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Beijing, Jul 6: A city in northern China on Sunday sounded an alert after a suspected case of bubonic plague was reported, according to official media here.

Bayannur, Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, announced a level III warning of plague prevention and control, state-run People’s Daily Online reported.

The suspected bubonic plague case was reported on Saturday by a hospital in Bayannur. The local health authority announced that the warning period will continue until the end of 2020.

"At present, there is a risk of a human plague epidemic spreading in this city. The public should improve its self-protection awareness and ability, and report abnormal health conditions promptly,” the local health authority said.

On July 1, state-run Xinhua news agency said that two suspected cases of bubonic plague reported in Khovd province in western Mongolia have been confirmed by lab test results.

The confirmed cases are a 27-year-old resident and his 17-year-old brother, who are being treated at two separate hospitals in their province, it quoted a health official as saying.

The brothers ate marmot meat, the health official said, warning people not to eat marmot meat.

A total of 146 people who had contact with them have been isolated and treated at local hospitals, according to Narangerel.

Bubonic plague is a bacterial disease that is spread by fleas living on wild rodents such as marmots. It can kill an adult in less than 24 hours if not treated in time, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).

A couple died of bubonic plague in the western Mongolian province of Bayan-Ulgii last year after eating raw marmot meat.

The news of bubonic plague came after Chinese researchers issued an early warning over another potential pandemic caused by an influenza virus in pigs.

Scientists from China Agricultural University, the Chinese Centre for Disease Control and Prevention and other institutes detected a pig influenza virus bearing genotype 4 (G4), which is contagious among pigs and has the possibility of jumping to humans, as the G4 virus is able to bind with human cells, state-run Global Times reported last week.

The researchers are concerned that it could mutate further so that it can spread easily from person to person, and trigger a global outbreak, BBC reported.

"Controlling the prevailing G4 EA H1N1 viruses in pigs and close monitoring in human populations, especially workers in the swine industry, should be urgently implemented," Chinese researchers warned in the paper.

The new diseases were reported even as China grappled with the second attack of Covid-19 in Beijing after controlling it in Wuhan where it was first reported in December last year.

On Saturday, Beijing reported a single-digit Covid-19, local authorities said Sunday.

The number of newly confirmed Covid-19 cases reached a peak in Beijing on June 13 and 14 and then started declining in general, Xinhua quoted local officials as saying.

From June 11 to July 4, the city reported 334 confirmed locally transmitted cases, 47 per cent of whom are workers of the Xinfadi wholesale food market, the official said.

Jan 28: China said on Tuesday that 106 people had died from a new coronavirus that is spreading across the country, up from the previous toll of 81.

The number of total confirmed cases in China rose to 4,515 as of Jan. 27, the National Health Commission said in a statement, up from 2,835 reported a day earlier.

The United States warned against travel to China on Monday and Canada issued a more narrow travel warning as the death toll from the spreading coronavirus passed 100, with tens of millions stranded during the biggest holiday of the year and global markets rattled.

Global stocks fell, oil prices hit three-month lows, and China's yuan dipped to its weakest level in 2020 as investors fretted about damage to the world's second-biggest economy from travel bans and the Lunar New Year holiday, which China extended in a bid to keep people at home.

The health commission of China's Hubei province said on Tuesday that 100 people had died from the virus as of Jan. 27, according to an online statement, up from the previous toll of 76, with the number of confirmed cases in the province rose to 2,714.

Other fatalities have been reported elsewhere in China, including the first in Beijing, bringing the deal toll to 106 so far, according to the People's Daily. The state newspaper put the total number of confirmed cases in China at 4,193, though some experts suspect a much higher number.

On Monday, US President Donald Trump offered China whatever help it needed, while the State Department said Americans should "reconsider" visiting all of China due to the virus.

Canada, which has two confirmed cases of the virus and is investigating 19 more potential cases, warned its citizens to avoid travel to China's Hubei province, at the heart of the outbreak.

Authorities in Hubei province are taking increasing flak from the public over their initial response to the virus. Chinese Premier Li Keqiang visited the city of Wuhan, epicentre of the outbreak, to encourage medical workers and promise reinforcements.

Visiting Wuhan in blue protective suit and mask, Li praised medics, said 2,500 more workers would join them in the next two days, and visited the site of a new hospital to be built in days.

The most senior leader to visit Wuhan since the outbreak, Li was shown on state TV leading medical workers in chants of "Wuhan jiayou!" - an exhortation to keep their strength up.

China's ambassador to the United Nations, following a meeting with UN Secretary-General António Guterres on Monday, said "the Chinese government attaches paramount importance to prevention and control of the epidemic, and President Xi Jinping has given important instructions. ...

"China has been working with the international community in the spirit of openness, transparency and scientific coordination," he said.

Guterres said in a statement, "The UN appreciates China's effort, has full confidence in China's ability of controlling the outbreak, and stands ready to provide any support and assistance."

MOUNTING ANGER

On China's heavily censored social media, officials have faced mounting anger over the virus, which is thought to have originated from a market where wildlife was sold illegally.

Some criticised the governor of Hubei province, of which Wuhan is the capital, after he corrected himself twice during a news conference over the number of face masks being produced.

"If he can mess up the data multiple times, no wonder the disease has spread so severely," said one user of the Weibo social media platform.

In rare public self-criticism, Wuhan Mayor Zhou Xianwang said the city's management of the crisis was "not good enough" and indicated he was willing to resign.

The central Chinese city of 11 million people is in virtual lockdown and much of Hubei, home to nearly 60 million people, is under travel curbs.

Elsewhere in China, people from the region faced questioning about their movements. "Hubei people are getting discriminated against," a Wuhan resident complained on Weibo.

Cases linked to people who travelled from Wuhan have been confirmed in a dozen countries, from Japan to the United States, where authorities said they had 110 people under investigation in 26 states. Sri Lanka was the latest to confirm a case.

INVESTORS WORRIED

Investors are worried about the impact. The consensus is that in the short term, economic output will be hit as authorities limit travel and extend the week-long New Year holiday — when millions traditionally travel by rail, road and plane - by three days to limit spread of the virus.

Asian and European shares tumbled, with Japan's Nikkei average sliding 2%, its biggest one-day fall in five months. Demand spiked for safe-haven assets such as the Japanese yen and Treasury notes. European stocks fell more than 2%.

The US S&P 500 closed down nearly 1.6%.

"China is the biggest driver of global growth so this couldn't have started in a worse place," said Alec Young, FTSE Russell's managing director of global markets research.

During the 2002-2003 outbreak of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), which originated in China and killed nearly 800 people globally, air passenger demand in Asia plunged 45%. The travel industry is more reliant on Chinese travellers now.

Chinese-ruled Hong Kong, which has had eight cases, banned entry to people who had visited Hubei recently.

Some European tour operators cancelled trips to China, while governments around the world worked on repatriating nationals.

Officially known as 2019-nCoV, the newly identified coronavirus can cause pneumonia, but it is still too early to know just how dangerous it is and how easily it spreads.

"What we know about this virus it that transmission occurs through human contact but we are speaking of close contact, i.e. less than a meter," said Jerome Salomon, a senior official with France's health ministry.

"Crossing someone (infected) in the street poses no threat," he said. "The risk is low when you spend a little time near that person and becomes higher when you spend a lot of time near that person."

Apr 26: The remarkable story of an airman who overcame prejudice to become one of only a handful of Indian fighter pilots in the First World War has emerged in newly-released archive files by the UK's Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC).

Lieutenant Shri Krishna Chanda Welinkar is one of the thousands of moving stories from the war preserved in family correspondence and being brought alive as part of a digitisation project.

The never-before-published files contain thousands of letters, pictures and other papers sent between the Commission and the next of the kin of First World War dead.

Among them is the story of Welinkar, who hailed from Bombay in colonial India. After much hardship and discrimination, he eventually became a pilot and went missing while on patrol over the skies above the Western Front in June 1918.

His family had to wait nearly three years before they finally knew for certain that he had died, and his grave was located.

“For everyone who died in the First World War, there was inevitably a partner, parent or child back home who had questions. The heartbreaking letters in CWGC's archive give us an insight into what it was like for those families trying to come to terms with their loss,” said Andrew Fetherston, chief archivist for CWGC.

“They are stories that show desperate searches for closure, former enemies uniting and, on many occasions, the sad realisation that a missing loved one would always remain so. We are pleased to be able to make this invaluable piece of World War history accessible to a new generation and help deepen our understanding of how the First World War impacted those who were left behind,” he said.

Welinkar was one of the 1.3 million Indians who answered the call to fight for the British Empire. Nearly 74,000 never saw their homeland again and are remembered today in cemeteries and memorials throughout the world, including France, Belgium, the Middle East and Africa.

Welinkar was a well-educated man studying at Cambridge University. He trained to become an aviator in Middlesex and wished to join the Royal Flying Corps, later known as the Royal Air Force.

Upon attempting to enlist, Welinkar encountered the same prejudices as his other fellow Indian airmen and was encouraged to become an air mechanic instead.

He was eventually given a commission in the Royal Flying Corps as an Officer. In 1918, he was posted to France and patrolled the skies above the Western Front.

In June 1918, Lieutenant Welinkar embarked on what would be his final patrol; he did not return and was reported missing. His fate remained unknown for many months afterwards.

The newly-released e-files chronicle the remarkable discovery of Welinkar and his final resting place long after the war had ended. Colonel Barton, who knew Welinkar, acted on behalf of his mother and helped find her missing son. They spoke to former enemies and honed their search to the grave of an unidentified man, buried by the Germans as “Oberleutnant S.C. Wumkar” in a grave in Rouvroy, Belgium.

The body was later moved and reinterred in Hangard Communal Cemetery Extension but it wasn't until the vital clue, found in the original German burial records in February 1921, that it was confirmed beyond doubt this grave was of Welinkar's.

In May 1921, Colonel Barton, on behalf of Welinkar's mother, requested that a Commission headstone be placed on the grave with the following personal inscription: “To the Honoured Memory of One of the Empire's Bravest Sons”.

This records – known as Enquiry Files – are part of a collection of nearly 3,000 files which have never been made available to the public before. Nearly half have been digitised so far, alongside a previously unreleased collection of more than 16,000 photographs held in negatives in the Commission's archive.

The files, internally referred to simply as E-Files, contain correspondence between the CWGC and the next of kin of the war dead. They often contain letters, typed memos between Commission staff and on occasion photos, maps and diagrams.

CWGC only holds an enquiry file for a small proportion of the 1.7 million people it commemorates from the Commonwealth. Today it is only possible to release those surviving records from the First World War because correspondence with families of Second World War casualties often involves people still alive today and cannot be made public for many years, due to the UK's data protection rules.

To date, more than 1,300 of the surviving 3,000 First World War enquiry files have been digitised.

The CWGC commemorates the 1.7 million Commonwealth servicemen and women who died during the two World Wars. It also holds and updates an extensive and accessible records archive, while operating over 23,000 locations in more than 150 countries and territories.