Two new studies provide more evidence that the coronavirus pandemic originated in a Wuhan, China market where live animals were sold – further bolstering the theory that the virus emerged in the wild rather than escaping from a Chinese lab.
The research, published online Tuesday by the journal Science, shows that the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market was likely the early epicenter of the scourge that has now killed nearly 6.4 million people around the world. Scientists conclude that the virus that causes COVID-19, SARS-CoV-2, likely spilled from animals into people two separate times.
“All this evidence tells us the same thing: It points right to this particular market in the middle of Wuhan,” said Kristian Andersen a professor in the Department of Immunology and Microbiology at Scripps Research and coauthor of one of the studies. “I was quite convinced of the lab leak myself until we dove into this very carefully and looked at it much closer.”
In one study, which incorporated data collected by Chinese scientists, University of Arizona evolutionary biologist Michael Worobey and his colleagues used mapping tools to estimate the locations of more than 150 of the earliest reported COVID-19 cases from December 2019. They also mapped cases from January and February 2020 using data from a social media app that had created a channel for people with COVID-19 to get help.
They asked, “Of all the locations that the early cases could have lived, where did they live? And it turned out when we were able to look at this, there was this extraordinary pattern where the highest density of cases was both extremely near to and very centered on this market,” Worobey said at a press briefing. “Crucially, this applies both to all cases in December and also to cases with no known link to the market … And this is an indication that the virus started spreading in people who worked at the market but then started to spread into the local community.”
Andersen said they found case clusters inside the market, too, “and that clustering is very, very specifically in the parts of the market” where they now know people were selling wildlife, such as raccoon dogs, that are susceptible to infection with the coronavirus.
In the other study, scientists analyzed the genomic diversity of the virus inside and outside of China starting with the earliest sample genomes in December 2019 and extending through mid-February 2020. They found that two lineages – A and B – marked the pandemic’s beginning in Wuhan. Study coauthor Joel Wertheim, a viral evolution expert at the University of California, San Diego, pointed out that lineage A is more genetically similar to bat coronaviruses, but lineage B appears to have begun spreading earlier in humans, particularly at the market.
“Now I realize it sounds like I just said that a once-in-a-generation event happened twice in short succession,” Wertheim said. But certain conditions were in place — such as people and animals in close proximity and a virus that can spread from animals to people and from person to person. So “barriers to spillover have been lowered such that multiple introductions, we believe, should actually be expected,” he said.
Many scientists believe the virus jumped from bats to humans, either directly or through another animal. But in June, the World Health Organization recommended a deeper probe into whether a lab accident may be to blame. Critics had said the WHO was too quick to dismiss the lab leak theory.
“Have we disproven the lab leak theory? No, we have not,” Andersen said. “But I think what’s really important here is there are possible scenarios and there are plausible scenarios and it’s really important to understand that possible does not mean equally likely.”
The pandemic’s origins remain controversial. Some scientists believe a lab leak is more likely and others remain open to both possibilities. But Matthew Aliota, a researcher in the college of veterinary medicine at the University of Minnesota, said in his mind the pair of studies “kind of puts to rest, hopefully, the lab leak hypothesis.”
“Both of these two studies really provide compelling evidence for the natural origin hypothesis,” said Aliota, who wasn’t involved in either study. Since sampling an animal that was at the market is impossible, “this is maybe as close to a smoking gun as you could get.”
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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s executive order that forbids school districts from imposing mask mandates on schools to prevent the spread of COVID-19 has been upheld by a divided federal appeals court panel.
The ruling from the New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ended a lower federal court injunction allowing such mandates.
Families of seven children with disabilities — the court record listed Down syndrome, asthma, attention deficit hyperactivity, epilepsy, heart defects and cerebral palsy, among others — had sued, saying the children were vulnerable and that the lack of a masking requirement at their schools endangered their health.
Writing for the majority in a 2-1 ruling Monday, Judge Andrew Oldham said there are other options for schools to accommodate the children’s health concerns. He specifically mentioned vaccines, plexiglass barriers, use of hand sanitizer and social distancing.
“It is plainly within the State’s power to remove one possible accommodation from consideration, so long as other reasonable options remain,” Oldham wrote in the opinion issued Monday, rejecting arguments that the prohibition on mask mandates violated the Americans with Disabilities Act and other federal law. Judge Don Willett concurred in the judgment.
Judge W. Eugene Davis dissented. Davis agreed that the lower court injunction was “overbroad.” But, he said, the courts should allow the school districts to impose mask mandates at the schools attended by the seven students.
“Because of their disabilities and based on the testimony of their personal physicians, the district court found that because of their heightened susceptibility of contracting COVID-19 and, if contracted, a heightened risk of severe illness or death from it, the children could not safely attend school where they would be in close proximity to unmasked students or staff members,” Davis wrote.
The 5th Circuit handles appeals of federal decisions in Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi. Oldham and Willett were appointed to the court by former President Donald Trump; Davis, by former President Ronald Reagan.
Micronesia’s first outbreak of COVID-19 grew in one week to more than 1,000 cases by Tuesday, causing alarm in the Pacific island nation.
Last week, Micronesia likely became the final nation in the world with a population of more than 100,000 to experience an outbreak of the disease, after avoiding it for 2 1/2 years thanks to its geographic isolation and border controls.
Health officials said cases were rapidly increasing. It reported 140 new cases Monday, bringing the total to 1,261, a figure which includes some cases caught at the border before the outbreak.
Eight people have been hospitalized and one older man has died, officials said.
Many top lawmakers and senior officials have caught the disease, including Vice President Yosiwo George, who has been hospitalized, officials said. They said the vice president’s condition was improving.
Camille Movick, whose family owns Fusion Restaurant in Pohnpei State, told The Associated Press that a lot of people have been posting on Facebook asking, for instance, that others stay away from their homes.
“Initially there was quite a bit of panic and worry with most people,” she said.
She said her restaurant remained open although business was slow because many people were afraid to dine in. She said some other restaurants had closed their dining rooms and were only offering takeaway services.
Movick said authorities had issued a directive that all people must wear masks in public — even outdoors — and that they faced fines of $1,000 for noncompliance.
She said one positive outcome was the outbreak had prompted many previously unvaccinated people to get their shots.
She said many people suspected the virus might have been circulating before the first community case was confirmed last week because health authorities weren’t routinely testing patients for the disease.
Last year, Micronesia became one of the few countries to impose a broad mandate requiring all eligible citizens get vaccinated against the coronavirus.
The government threatened to withhold federal funds from any individuals or business owners who didn’t follow the rules. Health officials said this week that 75% of people aged 5 and over were fully vaccinated.
Movick said many parts of society were continuing to function as before, including many people who were working from their offices.
“We’re hoping things get back to normal soon,” Movick said. “Just like in other countries, over time, they’ve gotten over it, and lifted the restrictions.”
As a new school year approaches, COVID-19 infections are again on the rise, fueled by highly transmissible variants, filling families with dread. They fear the return of a pandemic scourge: outbreaks that sideline large numbers of teachers, close school buildings and force students back into remote learning.
Some school systems around the country have moved to bolster staffing to minimize disruptions, but many are hoping for the best without doing much else differently compared with last year.
Among them is Baltimore County schools, where the number of days that individual schools in the district couldn’t offer in-person learning added together totaled 159 in January, according to data from the private research firm Burbio, which tracks over 5,000 school districts nationwide. District officials said they did not see a need to change protocols.
“We don’t anticipate significant changes to our plan; we don’t anticipate significant disruptions,” said Charles Herndon, a Baltimore County Public Schools spokesperson. “What we’re expecting to see is waves of COVID in 2022 and 2023, and I’m sure there are going to be times when more folks are going to be absent and there will be times when everything is OK.”
Still, the district is prepared to move classes online if necessary.
“We certainly hope we don’t have to go to that extreme, but it is an option should we need to consider it,” he said.
Teacher shortages remain a major concern, even bigger than COVID-19 itself, said Dan Domenech, executive director of AASA, an association of school superintendents.
“That is the greater concern – that they will have the necessary staff to man all the classrooms, to man all the programs – which will only be made worse if there is an outbreak of COVID,” he said.
Philadelphia’s schools illustrate how disruptive surges can be. Beginning in January the virus caused 114 city schools to go remote for an average of around eight days each — a total of 920 cumulative days of remote learning, more than any other district in Burbio’s data for January through June.
Amid shortages of substitute teachers, schools were forced to pull in central office staff, combine classrooms, or temporarily go remote, district spokesperson Marissa Orbanek said.
The district has switched to a new staffing agency and aims to fill 90% of substitute requests this year, said Orbanek. They also now have over 100 supplemental teachers, substitutes who show up at the same school every day in case of last-minute absences.
One parent, James Fogarty, saw his elementary school age children go back to online learning several times last year in Pittsburgh, a district that saw 46 disruptions in the second half of last year. He hopes the district and communities can identify problems earlier and work on better solutions, like identifying backup options for families.
“How do we build systems that are flexible to meet the shocks when they happen other than just like saying to families, ‘Good luck, you’re on your own and I hope you don’t get fired because you have to miss your shift job,’” said Fogarty, the executive director of A+ Schools in Pittsburgh, an organization that promotes equity in schools. “That’s not a satisfying answer for me.”
Schools cannot afford more disruptions that distract them from the critical work of helping kids catch up, said Thomas Kane, an education policy researcher at Harvard. Students at lower-income schools that were doing remote learning for more than half a year lost the equivalent of 22 weeks of learning, he said, while higher-income schools lost 13 weeks.
“We’ve experienced a historic widening in achievement gaps between Blacks and whites, between Latinx students and whites, between high- and low-poverty schools,” he said. “If we don’t get active in trying to close those gaps, they’re going to become permanent and there will be huge consequences for kids.”
Schools are hopeful disruptions will be less likely as many districts have invested in better ventilation and vaccines are available to children as young as six months old. Besides ramping up hiring of substitutes, some of the districts that were hit hardest last year have been making small changes to their protocols.
At Baltimore City schools, which is separate from the county school system, officials say expanded access to rapid tests will help schools stay open if a new variant surges in the fall. The school previously relied on slower PCR tests, and when omicron cases spiked in January, the district’s testing regimen couldn’t keep up. The switch to a faster test helped the district avoid any schoolwide closures for the rest of the spring.
“We firmly believe that with the protocols we have in place that we’re going to be able to keep in-person learning going as the virus ebbs and flows and as new variants come — pending an unforeseen variant that really changes the game,” said Cleo Hirsch, director of the district’s COVID-19 response.
The school district in Montgomery County, Maryland, had 338 cumulative days of disrupted learning in January, the second-highest of all the districts in Burbio’s data. District spokesperson Christopher Cram said that was in part because of a policy that triggered hybrid or virtual learning automatically if the COVID case rate in a school rose to 5%. It is working on an updated safety plan for the new school year, he said.
In Columbus, Ohio, where the school system saw 106 disruptions due to staff absences at the start of 2022, the district did not point to any planned changes to its policies to prepare for potential surges in the new year. “As we look toward opening schools in August, the District will continue to follow its current mitigation protocols to help keep staff, students, and families safe,” spokesperson Jacqueline Bryant said.
Lolita Augenstein, president of the Council of PTAs in Columbus, said she’s optimistic that this year will be better. The district has focused on hiring teachers and substitutes, she said, and educators are better trained to teach online if needed.
“We may not have figured it all out, and there are new variants and there are new concerns that have popped up,” said Augenstein, whose daughter graduated from a district high school last school year. “But kids are resilient. … The families are trained in going back and forth between remote and the building.”
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The Associated Press education team receives support from the Carnegie Corporation of New York. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
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Associated Press writers Brooke Schultz in Harrisburg, Pa., and Arleigh Rodgers in Indianapolis contributed to this report. They are corps members for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.
As a medical student in North Korea, Lee Gwang-jin said he treated his fevers and other minor ailments with traditional herbal medicine. But bad illness could mean trouble because hospitals in his rural hometown lacked the ambulances, beds, even the electricity at times needed to treat critical or emergency patients.
So Lee was skeptical when he heard recent North Korean state media reports that claimed such so-called Koryo traditional medicine is playing a key role in the nation’s fight against COVID-19, which has killed millions around the world.
“North Korea is using Koryo medicine a lot (for COVID-19) … but it’s not a sure remedy,” said Lee, who studied Koryo medicine before he fled North Korea in 2018 for a new life in South Korea. “Someone who is destined to survive will survive (with such medicine), but North Korea can’t help others who are dying.”
Like many other parts of life in North Korea, the medicine that the state says is curing its sick people is being used as a political symbol. That, experts say, will eventually allow the country to say its leaders have beaten the outbreak, where other nations have repeatedly failed, by providing homegrown remedies, independent of outside help.
As state media churn out stories about the effectiveness of the medicine and the huge production efforts to make more of it, there are questions about whether people suffering from severe disease are getting the treatment they need.
Defectors and experts believe North Korea is mobilizing Koryo medicine simply because it doesn’t have enough modern medicine to fight COVID-19.
“Treating mild symptoms with Koryo medicine isn’t a bad option. … But the coronavirus doesn’t cause only mild symptoms,” said Yi Junhyeok, a traditional doctor and researcher at South Korea’s Korea Institute of Oriental Medicine. “When we think about critical and high-risk patients, North Korea needs vaccines, emergency care systems and other medical resources that it can use to” lower fatalities.
More than two months have passed since North Korea admitted its first coronavirus outbreak, and the country has reported an average of 157 fever cases each day in the past seven days, a significant drop from the peak of about 400,000 a day in May. It also maintains a widely disputed claim that only 74 out of about 4.8 million fever patients have died, a fatality rate of 0.002% that would be the world’s lowest if true.
Despite widespread outside doubt about the truth of North Korea’s reported statistics, there are no signs that the outbreak has caused catastrophe in North Korea. Some outside experts say the North may soon formally declare victory over COVID-19 in an effort to boost internal unity. North Korea may then emphasize the role of Koryo medicine as the reason.
“North Korea calls Koryo medicine ‘juche (self-reliant) medicine,’ treats it importantly and views it as one of its political symbols,” said Kim Dongsu, a professor at the College of Korean Medicine at South Korea’s Dongshin University. “North Korea doesn’t have many academic and cultural achievements to advertise so it’ll likely actively propagate Koryo medicine.”
North Korea officially incorporated Koryo medicine — named after an ancient Korean kingdom — in its public healthcare system in the 1950s. Its importance has sharply grown since the mid-1990s, when North Korea began suffering a big shortage of modern medicine during a crippling famine and economic turmoil that killed hundreds of thousands of people.
Koryo medicine refers to herbal concoctions that sometimes include animal parts, acupuncture, cupping, moxibustion and meridian massages. Such ancient remedies are used in many Asian and Western nations, too. But while in those countries traditional and modern medicines operate independently, North Korea has combined them.
Medical students are required to study both modern and traditional medicine at school, regardless of what they major in. So once they become professional doctors, they can practice both. Each hospital in North Korea has a department of Koryo medicine. There are also Koryo medicine-only hospitals.
Kim Jieun, a defector who is a traditional doctor in South Korea, said she majored in Koryo medicine at school in the North but eventually worked as a pediatrician and internal medicine doctor. She said that South Koreans generally use traditional medicine to maintain or improve their health, but North Koreans use it to treat diverse diseases.
“In South Korea, patients with cerebral hemorrhage, hepatocirrhosis, liver cancer, ascites, diabetes and kidney infections don’t come to traditional clinics. But in North Korea, traditional doctors treat them,” said Kim, who resettled in South Korea in 2002 and now works for Seoul’s Well Saem Hospital of Korean Medicine.
North Korea’s main Rodong Sinmun newspaper has recently published a slew of articles praising herbal medicine and acupuncture for curing fever patients and reducing the aftereffects of COVID-19 illnesses, including abnormal pains, heart and kidney problems, nausea and coughing.
The newspaper also published calls by leader Kim Jong Un to embrace Koryo medicine. Other state media reports said the production of Koryo medicine has quadrupled since last year, while a vast amount of modern medicine has also been speedily delivered to local medical institutions, a claim that cannot be independently verified.
North Korea’s nominally free socialist medical system remains in shambles, with defectors testifying that they had to buy their own medicine and pay doctors for surgeries and other treatments. They say North Korea’s advanced hospitals are largely concentrated in Pyongyang, the capital, where the ruling elite and upper-class citizens loyal to the Kim family live.
Lee, 29, who attended a medical school in the northern North Korean city of Hyesan, said Koryo doctors reused their acupuncture needles after sterilizing them with alcohol, and hospitals typically charged patients for the use of electricity for a medical examination.
H.K. Yoon, a former North Korean doctor who fled the country in the mid-2010s, said her mid-level hospital in the northeast had no ambulance, no oxygen concentrator and only three to four beds in the emergency room. She said she shared surgical equipment with other doctors, and her monthly salary was the equivalent of 800 grams (1.76 pounds) of rice.
“My heart aches when I recall the lack of surgical equipment,” said Yoon, who asked that her first name be identified only by initials because of safety worries about relatives in North Korea. “When my patients were critical, I wanted to perform surgeries quickly. But I couldn’t do it because surgical equipment was being used by someone else, and I worried about how soon I could sterilize and use it.”
Some experts earlier predicted that the COVID-19 outbreak could cause dire consequences in North Korea because most of its 26 million people are unvaccinated and about 40% of its people are reportedly undernourished. Now, they speculate that North Korea is likely underreporting its death count to prevent political damage to Kim Jong Un.
Lee, the former North Korean medical student, said people in Hyesan didn’t go to hospitals unless they were extremely sick.
“When they are moderately ill, they just receive acupuncture or Koryo herbal medicine. They trust Koryo medicine but they also don’t make much money and Koryo medicine is cheaper than Western medicine,” Lee said.
President Joe Biden is feeling “much, much better” after testing positive for the coronavirus, the White House COVID-19 response coordinator said Sunday, confirming that the 79-year-old U.S. leader was infected with a highly contagious variant spreading throughout the country.
“It is the BA.5 variant … but thank goodness our vaccines and therapeutics work well against it, which is why I think the president’s doing well,” Dr. Ashish Jha told CBS’ “Face the Nation.”
“I checked in with his team late last night. He was feeling well. He had a good day yesterday. He’s got … an upper respiratory infection and he’s doing just fine. We haven’t gotten any updates this morning, but throughout the night he was feeling much, much better.’’
That variant is an offshoot of the omicron strain that emerged late last year. It is believed responsible for the vast majority of coronavirus cases in the country. Biden tested positive for the virus on Thursday morning. He has been isolating in the White House residence since then.
Administration officials have emphasized that his symptoms are mild because he has received four vaccine doses, and he started taking the antiviral drug Paxlovid after becoming infected.
Dr. Kevin O’Connor, the president’s physician, wrote in his latest update Saturday on Biden’s condition that Biden’s earlier symptoms, including a runny nose and a cough, have become “less troublesome,” but that the president now had body aches and a sore throat.
He said Biden “most likely” had the BA.5 variant and that results of the preliminary sequencing indicating that strain did not affect Biden’s treatment plan “in any way.”
Jha pledged that the White House would keep giving updates on the president’s condition and whether he might have long-term symptoms.
“We think it’s really important for the American people to know how well their president is doing,” he said.
“Obviously if he has persistent symptoms, obviously if any of them interfere with his ability to carry out his duties, we will disclose that early and often with the American people. But I suspect that this is going to be a course of COVID that we’ve seen in many Americans who have ben fully vaccinated, double boosted, getting treated with those tools in hand,” Jha said. “The president’s been doing well and we’re going to expect that he’s going to continue to do so.’’
