Covid-19 News & Updates (Thailand and Southeast Asia only)

[PeteC]

Bloomberg Worldwide Report (March 1)

https://www.bangkokpost.com/thailand/ge ... rus-update

[joelle]

Admin please delete if not useful
This link might be informative to get more update
https://www.ecdc.europa.eu/en/geographi ... ncov-cases

[buksida]

Coronavirus: Nasa images show China pollution clear amid slowdown
Satellite images have shown a dramatic decline in pollution levels over China, which is "at least partly" due to an economic slowdown prompted by the coronavirus, US space agency Nasa says.

Nasa maps show falling levels of nitrogen dioxide this year.

It comes amid record declines in China's factory activity as manufacturers stop work in a bid to contain the coronavirus.

China has recorded nearly 80,000 cases of the virus since the outbreak began.

It has spread to more than 50 countries but the vast majority of infections and deaths are in China, where the virus originated late last year.

Nasa scientists said the reduction in levels of nitrogen dioxide - a noxious gas emitted by motor vehicles and industrial facilities - was first apparent near the source of the outbreak in Wuhan city but then spread across the country.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-51691967

[PeteC]

Bloomberg Worldwide report (March 2)


https://www.bangkokpost.com/world/18697 ... rus-update

[Bluesky]

Looks like someone got caught with their hand in the cookie jar

Chinese Biotech Censured for False Claim on Gilead’s Virus Drug

Bloomberg
Bloomberg News
BloombergMarch 2, 2020
(Bloomberg) -- A Chinese biotech company which claimed to be able to manufacture an experimental drug from Gilead Sciences Inc. with the potential to treat the novel coronavirus, was censured for disclosing inaccurate information.

The Shanghai Stock Exchange said in an statement Sunday that BrightGene Bio-Medical Technology Co. has not gained approval from China’s drug regulator to make the drug known as remdesivir, which is seen as the leading candidate in the race to find a treatment for the virus that’s now sickened over 88,000 and killed over 3,000.

BrightGene also has not been licensed by the patent owner -- Gilead -- to make the drug, nor has it obtained “the relevant qualifications” for mass production of the therapy, said the stock exchange. Shares fell by the daily limit of 20% intraday on Monday.

Gilead’s experimental drug, which has not been licensed or approved for use anywhere in the world, is being tested in clinical trials at hospitals in the central Chinese city of Wuhan, the epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak, as well as in other Asian nations.

BrightGene’s announcement on Feb. 12 that it had managed to manufacture remdesivir in mass quantities garnered global headlines and sent its stock up nearly 60% last month to touch a record high. The stock exchange’s reprimand comes as concerns grow that researchers and drugmakers in China and elsewhere are seizing on the global panic around the growing epidemic to get attention for less-than-credible scientific work.

BrightGene, for example, had only been able to make remdesivir in a small quantity for clinical research and not commercial production and its elision of this difference led to the spread of “unclear, inaccurate information,” said the stock exchange.

BrightGene’s board secretary Wang Zhengye, who gave interviews to local media outlets saying the company’s drug is not for just for laboratory use but for mass production, was also reprimanded by the exchange.
With the virus now being reported in over 65 countries, exuberance among investors and medical companies around the development of treatments and vaccines is running the risk of becoming irrational and diverting resources from the most crucial scientific work.

Raised Concerns

Nearly 300 clinical trials have been registered in China so far to study the efficacy of various coronavirus treatments from Gilead’s remdesivir and AbbVie Inc.’s anti-HIV therapy Kaletra, to traditional Chinese medicine and even soy milk.

The design and execution of some of these trials have raised concerns among scientists, according to an article published last week in the Chinese Journal of Epidemiology.

The surge of trials has also led to a scramble for patients as test subjects, thus potentially delaying the progress of serious research that could lead to the discovery of effective therapies.

World Health Organization assistant director-general Bruce Aylward called for researchers to prioritize the most promising studies last week and said that Chinese researchers are facing difficulty recruiting enough patients into trials for remdesivir, which he said is the only drug that may be effective.

“We are doing lots of other studies with things that are less promising,” he said.

To contact Bloomberg News staff for this story: Dong Lyu in Beijing at dlyu3@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Rachel Chang at wchang98@bloomberg.net, Bhuma Shrivastava

[dtaai-maai]

Well, it's been cancelled,but it's worth noting that it's been cancelled by MotoGP and not by the Thai authorities...

MotoGP: First two races of 2020 season in Qatar & Thailand cancelled because of coronavirus

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/motorsport/51698839

[PeteC]

Bloomberg Worldwide Report (March 3)

https://www.bangkokpost.com/world/18705 ... rus-update

[Big Boy]

Double Posting this here because not everybody reads Thailand Football.

Thai football is no longer to be played behind closed doors. Every game has now been postponed until at least April 17.

To be reviewed March 31.

This was always threatened if Thailand moved into phase 3.

[PeteC]

Some background information and comparisons to a previous killer. Many people don't know about the Spanish Flu of the early 20th century and it's worth reading about. Personally, my father went through it, he was 7 in 1918. His recollection was very clear even into his old age about a horse drawn wagon coming down the street daily in the suburbs of Philadelphia with the driver yelling..."Bring out your dead"... That's how bad it was.

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/2020 ... panish-flu

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_flu

https://www.cdc.gov/flu/pandemic-resour ... -h1n1.html

[Spitfire]

Mod Edit: Sorry Spitfire. This thread is being kept as a serious subject, as exampled by actions to similar posts by Lost that have also been deleted.

[dtaai-maai]

Should the UK not be on the self-isolation list?

Bring out your dead

I can guess what Spitfire's post referred to. In my experience there are few subjects, no matter how serious, that couldn't benefit from a little gentle humour now and then.

[Bluesky]

Abridged article from WHO expert, Joint mission to China

March 3 (GMT):

Bruce Aylward, World Health Organization Joint Mission to China:

"I think the key learning from China is speed — it’s all about the speed. The faster you can find the cases, isolate the cases, and track their close contacts, the more successful you’re going to be. [...]
Abridged article from
People keep saying [the cases are the] tip of the iceberg. But we couldn’t find that. We found there’s a lot of people who are cases, a lot of close contacts — but not a lot of asymptomatic circulation of this virus in the bigger population. And that’s different from flu. [...]

China got patients in treatment early and have highly sophisticated health care treatment procedures. They are really good at keeping people alive with this disease. They have a survival rate (with a mortality rate of just under 1% outside of Hubei province) for this disease I would not extrapolate to the rest of the world. What you’ve seen in Italy and Iran is that a lot of people are dying.

Panic and hysteria are not appropriate. This is a disease that is in the cases and their close contacts. It’s not a hidden enemy lurking behind bushes. Get organized, get educated, and get working."

Source: Vox Interview

Full article, pragmatic and worth the read

https://www.vox.com/2020/3/2/21161067/c ... id19-china

[buksida]

Panic buying hits Bangkok stores
Shoppers in Greater Bangkok are quickly emptying supermarket shelves of long-lasting items like instant noodles, packed rice, tissue paper, tinned fish and drinking water as fears mount over the coronavirus epidemic.

Large retail operators including Tops Supermarket, Tesco Lotus, The Mall Group and Big C Supercenter acknowledged that these items have been snapped up quickly since the weekend.

They are also in consensus that fear of the deadly virus is the primary cause for the shopping spree.

"We have never seen these kinds of purchases," said Chairat Petchdakul, vice-president for supermarket merchandising at The Mall Group Co, the operator of Gourmet Market.

"At first we thought it stemmed from the payday, but the majority of the goods the shoppers bought were long-lasting items like instant noodles, drinking water and tinned fish," he said. "We then assumed that the demand was from growing concerns about the coronavirus epidemic. However, we will closely watch shoppers' behaviour again during these weekdays."

https://www.bangkokpost.com/business/18 ... kok-stores

[thecolonel]

What happened to HHTel daily data updates?


Sent from my Redmi Note 4 using Tapatalk

[sateeb]

Coronavirus panic: Why are people stockpiling toilet paper?

Perhaps the worst doomsday scenario is this: being stuck on the toilet and finding you're down to the last square.

At least that appears to be the nightmare prospect scaring many Australians right now, who have become the latest group to respond to coronavirus fears by buying toilet paper en masse.

This is despite authorities stressing there is no shortage - given most of the nation's rolls are made locally.

However in Sydney, the nation's largest city, supermarket shelves have been cleared in minutes, forcing one chain to enforce a four-pack buying limit.

On social media, #toiletpapergate and #toiletpapercrisis were top trending on Wednesday. Rolls were being flogged for hundreds of dollars online, while listeners were calling into radio stations to win packs of 3-ply loo roll.

Full story @ https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia

Always thought the Aussies were full of sh1t