Harvard study says COVID-19 might have hit Wuhan in August, 2019; China calls it "incredibly ridiculous"

Tehran, Jun 29: Iran has issued an arrest warrant and asked Interpol for help in detaining President Donald Trump and dozens of others it believes carried out the drone strike that killed a top Iranian general in Baghdad, a local prosecutor reportedly said Monday.

While Trump faces no danger of arrest, the charges underscore the heightened tensions between Iran and the United States since Trump unilaterally withdrew America from Tehran’s nuclear deal with world powers.

Tehran prosecutor Ali Alqasimehr said Trump and more than 30 others whom Iran accuses of involvement in the Jan. 3 strike that killed Gen. Qassem Soleimani in Baghdad face “murder and terrorism charges,” the semiofficial ISNA news agency reported.

Alqasimehr did not identify anyone else sought other than Trump, but stressed that Iran would continue to pursue his prosecution even after his presidency ends.

Interpol, based in Lyon, France, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Alqasimehr also was quoted as saying that Iran requested a “red notice” be put out for Trump and the others, which represents the highest level arrest request issued by Interpol. Local authorities end up making the arrests on behalf of the country that request it. The notices cannot force countries to arrest or extradite suspects, but can put government leaders on the spot and limit suspects’ travel.

After receiving a request, Interpol meets by committee and discusses whether or not to share the information with its member states. Interpol has no requirement for making any of the notices public, though some do get published on its website.

It is unlikely Interpol would grant Iran’s request as its guideline for notices forbids it from “undertaking any intervention or activities of a political” nature.

The U.S. killed Soleimani, who oversaw the Revolutionary Guard’s expeditionary Quds Force, and others in the January strike near Baghdad International Airport. It came after months of incidents raising tensions between the two countries and ultimately saw Iran retaliate with a ballistic missile strike targeting American troops in Iraq.

Jun 11: The total death toll in the US from the novel coronavirus pandemic could hit the grim figure of 200,000 by September and expecting a dramatic decrease in COVID-19 cases in the country will be a "wishful thinking , an eminent Indian-American professor has warned.

Ashish Jha, the head of Harvard's Global Health Institute, told CNN on Wednesday that he is not trying to scare people to stay at home rather urged everyone to wear masks, adhere to the social distancing rules and called for ramping up testing and tracing infrastructure.

Anybody who's expecting a dramatic decrease in cases is almost surely engaging in wishful thinking. And if it (COVID numbers) stays just flat for the next three months, we're going to hit 200,000 deaths sometime in September and that is just awful, Jha said.

Jha said the 200,000 death toll is not just a guess . Currently 800-1000 people are dying daily in America from the virus and all data suggest that the situation is going to get worse.

We're gonna have increases, but even if we assume that it's going to be flat all summer, that nothing is going to get worse... even if we pick that low number of 800 a day, that is 25,000 (deaths) a month in three and a half months. We're going to add another 88,000 people and we will hit 200,000 sometime in September, Jha said.

The United States is by far the hardest-hit country in the global pandemic, in terms of both confirmed infections and deaths.

According to data by the Johns Hopkins University, the number of coronavirus cases in the US currently is nearly two million and about 112,900 people have died in the country, the most in the world.

When asked about an improvement in states like New York, which had been the epicenter of the COVID19 pandemic in the US, Jha said while coronavirus cases are declining in New York, New Jersey, Connecticut and Massachusetts, the numbers are increasing in states such as Arizona, Florida, Texas, North and South Carolina while the country as a whole is pretty flat.

He said, people should take measures as that will help suppress the virus and ensure people could get back outside safely but he voiced concern that this was not the situation in reality.

We're not doing that and so we're going to unfortunately have another 25,000 deaths a month until September, and then it'll keep going. It's not going to magically disappear. We've got a turn around. This is not the future I want, he said.

Jha said he had expected the situation to improve in the summer months but on the contrary the numbers have continued to rise even in the warm weather.

Summer was supposed to be our better months - warmer weather, people outside, a little less transmission. This is not the time (summer) I was expecting a lot more cases. We're seeing a lot more cases, especially in states like Arizona where the numbers look really scary, he said.

Jha added that he was hopeful that maybe the summer months would give us more of a break. I think I may have been too optimistic on that.

Wuhan, Jun 9: China on Tuesday dismissed as "incredibly ridiculous" a Harvard study, which pointed to a surge in traffic outside Wuhan hospitals from August 2019 suggesting that the coronavirus hit the area far earlier than reported.

A whitepaper on coronavirus released by China on Sunday said the virus was first noticed on December 17 and Chinese virologists confirmed human-to-human transmission on January 19, prompting authorities to impose lockdown of Wuhan from January 23.

US President Donald Trump and leaders of several countries have accused China of not being transparent in reporting the deadly disease, leading to huge human casualties and economic crisis across the world.

The new study by Harvard researchers says satellite images show an increase in traffic outside five hospitals in Wuhan from late August to December.

The traffic spike coincided with a rise in online searches for information on symptoms like "cough" and "diarrhoea".

China said the study was "ridiculous" and based on "superficial" information, BBC reported.

It is believed that the virus first appeared in China some time in November. Authorities reported a cluster of pneumonia cases with an unknown cause to the World Health Organization (WHO) on December 31.

"Clearly, there was some level of social disruption taking place well before what was previously identified as the start of the novel coronavirus pandemic," Dr John Brownstein, who led the research, told ABC news.

The study has not been peer-reviewed.

The researchers examined commercial satellite data from outside five Wuhan hospitals, comparing data from late summer and autumn 2018 to the same time period in 2019.

In one case, researchers counted 171 cars parked at one of Wuhan''s largest hospitals, Tianyou Hospital, in October 2018.

Satellite data from the same time in 2019 showed 285 vehicles in the same place, an increase of 67 per cent.

A surge in online searches for words associated with the symptoms of coronavirus on the Chinese search engine Baidu seemed to emerge at the same time.

"This is all about a growing body of information pointing to something taking place in Wuhan at the time," Dr Brownstein said.

"Many studies are still needed to fully uncover what took place and for people to really learn about how these disease outbreaks unfold and emerge in populations. So this is just another point of evidence," he said.

Asked for her reaction at the media briefing, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying dismissed the findings as "incredibly ridiculous".

"I think it is ridiculous, incredibly ridiculous, to come up with this conclusion based on superficial observations such as traffic volume," she said.

"(I have) Not seen the research you mentioned. If the conclusion is drawn based on traffic volumes (and) other superficial observations, it won’t be a sound conclusion," she said and referred to the allegations about the COVID-19 originating from the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) by Trump.

"That allegation was proved to be wrong," she said.

When pointed out that China says it respects science based inquiry and Harvard is one of the top universities in the world, Hua said, "on the origin of virus there are lot of conspiracy theories against China”.

"That is very unfair. At the moment, the pressing task is to enhance coordination to contain the spread of the virus. Someday, I am sure the truth will be out. China deserves a fair and objective evaluation," she said and referred to the whitepaper released by the Chinese government detailing evolution of coronavirus in Wuhan and how Beijing handled the situation.

Recently, the World Health Assembly (WHA), the decision-making body of Geneva-based World Health Organization (WHO), passed a resolution to probe the origin of the virus. China also backed the resolution.

As of Monday, the overall confirmed cases on the mainland had reached 83,043, including 58 patients who were still being treated, with no one in severe condition, China’s National Health Commission, (NHC) said.

Altogether 78,351 people had been discharged after recovery and 4,634 people had died of the disease, it said.