Antoine FLAHAULT Profile picture
Jan 4 8 tweets 3 min read
1/8 - “Leading scientists advising the World Health Organization said they wanted a “more realistic picture” about the #COVID19 situation from China’s top experts at a key meeting on Tuesday as worries grow about the rapid spread of the virus.”
scmp.com/news/china/art…
2/8 - “The WHO has invited Chinese scientists to a virtual closed meeting with its technical advisory group on viral evolution on Tuesday, to present data on which variants are circulating in the country. It is not open to the public or media.”
3/8 - ““We want to see a more realistic picture of what is actually going on,” said @MarionKoopmans, a Dutch virologist who sits on the WHO committee. Speaking to Reuters ahead of the meeting, she said some of the data from China, such as hosp. numbers, is “not very credible”.
4/8 - “It is in the interests of China itself to come forward with more reliable information.
@Tuliodna, a South African scientist whose team has detected a number of new variants,said of course it would be good to get more information from China, but this also applies globally.”
5/8 - “So far, sequencing data from China provided to the online GISAID hub has shown the variants circulating there are offshoots of Omicron, in line with the dominant variants in the rest of the world.”
6/8 - “Koopmans said they have only seen a tiny fraction of China’s cases sequenced so far – around 700 – and called for the establishment of a global surveillance network. Right now, what we are getting is very patchy, but that has been the reality in other parts of the world.”
7/8 - “Last month, Reuters reported that the WHO had not received data from China on new Covid hospitalisations since Beijing lifted its #ZeroCovid policy, prompting some health experts to question whether it might be hiding information on the extent of its outbreak.”
8/8 - “De Oliveira criticised the imposition of travel restrictions by several countries on China, something South Africa experienced after alerting the world to the Beta and Omicron variants.”

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More from @FLAHAULT

Jan 6
1/9 - “Ever since China ended its #ZeroCovid policy late last month, its hospitals have been overwhelmed by cases. But as concerns grow about the threat of new variants Beijing has been criticised by global health bodies for a lack of transparency.”
ft.com/content/7623c6…
2/9 - “At least 15 countries have introduced mandatory #COVID19 testing for travellers arriving from China, mostly to ensure that no dangerous variants go undetected. The UKHSA has asked hospitals to sequence all viral samples from patients from China hospitalised with Covid.”
3/9 - “But are surging infection rates likely to lead to powerful variants from China or other countries, such as the US? The chances are seen as low by many epidemiologists though they remain concerned that a lack of transparency in some countries could hinder detection.”
Read 9 tweets
Jan 6
1/9 - “Wastewater is now a core component of infectious disease monitoring, providing a variant-specific, community-representative picture of public health trends that captures previously undetected spread and pathogen transmission links.”
science.org/doi/10.1126/sc…
2/9 - “Although clinical surveillance will remain fundamental to infectious disease response, wastewater-based approaches enable fast and cost-effective surveillance, even in current blind spots.”
3/9 - “Pathogen concentrations accurately estimate prevalence (the number of current infections in the population), and given that wastewater trends often precede corresponding clinical detections, they may allow for early detection.”
Read 9 tweets
Jan 4
1/9 - “China is mourning a growing number of public figures lost to #COVID19, from academics to opera singers, whose deaths have complicated the government’s efforts to minimise the scale of the unfolding outbreak sweeping across the country.”
ft.com/content/67d7c3…
2/9 - “Since authorities last month scrapped most restrictions instituted to keep the virus at bay, #SARSCoV2 has rampaged through China’s vulnerable population with unparalleled speed, leaving hospitals inundated with the sick and elderly and crematoria overwhelmed with demand.”
3/9 - “The havoc has left China’s propaganda organs struggling to shape a coherent narrative and defend the rollback of Xi Jinping’s signature #ZeroCovid, especially after spending two years playing up the death toll in the west as evidence of China’s superior governance.”
Read 9 tweets
Dec 25, 2022
1/9 - “I think people think of science as something that you get up at bat and you hit a home run the first time around. It isn’t that way — it’s a gradual, iterative process that is cumulative, and that will ultimately get you to the endgame you want.”
latimes.com/science/story/…
2/9 - “Science collects data, and you act on the data that you have at the time. In January 2020, we were learning about aspects of the coronavirus, and we had to, by necessity, make recommendations, make guidelines. We had to publicly discuss our understandings of the virus.”
3/9 - “Science is self-correcting. So what we knew in Jan was one thing. When we later learned that the virus is readily spread by aerosol, and that 50% to 60% of the spread was by people who didn’t even know they’re infected, we had to change our recommendations and guidelines.”
Read 9 tweets
Dec 23, 2022
1/9 - “Chinese officials estimate about 250mn people or 18% of the population were infected with #COVID19 in the first 20 days of December, as Beijing abruptly dismantled restrictions that had contained the disease for almost three years.”
ft.com/content/1fb604…
2/9 - “Sun Yang, [from the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention] said the rate of Covid’s spread in the country was still rising and estimated that more than half of the population in Beijing and Sichuan were already infected, the people briefed on the meeting said.”
3/9 - “Sun’s figures, which were provided in a closed-door meeting, contrast with data put out by the National Health Commission, which reported 62,592 symptomatic Covid cases over the same period. Last week, China stopped publicly trying to tally the total number of infections.”
Read 9 tweets
Dec 23, 2022
1/5 - [Trois ans déjà] : “2020, fut l’année de la souche de Wuhan, l’année de l’exacerbation des tensions entre Pékin et Washington, l’année de la chute de Donald Trump, l’année des confinements, quarantaines et couvre-feux, le retour au Moyen- Âge.”
atlantico.fr/article/decryp…
2/5 - “2021, fut l’année du déploiement des nouveaux vaccins à ARN messagers, affichant une efficacité insolente de plus de 95% de réduction des infections par le #SARSCoV2, et avec eux l’entrevue d’un règlement définitif de la crise sanitaire. Ce fut aussi…”
3/5 “… [2021] l’année de l’émergence de trois sous-variants qui allaient contourner de plus en plus l’efficacité initiale des vaccins contre l’infection. Alpha, le variant dit du Kent, puis Delta venant d’Inde et enfin Omicron, d’Afrique du Sud.”
Read 5 tweets

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