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 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.
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 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)
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