese factories are producing thousands of tons of a “green zombie fungus” to help fight the swarms of locusts in East Africa. Metarhizium is a genus of fungi with nearly 50 species – some genetically modified – that is used as a biological insecticide. Its roots drill through the insects’ hard exoskeleton and gradually poisons them. In China, it was named lu jiang jun, which means “green zombie fungus,” because it gradually turns its victims into a green mossy lump. There are now dozens of factories across the country dedicated to producing its spores and, despite the curbs introduced to stop the spread of the coronavirus that causes Covid-19, many of them have resumed operations and are

A team of researchers has hit back at rumors that the coronavirus that emerged in the central Chinese city of Wuhan late last year was engineered. In a paper posted on Monday on the scientific online forum Virological, the scientists – who include top epidemiologist W. Ian Lipkin from Columbia University; Edward Holmes from the University of Sydney; and Kristian Andersen of Scripps Research – said crucial genetic clues indicate that the coronavirus was not created in a laboratory. Despite scientists’ repeated efforts at debunking conspiracy theories, rumors about the still-unknown origins of the virus, also known as SARS-CoV-2, have been rife. Most are based on the idea that the virus emerg

The outbreak of a new coronavirus in China has added a new and intensifying source of tension to an already fractured relationship with the United States. With threats to public health, transport and the global economy looming, it was no surprise that the two countries would clash as the epidemic that apparently started at a seafood and live animal market in the central Chinese city of Wuhan spread to the US, among other countries. But the mysteries of a coronavirus that jumps species to find a home in humans – also known as a zoonotic disease – has opened a new, acrimonious rip into bilateral ties that were already tearing apart. It has pitted science against politics. Amid confusion among

As the number of coronavirus patients has continued to climb, medical workers in the heart of the outbreak have had to avoid drinking and cross their legs to get through long shifts in their protective suits. But for the many women on the front line of China’s fight against the epidemic, they have also had to deal with menstruation, a need that some female medical professionals said is being overlooked by China’s decision makers. A group of women’s rights advocates is seeking to help by sending hundreds of thousands of pairs of disposable underwear designed for periods to hospitals in the central city of Wuhan, the epicenter of the outbreak. The goal is to help female hospital staff have mor

Medical personnel in Wuhan, the epicenter of the current coronavirus outbreak, wear diapers as they work through grueling shifts in protective suits, often until skin irritation from their masks leaves bloody marks on their faces, a doctor said on Wednesday. “When doctors and nurses are in the ward,” dressed in protective clothing that seals them off from the environment, “they cannot eat, drink or go to the bathroom,” Han Ding, deputy director of the Peking Union Medical College Hospital in Beijing, said at a press briefing in the central city of Wuhan. “Just in case they must urinate, they [wear a] diaper, and wash up after they’re done with their shift,” he said. The reported conditions o

Retired Wuhan factory worker Wei Junlan had always been in good health, but around two weeks after developing the first signs of a cough and fever, the 63-year-old was dead from what doctors suspect was the new coronavirus. But her death on January 21 will not show up in official statistics about the outbreak – her death certificate listed the cause only as “heavy pneumonia.” Her nephew Jerry Shang said that Wei had not been tested for the disease, but that the doctor said her symptoms – including a lung infection, fever and increasing weakness – closely matched those of Covid-19, the disease caused by the virus. By the end, she was unable to walk, and the last the family saw of her was when