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08-JUN-2020 :: Anybody can be decisive during a panic It takes a strong Man to act during a Boom. World Of Finance |
“Anybody can be decisive during a panic; it takes a strong man to act during a boom.” ― V.S. Naipaul, A Bend in the River
“The businessman bought at ten and was happy to get out at twelve; the mathematician saw his ten rise to eighteen, but didn’t sell because he wanted to double his ten to twenty.”
For some reason, I keep returning to VS Naipaul. I have always been an avid Reader and Naipaul notwithstanding what some Folks considered a vicious cruel streak [One of my Aunties who was an avowed Socialist was criticized for buying her underwear at Marks and Spencer’s in one of his books and to this day I don’t understand why a Socialist should not be permitted to wear proper underwear], I have always found him to be a beautiful and lyrical Writer who spoke to my own lived experience.
Who has not thought
“Look, boys, it ever strike you that the world not real at all? It ever strike you that we have the only mind in the world and you just thinking up everything else? Like me here, having the only mind in the world, and thinking up you people here, thinking up the war and all the houses and the ships and them in the harbour. That ever cross your mind?”
― V.S. Naipaul, Miguel Street
However, I started with A Bend in the River and not because Ebola was on my mind which it was because This is surely The Year of the Virus and Ebola [in case you had forgotten has been resurfacing], nor because the bend in the river is set in the Congo.
The River Kinshasa
But because in that Book, Salim describes the BOOM!
And watching the Markets unfold, the ‘’Kisingani’’ Boom that Salim experienced came to my mind.
Bubbly all around. Highest % of members above 70 RSI since Volmageddon. Highest number of S&P 500 stocks above their 50-day moving average in 2 decades. Strongest 50- day rally in history.
The Nasdaq closed at a record
V shape recovery. No one anticipated it. Nasdaq hits all time high. @MadhusudanSara5
Widening divergence between profits and stock prices via @ISABELNET_SA @SoberLook @GregDaco
Of course President Trump is doing high fives!
The Optics however...
Of course The Federal Reserve has been pumping its balance Sheet $7.2 Trillion last
The Fed has taken an extraordinary amount of actions in response to the #COVID19 shock. Their response has been far superior to the #GFC. Since March 9, the Fed has expanded its balance sheet in a staggering 70%. @econchart
But who wants to be a Killjoy because Killjoys get carried out in the BOOM? Just ask Tiger Management’s Julian Robertson.
The Precipitate Trigger for the Surge Friday was of course the US Jobs report.
Employers added 2.5 million workers to their payrolls in May, trouncing forecasts for a 7.5 million decline. The jobless rate unexpectedly dropped to 13.3% from 14.7% as states began re-opening their economies.
A ‘misclassification error’ made the May unemployment rate look better than it is. Here’s what happened. @washingtonpost
When the U.S. government’s official jobs report for May came out on Friday, it included a note at the bottom saying there had been a major “error” indicating that the unemployment rate likely should be higher than the widely reported 13.3 percent rate.
The special note said that if this “misclassification error” had not occurred, the “overall unemployment rate would have been about 3 percentage points higher than reported,” meaning the unemployment rate would be about 16.3 percent for May.
The BLS admitted that some people who should have been classified as “temporarily unemployed” during the shutdown were instead misclassified as employed but “absent” from work for “other reasons.”
Just weeks after the stock market crashed in 1929, President Herbert Hoover assured the country that things were already “back to normal,” Liaquat Ahamed writes in Lords of Finance https://j.mp/39DEhpwFive months later, in March 1930, Hoover said the worst would be over “during the next 60 days.”
When that period ended, he said, “We have passed the worst.”
Eventually, Ahamed writes, “when the facts refused to obey Hoover’s forecasts, he started to make them up.”
Government agencies were pressed to issue false data. Officials resigned rather than do so, including the chief of the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
And we all know how that turned out: The Great Depression.
Is this going to rain on President Trump’s Parade? Probably not
.@RealdonaldTrump H/T @DanScavino
"We have gross oscillation here"
An Oscillation within Uyipa
Global oil demand is still expected to contract by around 9 mb/d for the whole of 2020 according to the Opec secretariat-
OPEC+ deal based on outcome today. @JRJ_ALHAJRI
Crude Oil Chart @TamirTiko2110 [I am looking to SELL]
Precious Metals YTD
The Markets believe it’s a V [but is it?]
EXPECT MORE BRRR!
COVID19
10-MAY-2020 :: We are trending in the 80,000-100,000 #COVID cases a day now.
[and Now] at a rate of more than 100,000 a day over a seven-day average @CNN
Newly reported cases reached a high of 130,400 on June 3.
In the last two weeks, the cumulative number of confirmed #COVID19 cases has grown by: • 88% in South America • 70% in Africa • 42% in Asia • 21% in North America • 13% in Europe • 2% in Oceania @edouad
The number of daily new cases is rising continuously in many large countries.
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A ‘misclassification error’ made the May unemployment rate look better than it is. Here’s what happened. @washingtonpost U.S. Economy |
When the U.S. government’s official jobs report for May came out on Friday, it included a note at the bottom saying there had been a major “error” indicating that the unemployment rate likely should be higher than the widely reported 13.3 percent rate.
The special note said that if this “misclassification error” had not occurred, the “overall unemployment rate would have been about 3 percentage points higher than reported,” meaning the unemployment rate would be about 16.3 percent for May.
The BLS admitted that some people who should have been classified as “temporarily unemployed” during the shutdown were instead misclassified as employed but “absent” from work for “other reasons.”
This problem started in March when there was a big jump in people claiming they were temporarily “absent” from work for “other reasons.”
The BLS noticed this and flagged it right away. In March, the BLS said the unemployment rate likely should have been 5.4 percent, instead of the official 4.4 percent rate.
One of those questions asks if someone was “temporarily absent” from the job and why that absence occurred. One of the responses is “other.” |
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Just weeks after the stock market crashed in 1929, President Herbert Hoover assured the country that things were already “back to normal,” Liaquat Ahamed writes in Lords of Finance Market Crashes / Panic |
Five months later, in March 1930, Hoover said the worst would be over “during the next 60 days.”
When that period ended, he said, “We have passed the worst.”
Eventually, Ahamed writes, “when the facts refused to obey Hoover’s forecasts, he started to make them up.”
Government agencies were pressed to issue false data. Officials resigned rather than do so, including the chief of the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
And we all know how that turned out: The Great Depression.
The problem is more grave than the worst downturns of the past, Sheng said.
“This time round, we are facing an unprecedented health, economic, financial, social, and geopolitical crisis at the same time,” he said.
“Worse, no one is emotionally prepared for the rapid escalation and devastation.”
Until there is a vaccine, any expert who says they can predict an outcome is misinformed or lying.
The only conclusion that is certain is that the virus and its fallout will not pass any time soon.
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New Zealand says it has no active COVID-19 cases in the country Misc. |
New Zealand’s Health Ministry said in a statement on Monday that the last person who was being monitored for coronavirus had recovered.
It also said there were no new cases of COVID-19 for a 17th consecutive day.
“Having no active cases for the first time since February 28 is certainly a significant mark in our journey but as we’ve previously said, ongoing vigilance against COVID-19 will continue to be essential,” Director-General of Health Dr Ashley Bloomfield said in the statement.
New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern will announce later on Monday if the country intends to lift all remaining social distancing and economic restrictions except for border controls.
A move to national Alert Level 1 from the current Level 2 would mean all social distancing measures and curbs on mass gatherings will be lifted, making New Zealand one of the first industrialised countries to do so.
The country of five million people has pursued an elimination strategy to beat coronavirus, rather than just aiming to contain the disease.
But the health ministry has been cautious about declaring victory.
Elimination did not mean eradicating the virus permanently from New Zealand, but eliminating “chains of transmission” for at least 28 consecutive days after the last infected person left isolation, which would be on June 15, the ministry said.
It also required the country to be able to “effectively prevent or contain any future imported cases from overseas”, it said in an emailed statement.
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Seroprevalence of immunoglobulin M and G antibodies against SARS-CoV-2 in China Nature Misc. |
Detection of asymptomatic or subclinical novel human coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 infection is critical for understanding the overall prevalence and infection potential of COVID-19.
To estimate the cumulative prevalence of SARS-CoV-2 infection in China, we evaluated the host serologic response, measured by the levels of immunoglobulins M and G in 17,368 individuals, in the city of Wuhan, the epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic in China, and geographic regions in the country, during the period from 9 March 2020 to 10 April 2020.
In our cohorts, the seropositivity in Wuhan varied between 3.2% and 3.8% in different subcohorts. Seroposivity progressively decreased in other cities as the distance to the epicenter increased.
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Is considering a genetic-manipulation origin for SARS-CoV-2 a conspiracy theory that must be censored? Market Crashes / Panic |
The theory that the Wuhan’s Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market was the first source for animal–human viral transmission, long promoted by China, some Western scientists and the media, is now totally discredited, even by the Chinese Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The claim that COVID-19 is a naturally-occurring outbreak has been based, nearly entirely, on a single, but widely-cited scientific article entitled “The Proximal Origin of SAR-CoV-2,” the arguments of which are thoroughly dissected and dismantled by the authors of the present study.
Although China is now promoting a new “multiple origin” theory based on alleged genetic differences observed in the virus taken from a small sample of Chinese COVID-19 patients and published in March and May, the validity and significance of those findings are already in dispute.
There remains no credible scientific evidence that the COVID-19 pandemic was naturally-occurring.
The evidence to the contrary, that the coronavirus responsible, SARS-CoV-2, was man-made is now substantial.
The most conspicuous sign of genetic manipulation is the presence of a furin polybasic cleavage site in SARS-CoV-2, a structure that is not present in any of the coronaviruses so far identified as possible recent ancestors.
According to the new study, the furin site was created by a genetic, nucleotide insertion that coded for amino acids proline, arginine, arginine, alanine (PRRA).
The two arginines are coded by nucleotide “codons,” consisting of a sequence of three nucleotides each, CGG-CGG.
The codon CGG is rare. Only 5% of arginines are coded by CGG in SARS-CoV-2 or its closest identified bat coronavirus relative, RaTG13 and it is the only instance of a double CGG-CGG codon.
Also, the CGG-CGG insert includes a FauI restriction site, of which there are six instances in SAR-CoV-2, a “marker” used in cloning and the screening of genetic mutations.
Engineering of the cleavage sites can make a coronavirus more dangerous because furin is an enzyme found in multiple human organ systems.
Such a modification may have given SARS-CoV-2 the ability to infect cells and organs otherwise insensitive to unaltered coronaviruses.
Furthermore, the authors suggest that SARS-CoV-2 is a chimer, an artificially-created virus consisting of a pangolin (scaly anteater) receptor protein “spliced” onto a bat coronavirus backbone.
This ground-breaking article concludes:
“Due to the gravity of SARS-CoV-2 impact on humanity, researchers have the responsibility to carry out a thorough analysis, beyond any personal research interests, of all possible causes for SARS-CoV-2 emergence. Unfortunately, theories that consider a possible artificial origin for SARS-CoV-2 are censored by international scientific journals as they seem to support conspiracy theories. Genetic manipulation of SARS-CoV-2 may have been carried out in any laboratory in the world with access to the backbone sequence and the necessary equipment. New technologies based on synthetic genetics platforms even allow the reconstruction of viruses based on their genomic sequence, without the need of a natural isolate.”
Either the coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2, responsible for the COVID-19 pandemic, is the product of a highly improbable and still unknown sequence of naturally-occurring coincidences or it is a laboratory creation.
You decide.
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Is considering a genetic-manipulation origin for SARS-CoV-2 a conspiracy theory that must be censored? Rossana Segreto1# and Yuri Deigin2 Department of Microbiology, University of Innsbruck, Austria. 2Youthereum Genetics Inc., Toronto, ON Canada. Misc. |
The origin of SARS-CoV-2 is still controversial. Comparative genomic analyses have shown that SARS- CoV-2 is likely to be chimeric, most of its sequence being very close to the CoV detected from a bat, whereas its receptor binding domain is almost identical to that of CoV obtained from pangolins. The genomic sequences obtained from early cases shared 79% sequence identity to the CoVs that caused Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS-CoV) in 2002-2003 and 96.2% sequence identity to RaTG13 (MN996532)
BtCoV/4991 and RaTG13 have been recently confirmed to be two different coding names of the same strain by their original authors at WIV, as they registered the two strains as one entry in the Database of Bat-associated Viruses (DBatVir).12
The second non-human RdRp sequence closest to BtCoV/4991 (91.89% nucleotide identity) is the CoV sequence MP789 (MT084071) isolated in 2019 in a Malaysian pangolin (Manis javanica) from the Guangdong province, China.13
The envelope protein of MP789 has 100% aminoacidic identity with the corresponding protein in RaTG13, in bat-SL-CoVZXC21 (MG772934.1), in bat-SL-CoVZC45 (MG772933.1) and in some SARS-CoV-2 isolates (e.g. YP_009724392).14
The envelope protein of CoVs is involved in critical aspects of the viral life, as viral entry, replication and pathogenesis.15
Bat CoVs have been studied intensely and genetically manipulated Several studies point out that bats are reservoirs for a broad diversity of potentially pathogenic SARS- like CoV.16, 17
Some of these viruses can directly infect humans18, whereas others need to mutate their spike protein in order to effectively bind to the human angiotensin 1-converting enzyme 2 (hACE2) receptor and mediate virus entry.19
In order to evaluate the emergence potential of novel CoVs, chimeric CoVs with Bat CoV backbones not able to infect human cells were fused to spike proteins of CoVs compatible with human ACE2, simulating recombination events that might naturally occur.20, 21
These experiments with gain of function have raised biosafety concerns and controversy among researchers and the public.
One of the main arguments in favour of gain of function studies is the need to be prepared with an arsenal of drugs and vaccines for the next pandemic.
By contrast, one of the main arguments against them is that the next pandemic could be caused by those experiments, due to the risk of lab leakage.22, 23, 24
Synthetically generating diverse panels of potential pre-emergent coronaviruses was declared as a goal of active grants for EcoHealth Alliance which funded some of such research at WIV.30
Key difference between SARS-CoV-2 and its closest relative RaTG13 SARS-CoV-2 differs from its closest relative RaTG13 by a few key characteristics.
The most striking one is the acquisition in the spike protein of SARS-CoV-2 of a cleavage site activated by the host-cell enzyme furin, previously not identified in other beta-CoVs of lineage b31 and similar to that of Middle East Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus (MERS-CoV).32
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China: End of the Belt and Road? @euromoney China |
China had internal reasons to fret. From the outset, the BRI was unpopular at home. Politicians branded it as a chance to reset the global order, but its people dismissed it as “too generous” to recipient countries, says Scott Morris, a senior fellow at the Center for Global Development (CGD), a Washington-based non-profit.
The project is huge. RWR Advisory, a Washington-based consultancy, puts total lending to transport and energy projects from the Horn of Africa to central Asia since 2013, all under the BRI umbrella, at $461 billion.
Direct loans to Africa alone between 2000 and 2017 are estimated by the China Africa Research Initiative at Johns Hopkins University at $143 billion.
Still, what Rhodium expected to find was a snapshot of clear and coherent financial planning. What it found was the exact opposite. The image it depicts in its report is of a vast development initiative that wandered way off the rails and that is no longer fiscally sustainable.
It found evidence of China’s policy banks aggressively lending to fragile states, then rushing around in a desperate effort to plug holes in leaky budgets and extend, and often expand, credit lines.
Rhodium analysts found 40 restructured BRI loans with a market value of $50 billion, extended recently to governments and state agencies by China Development Bank (CDB) and Export-Import Bank of China (Eximbank).
In Africa, which dominates the data, it found 22 renegotiated loans worth $32 billion, although that number is probably higher, as much of China’s external lending is shrouded in secrecy.
“We suspect we are missing at least two dozen cases of debt forgiveness, especially to African countries,” wrote Rhodium.
By any measure it’s a startling number. It means at least a quarter of all Chinese lending to Africa has fallen into disrepair.
The consultancy uncovered a “wide variety of loan types”, including funding for specific projects (such as a railway in Ethiopia) and more general items (an unspecified credit line to Ghana disbursed by CDB).
There were loans that funded budgetary items in Zimbabwe and state-run firms in Angola.
There were old loans (a $34 million loan to Cameroon written off in 2001) and newer ones, notably an $800 million credit line, still under renegotiation, to tiny Djibouti, a valuable staging post on the Maritime Silk Road, part of the BRI.
Rhodium found deferrals ($3.3 billion for Ethiopia in 2018) and refinancings ($21.4 billion for Angola, a key Chinese ally, in 2015), and several smallish write-offs.
That tallies with a sharp rise in Chinese external debt from $850 billion at the end of 2014, to $2 trillion five years later, according to CEIC Data.
It is now increasingly clear that at the height of this lending spree in the mid 2010s, Beijing: “had no idea how much was flowing out the door,” says Pei.
There’s no denying this. In August 2019 Eximbank’s deputy governor, Xie Ping, said the bank had funded projects worth Rmb600 billion ($84 billion) in 46 African countries since its creation 25 years earlier.
This hold-your-nose approach to debt deferment is a favourite of the Party’s. When China forgives loans it often does so piecemeal and grudgingly.
In 2017, it wrote off $160 million in loans to Sudan – a sum that comprised just 2.5% of the country’s obligations to Beijing.
Often, it ties debt forgiveness to new lending. In 2018, it wrote off $7 million of Botswana’s debt. In return, the southern African state agreed to tap into a brand new $1 billion infrastructure facility.
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19-APR-2020 :: The End of Vanity China Africa Win Win Africa |
And the entire China Africa relationship has been an extraordinary exercise in Narrative Framing and linguistic control, accompanied by a chorus of Party Hacks chirruping Hosannas at every turn amplifying largely meaningless feel good Phrases artfully placed in the mouths of our Politicians and our Newspapers. It is remarkable.
I reference excerpts from Chinese President Xi Jinping's speech at the opening ceremony of 2018 FOCAC Beijing Summit
"The ocean is vast because it rejects no rivers."
Interestingly, At that 2018 FOCAC Meeting Xi Jinping also delivered a thinly veiled warning China's Xi says funds for Africa not for 'vanity projects' Reuters #FOCAC2018
2-SEP-2019 :: the China EM Frontier Feedback Loop Phenomenon. #COVID19
This Phenomenon was positive for the last two decades but has now undergone a Trend reversal. The ZAR is the purest proxy for this Phenomenon.
African Countries heavily dependent on China being the main Taker are also at the bleeding edge of this Phenomenon.
This Pressure Point will not ease soon but will continue to intensify
The Hambantota Moment has arrived
18-JUN-2018 :: So the first overarching Point, is that creditors are not Santa Claus and miscues will exact a very heavy price, Countries will be "Hambantota-ed"
Basically China has an Option to buy in SSA Assets at fire-sale Prices.
In an interview, The World Bank’s Malpass cited liens against Angola’s oil revenues associated with Chinese debt that were hidden by non-disclosure agreements, convenient for politicians and contractors.
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10-MAY-2020 :: ―Brazil is the global epicenter of the coronavirus. Emerging Markets |
In Brazil we have a toxic mix of a „‟Voodoo‟‟ President @jairbolsonaro and a runaway #COVID19
Brazilians aren‘t infected by anything, even when they fall into a sewer
“It‟s tragic surrealism ... I can‟t stop thinking about Gabriel García Márquez when I think about the situation Manaus is facing.” Guardian
Viruses are in essence non linear exponential and multiplicative and COVID19 has „‟escape velocity‟‟ in Brazil.
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@jairbolsonaro threatens @WHO exit as COVID-19 kills 'a Brazilian per minute' #COVID19 @Reuters Emerging Markets |
President Jair Bolsonaro threatened on Friday to pull Brazil out of the World Health Organization after the U.N. agency warned Latin American governments about the risk of lifting lockdowns before slowing the spread of the novel coronavirus throughout the region.
A new Brazilian record for daily COVID-19 fatalities pushed the county’s death toll past that of Italy late on Thursday, but Bolsonaro continues to argue for quickly lifting state isolation orders, arguing that the economic costs outweigh public health risks.
Latin America’s most populous nations, Brazil and Mexico, are seeing the highest rates of new infections, though the pandemic is also gathering pace in countries such as Peru, Colombia, Chile and Bolivia.
Overall, more than 1.1 million Latin Americans have been infected. While most leaders have taken the pandemic more seriously than Bolsonaro, some politicians that backed strict lockdowns in March and April are pushing to open economies back up as hunger and poverty grow.
In an editorial running the length of newspaper Folha de S.Paulo’s front page, the Brazilian daily highlighted that just 100 days had passed since Bolsonaro described the virus now “killing a Brazilian per minute” as “a little flu.”
“While you were reading this, another Brazilian died from the coronavirus,” the newspaper said.
Brazil’s Health Ministry reported late on Thursday that confirmed cases in the country had climbed past 600,000 and 1,437 deaths had been registered within 24 hours, the third consecutive daily record.
With more than 35,000 lives lost, the pandemic has killed more people in Brazil than anywhere outside of the United States and the United Kingdom.
Asked about efforts to loosen social distancing orders in Brazil despite rising daily death rates and diagnoses, World Health Organization (WHO) spokeswoman Margaret Harris said a key criteria for lifting lockdowns was slowing transmission.
“The epidemic, the outbreak, in Latin America is deeply, deeply concerning,” she told a news conference in Geneva. Among six key criteria for easing quarantines, she said, “one of them is ideally having your transmission declining.”
In comments to journalists later Friday, Bolsonaro said Brazil will consider leaving the WHO unless it ceases to be a “partisan political organization.”
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China suspends debt repayment for 77 developing nations, regions @globaltimesnews China |
China has announced the suspension of debt repayment for 77 developing countries and regions as the nation is working with other G20 members to carry out the G20 debt relief initiative for low-income countries, Chinese officials said at a press briefing at the State Council Information Office on Sunday.
—no detail yet on which countries or what terms, but its important to note that debt suspension doesn't mean the debt is forgiven. But this is a positive boost for beneficiaries. @ChiedzaMadzima
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19-APR-2020 :: The End of Vanity China Africa Win Win China |
And the entire China Africa relationship has been an extraordinary exercise in Narrative Framing and linguistic control, accompanied by a chorus of Party Hacks chirruping Hosannas at every turn amplifying largely meaningless feel good Phrases artfully placed in the mouths of our Politicians and our Newspapers. It is remarkable.
For China, we are always Africa's good friend, good partner and good brother. No one could undermine the great unity between the Chinese people and the African people.
"The ocean is vast because it rejects no rivers."
"The red rising sun will light up the road ahead." I am confident that the baton of China-Africa friendship will be passed from one generation to the next and that China and Africa, working together, will build an even more vibrant community with a shared future. The day will surely come when the Chinese nation realizes its dream of national renewal and Africa realizes its dream of unity and invigoration!
Interestingly, At that 2018 FOCAC Meeting Xi Jinping also delivered a thinly veiled warning China's Xi says funds for Africa not for 'vanity projects' Reuters #FOCAC2018
1/12 The idealization of Chinese economic success has always been a big scam. Throughout history we have had several similar examples of communist countries that have reached unsustainable levels of internal and external debt and have suffered marked collapses.
2/12 Para elaborar nessa proposição, considere a seguinte reflexão. De acordo com o PIB publicado pelo governo chinês, a China foi responsável por mais de 60% do crescimento econômico global desde 2008.
2/12 To elaborate on this proposition, consider the following reflection. According to GDP published by the Chinese government, China has accounted for more than 60% of global economic growth since 2008.
3/12 Com isso, ela passou a ser, incomparavelmente, a maior importadora de commodities no mundo. Se caso o seu crescimento de PIB tivesse sido tão expressivo, como justificaríamos a queda geral de preços de commodities no mundo?
3/12 As a result, it has become, by far, the largest importer of commodities in the world. If your GDP growth had been so expressive, how would we justify the general drop in commodity prices in the world?
4/12 Curiosamente, esse período marcou uma das piores décadas para esse mercado na história. É incontestável a contradição entre esses números, presumivelmente mais apurados, e os números “criados” pelo próprio governo comunista Chinês.
4/12 Interestingly, this period marked one of the worst decades for this market in history. The contradiction between these numbers, presumably more accurate, and the numbers “created” by the Chinese communist government is undeniable.
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Ebola virus disease case in Equateur Province, DRC is a new spillover H/T @AthaliaChristie Africa |
On 1 June 2020, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) announced a new cluster of Ebola virus disease (EVD) cases occurring in Mbandaka health zone, in Équateur Province.
This is the same area where the DRC’s 9th Ebola outbreak occurred back in May 2018.
A sample was sent to Institut National de Recherche Biomédicale (INRB) in Kinshasa for confirmatory testing.
Ebola virus (EBOV) was confirmed by PCR on 1 June 2020 using the GeneXpert (GP ct 31, NP ct 28).
The sample was sequenced using an amplicon strategy developed with Primal Scheme (using MK007330 as a reference to generate the primers), followed by Illumina Nextera DNA Flex library preparation.
The consensus genome 20 was generated using iVar 3 on 4 June 2020.
The new EVD cluster could have been seeded from the current Nord Kivu/Ituri outbreak (Ituri), from the May 2018 Équateur province outbreak (Tumba) via a persistent source, or a new spillover event from the reservoir host.
The new EBOV genome was aligned to single representatives from previous EVD outbreaks using MAFFT, and a phylogenetic tree was inferred using RaxML (Figure 1).
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02-JUN-2020 :: Fast Forward On top of all that we know have an Ebola Outbreak in DR Congo Africa |
Congo declares new Ebola epidemic, 1,000 km from eastern outbreak Reuters
Democratic Republic of Congo declared a new Ebola epidemic on Monday in the western city of Mbandaka, more than 1,000 km (620 miles) away from an ongoing outbreak of the same deadly virus in the east.
Health Minister Eteni Longondo said four people who died in Mbandaka were confirmed as positive cases following testing at the national biomedical laboratory in the capital Kinshasa.
“We have a new Ebola epidemic in Mbandaka,” Longondo told reporters. “We are going to very quickly send them the vaccine and medicine.”
The outbreak was confirmed by World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, who tweeted: “This outbreak is a reminder that #COVID19 is not the only health threat people face.”
Congo has been struggling to put an end to a nearly two-year-old Ebola outbreak near its eastern borders with Rwanda and Uganda, which has killed more than 2,200 people, the world’s second-deadliest outbreak of the disease on record.
It was days away in April from declaring the end of that outbreak, its tenth since the virus was discovered in 1976, when a new chain of infection was confirmed in the east. However, no new cases have been detected there in over 30 days.
The first known emergence of Ebola Zaire—the hottest subtype of Ebola virus— happened in September, 1976, when the virus erupted simultaneously in fifty-five villages near the Ebola River.
Ebola Zaire is a slate-wiper in humans. It killed eighty- eight per cent of the people it infected. Apart from rabies and the human immunodeficiency virus, H.I.V., which causes aids, this was the highest rate of mortality that has been recorded for a human virus.
Ebola was spread mainly among family members, through contact with bodily fluids and blood. Many of the people in Africa who came down with Ebola had handled Ebola-infected cadavers. It seems that one of Ebola’s paths wends to the living from the dead.
These remain precarious times.
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