The launch of the “Jilin-1 吉林一号 ” high-division 02C satellite by a Qizhou-1A carrier rocket from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Centre was abnormal and the mission was lost. The specific causes are being further investigated and analysed.
A new study by American researchers, released on Thursday, suggests the deadly coronavirus may have already reached Los Angeles by late December, actively circulating in the area months before the first definitive cases in the United States were identified.
Researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), evaluated more than 10 million patient and health records for UCLA Health outpatient, emergency department and hospital facilities, spanning Dec. 1, 2019, to Feb. 29, 2020, and compared those records with data from the same period over the previous five years.
They found a troubling trend. The outpatient clinic visits by UCLA patients seeking care for coughs increased by over 50 percent and exceeded the average number of visits for the same complaint over the prior five years by more than 1,000.
They also discovered a “significant” excess in the number of patients seen in emergency departments for reports of coughs and of patients hospitalized with acute respiratory failure during this time period.
These excesses remained even after accounting for changes in patient populations and seasonal variation, according to the study, published in the peer-reviewed Journal of Medical Internet Research.
“For many diseases, data from the outpatient setting can provide an early warning to emergency departments and hospital intensive care units of what is to come,” said Joann Elmore, the study’s lead author and a professor of medicine at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA.
Researchers noted the unusually high number of visitors, patients and hospitalizations suggests community spread of SARS-CoV-2 prior to established clinical awareness and testing capabilities.
It may indicate that the coronavirus had silently arrived and begun establishing a foothold undetected on the West Coast around Christmas 2019. If true, that would shake up the current narrative of the virus’ origins in the country.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported the first U.S. COVID-19 case on Jan. 21, who was a man traveling from Wuhan, China to Washington state. And it was not until Feb. 26 that the CDC confirmed community spread of the coronavirus in the United States.
UCLA researchers did not conclude for certain that coronavirus was behind the trends laid out in their study, saying other factors could be responsible for some of this unexpected increase, such as the use of e-cigarettes, or flu.
Fraser Institute once again ranked Hong Kong as the world’s freest economy in the Economic Freedom of the World 2019 Report. Hong Kong has been retaining the top rank since the inception of the report. Among the five areas of assessment, Hong Kong was ranked top in “Freedom to Trade Internationally” and “Regulation”.
The index published in Economic Freedom of the World measures the degree to which the policies and institutions of countries are supportive of economic freedom. The cornerstones of economic freedom are personal choice, voluntary exchange, freedom to enter markets and compete, and security of the person and privately owned property. Forty-two data points are used to construct a summary index and to measure the degree of economic freedom in five broad areas.
