China accused of under-reporting coronavirus outbreak
Health experts say official testing system captures only a fraction of cases
Frontline healthcare workers, patients and international experts have accused China of under-reporting the number of coronavirus victims in the country, saying authorities were conducting inadequate testing and medical facilities were overwhelmed.
China’s health commission has reported a decline in new coronavirus cases for eight consecutive days outside of Hubei province, where the outbreak started in the city of Wuhan. Official data showed that by Wednesday more than 1,100 people had died and there were more than 44,000 confirmed infections in the country.
But health experts have questioned the timeliness and accuracy of the figures, saying the testing system captured only a fraction of the cases in China’s poorly run hospitals.
Professor Neil Ferguson, an epidemiologist at Imperial College London, said only the most severe infections were being diagnosed and as few as 10 per cent of cases were being properly detected, in a video released by the university.
In Wuhan, the official figures for confirmed cases could capture as few as 1 in 19 infections, according to a paper published by Prof Ferguson.
Dr Brendan Murphy, Australia’s chief medical officer, told state broadcaster ABC that China’s prediction the outbreak would peak in April was “far too premature”, adding he expected the number of cases to keep rising.
Getting a proper gauge on infections is seen as critical to ending the outbreak and restarting the world’s second-largest economy. China has been paralysed by the outbreak since the lunar new year holiday last month, when millions of migrant workers travelled home to see their families. Many are now stranded far from their factories as the country restricts travel. Shops and restaurants remain closed and office workers have been forced to work from home.
Multiple patients in the most affected areas, such as Wuhan, told the Financial Times they were waiting for an official diagnosis because of a lack of testing kits.
Luo Jun, a 45-year-old woman from Wuhan, said she had been suffering from severe viral pneumonia since Saturday. With private cars banned from the roads, she struggled to walk the 5km to a hospital that would treat her. Once she was there, she underwent a CT scan that confirmed her symptoms. Ms Luo was told that she would have to come back at 9am the next day to queue again in order to receive a nucleic acid test, the current standard for confirming coronavirus cases.
“I’m too tired. My entire body is drained of energy,” Ms Luo said. Instead of trying to make it back to the hospital, she was waiting at home, assured by the local authorities that she was on a waiting list to receive the test.
Healthcare workers have complained about the laborious and slow bureaucratic testing procedure.
A frontline nurse in China, who wished to remain anonymous, said the process took at least two days. Another doctor explained they first had to send a sample to the city-level Centre for Disease Control and then to the provincial-level CDC for retesting.
“The testing kits are not very accurate, so we need to do multiple tests,” said a coronavirus researcher who wished to remain anonymous because of the sensitivity of the issue.
The coronavirus tests correctly detected positive results just 20-30 per cent of the time, Tong Chaohui, a medical expert advising the government, told local media. Better hospitals could reach a 50 per cent rate of detection but poor ones might have rates as low as 10 per cent, he added.
China’s National Health Commission tells doctors to take two tests one day apart before ruling out an infection.
The NHC has since January 29 required doctors to divide patients into “positive test cases” — infected people with no or light symptoms —, “suspected cases” and “confirmed cases”. In a later version of guidance, it allowed doctors to classify light-symptom cases as “confirmed” or “suspected” but not asymptomatic cases.
Nathalie MacDermott, clinical lecturer at King’s College London, said: “To not include asymptomatic or minimally symptomatic cases is flawed thinking in the context of tracking an epidemic.” She added it “not only skews the figures for monitoring of the epidemic but ignores important groups when it comes to understanding the spread of infection”.
Switzerland halts rollout of 5G over health concerns
The country’s environment agency has called time on the use of all new towers
Switzerland, one of the world’s leaders in the rollout of 5G mobile technology, has placed an indefinite moratorium on the use of its new network because of health concerns.
The move comes as countries elsewhere around Europe race to upgrade their networks to 5G standards amid a furious rearguard diplomatic campaign by the US to stop them using Chinese technology provided by Huawei. Washington says the company, which is fundamental to most European networks’ upgrade plans, presents a grave security risk.
Switzerland is relatively advanced in Europe in adopting 5G. The wealthy alpine country has built more than 2,000 antennas to upgrade its network in the last year alone, and its telecoms providers have been promising their customers’ imminent 5G coverage for most of the past year.
However, a letter sent by the Swiss environment agency, Bafu, to the country’s cantonal governments at the end of January, has now in effect called time on the use of all new 5G towers, officials who have seen the letter told the Financial Times.
The agency is responsible for providing the cantons with safety criteria against which telecoms operators’ radiation emissions can be judged. Under Switzerland’s highly federalised structure, telecoms infrastructure is monitored for compliance and licensed by cantonal authorities, but Bern is responsible for setting the framework.
Bafu has said it cannot yet provide universal criteria without further testing of the impact of 5G radiation.
The agency said it was “not aware of any standard worldwide” that could be used to benchmark recommendations. “Therefore Bafu will examine exposure through adaptive [5G] antennas in depth, if possible in real-world operational conditions. This work will take some time,” it said.
Without the criteria, cantons are left with little option but to license 5G infrastructure according to existing guidelines on radiation exposure, which all but preclude the use of 5G except in a tiny minority of cases.
Several cantons have already imposed their own voluntary moratoria because of uncertainty over health risks.
Swiss law on the effects of radiation from telecoms masts is broadly in line with that of European peers, but specifies the application of more stringent precautionary measures in certain cases. New 5G communications technology means individuals are exposed to more concentrated beams of non-ionising radiation, but for shorter periods. Bafu must determine which legal standards to apply to this.
Swisscom, the country’s largest mobile operator, said it understood “the fears that are often expressed about new technologies”.
“There is no evidence that antenna radiation within the limit values adversely affects human health,” the company added, pointing out that 5G is run on frequencies similar to the current 4G standard, which has been subject to “several thousand studies.”
The company said Switzerland’s regulatory limits were “10 times stricter than those recommended by the World Health Organization in places where people stay for longer periods of time”.
Switzerland already has a notable anti-5G lobby, with recent protests against its rollout in Bern, Zurich and Geneva.
The Swiss Medical Association has advised caution on 5G, arguing that the most stringent legal principles should be applied because of unanswered questions about the technology’s potential to cause damage to the nervous system, or even cancers.
Five “popular initiatives” — proposals for legally binding referendums on 5G use — are already in motion in Switzerland. Two have already been formalised and are in the process of collecting the 100,000 signatures needed to trigger nationwide votes that if successful will amend Switzerland’s constitution.
One will make telecoms companies legally liable for claims of bodily damage caused by radiation from masts unless they can prove otherwise. The other proposes strict and stringent limits on radiation emissions from masts and will give local residents veto power over all new constructions in their area.
ALSTOM ALSO.PA TO HOLD BOARD MEETING ON WEDNESDAY EVENING TO DECIDE ON OFFER FOR BOMBARDIER RAIL BUSINESS - SOURCE
Gapping down
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Other news:
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Analyst comments:
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Gapping up
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M&A news:
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Other news:
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Analyst comments:
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Early premarket gappers
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