Day: April 21, 2022

Hong Kong relaxed pandemic restrictions on Thursday, with Disneyland and museums reopening and nighttime restaurant dining resuming as the city’s worst COVID-19 outbreak appears to be fading.

Enthusiastic visitors ran into Disneyland the moment the gates opened after a three-month closure.

Popular theme parks were ordered to close in January as Hong Kong’s fifth wave of the coronavirus took hold. Nearly 1.2 million people in the city of 7.4 million were infected in less than four months, and nearly 9,000 have died.

“Since Christmas we haven’t been back here, my daughter’s really happy, she’s been waiting so long,” said Joyce Mak, 36, who brought her young daughter to Disneyland. “Last night she was so excited, she didn’t want to go to sleep.”

The city was caught off guard as the surge, driven by highly transmissible omicron variant, overwhelmed hospitals. At the peak of the outbreak, bodies were stored in refrigerated containers because mortuaries were overwhelmed.

The easing of restrictions came after officials acknowledged that people were getting frustrated with the measures, and that there must be a balance between fighting the epidemic and resumption of normal activities.

The relaxation of measures before Hong Kong has reached zero COVID-19 cases marks a shift from the city’s earlier strategy, which was aligned to mainland China’s zero-tolerance for any outbreaks. Previously, authorities were reluctant to ease measures until it was clear that outbreaks in the city were stamped out.

A 15-year-old student, Cynthia Cheung, said Disneyland was her “happiest place.”

“It’s been such a long time since coming here, last time was in December,” she said. “I really missed it.”

Theme parks can now operate at 50% capacity, and visitors must show proof of vaccination. Disney employees held up signs reminding people to keep social distance.

In mainland China, the death toll rose to 25 in an outbreak in Shanghai that has all but shut down the country’s largest city. Health authorities said Thursday that eight more people had died in the previous day. The relatively low number of reported deaths highlights China’s use of much narrower criteria than the rest of the world for its pandemic statistics.

Shanghai has eased the lockdown somewhat in areas that have not reported new cases in seven to 14 days, allowing residents out of their homes but still restricting them to their compounds or neighborhoods. Some said on social media that they dare not venture out anyway, wary of entering nearby areas that have had recent cases.

Officials said this week that 12.3 million people in the city of 25 million are now in “control” or “prevention” areas, which are less restrictive than lockdown zones in a three-tier system. That is 4 million more than 10 days ago, they said.

However, one of the city’s 16 districts announced Thursday that no residents would be allowed to leave their compounds. The Jing’an district in central Shanghai said that even those in prevention areas, the least restrictive zone, would no longer be able to venture into the surrounding neighborhood.

The city reported 18,495 new local cases on Thursday, including 15,861 without symptoms.

In eastern Shanghai, some residents were ordered to leave their homes while health workers carried out a large-scale disinfection following a spike in infections, according to news reports and social media posts.

It wasn’t clear how many people in Beicai town were affected. The area’s population is nearly 300,000. Phone calls to the municipal government weren’t answered. Photos published by The Paper, an online news outlet, showed workers in hooded, white protective suits spraying disinfectant in homes.

In Hong Kong, a semi-autonomous Chinese region, attractions such as Ocean Park and M+ museum reopened Thursday. Gyms, beauty salons and massage parlors were also allowed to resume business. Customers must have at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine and scan a QR code upon entry for contact-tracing purposes.

Restaurants, which had been barred from providing dine-in service after 6 p.m., can reopen in the evening, although each table is capped at four guests.

Hong Kong reported 603 locally spread infections Thursday, down more than 99% from the peak of more than 30,000 in March.

Source: Voice of America

A U.K. patient with a severely weakened immune system had COVID-19 for almost a year and a half, scientists reported, underscoring the importance of protecting vulnerable people from the coronavirus.

There’s no way to know for sure whether it was the longest-lasting COVID-19 infection because not everyone gets tested, especially on a regular basis like this case.

But at 505 days, “it certainly seems to be the longest reported infection,” said Dr. Luke Blagdon Snell, an infectious disease expert at the Guy’s & St. Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust.

Snell’s team plans to present several “persistent” COVID-19 cases at an infectious diseases meeting in Portugal this weekend.

Their study investigated which mutations arise — and whether variants evolve — in people with super long infections. It involved nine patients who tested positive for the virus for at least eight weeks. All had weakened immune systems from organ transplants, HIV, cancer or treatment for other illnesses. None were identified for privacy reasons.

Repeated tests showed their infections lingered for an average of 73 days. Two had the virus for more than a year. Previously, researchers said, the longest-known case that was confirmed with a PCR test lasted 335 days.

Persistent COVID-19 is rare and different from long COVID.

“In long COVID, it’s generally assumed the virus has been cleared from your body but the symptoms persist,” Snell said. “With persistent infection, it represents ongoing, active replication of the virus.”

Each time researchers tested patients, they analyzed the genetic code of the virus to make sure it was the same strain and that people didn’t get COVID-19 more than once. Still, genetic sequencing showed that the virus changed over time, mutating as it adapted.

The mutations were similar to the ones that later showed up in widespread variants, Snell said, although none of the patients spawned new mutants that became variants of concern. There’s also no evidence they spread the virus to others.

The person with the longest known infection tested positive in early 2020, was treated with the antiviral drug remdesivir and died sometime in 2021. Researchers declined to name the cause of death and said the person had several other illnesses.

Five patients survived. Two cleared the infection without treatment, two cleared it after treatment and one still has COVID-19. At the last follow-up earlier this year, that patient’s infection had lasted 412 days.

Researchers hope more treatments will be developed to help people with persistent infections beat the virus.

“We do need to be mindful that there are some people who are more susceptible to these problems like persistent infection and severe disease,” Snell said.

Although persistent infections are rare, experts said there are many people with compromised immune systems who remain at risk of severe COVID-19 and who are trying to stay safe after governments lifted restrictions and masks started coming off. And it’s not always easy to know who they are, said Dr. Wesley Long, a pathologist at Houston Methodist in Texas, who was not part of the research.

“Masking in crowds is a considerate thing to do and a way we can protect others,” he said.

Source: Voice of America