Chinese Wuhan Virus Thread

First Nasal Spray For Treating Adult Covid Patients Launched In India​

New Delhi:
Mumbai based innovation-driven global pharma company Glenmark has launched Nitric Oxide Nasal Spray (FabiSpray) in India, in partnership with SaNOtize, for treatment of adult patients suffering from COVID-19.

Glenmark received manufacturing and marketing approval from India's drug regulator, Drugs Controller General of India, for Nitric Oxide Nasal Spray as part of the accelerated approval process.

"Phase 3 trial in India met the key endpoints and demonstrated reduction of viral load of 94 per cent in 24 hours and 99 per cent in 48 hours. Nitric Oxide Nasal Spray (NONS) was safe and well-tolerated in COVID-19 patients. Glenmark to market NONS under the brand name FabiSpray," reads the official statement.

The company claims that when the Nitric Oxide Nasal is sprayed over nasal mucosa it acts as a physical and chemical barrier against the virus.

"FabiSpray is designed to kill the COVID-19 virus in the upper airways. It has proven anti-microbial properties with a direct virucidal effect on SARS-CoV-2. NONS when sprayed over nasal mucosa acts as a physical and chemical barrier against the virus, preventing it from incubating and spreading to the lungs," the statement reads.

Terming the spray an effective and safe antiviral treatment for COVID-19, Glenmark Pharmaceuticals Ltd's Chief Commercial Officer Robert Crockart said "we are confident it will offer patients a much needed and timely therapy option."

"As a leading pharmaceutical player, it is important that we are an integral part of India's fight against the COVID-19 pandemic. We are happy to receive regulatory approval for Nitric Oxide Nasal Spray (FabiSpray) and launch it in partnership with SaNOtize," he said.

Over the issue of clinical trials results, Dr. Monika Tandon, Senior VP and Head of Clinical Development in Glenmark Pharmaceuticals Ltd. said,"The results from this Phase 3, double blind, placebo controlled trial are encouraging. Demonstration of reduction in the viral load has significant positive impact from a patient and community perspective. In the current scenario, with new emerging variants exhibiting high transmissibility, NONS provides a useful option in India's fight against COVID-19."

"As per studies conducted in the Utah State University USA, NONS is proven to kill 99.9 per cent of SARS-Cov-2 virus including Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta, and Epsilon variant within 2 minutes." She said.

Dr Srikanth Krishnamurthy one of the Principal Investigators of the study said, "I have had a chance to view the results of the study. Nitric Oxide Nasal Spray lowers the viral load and hastens RT-PCR negativity when used early in COVID 19 infection leading to recovery. Most importantly, viral load reduction with NONS has the potential to reduce the chain of transmission. Last but not the least, NONS being topical is safe and makes this therapeutic option very attractive".
 

India sends medical supplies to Kiribati after Covid-19 triggers a state of disaster​

Responding to the appeal of the Government of Kiribati seeking offers of support to assist in its national efforts to manage the first Covid-19 outbreak in the Pacific Island country, the Government of India sent a consignment of medical supplies containing PPEs and medications to Kiribati.

2. The relief material sent by the Government of India include Pulse Oximeters, Swabs with VTM, Specimen bags for swabs, PPE kits (Surgical masks, Gloves, N95 masks, Shoe covers, Hair caps) and emergency Covid-19 medication supplies.

3. Despite the logistical challenges in reaching the isolated Pacific Island country, the medical supplies from India were put together and despatched in a short span of time. The consignment reached Kiribati on 12 February onboard a flight coordinated by the Australian Government.

4. The consignment of medical supplies to Kiribati affirms India’s commitment to provide Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Relief (HADR) support as an early responder in the Pacific region. India remains committed to extend full support to Kiribati’s national efforts in mitigating the challenges arising from the pandemic.
 

Striking new evidence points to Wuhan seafood market as the pandemic's origin point​

Was it a few raccoon dogs, inside a metal cage and stacked on top of a chicken coop? Or perhaps a lone red fox, curled up in the corner of its cage. Could one of these wild animals have triggered the entire COVID-19 pandemic late in 2019?


Over the weekend, an international team of scientists published two extensive papers online, offering the strongest evidence to date that the COVID-19 pandemic originated in animals at a market in Wuhan, China. Specifically, they conclude that the coronavirus most likely jumped from a caged wild animal into people at the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market, where a huge COVID-19 outbreak began in December 2019.


Scientists who weren't involved in the research papers are calling the new data "very convincing" and a "blow" to the lab-leak theory — that the virus somehow escaped from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, which does research on coronaviruses. In reaction to the papers, they say the newly published data is tipping the scales toward wildlife sold at the market.


"The studies don't exclude other hypotheses entirely," says virologist Jeremy Kamil, who's at Louisiana State University Health Shreveport and was not involved in this research. "But they absolutely are pushing it toward an animal origin."




Neither of the papers provides the smoking gun — that is, an animal infected with the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus at a market.


But they come close. They provide photographic evidence of wild animals, which can be infected with and shed SARS-CoV-2, sitting in the market in late 2019 — such as raccoon dogs and a red fox. What's more, the caged animals are shown in or near a stall where scientists found SARS-CoV-2 virus on a number of surfaces, including on cages, carts and machines that process animals after they are slaughtered at the market.


The papers are preliminary. They still need to be reviewed by outside scientists. But if the analyses turn out to be accurate, the new data paints an incredibly detailed picture of the early days of the pandemic. Photographic and genetic data pinpoint a specific stall at the market where the coronavirus likely was transmitted from an animal into people. And a new genetic analysis estimates the time, within weeks, when not just one but two spillovers occurred. It predicts the coronavirus jumped into people once in late November or early December and then again few weeks later.


So now, for the first time, the timing of the earliest known coronavirus infections coincides almost exactly with the timing of the outbreak at the seafood market, which began in early December and likely involved hundreds of people working or shopping at the market. That outbreak also spilled over into the surrounding community, as one of the new studies shows.


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Staff members of the Wuhan Hygiene Emergency Response Team investigate the shuttered Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market on Jan. 11, 2020, after it was linked to cases of COVID-19.
Noel Celis/AFP via Getty Images

At the same time, the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention found two variants of the coronavirus inside the market. And an independent study, led by virologists at the University of California, San Diego, suggests these two variants didn't evolve in people, because throughout the entire pandemic, scientists have never detected a variant linking the two together. Altogether, the new studies suggest that, most likely, the two variants evolved inside animals.


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Michael Worobey is a top virus sleuth. He has tracked the origins of the 1918 flu, HIV and now SARS-CoV-2. Worobey is a research professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Arizona.
University of Arizona

Evolutionary biologist Michael Worobey helped lead two of the studies and has been at the forefront of the search for the origins of the pandemic. He has spent his career tracking down the origins of pandemics, including the origin of HIV and the 1918 flu.


Back in May, Worobey signed a letter calling for an investigation into the lab-leak theory. But then, through his own investigation, he quickly found data supporting an animal origin.


This week, NPR spoke to Worobey, who's at the University of Arizona, to understand what the data in these new studies tells us about the origin of SARS-CoV-2; how, he believes, the data may shift the debate about the lab-leak theory; and the significance of photos taken five years before the pandemic. Here are key points from the conversation, which has been edited for clarity and length.


Live animals that are susceptible to COVID-19 were in the market in December 2019​


It's clear-cut these wild, live animals, including raccoon dogs and red foxes, were in the market. We have photographic evidence from December 2019. A concerned customer evidently took these photos and videos of the market on Dec. 3 and posted them on Weibo [because it was illegal to sell certain live animals]. The photos were promptly scrubbed. But a CNN reporter had communicated directly with the person who took the photos. I was able to get in touch with this reporter, and they passed on those photos from the source. So we don't completely verify the photos.


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An anonymous user on the Chinese social media platform Weibo posted pictures of live animals for sale in the southwest corner of the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in Wuhan in 2019.
Worobey and Holmes et al.

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Researchers investigating the origins of the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus are including these images in a forthcoming academic paper that pinpoints the southwest corner of the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market as the most probable origin point of the pandemic.
Worobey and Holmes et al.

Live susceptible animals were held in a stall where SARS-CoV-2 was later detected on a machine that processed animals in the market​


We analyzed a leaked report from the Chinese CDC detailing the results of this environmental sampling. Virtually all of the findings in the report matched what was in the World Health Organization's report. But there was some extra information in the leaked report. For example, there was information not just on which stalls had virus in them — or had samples positive for SARS-CoV-2 — but also how many samples in a given stall yielded positive results.


We found out that one stall actually had five positive samples — five surfaces in that stall had virus on them. And even better, in that particular stall, the samples were very animal-y. For example, scientists found virus on a feather/hair remover, a cart of the sort that we see in photographs that are used for transporting cages and, best of all, a metal cage in a back room.


So now we know that when the national public health authorities shut down the market and then sampled the surfaces there, one of the surfaces positive for SARS-CoV-2 was a metal cage in a back room.


What's even weirder — it turns out that one of the co-authors of the study, Eddie Holmes, had been taken to the Huanan market several years before the pandemic and shown raccoon dogs in one of the stalls. He was told, "This is the kind of place that has the ingredients for cross-species transmission of dangerous pathogens."


So he clicks photos of the raccoon dogs. In one photo, the raccoon dogs are in a cage stacked on top of a cage with some birds in it.


And at the end of our sleuth work, we checked the GPS coordinates on his camera, and we find that he took the photo at the same stall, where five samples tested positive for SARS-CoV-2.


So we connected all sorts of bizarre kinds of data. Together the data are telling a strong story.




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These two photos, taken in 2014 by scientist Eddie Holmes, show raccoon dogs and unknown birds caged in the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market. GPS coordinates of these images confirm that the animals were housed in the southwest corner of the market, where researchers found evidence of the coronavirus in January 2020.
Eddie Holmes

Earliest known cases of COVID-19, even those not directly related to individuals who had been in the market, radiate out from the market​


With a virus, such as SARS-CoV-2, that causes no symptoms or mild symptoms in most people, you don't have any chance of linking all the early cases to the site where the outbreak started. Because the virus is going to quickly spread to people outside of wherever it started.


And yet, from the clinical observations in Wuhan, around half of the earliest known COVID cases were people directly linked to the seafood market. And the other cases, which aren't linked through epidemiological data, have an even closer geographical association to the market. That's what we show in our paper.


It's absurd how strong the geographical association is [to the market].


NPR: Absurd? How? In the sense that the seafood market is so clearly bull's-eye center of this outbreak?


Yes. And I don't understand how anyone could not be moved, at least somewhat, by that data and then take this idea [of an animal origin] seriously, especially given the other things we've found in these studies.


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The Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market on July 16, 2021.
Getty Images



The virus jumped into people right before the outbreak in the market​


For example, our new genetic analysis tells us that this virus was not around for very long when the cases occurred at the market. For example, the earliest known patient at the market had an onset of symptoms on Dec. 10, 2019. And we can estimate that at that point in time, there were only about 10 people infected with the virus in the world and probably fewer than 70.


So if the pandemic didn't start at the market, one of the first five or 10 people infected in the world was at the market. And how do you explain that?


You have to remember: Wuhan is a city of 11 million people. And the Huanan market is only 1 of 4 places in Wuhan that sold live animals susceptible to SARS-CoV-2, such as raccoon dogs.


It's highly unlikely that the first COVID-19 outbreak would occur at the market if there weren't a source of the virus there​


Step back and think, "Where is the first cluster of a new respiratory infection going to appear in this city?" It could appear at a market. But it could also appear at a school, a university or a meatpacking plant.


NPR: Or a biotech conference?


Yes. In Washington state, SARS-CoV-2 first appeared in a nursing home. In Germany, it was at an auto-parts supplier.


There are thousands, perhaps 10,000, other places at least as likely, or even more likely, to be the place where a new pathogen shows up. And yet, in Wuhan, the first cluster of cases happens to be one of the four places that sells live animals, out of 10,000 other places. If you're not surprised by that, then I don't think you're understanding the unlikelihood that that presents.


NPR: So what is the likelihood of that coincidence happening — that the first cluster of cases occurs at a market that sells animals known to be susceptible to SARS-CoV-2, but the virus didn't actually come from the market?


I would put the odds at 1 in 10,000. But it's interesting. We do have one analysis where we show essentially that the chance of having this pattern of cases [clustered around the market] is 1 in 10 million [if the market isn't a source of the virus]. We consider that strong evidence in science.


The analyses that we've done are telling a very strong story.


The evidence is amongst the best we have for any emerging virus.


NPR: Really?


It's important to note we haven't found a related virus from the intermediate host. But we have a bunch of other evidence.


And the data zeroing in on the Huanan market, to me, is as compelling as the data that indicated to John Snow that the water pump was poisoning people who used it. [John Snow was a doctor in London who helped launch the field of outbreak investigations by figuring out the source of a cholera outbreak in the city in the mid-19th century].


Making these findings brought tears​


Sometimes you have these rare moments where you're maybe the only person on Earth who has access to this kind of crucial information. As I just started to figure out that there were more cases around the market than you can expect randomly — I felt that way. And no exaggeration, that moment — those kinds of moments — bring a tear to your eye.
 

Vaccine For 12-14 Age Group: Delhi Parents Feel Relieved, Say Apt Move Ahead Of School Reopening​

New Delhi:
Parents in the national capital heaved a sigh of relief with the government's announcement that Covid vaccination for children in the age group of 12-14 years will begin from Wednesday and said vaccine for children was long awaited.

For the first time in two years, schools in the national capital will reopen completely in offline mode from April 1 with the hybrid mode of operation coming to an end. "This is the right time to give them the vaccine as the classes will go completely offline from April 1 and the students will not have a choice to be at home," said Amita Bhargav, parent of a 13-year-old.

Union Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya on Monday announced that the Covid vaccination for children in the age group of 12-14 years will begin from Wednesday.

The COVID-19 vaccine to be administered to the 12-14 years age group would be Corbevax manufactured by Biological E. Limited, Hyderabad.

"I hope that we don't have to scout for the vaccination for my kids as we had to do last year for adults. It was a long awaited move, I just hope they have enough stock so its not difficult to get one," said Pooja Singh, another parent. Singh's views were echoed by Ella Joshi, a Dwarka resident, who said, "This has been long due but better late than never. It would have been good to have the jab at least a month back so kids could have got both the doses before returning to offline classes in April".

The countrywide vaccination drive was rolled out on January 16 last year with healthcare workers (HCWs) getting inoculated in the first phase. The vaccination of frontline workers (FLWs) started from February 2 last year.

The next phase of COVID-19 vaccination commenced from March 1 for people over 60 years of age and those aged 45 and above with specified co-morbid conditions. The country launched vaccination for all aged more than 45 years from April 1, 2021.

The government then decided to expand its vaccination drive by allowing everyone above 18 years to be vaccinated from May 1 last year. The next phase of COVID-19 vaccination commenced from January 3 for adolescents in the age group of 15-18 years. "My son's school has also sent a mail asking us to register for the vaccine on COWIN portal.

I hope it is a smooth experience and we also want that a vaccine is available for children below the age of 12 years soon," said Neetu Jha. According to official sources, around 7.11 crore children will be vaccinated under the new age group. Biological E Ltd has supplied 5 crore doses of Corbevax to the Centre and the vaccine has been distributed to states, sources said.
 
This is why I never believed Indian news
Nonsense and wanton delusions are everywhere
The source is AFP which is a French News Agency. The Indian media company is merely carrying the article. You have a problem which I'm sure you do , please take it up with the French agency . I'm sure they'd love to carry your rejoinder.