Category: Breaking News

DEVASTATING footage shows coronavirus patients being welded inside their homes and “left to die” as China battles to contain the fatal disease.

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Originally posted by As Breaking on Twitter, the videos are alleged to show a horrific standard practice as coronavirus panic grips the Chinese government. Activists have told how people suspected to be infected with the deadly disease are being left to “starve and die”.

It comes amid news that coronavirus has claimed more lives than the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) outbreak in 2003. A total of 774 people died in the SARS pandemic – another form of coronavirus that jumped from animals to humans.

Residents are welded inside their apartment blocks and left to die. #CoronaVirus.pic.twitter.com/XZrRoeDAVh

The new videos also show officials barricading doors with metal bars – and in one scene, a woman in a white lab coat appears to speak to somebody inside an apartment as a welder works on the door, sparks flying from his torch. Some tweets read that the residents were “being locked in while they are left to die”. Due to China’s super-strict censorship laws, it’s extremely difficult to trace exactly where the welding scenes were shot.

Another harrowing video also emerged yesterday that appears to show a woman recently returned from Wuhan being barricaded into her home by black-clad Chinese authorities. The woman can be heard screaming and yelling while a group of masked men fit thick metal bars over her door. A sign outside reads: “This family came back from Wuhan. Stay away, no contact”. The deathly virus – originated in Wuhan – has spread across the globe striking down thousands and killing hundreds, with more confirmed cases by the minute. Activists say as well as Chinese authorities, mob rule has gripped some panic-stricken neighbourhoods and groups of civilians are barricading infected people’s homes. There are also suggestions some members of the public are digging up roads leading to Wuhan and Hubei, two of the worst affected regions.

Meanwhile, communist regime in China has been pictured rounding up patients in Wuhan with the virus and taking them to camps. As well as those suspected of having the virus, China’s central government ordered that those close to the patients should also be put into the camps.

What we are witnessing is essentially a breakdown in government

Gordon Chang

According to an expert in Chinese affairs and censorship, Gordon Chang, the Chinese authorities are deliberately falsifying the coronavirus numbers. Mr Chang, an expert in Chinese affairs and censorship, said here has been a “breakdown in government” which means it has “just lost the ability to pick up corpses”. He told Fox: “I think that the government in Wuhan and some other cities have just lost the ability to pick up corpses. “What we are witnessing is essentially a breakdown in government and keeping accurate statistics is a very minor part of their priorities right now.”

The coronavirus situation is being described as China’s Chernobyl after it was initially covered up for months. The latest official numbers breaching the 20,600 mark, with 2,790 cases believed to be critical. Case numbers are growing exponentially in China on a daily basis. Current measures, such as proper screening of those escaping Wuhan, are not being carried out as efficiently as Beijing claims.

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GENEVA (Reuters) – The first vaccine targeting China’s coronavirus could be available in 18 months, “so we have to do everything today using available weapons”, World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in Geneva on Tuesday. He said the virus had been named COVID-19, explaining that it was important to avoid stigma and that other names could be inaccurate.

GENEVA (Reuters) – China’s coronavirus outbreak poses a “very grave threat for the rest of the world”, the head of the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Tuesday in an appeal for sharing virus samples and speeding up research into drugs and vaccines. WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus was addressing the start of a two-day meeting aimed at accelerating development of drugs, diagnostics and vaccines against the flu-like virus amid growing concerns about its ability to spread.To date China has reported 42,708 confirmed cases, including 1,017 deaths, Tedros said. “With 99% of cases in China, this remains very much an emergency for that country, but one that holds a very grave threat for the rest of the world,” he told more than 400 researchers and national authorities, including some taking part by video conference from mainland China and Taiwan. Tedros, speaking to reporters on Monday, referred to “some concerning instances of onward transmission from people with no travel history to China”, citing cases this week in France and Britain. Five British nationals were diagnosed with the coronavirus in France, after staying in the same ski chalet with a person who had been in Singapore. “The detection of this small number of cases could be the spark that becomes a bigger fire. But for now it’s only a spark. Our objective remains containment,” he said.

Hong Kong residents evacuated from a residential building where a man and woman confirmed with coronavirus live tested negative for the virus, health authorities said on Tuesday, easing concerns of a cluster of the outbreak in the Chinese-ruled city. Many questions remain about the origin of the virus, which emerged at a wildlife market in the central Chinese city of Wuhan in December, and is spread by people in droplets from coughing or sneezing. “We hope that one of the outcomes of this meeting will be an agreed roadmap for research around which researchers and donors will align,” Tedros told the closed-door meeting, according to remarks made available by the U.N. agency. “The bottom line is solidarity, solidarity, solidarity. That is especially true in relation to sharing of samples and sequences,” Tedros said. “To defeat this outbreak, we need open and equitable sharing, according to the principles of fairness and equity.” Dr. Mike Ryan, WHO’s top emergencies experts, told reporters on Monday: “This is an amazing initiative to centralise our knowledge.” The aim was to identify gaps and generate scientific information for urgently needed medical interventions, he said. “This is not just simply scientific discourse, there are big issues to do with how that whole process is governed,” Ryan said, citing the need to “ensure equitable access” to any products derived from research and approved by regulators. “Bringing everybody together I think will give us a leap-frog moment in terms of coherence, priority-setting,” he said. A week ago, only two laboratories in Africa could diagnose the novel coronavirus but as of Sunday, the WHO expected every nation in Africa to be able to diagnose the disease.

BEIJING (Reuters) – China’s Huanggang city, one of the hardest hit by the coronavirus outbreak, is still facing a severe virus situation and a lack of medical supplies, its Communist Party boss said on Tuesday. Huanggang is located in the central province of Hubei near to Wuhan, believed to be the epicentre of the outbreak. Huanggang has recorded the second highest number of deaths from the virus after Wuhan. Speaking at a news conference carried live on state television, Liu Xuerong said they also face a serious challenge in preventing the spread of the virus in rural areas. “At present, the epidemic situation in our city is still very severe,” Liu said. “We will seize the key window period, strengthen our proactiveness in work, and resolutely win the fight against the epidemic.” Huanggang has recorded 2,332 confirmed cases and 52 deaths as of midnight on Feb 10, he added.

There are now 42,968 confirmed coronavirus cases and at least 1,018 deaths, according to the World Health Organization. The 13th case of coronavirus in the U.S. was reported Monday in San Diego. Health officials told The Wall Street Journal that the individual had been evacuated to San Diego on a U.S. flight out of Wuhan, China, the epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak. She had first tested negative for the virus, then later tested positive after developing symptoms. The novel coronavirus has slowed China’s economic output and has since been declared a public health emergency by U.S. officials.

The coronavirus epidemic could spread to about two-thirds of the world’s population if it cannot be controlled, according to Hong Kong’s leading public health epidemiologist.

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His warning came after the head of the World Health Organization (WHO) said recent cases of coronavirus patients who had never visited China could be the “tip of the iceberg”. Prof Gabriel Leung, the chair of public health medicine at Hong Kong University, said the overriding question was to figure out the size and shape of the iceberg. Most experts thought that each person infected would go on to transmit the virus to about 2.5 other people. That gave an “attack rate” of 60-80%. “Sixty per cent of the world’s population is an awfully big number,” Leung told the Guardian in London, en route to an expert meeting at the WHO in Geneva on Tuesday. Even if the general fatality rate is as low as 1%, which Leung thinks is possible once milder cases are taken into account, the death toll would be massive. He will tell the WHO meeting that the main issue is the scale of the growing worldwide epidemic and the second priority is to find out whether the drastic measures taken by China to prevent the spread have worked – because if so, other countries should think about adopting them. The Geneva meeting brings together more than 400 researchers and national authorities, including some participating by video conference from mainland China and Taiwan. “With 99% of cases in China, this remains very much an emergency for that country, but one that holds a very grave threat for the rest of the world,” the WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in his opening remarks. To date China has reported 42,708 confirmed cases, including 1,017 deaths, Tedros said. Leung – one of the world’s experts on coronavirus epidemics, who played a major role in the Sars outbreak in 2002-03 – works closely with other leading scientists such as counterparts at Imperial College London and Oxford University. At the end of January, he warned in a paper in the Lancet that outbreaks were likely to be “growing exponentially” in cities in China, lagging just one to two weeks behind Wuhan. Elsewhere, “independent self-sustaining outbreaks in major cities globally could become inevitable” because of the substantial movement of people who were infected but had not yet developed symptoms, and the absence of public health measures to stop the spread. Epidemiologists and modellers were trying to figure out what was likely to happen, said Leung. “Is 60-80% of the world’s population going to get infected? Maybe not. Maybe this will come in waves. Maybe the virus is going to attenuate its lethality because it certainly doesn’t help it if it kills everybody in its path, because it will get killed as well,” he said. Experts also need to know whether the restrictions in the centre of Wuhan and other cities have reduced infections. “Have these massive public health interventions, social distancing, and mobility restrictions worked in China?” he asked. “If so, how can we roll them out, or is it not possible?” There would be difficulties. “Let’s assume that they have worked. But how long can you close schools for? How long can you lock down an entire city for? How long can you keep people away from shopping malls? And if you remove those [restrictions], then is it all going to come right back and rage again? So those are very real questions,” he said. If China’s lockdown has not worked, there is another unpalatable truth to face: that the coronavirus might not be possible to contain. Then the world will have to switch tracks: instead of trying to contain the virus, it will have to work to mitigate its effects. For now, containment measures are essential. Leung said the period of time when people were infected but showed no symptoms remained a huge problem. Quarantine was necessary, but to ensure people were not still carrying the virus when they left, everybody should ideally be tested every couple of days. If anyone within a quarantine camp or on a stricken cruise ship tested positive, the clock should be reset to 14 days more for all the others. Some countries at risk because of the movement of people to and from China have taken precautions. On a visit to Thailand three weeks ago, Leung talked to the health minister and advised the setting up of quarantine camps, which the government has done. But other countries with links to China appear, inexplicably, to have no cases – such as Indonesia. “Where are they?” he asked.

BEIJING (AP) — After nearly a week of roaming China’s epidemic-struck city, filming the dead and the sickened in overwhelmed hospitals, the strain of being hounded by both the new virus and the country’s dissent-quelling police started to tell. Chen Qiushi looked haggard and disheveled in his online posts, an almost unrecognizable shadow of the energetic young man who had rolled into Wuhan on a self-assigned mission to tell its inhabitants’ stories, just as authorities locked the city down almost three weeks ago.

Until he disappeared last week, the 34-year-old lawyer-turned-video blogger was one of the most visible pioneers in a small but dogged movement that is defying the ruling Communist Party’s tightly policed monopoly on information.

Armed with smart phones and social media accounts, these citizen-journalists are telling their stories and those of others from Wuhan and other locked-down virus zones in Hubei province. The scale of this non-sanctioned storytelling is unprecedented in any previous major outbreak or disaster in China. It presents a challenge to the Communist Party, which wants to control the narrative of China, as it always has since taking power in 1949. “It’s very different from anything we have witnessed,” said Maria Repnikova, a communications professor at Georgia State University who researches Chinese media. Never have so many Chinese, including victims and health care workers, used their phones to televise their experiences of a disaster, she said. That’s partly because the more than 50 million people locked down in cities under quarantine are “really anxious and bored and their lives have pretty much stopped.” Official state media extol the Communist Party’s massive efforts to build new hospitals in a flash, send in thousands of medical workers and ramp up production of face masks without detailing the underlying conditions that are driving these efforts. Chen did just that in more than 100 posts from Wuhan over two weeks. He showed the sick crammed into hospital corridors and the struggles of residents to get treatment.

“Why am I here? I have stated that it’s my duty to be a citizen-journalist,” he said, filming himself with a selfie stick outside a train station. “What sort of a journalist are you if you don’t dare rush to the front line in a disaster?”

A video posted Jan. 25 showed what Chen said was a body left under a blanket outside an emergency ward. Inside another hospital, he filmed a dead man propped up on a wheelchair, head hanging down and face deathly pale. “What’s wrong with him?” he asked a woman holding the man up with an arm across the chest. “He has already passed,” she said. Chen’s posts and vlogs, or video blogs, garnered millions of views — and police attention. In an anguished video post near the end of his first week in Wuhan, he said police had called him, wanting to know where he was, and questioned his parents.

“I am scared,” he said. “I have the virus in front of me, and on my back, I have the legal and administrative power of China. His voice trembling with emotion and tears welling in his eyes, he vowed to continue “as long as I am alive in this city.” “Even death doesn’t scare me!” he said. “So you think I’m scared of the Communist Party?” Last week, Chen’s posts dried up. His mother broke the silence with a video post in the small hours of Friday. She said Chen was unreachable and appealed for help in finding him. Police also came knocking last week for Fang Bin, who has been posting videos from Wuhan hospitals, including footage of body bags piled in a minibus, waiting to be carted to a crematorium. Fang, a seller of traditional Chinese clothing, filmed a testy exchange through the metal grill of his door with a group of four or five officers. The footage posted on YouTube offered a glimpse into how the security apparatus is working overtime to keep a lid on public anger about the spread of the virus. “Why are there so many of you?” Fang asked. “If I open the door, you’ll take me away!” Chen re-posted that video on his Twitter feed — one of his last tweets before his disappearance. The death of a Wuhan doctor last week focused attention on earlier attempts to suppress speech, and its consequences. Police had accused Dr. Li Wenliang of spreading rumors after he raised alarm in December about the outbreak. He succumbed to the virus, bringing an outpouring of grief, along with anger at authorities for how he had been treated.

Republican senator suggests ‘worse than Chernobyl’ coronavirus could’ve come from Chinese ‘superlaboratory’

Republican Sen. Tom Cotton suggested that Chinese officials misled the public on the origins of the novel coronavirus that has killed at least 362 people and infected more than 17,400 others, saying it may have originated in a “superlaboratory.” At a Senate Armed Service Committee hearing with US military leaders on Thursday, Cotton described the coronavirus as the “biggest and most important story in the world” and “worse than Chernobyl.” Cotton, a longtime China hawk, suggested Beijing had not been as forthcoming about the number of infections and was “lying about it from the very beginning” to downplay the seriousness of the epidemic. Chinese officials have been accused of lowering the number of cases and tamping down on reports weeks before it was formally acknowledged by the government. “They also claimed, for almost two months until earlier this week, that it originated in a seafood market in Wuhan,” Cotton said, referring to a study published by The Lancet. “That is not the case.”

“Of the original 40 cases, 14 of them had no contact with the seafood market, including patient zero,” Cotton said. “I would note that Wuhan also has China’s only bio-safety level four ‘superlaboratory’ that works with the world’s most deadly pathogens to include, yes, coronavirus.” Cotton was referring to China’s first Biosafety Level 4 lab, the Wuhan National Biosafety Laboratory of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, which investigates “the most dangerous pathogens,” according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. While Cotton qualified his remarks by saying “we still don’t know where” the virus originated, his comments come amid numerous conspiracy theories about the virus’s origins — including one that says the virus “originated in lab linked to China’s biowarfare program.” The amount of false information spreading across social-media platforms has prompted several companies, including Facebook, to limit the reach of such posts. In a statement, Facebook said it would display “accurate information” and notify users if they are suspected of sharing false or misleading information.

Video: Wuhan, China – people quarantined in their houses screaming out their windows that they have no food. There are 50 million of them.

Declaration gives UK government additional powers as death toll inside China jumps to 908 with more than 40,000 infections