Where did the coronavirus come from? Investigators find 'important clues' about Wuhan seafood market’s role


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Related: Chinese whistle-blower doctor honoured on death anniversary

Scientists who are trying to trace the origins of the coronavirus are completing a lengthy investigation in China.

A zoologist said they had found “important clues” about a seafood market’s role in the outbreak.

Peter Daszak, who is assisting the World Health Organisation-sponsored mission, said he anticipated the main findings will be made public before he leaves Wuhan on Wednesday.

Speaking from the central Chinese city where the coronavirus was identified in winter of 2019, Mr Daszak said the 14-member group worked with experts in China and visited hot spots and research centres to uncover "some real clues about what happened".

That's what this is all about – trying to understand why these things emerge so we don't continually have global economic crashes and horrific mortality while we wait for vaccines

Investigators want to know how the Sars-CoV-2 virus – whose closest known relative came from bats about 1,000 kilometres away – spread explosively in Wuhan before causing the worst outbreak in more than a century.

Mr Daszak said the investigation heralded a turning point in pandemic mitigation.

“It’s the beginning of hopefully a really deep understanding of what happened so we can stop the next one,” he said on Friday.

“That’s what this is all about, trying to understand why these things emerge so we don’t continually have global economic crashes and horrific mortality while we wait for vaccines. It’s just not a tenable future.”

Worldwide, the coronavirus has caused more than 106 million infections and 2.3 million deaths.

In May, the WHO was asked to help “identify the zoonotic source of the virus and the route of introduction to the human population, including the possible role of intermediate hosts”.

Lab theory

The lack of a clear pathway from bats to humans led to speculation – refuted by Mr Daszak – that the virus might have escaped from Wuhan Institute of Virology, a top-security biocontainment laboratory used to study bat-borne coronaviruses.

Scientists visited the lab and asked Shi Zhengli, who has collected and analysed these viruses for more than a decade, about the research and the earliest known coronavirus cases.

Collaboration

“We really have to cover the whole gamut of key lines of investigation,” Mr Daszak said.

“To be fair to our hosts here in China, they have been doing the same for the last few months. They have been working behind the scenes, digging up the information, looking at it and getting it ready.”

The work has been collaborative, with Chinese counterparts helping mission investigators dig deeper for clues, he said.

“We sat down with them every single day and went through information, new data, and then said we want to go to the key places,” the scientist said. “They asked for a list. We suggested where we should go and the people we should meet. We went to every place on that list and they were really forthcoming with that.”

Mr Daszak is British and lives in New York, where he runs the EcoHealth Alliance NGO.

He is one of 10 independent experts assisting the WHO mission. The agency also has five employees participating, and the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation and the Paris-based World Organisation for Animal Health have two each.

Joining threads

Mission delegates worked in three groups that focused on the potential involvement of animals, the epidemiology or spread of the disease and the findings from environmental sampling.

Genetic sequencing data are helping investigators identify threads linking the information across patients and wildlife, Mr Daszak said.

“My feeling is we will be able to say something of some value at the end of this trip – quite a lot of value – but I don’t want to get into what that’s going to be or which way it points,” he said.

The group’s findings will be confidential until they are published, he said.

Mr Daszak, who was focused on the animal side, said his trip to Huanan fresh produce market in central Wuhan was especially useful.

The so-called wet market sold mostly seafood, as well as fresh meat from wild animals. It was a focus early in the outbreak, when cases occurred among workers and shoppers, suggesting it might have been where the virus jumped from animals to humans. But subsequent research found earlier cases among people not linked to the market, undermining that theory.

‘Important clues’

Investigators looked further and found “important clues” about the market’s role, Mr Daszak said, declining to elaborate.

“Right now, we’re trying to tease everything together,” he said. “We’ve looked at these three strands separately. Now we’re going to bring it together and see what everything tells us.”

While the food market was shut and cleaned almost immediately after cases were recognised, “it’s still pretty intact”, Mr Daszak said.

“People left in a hurry and they left equipment, they left utensils, they left evidence of what was going on, and that’s what we looked at.”

Scientists in China who took environmental samples inside the market identified sites where traces of Sars-CoV-2 were detected, he said. Investigators also benefited from a greater understanding of the coronavirus.

“We know now what we didn’t know then – that for every sick case, there were others that were asymptomatic or difficult to distinguish from a cold or cough,” Mr Daszak said. “And so it’s not unexpected that there would have been cases other than ones that got into hospital. But how many others, when did this start? That’s the sort of thing we’re still working on.”

Viruses are passed along “convoluted rivers of emergence” and tracing that journey is complicated and will take “a really long time,” Mr Daszak said.

“What I have seen already tells me that there are some real clues about what happened, and I hope that we’ll be able to make a solid explanation of that by the end of this trip.”

Dirham Stretcher tips for having a baby in the UAE

Selma Abdelhamid, the group's moderator, offers her guide to guide the cost of having a young family:

• Buy second hand stuff

 They grow so fast. Don't get a second hand car seat though, unless you 100 per cent know it's not expired and hasn't been in an accident.

• Get a health card and vaccinate your child for free at government health centres

 Ms Ma says she discovered this after spending thousands on vaccinations at private clinics.

• Join mum and baby coffee mornings provided by clinics, babysitting companies or nurseries.

Before joining baby classes ask for a free trial session. This way you will know if it's for you or not. You'll be surprised how great some classes are and how bad others are.

• Once baby is ready for solids, cook at home

Take the food with you in reusable pouches or jars. You'll save a fortune and you'll know exactly what you're feeding your child.

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2018 ICC World Twenty20 Asian Western Sub Regional Qualifier

Event info: The tournament in Kuwait is the first phase of the qualifying process for sides from Asia for the 2020 World T20 in Australia. The UAE must finish within the top three teams out of the six at the competition to advance to the Asia regional finals. Success at regional finals would mean progression to the World T20 Qualifier.

Teams: UAE, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Maldives, Qatar

Friday fixtures: 9.30am (UAE time) - Kuwait v Maldives, Qatar v UAE; 3pm - Saudi Arabia v Bahrain

Profile

Company: Justmop.com

Date started: December 2015

Founders: Kerem Kuyucu and Cagatay Ozcan

Sector: Technology and home services

Based: Jumeirah Lake Towers, Dubai

Size: 55 employees and 100,000 cleaning requests a month

Funding:  The company’s investors include Collective Spark, Faith Capital Holding, Oak Capital, VentureFriends, and 500 Startups. 

Test

Director: S Sashikanth

Cast: Nayanthara, Siddharth, Meera Jasmine, R Madhavan

Star rating: 2/5

Coming soon

Torno Subito by Massimo Bottura

When the W Dubai – The Palm hotel opens at the end of this year, one of the highlights will be Massimo Bottura’s new restaurant, Torno Subito, which promises “to take guests on a journey back to 1960s Italy”. It is the three Michelinstarred chef’s first venture in Dubai and should be every bit as ambitious as you would expect from the man whose restaurant in Italy, Osteria Francescana, was crowned number one in this year’s list of the World’s 50 Best Restaurants.

Akira Back Dubai

Another exciting opening at the W Dubai – The Palm hotel is South Korean chef Akira Back’s new restaurant, which will continue to showcase some of the finest Asian food in the world. Back, whose Seoul restaurant, Dosa, won a Michelin star last year, describes his menu as,  “an innovative Japanese cuisine prepared with a Korean accent”.

Dinner by Heston Blumenthal

The highly experimental chef, whose dishes are as much about spectacle as taste, opens his first restaurant in Dubai next year. Housed at The Royal Atlantis Resort & Residences, Dinner by Heston Blumenthal will feature contemporary twists on recipes that date back to the 1300s, including goats’ milk cheesecake. Always remember with a Blumenthal dish: nothing is quite as it seems. 

Director: Laxman Utekar

Cast: Vicky Kaushal, Akshaye Khanna, Diana Penty, Vineet Kumar Singh, Rashmika Mandanna

Rating: 1/5

Family reunited

Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe was born and raised in Tehran and studied English literature before working as a translator in the relief effort for the Japanese International Co-operation Agency in 2003.

She moved to the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies before moving to the World Health Organisation as a communications officer.

She came to the UK in 2007 after securing a scholarship at London Metropolitan University to study a master's in communication management and met her future husband through mutual friends a month later.

The couple were married in August 2009 in Winchester and their daughter was born in June 2014.

She was held in her native country a year later.

Andor
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US PGA Championship in numbers

Joost Luiten produced a memorable hole in one at the par-three fourth in the first round.

To date, the only two players to win the PGA Championship after winning the week before are Rory McIlroy (2014 WGC-Bridgestone Invitational) and Tiger Woods (2007, WGC-Bridgestone Invitational). Hideki Matsuyama or Chris Stroud could have made it three.

Number of seasons without a major for McIlroy, who finished in a tie for 22nd.

4 Louis Oosthuizen has now finished second in all four of the game's major championships.

In the fifth hole of the final round, McIlroy holed his longest putt of the week - from 16ft 8in - for birdie.

For the sixth successive year, play was disrupted by bad weather with a delay of one hour and 43 minutes on Friday.

Seven under par (64) was the best round of the week, shot by Matsuyama and Francesco Molinari on Day 2.

Number of shots taken by Jason Day on the 18th hole in round three after a risky recovery shot backfired.

Jon Rahm's age in months the last time Phil Mickelson missed the cut in the US PGA, in 1995.

10 Jimmy Walker's opening round as defending champion was a 10-over-par 81.

11 The par-four 11th coincidentally ranked as the 11th hardest hole overall with a scoring average of 4.192.

12 Paul Casey was a combined 12 under par for his first round in this year's majors.

13 The average world ranking of the last 13 PGA winners before this week was 25. Kevin Kisner began the week ranked 25th.

14 The world ranking of Justin Thomas before his victory.

15 Of the top 15 players after 54 holes, only Oosthuizen had previously won a major.

16 The par-four 16th marks the start of Quail Hollow's so-called "Green Mile" of finishing holes, some of the toughest in golf.

17 The first round scoring average of the last 17 major champions was 67.2. Kisner and Thorbjorn Olesen shot 67 on day one at Quail Hollow.

18 For the first time in 18 majors, the eventual winner was over par after round one (Thomas shot 73).

While you're here
Joker: Folie a Deux

Starring: Joaquin Phoenix, Lady Gaga, Brendan Gleeson

Director: Todd Phillips 

Rating: 2/5

UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
The specs: Lamborghini Aventador SVJ

Price, base: Dh1,731,672

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UK-EU trade at a glance

EU fishing vessels guaranteed access to UK waters for 12 years

Co-operation on security initiatives and procurement of defence products

Youth experience scheme to work, study or volunteer in UK and EU countries

Smoother border management with use of e-gates

Cutting red tape on import and export of food

Dust and sand storms compared

Sand storm

  • Particle size: Larger, heavier sand grains
  • Visibility: Often dramatic with thick "walls" of sand
  • Duration: Short-lived, typically localised
  • Travel distance: Limited 
  • Source: Open desert areas with strong winds

Dust storm

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  • Travel distance: Long-range, up to thousands of kilometres
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Key facilities
  • Olympic-size swimming pool with a split bulkhead for multi-use configurations, including water polo and 50m/25m training lanes
  • Premier League-standard football pitch
  • 400m Olympic running track
  • NBA-spec basketball court with auditorium
  • 600-seat auditorium
  • Spaces for historical and cultural exploration
  • An elevated football field that doubles as a helipad
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  • Disruption Lab and Research Centre for developing entrepreneurial skills
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Our legal consultants

Name: Hassan Mohsen Elhais

Position: legal consultant with Al Rowaad Advocates and Legal Consultants.

THE SPECS

GMC Sierra Denali 1500

Engine: 6.2-litre V8

Transmission: 10-speed automatic

Power: 420hp

Torque: 623Nm

Price: Dh232,500

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MATCH INFO

Uefa Champions League semi-final, first leg
Bayern Munich v Real Madrid

When: April 25, 10.45pm kick-off (UAE)
Where: Allianz Arena, Munich
Live: BeIN Sports HD
Second leg: May 1, Santiago Bernabeu, Madrid

Specs

Engine: Dual-motor all-wheel-drive electric

Range: Up to 610km

Power: 905hp

Torque: 985Nm

Price: From Dh439,000

Available: Now

UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
The Melbourne Mercer Global Pension Index

The Melbourne Mercer Global Pension Index

Mazen Abukhater, principal and actuary at global consultancy Mercer, Middle East, says the company’s Melbourne Mercer Global Pension Index - which benchmarks 34 pension schemes across the globe to assess their adequacy, sustainability and integrity - included Saudi Arabia for the first time this year to offer a glimpse into the region.

The index highlighted fundamental issues for all 34 countries, such as a rapid ageing population and a low growth / low interest environment putting pressure on expected returns. It also highlighted the increasing popularity around the world of defined contribution schemes.

“Average life expectancy has been increasing by about three years every 10 years. Someone born in 1947 is expected to live until 85 whereas someone born in 2007 is expected to live to 103,” Mr Abukhater told the Mena Pensions Conference.

“Are our systems equipped to handle these kind of life expectancies in the future? If so many people retire at 60, they are going to be in retirement for 43 years – so we need to adapt our retirement age to our changing life expectancy.”

Saudi Arabia came in the middle of Mercer’s ranking with a score of 58.9. The report said the country's index could be raised by improving the minimum level of support for the poorest aged individuals and increasing the labour force participation rate at older ages as life expectancies rise.

Mr Abukhater said the challenges of an ageing population, increased life expectancy and some individuals relying solely on their government for financial support in their retirement years will put the system under strain.

“To relieve that pressure, governments need to consider whether it is time to switch to a defined contribution scheme so that individuals can supplement their own future with the help of government support,” he said.

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Engine: 3.8-litre twin-turbo flat-six

Power: 650hp at 6,750rpm

Torque: 800Nm from 2,500-4,000rpm

Transmission: 8-speed dual-clutch auto

Fuel consumption: 11.12L/100km

Price: From Dh796,600

On sale: now

The biog

Age: 59

From: Giza Governorate, Egypt

Family: A daughter, two sons and wife

Favourite tree: Ghaf

Runner up favourite tree: Frankincense 

Favourite place on Sir Bani Yas Island: “I love all of Sir Bani Yas. Every spot of Sir Bani Yas, I love it.”