(Reuters) – Here’s what you need to know about the coronavirus right now:
China keeps close vigil at ports of entry
China is on high alert at its ports of entry as strict policies on travel in and out of the country are enforced to reduce COVID-19 risks amid a fresh domestic outbreak, less than 100 days from the start of the Beijing Winter Olympics.
The National Immigration Administration (NIA) said on Thursday it would continue to guide citizens not to go abroad for non-urgent and non-essential reasons. While some countries have removed quarantine requirements for vaccinated inbound travellers, China still insists that most people arriving from outside the mainland to be quarantined for weeks, regardless of their vaccination status.
England sees record COVID prevalence in Oct -Imperial study
COVID-19 prevalence in England rose to its highest level on record in October, Imperial College London said on Thursday, led by a high numbers of cases in children and a surge in the south-west of the country. Researchers said rates had doubled in older groups compared to September, a concerning sign as the government races to give booster shots to the most vulnerable.
The Imperial study found there was nearly a four-fold increase in prevalence in the southwest, the area impacted by an error at a private lab that resulted in an estimated 43,000 people wrongly being given negative PCR test results.
Asia tourism reopens with big-spending Chinese stuck at home
Asia’s gradual easing of international travel curbs is proving a welcome relief for the region’s hard-hit tourism operators – with one giant exception. China, previously the world’s largest outbound tourism market, is keeping international air capacity at just 2% of pre-pandemic levels and has yet to relax tight travel restrictions as it sticks to zero tolerance for COVID-19, leaving a $255 billion annual spending hole in the global tourism market.
Many experts expect China to keep such stringent measures such as up to a three-week quarantine for those returning home until at least the second quarter of next year and possibly then open gradually on a country-by-country basis. An emerging trend in surveys of Chinese travellers is a preference for natural scenery, and tourism operators will need to adapt accordingly, experts say.
Mothers’ COVID-19 antibodies provide unexpected benefit
COVID-19 antibodies passed from infected mothers to their breastfeeding newborns provide more benefit to the baby than researchers expected, according to a report published on Wednesday in JAMA Network Open. Researchers studied 21 babies born to mothers who were infected with the coronavirus at the time of delivery. Two months later, the researchers found a class of immune molecule in the breast milk, known as IgA antibodies, had stimulated active immunity in the newborns, triggering their immune systems to produce their own IgA antibodies.
“We have shown for the first time that the mother can also trigger the active immune response of the newborn through the transfer of (immune molecules) in breast milk resulting in the production of salivary antibodies,” Dr. Rita Carsetti of Bambino Gesu Children Hospital and Dr. Gianluca Terrin of Sapienza University, both in Rome, said in an email. They are performing further studies to see whether vaccine-induced antibodies in breast milk have the same effect.
Move to vaccinate young U.S. children gets going
U.S. President Joe Biden said on Wednesday after the United States started administering the COVID-19 vaccine to children aged 5 to 11 that there will be enough COVID-19 vaccines by next week for children and the shots will be available at about 20,000 locations around the country.
A Kaiser Family Foundation poll in August found that about a quarter of parents want their young children vaccinated “right away,” with another quarter in the “definitely not” camp. In interviews, pediatricians and public health experts said parents appear to be growing less hesitant as time goes on.
(Compiled by Karishma Singh; Editing by Kim Coghill)
