Beirut, Dec 21: A "soldier" of the Islamic State group carried out a truck attack that killed 12 people at a Berlin Christmas market, a news agency linked to the jihadists said today.
"A soldier of the Islamic State carried out the Berlin operation in response to appeals to target citizens of coalition countries," the IS-linked Amaq news agency said in a statement posted online.
Ninety per cent of a sample group of coronavirus-recovered patients from a prominent hospital in China's Wuhan city where the pandemic broke out have reported lung damage and five per cent of them are again in quarantine after testing positive for the virus, according to a media report on Wednesday.
A team at the Zhongnan Hospital of Wuhan University led by Peng Zhiyong, director of the hospital's Intensive Care Unit, has been conducting follow-up visits with '100 recovered patients' since April.
The first phase of this one-year programme finished in July. The average age of the patients in the study is 59.
According to the first phase results, 90 per cent of the patients' lungs are still in a damaged state, which means their lungs ventilation and gas exchange functions have not recovered to the level of healthy people, state-run Global Times reported.
Peng's team conducted a six-minute walking test with the patients. They found that the recovered patients could only walk 400 metres in six minutes while their healthy peers could walk 500 metres in the same period.
Some recovered patients have to rely on oxygen machines even three months after being discharged from the hospital, Liang Tengxiao, a doctor from the Dongzhimen Hospital, Beijing University of Chinese Medicine, was quoted as saying by the report.
Liang's team is also conducting follow-up visits with recovered patients aged above 65.
The results also showed that antibodies against the novel coronavirus in 10 per cent of the 100 patients have disappeared.
Five per cent of them received negative results in Covid-19 nucleic acid tests but positive results in Immunoglobulin M (IgM) tests, and thus have to be quarantined again, the report said.
IgM is usually the first antibody produced by the immune system when a virus attacks. A positive result in an IgM test usually means that a person has just been infected by the virus.
It is still unclear if this means these people have been infected again.
The 100 patients' immune systems have not fully recovered as they showed a low level of B cells -- - a primary force for killing viruses in the human body -- but a high level of T cells which only recognise viral antigens outside infected cells.
"The results revealed that the patients’ immune systems are still recovering," Peng said.
The patients also suffered from depression and a sense of stigma. Most of the recovered patients told the team that their families were not willing to have dinner with them at the same table, the report said.
Less than half of the recovered patients have returned to work, it said.
The findings are significant as the coronavirus first emerged in Wuhan city.
Hubei province for which Wuhan is the provincial capital has reported a total of 68,138 confirmed Covid-19 cases till now. The disease has claimed 4,512 lives in the province, according to the official data.
China reported 27 new confirmed Covid-19 cases on Tuesday, including 22 locally-transmitted cases, the National Health Commission (NHC) said on Wednesday.
Tokyo, April 6: Japan Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is planning to declare a state of emergency in view of the surging cases of coronavirus in the country, especially in Tokyo and other large cities, government sources said on Monday.
Pressure had been mounting on Abe to make the declaration amid a spurt in COVID-19 cases recently, with calls for the move from Tokyo Governor Yuriko Koike and the Japan Medical Association intensifying, Xinhua news agency reported.
The Tokyo metropolitan government, along with healthcare specialists, said that the number of hospital beds available for coronavirus patients will soon reach capacity, with the health ministry rapidly trying to secure more beds.
Adding to pressure on the government to demonstrably bolster its preventive and countermeasures to the spread of the virus, a panel of government experts warned recently that the country's healthcare system could collapse if coronavirus cases continue to spike.
The healthcare system in Tokyo and four other prefectures are under increased strain and "drastic countermeasures need to be taken as quickly as possible," the experts said.
As of Sunday, 143 new cases of COVID-19 were recorded in Tokyo, a record daily high for the capital, bringing the total to 1,034, with Japan's health ministry and local governments adding that nationwide cases rose to 3,531 as of Sunday afternoon.
Bueno Aires, Apr 25: Dozens of prisoners at a jail in Argentina's capital Buenos Aires rioted on Friday demanding urgent health measures after confirmation of a coronavirus case inside the facility.
Police surrounded the prison, which holds around 2,200 inmates, as explosions were heard, news agency reporters at the scene said.
A group of prisoners managed to climb onto a roof, burn mattresses and throw objects at security guards trying to quell the uprising.
Authorities have yet to comment on the riot or whether there are any injuries.
Inmates could be heard shouting demands for a judge to hear their case and for better protection against the pandemic, just a few days after a warden at the Villa Devoto prison was confirmed to have contracted the novel coronavirus.
"COVID-19 in Devoto, genocidal judges," read a banner hung from the prison roof. "We refuse to die in prison," read another.
The inmates are demanding, among other things, that releases that were pending before the pandemic be processed.
Several other riots broke out in prisons last week, including in Florencio Varela in Buenos Aires province where one inmate died and 20 were injured.
Argentina has been in lockdown since March 20 and has recorded more than 3,400 coronavirus cases and 167 deaths.
Comments
Very hard to believe. However, this is highly regretted and condemned in strong words. If some one did it, he might be a fool or mentally disturbed.
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