Coronavirus: Thailand shuts seafood market amid new outbreak, UK strain in Australia
A strain of COVID-19 from the UK has hit Australia’s shores. It somes after Thailand’s biggest seafood market was locked down to contain an outbreak.
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A more virulent strain of COVID-19 that has stopped the United Kingdom in its tracks has arrived in Australia, it has been confirmed.
On Monday, NSW chief health officer Kerry Chant confirmed two travellers from the UK had brought the new strain into the country, which is estimated to be 70 per cent more transmissible than earlier versions of the virus.
“Today I’m advised that we’ve had a couple of UK returned travellers with the particular mutations you’re referring to,” Dr Chant told reporters.
Dr Chant did not say whether the couple was currently in hotel quarantine.
None of the 83 cases that have arisen out of the cluster in Sydney’s northern beaches have matched the UK strain through genomic sequencing.
“Can I be very clear that the Avalon cluster strain does not have those mutations,” Dr Chant said.
“But the key point, regardless, is that we need to treat all people with that end-to-end process of making sure that they’re not coming in contact and there is not a risk of exposure to any residents in New South Wales.”
THAI SEAFOOD MARKET OUTBREAK
Thailand’s biggest seafood market and the surrounding area have been locked down to contain a coronavirus outbreak, after the country’s largest spike in cases since the pandemic began.
Despite being the first place to register an infection outside China, the kingdom had been mostly unscathed by the pandemic, with just over 4000 cases and 60 deaths so far.
But on Saturday night, authorities announced 548 positive cases connected to a seafood market in Mahachai, Samut Sakhon province, about 40 minutes southwest of Bangkok.
“We have announced the shrimp market is a severe disease control area,” provincial governor Veerasak Vijitsaengsri said.
A strict lockdown and curfew were introduced around the market until early January, affecting schools, sports stadiums, playgrounds and shopping malls.
However, local elections were expected to go ahead on Sunday local time as planned, as long as voters wore masks.
Foreign workers have been banned from leaving the province.
“The total number is 548 and 90 per cent (of cases) have no sign of sickness and most of them are foreign workers,” said Opas Kankavinwong, director general of the Disease Control Department.
Moe Kyaw Thu from the Raks Thai Foundation, which is co-ordinating testing, said it aimed to screen 4000 people over the weekend.
“The population in Mahachai is roughly 70 per cent Thai and 30 per cent migrant workers, which means the source of the virus spreading could come from migrant workers, particularly Myanmese workers,” he said.
Myanmar has had more than 115,000 cases of coronavirus and Thai authorities have been ramping up border controls over recent months.
FRANCE, GERMANY AMONG COUNTRIES TO BAN UK FLIGHTS
European countries banned flights from the UK on Sunday (local time) and the World Health Organisation called for stronger containment measures as the British government warned that a potent new strain of the virus was “out of control”.
Several EU countries — Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy and the Netherlands — have announced the suspension of air links, and in some cases rail and ferry links, with Britain.
In most cases, the bans were effective from midnight on Sunday (local time) and were to last a day or two, as a precaution while the threat of the new strain was evaluated and a co-ordinated response was worked out.
The World Health Organisation urged its European members to strengthen measures against a new variant of COVID-19 circulating in Britain.
Alarm bells were ringing across Europe — which last week became the first region in the world to pass 500,000 deaths from COVID-19 since the pandemic broke out a year ago — after it appeared that a new, even more infectious strain of the virus was raging in parts of Britain.
Germany, too, was considering a similar move as “a serious option” for flights from both Britain and South Africa, where another variant was discovered, according to a government source.
Italy will join the ban in order to protect its citizens, Foreign Minister Luigi Di Maio wrote on Facebook, without specifying when the measures would come into force.
Austria’s health ministry told the APA news agency that it would also impose a flight ban, the details of which were still being worked out.
A spokeswoman for WHO Europe said that “across Europe, where transmission is intense and widespread, countries need to redouble their control and prevention approaches.”
French President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, and EU chiefs Ursula von der Leyen and Charles Michel held a conference call on Sunday about the matter, according to the Elysee Palace in Paris.
ALARM BELLS
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said the infectiousness of the new strain had forced his hand into imposing a lockdown across much of England over the Christmas period.
“Unfortunately the new strain was out of control. We have got to get it under control,” UK Health Secretary Matt Hancock told Sky News after Mr Johnson U-turned on his previously stated policy of easing containment measures over the festive season.
Scientists first discovered the new variant — which they believe is 70 per cent more transmissible — in a patient in September. And Public Health England notified the government on Friday when modelling revealed the full seriousness of the new strain.
But Britain’s chief medical officer Chris Whitty pointed out that while the new strain was greatly more infectious, “there is no current evidence to suggest (it) causes a higher mortality rate or that it affects vaccines and treatments, although urgent work is underway to confirm this.”
The novel coronavirus has killed close to 1.7 million people since the outbreak emerged in China last December.
And with the onset of colder winter weather in the northern hemisphere where respiratory diseases flourish, countries are bracing for new waves of COVID-19 with tighter restrictions, despite the economic damage such lockdowns wrought earlier this year.
The Netherlands is under a five-week lockdown until mid-January with schools and all non-essential shops closed to slow a surge in the virus.
Italy also announced a new regimen of restrictions until January 6 that included limits on people leaving their homes more than once a day, closing non-essential shops, bars and restaurants and curbs on regional travel.
In Russia, health authorities said that the number of people who have died from the coronavirus has surpassed the 50,000 mark and now stands at 50,858.
VACCINATION ROLL OUT
The rapid rollout of vaccinations is now seen as the only effective way to end the crisis and the economically devastating shutdowns used to halt its spread.
Europe is expected to start a massive vaccination campaign after Christmas following the United States and Britain, which have begun giving jabs with an approved Pfizer-BioNTech shot, one of several leading candidates.
Russia and China have also started giving out jabs with their own domestically produced vaccines.
FedEx began shipping the second coronavirus vaccine candidate to earn emergency authorisation in the US after Moderna, a Massachusetts-based biotech company, received the authorisation for its vaccine candidate from an FDA advisory panel on Thursday.
Employees at a factory in the Memphis area and a facility in Olive Branch, Mississippi were boxing up the vaccine developed by Moderna Inc. and the National Institutes of Health.
A truck left the Mississippi facility Sunday morning with a police escort. The much-needed shots are expected to be given starting Monday, just three days after the Food and Drug Administration authorised their emergency rollout.
Later on Sunday (local time), an expert committee will debate who should be next in line for early doses of the Moderna vaccine and a similar one from Pfizer Inc. and Germany’s BioNTech. Pfizer’s shots were first shipped out a week ago and started being used the next day, kicking off the nation’s biggest vaccination drive.
FedEx said it has been working with McKesson, the company distributing Moderna’s vaccine candidate, for months to prepare.
“The shipment of vaccines to help end the COVID-19 pandemic is among the most important work in the history of FedEx, and our team is focused on the safe and efficient delivery of these critical shipments,” Raj Subramaniam, president and COO of FedEx, said in a statement. “As we have said since the onset of the pandemic and our relief efforts, this is who we are and what we do.”
Moderna agreed to deliver approximately 20 million doses of the vaccine candidate to the US government by the end of December.
The United States on Friday (local time) authorised Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine for emergency use, paving the way for millions of doses of a second jab to be shipped across the hardest-hit country in the world.
It is the first nation to authorise the two-dose regimen from Moderna, now the second vaccine to be deployed in a Western country after the one developed by Pfizer and BioNTech.
The Wall Street Journal reported that US politicians had agreed on pandemic spending powers for the Federal Reserve late on Saturday (local time), clearing the way for a vote on a roughly US$900-billion ($A1.1 billion) COVID-19 relief package for millions of Americans.
The deal would maintain the central bank’s ability to set up emergency lending programs without congressional approval, the Journal said, but the Fed would require approval to restart existing CARES Act programs once they expire at the end of this year.
– with AFP, Evin Priest
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