President Donald Trump will sharply reduce the number of US forces in Afghanistan from 4,500 to 2,500 by mid-January, the Pentagon announced, stopping short of a full withdrawal from America's longest war.
US troops at an Afghan National Army checkpoint in Wardak province, west of Kabul, in 2019. Photo: AFP
Trump's decision to limit himself to a partial withdrawal was first reported by Reuters on Monday and triggered a rebuke from senior Republicans who fear it will undermine security and hurt fragile peace talks with the Taliban.
Acting Defense Secretary Christopher Miller, who Trump installed last week after abruptly firing Mark Esper, confirmed the Afghan drawdown and also outlined a modest withdrawal of forces from Iraq that will reduce troop levels there from 3,000 to 2,500, by 15 January.
"This is consistent with our established plans and strategic objectives, supported by the American people, and does not equate to a change in US policy or objectives," Miller said.
Moments later, the top Republican in the Senate, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, warned against any major changes in US defense or foreign policy in the next couple of months - including any precipitous troop drawdowns in Afghanistan and Iraq.
"It is extremely important here in the next couple of months not to have any earthshaking changes in regard to defense or foreign policy," McConnell told reporters.
Trump is due to leave office on 20 January after losing this month's presidential election to Democrat Joe Biden. He has launched legal challenges to vote counts in some swing states which he says were fraudulent but legal experts give him little chance of success.
The top Republican on the House of Representatives Armed Services Committee, Rep. Mac Thornberry also slammed the troop cut as a "mistake."
"Further reductions in Afghanistan will also undercut negotiations there; the Taliban has done nothing - met no condition - that would justify this cut," Thornberry said.
US and Afghan officials are warning of troubling levels of violence by Taliban insurgents and persistent Taliban links to al Qaeda.
It was those ties that triggered US military intervention in 2001 following the al Qaeda Sept. 11 attacks on the United States. Thousands of American and allied troops have died in fighting in Afghanistan.
Some US military officials had been urging Trump to keep US troop levels at around 4,500 for now.
But the withdrawal stops short of his pledge on 7 October when Trump said on Twitter "We should have the small remaining number of our BRAVE Men and Women serving in Afghanistan home by Christmas!"
Rick Olson, a former US special envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan, said that the remaining 2,500 troops still give the United States some leverage in advancing the peace process, but "it would have been better to have left them at 4,500."
"Zero would have been truly awful, while 2,500 is maybe okay, but it's probably not very stable," he said. "I would say 2,500 is probably stable as long as the US-Taliban peace holds. But that may not happen because the Taliban have not done a reduction in violence, as they committed to do."
Ronald Neumann, a former US ambassador to Kabul, cautioned that "if we are pulling out faster than the withdrawal schedule, there's no incentive for the Taliban to negotiate."
The withdrawals could hand Biden a new set of challenges when he takes office on 20 January.
Taliban militants, fighting against the US-backed government in Kabul, have called on the United States to stick to a February agreement with the Trump administration to withdraw US troops by May, subject to certain security guarantees.
Violence has been rising throughout Afghanistan, with the Taliban attacking provincial capitals, in some case prompting U.S. airstrikes.
In Iraq, four rockets fell in the Green Zone in Baghdad on Tuesday, an Iraqi military statement said. The fortified zone houses government buildings and foreign missions.
- Reuters
Twitter is launching tweets that disappear after 24 hours, similar to the stories feature that is popular on Snapchat and Facebook's photo-sharing app Instagram.
Photo: 123rf
Twitter has previously announced its plan for these ephemeral tweets, dubbed "fleets", and tested the feature in Brazil, Italy, India, and South Korea.
"Some of you tell us that Tweeting is uncomfortable because it feels so public, so permanent, and like there's so much pressure to rack up retweets and likes," design director Joshua Harris and product manager Sam Haveson said in a blog post.
"Because they disappear from view after a day, fleets helped people feel more comfortable sharing personal and casual thoughts, opinions, and feelings," they added.
Fleets, which include text, photos and videos, will be available at the top of users' home timelines on Twitter and on the sender's profile.
Twitter and other major social media companies are under pressure to better police abuses and viral misinformation on their sites. Twitter spokeswoman Liz Kelley said fleets are subject to the same rules as tweets.
Kelley also said that warnings or labels, which Twitter has started applying to content such as manipulated media and misinformation about civic processes or Covid-19, could be applied to fleets.
Twitter also confirmed it was working on a live audio feature, dubbed 'Spaces,' that it aims to test later this year. The feature will allow users to talk in public, group conversations. It has similarities with Clubhouse, a social platform in which users are invited to talk in voice chat rooms.
"Given all of the potential for abuse within audio spaces, we are going to be making it available first to women and historically marginalized communities," said Twitter's Kelley.
The company earlier this year launched a feature for users to tweet recorded voice notes.
- Reuters
Fiji's Autumn Nations Cup rugby Test against Italy has been called off after 29 members of the touring party tested positive for Covid-19.
Italy's Luca Morisi is tackled by Fiji's Nemani Nadolo during their 2013 test in Cremona. Photo: PHOTOSPORT
The decision was taken after the squad underwent a new round of Covid-19 testing on Monday.
Fiji Rugby Chief Executive John O'Connor confirmed the positive tests included both players and management staff and the squad will remain in quarantine isolation and undergo further testing.
"After contact tracing, our medical team and FFR medical team have been able to narrow down the origin of the virus but since the team has been training and living in their own bubble, it has spread to other members of the team and management," he said.
"Our medical team with the support of the FFR, and Tournament medical team are continuing to closely monitor the team since no one has any symptoms and all are healthy and doing well. No one has required any form of medical treatment."
What doesn’t break us will only make us stronger.. we’re ok if anyone is concern!. ❤️ #FijieverFiji https://t.co/BxADNFoLnV
— nemzy (@nemani_nadolo) November 17, 2020
John O'Connor said their priority now is the safety and well-being of the players and management staff.
"Fiji Rugby and the Organisers are committed in taking all necessary action and steps to ensure that all players are tested negative prior to any further consideration."
In a statement, tournament organisers Six Nations Rugby said they remain in constant contact with the Fijian squad to address the situation.
Semi Radradra was reportedly among five players to test positive prior to the cancelled Test against France. Photo: AFP
"The main priority at present is the welfare of all players and management."
The Fiji squad, which includes 32 players and the management staff, is currently self-isolating in their hotel rooms at their tournament base in Saint-Galmier, France.
A warm-up test against Portugal was cancelled earlier this month when three members of the Flying Fijians squad tested positive for the coronavirus, while Monday morning Nations Cup clash against France was scrapped when five Fijian players returned positive tests.
France were awarded a 28-0 victory and a bonus point after the Flying Fijians were unable to front for the test in Vannes.
The impact on Fiji's remaining matches two Autumn Nations Cup Tests is under review.
Fiji's final group match against Scotland remains up in the air. Photo: AFP
Facebook and Twitter's chief executives are being cross-examined by US senators for the second time in three weeks.
Mark Zuckerberg testifies remotely to the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing in Washington. Photo: AFP
The two were summoned to answer questions about how their platforms had limited distribution of a controversial article about Joe Biden's son published ahead of the US election.
But they are also being challenged over their handling of posts by President Donald Trump and others who have contested the vote's result.
The tech firms face new regulations. In particular, President-elect Joe Biden has suggested that protections they currently enjoy under a law known as Section 230 should be "revoked".
It says the platforms are generally not responsible for illegal or offensive things users post on them.
Biden has said this allows them to spread "falsehoods they know to be false".
Republicans have also voiced concern about the law. They claim it lets social media companies take decisions about what to leave up and take down without being transparent about why, making bias possible.
"When you have companies that have the power of governments, have more power than traditional media outlets, something has to give," said the Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, who is chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee.
'Frivolous lawsuits'
Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg and Twitter's Jack Dorsey both addressed the issue in their opening remarks.
Dorsey urged the politicians to work with Twitter to avoid changes that might cause "the proliferation of frivolous lawsuits, and severe limitations on our collective responsibility to address harmful content".
Zuckerberg added that any update must preserve "the freedom for people to express themselves and for entrepreneurs to build new things".
The two tech CEOs also defended their record in handling the 2020 election.
But Dorsey acknowledged that Twitter's decision to block links to the New York Post article about Hunter Biden had been "wrong", and that its failure to subsequently restore the newspaper's own tweets about the story had required a further policy change.
"I hope this... demonstrates our ability to take feedback, admit mistakes and make all changes transparently to the public," he said.
Twitter's Jack Dorsey testifies remotely to a US Senate hearing. Photo: AFP
Zuckerberg avoided direct reference to the matter.
However, he used the opportunity to challenge recent claims by Democrats that Facebook had been slow in removing posts that promoted insurrection and violence.
"We strengthened our enforcement against militias and conspiracy networks like QAnon to prevent them from using our network to organise violence or civil unrest," Zuckerberg said.
Zuckerberg defends decision not to ban Bannon
The two tech leaders have been challenged over some of their recent decisions.
The Democratic Senator Richard Blumenthal wanted to know why Facebook had not banned Steve Bannon.
President Trump's former top adviser recently called for the beheadings of disease expert Dr Anthony Fauci and the FBI director Christopher Wray in a video he posted to both Twitter and Facebook.
Twitter threw him off its service, but Facebook only froze Bannon's page.
Steve Bannon, who is facing fraud charges in the US, has been banned by Twitter but not Facebook. (file pic) Photo: AFP
Zuckerberg said Bannon "did violate our policies" but had not clocked up enough strikes to permanently lose access.
And when the senator called for a rethink, Zuckerberg responded: "That's not what our policies would suggest we should do."
Zuckerberg went on to dispute reports that Facebook had forgiven infractions by both of Trump's sons and the news site Breitbart, among others, in order to avoid accusations of bias from conservatives.
"Those reports mischaracterise the actions that we've taken," he said.
Questions on Trump's election claims
The Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein followed up with questions to both executives over their responses to President Trump's posts about election fraud, which lacked factual basis.
She asked Twitter's chief whether he thought adding labels but allowing the tweets to remain visible went far enough.
Dorsey responded that he believed providing "context" and "connecting people to the larger conversation" was the right path to follow.
Senator Feinstein went on to ask Zuckerberg if he felt enough had been done to prevent people delegitimising the election's result given that hashtags for Steal The Vote and Voter Fraud had garnered more than 300,000 interactions on its platforms in the hours after Trump falsely declared victory.
"I believe we have taken some very significant steps in this area," Zuckerberg responded, pointing to information it had placed at the top of the screens of US-based Facebook and Instagram users.
"I think that we really went quite far in terms of helping to distribute reliable and accurate information about the results."
Meanwhile, the Republican Senator Michael Lee brought up Twitter's suspension of an account belonging to Mark Morgan, the commissioner of US Customs and Border Protection.
The action was taken after Morgan tweeted that the wall on the border with Mexico had helped stop "gang members, murderers, sexual predators and drugs from entering our country".
"What exactly is hateful about [that]?" asked Senator Lee.
Dorsey acknowledged that the action had been taken in error.
"There was a mistake and it was due to the fact that we had heightened awareness around government accounts," he explained.
The Senator responded: "I understand that mistakes happen, but what we're going to see today is that mistakes happen... almost entirely on one side of the political aisle rather than the other."
- BBC
Ethiopia's Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed has said the military operation in the northern Tigray region is entering its "final phase" now that a three-day ultimatum given to fighters to surrender has expired.
An Ethiopian refugee speaks to a fellow refugee at the border reception centre of Hamdiyet, in the eastern Sudanese state of Kasala. Photo: AFP
At least 27,000 people have so far fled the fighting into neighbouring Sudan. The UN has said a "full-scale humanitarian crisis" is unfolding.
The conflict began almost a fortnight ago as tensions between the federal government and Tigray officials boiled over.
The Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF), the party in charge of the region, sees Abiy's government as illegitimate because he postponed national elections which were due to be held in August.
The federal government made the decision because of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Abiy ordered a military operation after he accused that TPLF of treason for sending its fighters to occupy a military base. TPLF has denied the claim.
Civilian sites bombed - TPLF adviser
The party's adviser, Fesseha Tessema, a former Ethiopian diplomat, has told the BBC that civilian sites in Tigray's main city, Mekelle, are being bombed by federal forces.
"[The people of Tigray] haven't done anything wrong, they are in their own homes, churches," Fesseha said.
But the federal government has denied targeting civilians and said that air attacks are aimed at the Tigrayan military.
The UN fears the numbers fleeing Ethiopia may be just a fraction of those forced from their homes by the fighting, but for the moment aid agencies have no access to the Tigray region.
The conflict has also reportedly killed hundreds, but getting information from Tigray is hard as there is a virtual communications blackout.
Regional powers Kenya and Uganda have called for negotiations to find a peaceful resolution to the conflict.
The Ethiopian government has, however, ruled out talks with the TPLF.
In a Facebook post, the prime minister thanked TPLF fighters who, he said, took advantage of the three-day deadline to switch sides but he did not give a number.
He said that his government was "ready to receive and reintegrate our fellow Ethiopians fleeing to neighbouring countries".
People carry Amhara flags and Ethiopia national flags in the streets after a national call to stand in honour of the Ethiopian National Defence Forces, in Addis Ababa. Photo: AFP
Fears of humanitarian crisis
The UN's refugee agency, the UNHCR, said that "a full-scale humanitarian crisis is unfolding" and thousands were fleeing the fighting.
Ethiopian refugees who fled intense fighting in their homeland of Tigray, gather in Hamdiyet, in the eastern Sudanese state of Kasala. Photo: AFP
The agency was "on stand-by to provide assistance in Tigray when access and security allow", spokesman Babar Baloch told a Geneva news briefing.
"There may be massive displacement inside Tigray and that is of course a concern and we try to prepare the best way possible," Jens Laerke, spokesman of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), told the briefing.
Hundreds dead in one town - Amnesty
Hundreds have reportedly died in Ethiopia since the fighting began on 4 November.
Human rights group Amnesty International said it had confirmed that "scores, and likely hundreds, of people were stabbed or hacked to death" in the town of Mai-Kadra (May Cadera) on Monday last week.
Prime Minister Abiy has accused forces loyal to Tigray's leaders of carrying out the mass killings. The TPLF has denied involvement, saying it will welcome an independent international investigation.
Ethiopia's human rights commission said it would send a team to investigate.
Ethiopia's Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed Photo: AFP
Why are the government and TPLF fighting?
The TPLF dominated Ethiopia's military and political life for decades before Abiy took office in 2018 and pushed through major reforms.
Last year, Abiy dissolved the ruling coalition, made up of several ethnically based regional parties, and merged them into a single, national party, which the TPLF refused to join.
The feud escalated in September, when Tigray held a regional election, defying a nationwide ban on all polls imposed because of the coronavirus pandemic. Abiy responded by calling the vote illegal.
Tigray's administration sees Abiy's reforms as an attempt to hand his central government more power and weaken regional states.
It also resents what it calls the prime minister's "unprincipled" friendship with Eritrean President Isaias Afwerki.
Abiy won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2019 for his efforts to bring peace with Eritrea.
The prime minister believes TPLF officials are undermining his authority. He ordered the military operation against the TPLF after he said its fighters had crossed "the last red line".
He accused them of attacking a military camp hosting federal troops on 4 November, calling the action "treasonous". The TPLF has denied attacking the camp.
- BBC
A Chinese citizen journalist who covered Wuhan's virus outbreak is facing up to five years in jail, according to newly released documents.
The 37-year-old former lawyer was arrested by police in May, according to NGO the Network of Chinese Human Rights Defenders. Photo: Network of Chinese Human Rights Defenders (CHRD)
Zhang Zhan, a 37-year-old former lawyer, has been held in detention since she was arrested in May.
She is accused of "picking quarrels and provoking trouble" - a charge often used against activists in China.
Zhang is not the first citizen journalist who has run into trouble for reporting on the then virus-hit Wuhan.
At least three disappeared in February. One, Li Zehua, reappeared in April saying he had been "quarantining".
It later emerged the second, Chen Qiushi, had been placed under government supervision, while the whereabouts of the third journalist, Fang Bin, is still unknown.
Chinese authorities are known to clamp down on activists who speak out.
Hunger strike
According to an indictment sheet which has now emerged, Ms Zhang made her way to Wuhan in February, where she reported on numerous stories. According to NGO the Network of Chinese Human Rights Defenders (CHRD), her reports included the detention of other independent journalists and the harassment of families of victims who were seeking accountability.
But on 14 May she went missing from Wuhan, says CHRD. A day later, it was revealed she had been detained by police in Shanghai, more than 640km away.
On 19 June, she was formally arrested in Shanghai. Almost three months later, on 9 September, her lawyer was a granted a meeting with her.
The CHRD says Ms Zhang had gone on a hunger strike to protest against her arrest. On 18 September, her lawyer received a phone call that she had been indicted. She was formally charged last Friday.
The indictment sheet, which emerged on Monday, alleges she sent "false information through text, video and other media through [platforms like] WeChat, Twitter and YouTube". She was also accused of accepting interviews with foreign media outlets and "maliciously spreading" information about the virus in Wuhan.
A sentence of four to five years was recommended.
This is not the first time Ms Zhan has run into trouble with authorities. According to CHRD, she was summoned by police in Shanghai in September 2019 and detained for voicing support for activists in Hong Kong.
She was reportedly forced to undergo psychiatric examination while in detention.
- BBC
By Catherine Taylor for the ABC
Analysis - This time last year - as China's perishing winter descended across most of the country - rumours about a strange new flu were beginning to circulate in Wuhan.
Wearing masks has now become the norm in many countries across the world amid the Covid-19 pandemic. Photo: The Yomiuri Shimbun / AFP
On China's social media platform WeChat, users had been discussing their coughs and colds for weeks with words like "SARS" and "shortness of breath" spiking from mid-November.
By early December, a so-called "pneumonia of unknown origin" had been identified, and patients - many of them workers or customers of a well-known market - were finding their way to Wuhan's hospitals for treatment.
The first cases of pneumonia of unknown origin were identified in Wuhan, China, in early December 2019. Little was known about the characteristics or transmission of the pathogen, identified as a novel coronavirus. #COVID19 #SARSCoV2 pic.twitter.com/VOQMWxyJdz
— NEJM (@NEJM) May 2, 2020
As we close in on 12 months of life with this pandemic - with puzzling beginnings that have led to more than 54 million global infections and 1.3 million deaths, affecting almost every nation on earth, upending economies and lifestyles, sparking political tensions - the most fundamental questions remain unanswered: Where did it come from? Who was its first victim?
The hunt for 'Patient Zero'
These are mysteries that may never be solved, says Professor Edward Holmes, a leading virologist at the University of Sydney, and recently named NSW Scientist of the Year, who was among the first in the world to map the genome of SARS-CoV-2.
"You know, it sounds like a cliche but it's really needle in a haystack stuff," he says of the search for the origins of the virus. "It may actually depend on going into exactly the right cave and sampling exactly the right bat. It could be that chancy. It's not a simple thing to do."
A medical worker conducts blood testing on patients in Tongji Hospitai, in Wuhan on September 3, 2020, while local authorities made a visit with media to the hospital. Photo: Hector Retamal / AFP
In the movie Contagion, Gwyneth Paltrow's character gives the impression that one dodgy meal and clever use of CCTV footage can lead us to Patient Zero and bingo, the mystery is unravelled.
Yet exactly how Covid-19 came into being, and who its first human victim was - the so-called "Index Case" - is a "hypothetical construct", according to Prof Holmes.
"It sounds good in the movies to go back and find the person who was first exposed to the bat, but the chance of ever finding that in reality is almost zero," he says.
That hasn't stopped people trying.
One widely republished report suggests a 55-year-old Hubei man was the first to become infected with coronavirus exactly 12 months ago today, on 17 November. But the information has not been corroborated.
There are also suspicions the roots of the virus could have emerged even earlier.
On 18 September, Wuhan's Tianhe Airport Customs received a report that an inbound passenger "was unwell, respiratory distress and unstable vital signs". An early case of Covid-19? Or just a bad cold and a coincidence?
Other reports point to Spanish sewage samples from March 2019 that found fragments of Covid-19 during retrospective tests.
Just this week reports of Covid cases in Italy as early as September have been suggested.
Prof Holmes scoffs at these accounts.
"I just don't find those reports in any way credible and I don't think anyone really does," he says. "Extraordinary claims need extraordinary proof. Unless they have the genomic sequence, I don't think anyone really believes that."
We can deduce when Covid emerged in humans
Prof Holmes' resoluteness rests on the fact that for all the mystery surrounding Covid-19, the mathematics of the virus is relentlessly dependable.
Staff members receive the novel coronavirus strain transported to a laboratory of Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, in Beijing, on February 25, 2020. Photo: Liu Peicheng / Xinhua / AFP
While medicine and epidemiology have unravelled the fundamentals of when carriers are most infectious and how the disease spreads, virologists like Prof Holmes can make deductions about how long it has been circulating and what it's likely to do next.
Different strains of Covid-19 can all be tracked to a common "ancestor", the implication being that this ancestor virus marks the general period during which the virus "jumped" from animals to humans.
"If you look at the genomic data, you can try and date when they diverged and if you do that, the most likely ancestor date is around about November last year," Prof Holmes says.
A quick biology lesson
A quick and basic biology lesson on the virus goes like this: a virus exists in an animal - the leading candidate is a bat. At some point the bat virus is transmitted to another animal that is in closer contact with humans and then some time after that, the virus infects its first human. Maybe a fragment of faeces or mucus from the animal is absorbed, or it could be transmitted after being eaten.
It's not possible to know precisely how long before being detected in humans this transmission happened. Prof Holmes uses the example of HIV which is believed to have jumped from chimpanzees to humans in the 1920s, maybe while the animal was being butchered for food, but only became widely known in the 1980s when it spread to a level that allowed patterns to become evident in the community.
In the case of Covid-19, several mutations may have existed in humans prior to November 2019, but for one reason or another they died out, leaving just one powerful mutation. Perhaps that mutation was caught by a superspreader, leading to the current pandemic.
Enter the superspreader
That's where the now infamous Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in Wuhan comes in.
While it's possible that one of the animals on sale at that market was the creature that transmitted SARS-CoV-2 to humans, that does not have to be the case.
The Wuhan Hygiene Emergency Response Team conducts searches on the closed Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in the Hubei Province, on January 11, 2020. Photo: Noel Celis / AFP
Perhaps the virus was transmitted to humans somewhere else and the market was merely the site of a superspreader event that "amplified" the disease into the wider community.
On 31 December, the Wuhan Municipal Health Commission formally announced an outbreak of what we now know as SARS-Cov-2. Two days later lab reports confirmed that 41 people had been hospitalised with the disease.
Yiwan Lee remembers watching frustration rise on social media as evidence gathered that something was seriously wrong in Wuhan, but China's official media was silent. At other times stories appeared briefly, only to be hidden behind the country's Great Firewall just as fast.
"On the one hand what we saw on TV made everything look great," she says. "Then when you switch to your phone, everyone is posting about how terrible the situation is."
Heading into the heart of the crisis
Early on 23 January, a few weeks after Prof Holmes had uploaded the Covid sequence to global acclaim, and just hours before Wuhan's lockdown was due to take effect, The New York Times newspaper sent a message to its staff in China: who is willing to report from the stricken city?
Information about the virus remained sketchy and accusations that the Chinese government had not been transparent about the scale of the unfolding crisis meant having a reporter on the ground seemed the best way to learn what was going on.
With public transport out of Wuhan heaving with residents anxious to escape the city before shut down, Chris Buckley - an experienced journalist for the Times, fluent in Chinese, with a PhD in Chinese Communist Party history - began heading the other way.
People wearing protective clothing and masks arrive at Hankou Railway Station to board one of the first trains to leave Wuhan after an outbound travel ban was lifted on April 8, 2020. Photo: Hector Retamal / AFP
"I thought it would be a big story, but I don't think anybody anticipated what would happen," says Buckley, who spent more than 70 days confined to the city. "I threw some clothes in a bag, some hand sanitiser, and I thought I would be there for a week, maybe two."
It must have felt like heading towards a war zone and the mood on the train was tense but resigned, Buckley remembers. A fellow passenger noted pragmatically "If you are the panicky type you are not on this train".
Buckley wasn't panicky. Originally from Sydney, he had been a China resident for most of the past three decades, until being forced to leave in May. Over the years he had covered SARS, earthquakes and the suppression of Uyghurs in Xinjiang. Surely Wuhan was just another assignment.
'A pretty big deal'
Even in authoritarian China, shutting down a city was "a pretty big deal" Buckley reflects now. And doing so in Wuhan - a huge industrial city and transport hub that straddled the famous Yangze River, with a population of more than 11 million - the task seemed monumental.
Knowing what we do now about the rapid spread of Covid-19, the decision seems prophetic.
"I just couldn't imagine how it was going to work," he says. "Even a government as powerful as China's under Xi Jinping didn't arrive at that decision [to lock down the city] lightly."
As the bullet train pulled into Wuhan that day, Buckley suspected he may be about to walk into a large-scale security operation designed to control population movements. But the city was calm. He caught a taxi to a nearby hospital and found people lining up at fever clinics to be tested.
Medical supplies are still not enough in Wuhan. But food donations have been arriving, and this neighborhood party committee was handing out residents bags of chilies donated from Hainan. There might be a different vegetable tomorrow, they said. pic.twitter.com/lLH0a6FQq8
— Chris Buckley 储百亮 (@ChuBailiang) February 11, 2020
As he spoke with them, Buckley noted a wide "backwash of anger" against the local government.
"There was a conviction that the government had played down or hidden some of the evidence that the virus was spreading," he says. "People in the city had acknowledged for some time that there were growing numbers of people going to fever clinics, and experiencing these pneumonia-like symptoms that could be very, very severe in some cases."
But the story of coronavirus in China is not just a story of complacency, Buckley believes.
"It's a much more complicated set of issues. You do have heroes, you have doctors in Wuhan and other parts of China who really pushed [to get the situation addressed]."
What happens next
Finding that animal or species that transferred Covid-19 to humans is of critical importance, Prof Holmes believes, and the World Health Organisation has released a plan to search for the zoonotic origins of the virus.
Bats are fascinating mammals but they often play a key role in zoonotic transfer of disease. Photo: Ye Aung Thu / AFP
Right now, the Covid-19 genome is around 96 percent compatible with coronaviruses that have known animal hosts. But that's just not close enough. It equates to about 30 years of missing evolution.
"The key thing to do is fill in that gap," says Prof Holmes. "Thirty-or-so years of missing 'stuff'."
The WHO investigators - alongside the work Chinese experts are already doing - will focus on hunting for an animal with a coronavirus that is a 99 percent match.
That's where the needle in a haystack metaphor comes in - the task ahead is monumental and the only way to attack it is with old-fashioned detective work: sampling animals until a match is found. It's hard, hard work with no guaranteed result.
"It could take years and it's possible we might never find it," says Prof Holmes, using the example of Hepatitis C, a virus which affects millions and has done for decades, "but we still don't know where it came from".
The link to Ebola and Zika
The rise of so-called zoonotic diseases over recent decades - from Ebola and HIV to SARS, Zika and more - is not just bad luck. It relates directly to the way we live now, Prof Holmes argues.
While humans have always existed alongside wild, farmed and domesticated animals, with potential for virus transmission ever present, the difference now is profound, he believes.
"We live in these mega cities with globally connected populations, we expose ourselves to wildlife more by deforestation and the wildlife trade," he says. "All those things are fuelling these pandemics."
He argues a focus on finding Patient Zero is misplaced effort. The more important task is to find out what species gave rise to the virus.
"We must find out where it happened and then cut that route off. If it's the wildlife trade, we need to clamp down on that. If it's farming, we need to commit to cut down on those things. We need to find out so we can plug the holes."
An illustration of the virus that causes Covid-19. Photo: AFP
Law, not just science, is the next step
This is a topic that Katie Woolaston, a wildlife lawyer from Queensland University of Technology, is passionate about. She sees a pivotal role for law, alongside science, in reducing the future risk of pandemics.
"The risk of pandemics is increasing because of our relationship with biodiversity and our relationship with the environment," she says, noting climate change, wildlife trade and agricultural expansion as factors pushing humans into animal spaces.
Woolaston - who co-authored a report for the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) into the animal origins of pandemics - argues that stronger environmental laws can play a role in preventing future pandemics. She advocates for a "one health" approach in which policy considers human health alongside environmental health and economic development.
What does the future look like?
Woolaston and Prof Holmes are at pains to convey the idea that preparing for the next pandemic is embedded within these environmental concerns.
There is no simple medical answer that can save us. Even a vaccine can't offer an ongoing solution because viruses mutate, and zoonotic transmission has an almost limitless crucible of potential future viruses to draw from.
EcoHealth Alliance research estimates that there are 1.67 million unknown viruses in the wild. https://t.co/dYJezw3b4S
— EcoHealth Alliance (@EcoHealthNYC) March 25, 2020
"I've heard the narrative that this is a once in 100-year pandemic, a jolt to the system," Prof Holmes says. "But that's just completely wrong. The rate at which these things are occurring is escalating. We will not wait 100 years for the next one. It could be in 10 years. Or next year."
Prof Holmes hopes that the dramatic impact of Covid-19 will spur governments and populations into action. "I can't believe as a species we would let this happen again without learning the lessons," he says. "We absolutely have to and I'm reasonably confident that we will."
In the meantime, only one thing is certain: Covid-19 is not done with us yet.
-ABC
By Catherine Taylor for the ABC
Analysis - This time last year - as China's perishing winter descended across most of the country - rumours about a strange new flu were beginning to circulate in Wuhan.
Wearing masks has now become the norm in many countries across the world amid the Covid-19 pandemic. Photo: The Yomiuri Shimbun / AFP
On China's social media platform WeChat, users had been discussing their coughs and colds for weeks with words like "SARS" and "shortness of breath" spiking from mid-November.
By early December, a so-called "pneumonia of unknown origin" had been identified, and patients - many of them workers or customers of a well-known market - were finding their way to Wuhan's hospitals for treatment.
The first cases of pneumonia of unknown origin were identified in Wuhan, China, in early December 2019. Little was known about the characteristics or transmission of the pathogen, identified as a novel coronavirus. #COVID19 #SARSCoV2 pic.twitter.com/VOQMWxyJdz
— NEJM (@NEJM) May 2, 2020
As we close in on 12 months of life with this pandemic - with puzzling beginnings that have led to more than 54 million global infections and 1.3 million deaths, affecting almost every nation on earth, upending economies and lifestyles, sparking political tensions - the most fundamental questions remain unanswered: Where did it come from? Who was its first victim?
The hunt for 'Patient Zero'
These are mysteries that may never be solved, says Professor Edward Holmes, a leading virologist at the University of Sydney, and recently named NSW Scientist of the Year, who was among the first in the world to map the genome of SARS-CoV-2.
"You know, it sounds like a cliche but it's really needle in a haystack stuff," he says of the search for the origins of the virus. "It may actually depend on going into exactly the right cave and sampling exactly the right bat. It could be that chancy. It's not a simple thing to do."
A medical worker conducts blood testing on patients in Tongji Hospitai, in Wuhan on September 3, 2020, while local authorities made a visit with media to the hospital. Photo: Hector Retamal / AFP
In the movie Contagion, Gwyneth Paltrow's character gives the impression that one dodgy meal and clever use of CCTV footage can lead us to Patient Zero and bingo, the mystery is unravelled.
Yet exactly how Covid-19 came into being, and who its first human victim was - the so-called "Index Case" - is a "hypothetical construct", according to Prof Holmes.
"It sounds good in the movies to go back and find the person who was first exposed to the bat, but the chance of ever finding that in reality is almost zero," he says.
That hasn't stopped people trying.
One widely republished report suggests a 55-year-old Hubei man was the first to become infected with coronavirus exactly 12 months ago today, on 17 November. But the information has not been corroborated.
There are also suspicions the roots of the virus could have emerged even earlier.
On 18 September, Wuhan's Tianhe Airport Customs received a report that an inbound passenger "was unwell, respiratory distress and unstable vital signs". An early case of Covid-19? Or just a bad cold and a coincidence?
Other reports point to Spanish sewage samples from March 2019 that found fragments of Covid-19 during retrospective tests.
Just this week reports of Covid cases in Italy as early as September have been suggested.
Prof Holmes scoffs at these accounts.
"I just don't find those reports in any way credible and I don't think anyone really does," he says. "Extraordinary claims need extraordinary proof. Unless they have the genomic sequence, I don't think anyone really believes that."
We can deduce when Covid emerged in humans
Prof Holmes' resoluteness rests on the fact that for all the mystery surrounding Covid-19, the mathematics of the virus is relentlessly dependable.
Staff members receive the novel coronavirus strain transported to a laboratory of Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, in Beijing, on February 25, 2020. Photo: Liu Peicheng / Xinhua / AFP
While medicine and epidemiology have unravelled the fundamentals of when carriers are most infectious and how the disease spreads, virologists like Prof Holmes can make deductions about how long it has been circulating and what it's likely to do next.
Different strains of Covid-19 can all be tracked to a common "ancestor", the implication being that this ancestor virus marks the general period during which the virus "jumped" from animals to humans.
"If you look at the genomic data, you can try and date when they diverged and if you do that, the most likely ancestor date is around about November last year," Prof Holmes says.
A quick biology lesson
A quick and basic biology lesson on the virus goes like this: a virus exists in an animal - the leading candidate is a bat. At some point the bat virus is transmitted to another animal that is in closer contact with humans and then some time after that, the virus infects its first human. Maybe a fragment of faeces or mucus from the animal is absorbed, or it could be transmitted after being eaten.
It's not possible to know precisely how long before being detected in humans this transmission happened. Prof Holmes uses the example of HIV which is believed to have jumped from chimpanzees to humans in the 1920s, maybe while the animal was being butchered for food, but only became widely known in the 1980s when it spread to a level that allowed patterns to become evident in the community.
In the case of Covid-19, several mutations may have existed in humans prior to November 2019, but for one reason or another they died out, leaving just one powerful mutation. Perhaps that mutation was caught by a superspreader, leading to the current pandemic.
Enter the superspreader
That's where the now infamous Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in Wuhan comes in.
While it's possible that one of the animals on sale at that market was the creature that transmitted SARS-CoV-2 to humans, that does not have to be the case.
The Wuhan Hygiene Emergency Response Team conducts searches on the closed Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in the Hubei Province, on January 11, 2020. Photo: Noel Celis / AFP
Perhaps the virus was transmitted to humans somewhere else and the market was merely the site of a superspreader event that "amplified" the disease into the wider community.
On 31 December, the Wuhan Municipal Health Commission formally announced an outbreak of what we now know as SARS-Cov-2. Two days later lab reports confirmed that 41 people had been hospitalised with the disease.
Yiwan Lee remembers watching frustration rise on social media as evidence gathered that something was seriously wrong in Wuhan, but China's official media was silent. At other times stories appeared briefly, only to be hidden behind the country's Great Firewall just as fast.
"On the one hand what we saw on TV made everything look great," she says. "Then when you switch to your phone, everyone is posting about how terrible the situation is."
Heading into the heart of the crisis
Early on 23 January, a few weeks after Prof Holmes had uploaded the Covid sequence to global acclaim, and just hours before Wuhan's lockdown was due to take effect, The New York Times newspaper sent a message to its staff in China: who is willing to report from the stricken city?
Information about the virus remained sketchy and accusations that the Chinese government had not been transparent about the scale of the unfolding crisis meant having a reporter on the ground seemed the best way to learn what was going on.
With public transport out of Wuhan heaving with residents anxious to escape the city before shut down, Chris Buckley - an experienced journalist for the Times, fluent in Chinese, with a PhD in Chinese Communist Party history - began heading the other way.
People wearing protective clothing and masks arrive at Hankou Railway Station to board one of the first trains to leave Wuhan after an outbound travel ban was lifted on April 8, 2020. Photo: Hector Retamal / AFP
"I thought it would be a big story, but I don't think anybody anticipated what would happen," says Buckley, who spent more than 70 days confined to the city. "I threw some clothes in a bag, some hand sanitiser, and I thought I would be there for a week, maybe two."
It must have felt like heading towards a war zone and the mood on the train was tense but resigned, Buckley remembers. A fellow passenger noted pragmatically "If you are the panicky type you are not on this train".
Buckley wasn't panicky. Originally from Sydney, he had been a China resident for most of the past three decades, until being forced to leave in May. Over the years he had covered SARS, earthquakes and the suppression of Uyghurs in Xinjiang. Surely Wuhan was just another assignment.
'A pretty big deal'
Even in authoritarian China, shutting down a city was "a pretty big deal" Buckley reflects now. And doing so in Wuhan - a huge industrial city and transport hub that straddled the famous Yangze River, with a population of more than 11 million - the task seemed monumental.
Knowing what we do now about the rapid spread of Covid-19, the decision seems prophetic.
"I just couldn't imagine how it was going to work," he says. "Even a government as powerful as China's under Xi Jinping didn't arrive at that decision [to lock down the city] lightly."
As the bullet train pulled into Wuhan that day, Buckley suspected he may be about to walk into a large-scale security operation designed to control population movements. But the city was calm. He caught a taxi to a nearby hospital and found people lining up at fever clinics to be tested.
Medical supplies are still not enough in Wuhan. But food donations have been arriving, and this neighborhood party committee was handing out residents bags of chilies donated from Hainan. There might be a different vegetable tomorrow, they said. pic.twitter.com/lLH0a6FQq8
— Chris Buckley 储百亮 (@ChuBailiang) February 11, 2020
As he spoke with them, Buckley noted a wide "backwash of anger" against the local government.
"There was a conviction that the government had played down or hidden some of the evidence that the virus was spreading," he says. "People in the city had acknowledged for some time that there were growing numbers of people going to fever clinics, and experiencing these pneumonia-like symptoms that could be very, very severe in some cases."
But the story of coronavirus in China is not just a story of complacency, Buckley believes.
"It's a much more complicated set of issues. You do have heroes, you have doctors in Wuhan and other parts of China who really pushed [to get the situation addressed]."
What happens next
Finding that animal or species that transferred Covid-19 to humans is of critical importance, Prof Holmes believes, and the World Health Organisation has released a plan to search for the zoonotic origins of the virus.
Bats are fascinating mammals but they often play a key role in zoonotic transfer of disease. Photo: Ye Aung Thu / AFP
Right now, the Covid-19 genome is around 96 percent compatible with coronaviruses that have known animal hosts. But that's just not close enough. It equates to about 30 years of missing evolution.
"The key thing to do is fill in that gap," says Prof Holmes. "Thirty-or-so years of missing 'stuff'."
The WHO investigators - alongside the work Chinese experts are already doing - will focus on hunting for an animal with a coronavirus that is a 99 percent match.
That's where the needle in a haystack metaphor comes in - the task ahead is monumental and the only way to attack it is with old-fashioned detective work: sampling animals until a match is found. It's hard, hard work with no guaranteed result.
"It could take years and it's possible we might never find it," says Prof Holmes, using the example of Hepatitis C, a virus which affects millions and has done for decades, "but we still don't know where it came from".
The link to Ebola and Zika
The rise of so-called zoonotic diseases over recent decades - from Ebola and HIV to SARS, Zika and more - is not just bad luck. It relates directly to the way we live now, Prof Holmes argues.
While humans have always existed alongside wild, farmed and domesticated animals, with potential for virus transmission ever present, the difference now is profound, he believes.
"We live in these mega cities with globally connected populations, we expose ourselves to wildlife more by deforestation and the wildlife trade," he says. "All those things are fuelling these pandemics."
He argues a focus on finding Patient Zero is misplaced effort. The more important task is to find out what species gave rise to the virus.
"We must find out where it happened and then cut that route off. If it's the wildlife trade, we need to clamp down on that. If it's farming, we need to commit to cut down on those things. We need to find out so we can plug the holes."
An illustration of the virus that causes Covid-19. Photo: AFP
Law, not just science, is the next step
This is a topic that Katie Woolaston, a wildlife lawyer from Queensland University of Technology, is passionate about. She sees a pivotal role for law, alongside science, in reducing the future risk of pandemics.
"The risk of pandemics is increasing because of our relationship with biodiversity and our relationship with the environment," she says, noting climate change, wildlife trade and agricultural expansion as factors pushing humans into animal spaces.
Woolaston - who co-authored a report for the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) into the animal origins of pandemics - argues that stronger environmental laws can play a role in preventing future pandemics. She advocates for a "one health" approach in which policy considers human health alongside environmental health and economic development.
What does the future look like?
Woolaston and Prof Holmes are at pains to convey the idea that preparing for the next pandemic is embedded within these environmental concerns.
There is no simple medical answer that can save us. Even a vaccine can't offer an ongoing solution because viruses mutate, and zoonotic transmission has an almost limitless crucible of potential future viruses to draw from.
EcoHealth Alliance research estimates that there are 1.67 million unknown viruses in the wild. https://t.co/dYJezw3b4S
— EcoHealth Alliance (@EcoHealthNYC) March 25, 2020
"I've heard the narrative that this is a once in 100-year pandemic, a jolt to the system," Prof Holmes says. "But that's just completely wrong. The rate at which these things are occurring is escalating. We will not wait 100 years for the next one. It could be in 10 years. Or next year."
Prof Holmes hopes that the dramatic impact of Covid-19 will spur governments and populations into action. "I can't believe as a species we would let this happen again without learning the lessons," he says. "We absolutely have to and I'm reasonably confident that we will."
In the meantime, only one thing is certain: Covid-19 is not done with us yet.
-ABC
Federal Health Minister Greg Hunt has announced three extra cases of coronavirus have been identified within South Australia's Parafield cluster.
Photo: 123RF
A spokesperson for South Australian Health Minister Stephen Wade confirmed the cases, saying they were in addition to one case announced by the Premier this morning.
The spokesman said it brought the total number of confirmed and suspected cases in the Parafield cluster to 23.
Hunt said all the new cases were among the same family and there were "no cases of community transmission in South Australia outside of that cluster".
"We have seen widespread testing and South Australians have done a great job in presenting for testing and we encourage them to continue to do so," he said.
Premier Steven Marshall told State Parliament this afternoon there were "in excess of 5300 tests conducted yesterday", which was a record for the state.
"We all know that the incubation period for this disease can be up to 14 days so we still do have an anxious wait to see what the true situation is in South Australia but there is more and more data coming in all the time," he said.
He said the virus was transferred to a cleaner at the Peppers Waymouth medi-hotel "via a surface" and that they believe she infected two security guards but none were symptomatic.
He said he did not believe there had been a breach of the state's hotel quarantine system, but SA Health would conduct a "fulsome" review once the threat of the Parafield cluster was over.
Authorities have been scrambling to contact trace and contain a Covid-19 cluster in Adelaide's northern suburbs, which prompted sweeping new restrictions across the state yesterday.
Earlier today the Premier urged anyone with even the mildest symptoms to get tested.
"Thousands of people were tested yesterday ... I'm very grateful for that," he said.
"They do not want a second wave here and they're prepared to do whatever it takes.
"Data is absolute king during these outbreaks [and] time is of the essence."
Restrictions may extend beyond initial fortnight
SA Chief Public Health Officer Nicola Spurrier said the new coronavirus restrictions - which include limits on gatherings in homes and licensed venues and a temporary ban on community sport - may continue beyond the initial two-week period if it becomes clear there has been major community transmission.
She said a "large number" of people were in quarantine or isolation across Adelaide.
Professor Spurrier asked South Australians to limit their interactions with other people to help contain the outbreak.
"I really want people to think about whether they need to go out and about for the next couple of days [and] for the next week," she said.
"It's very important for people to reduce the amount of travel.
"What we want people to do is monitor for symptoms ... even if it's just a sniffle. Don't go 'oh, it's hay fever' - go and get a test."
SA Health has released a list of dozens of locations across Adelaide where people could have become infected.
Authorities have urged people to get tested if they have developed symptoms after visiting those locations.
Meanwhile, most Australian states and territories have instituted quarantine or self-isolation orders for people travelling from SA, or for those who arrived from the state within the past seven days.
As of yesterday afternoon, Queensland, Victoria, Tasmania, the Northern Territory and Western Australia had announced specific measures for people arriving from SA.
New South Wales and the ACT will keep their borders open.
- ABC
The Swedish Government has announced new restrictions on the size of public gatherings as the country seeks to come to grips with a second wave of the pandemic that has seen record daily numbers of new cases and growing pressure on hospitals.
eden's Minister for Health and Social Affairs Lena Hallengren and Prime Minister Stefan Lofven give a press conference on the new restrictions to curb the spread of covid. Photo: AFP
Prime Minister Stefan Lofven said Swedes were not sticking to coronavirus recommendations as well as they did in the spring and public gatherings would be limited to eight people, down from a previous upper limit of 300.
"This is the new norm for the entire society," Lofven told a news conference.
"Don't go to gyms, don't go to libraries, don't host dinners. Cancel."
Lofven said that the situation would get worse and appealed to Swedes to "do your duty" and "take responsibility to stop the spread" of Covid-19.
At first glance, life in Sweden during the pandemic appears to have hardly changed. But those working in the public health sector have had a very different experience.
The Prime Minister's announcement comes after the government, as recently as Friday, announced its strategy would not change.
Sweden has gained international attention for its unorthodox response to the pandemic, shunning lockdowns and widespread use of face masks and instead relying on mainly voluntary measures even as the pandemic hit the country increasingly hard.
The Nordic nation of 10 million people, whose soft-touch approach to combating the virus has also drawn harsh domestic criticism from some - has seen a surge in the number of cases, hospitalisations and deaths in recent weeks.
At 5990, the number of new cases reported on Friday was the highest since the start of the pandemic.
A further 42 deaths were also recorded, the most for about three months.
The Swedish government said last week that it would impose a nationwide ban on the sale of alcohol in bars, restaurants and night clubs after 10pm from 20 November.
Swedish Interior Minister Mikael Damberg said the new limit on gatherings - far lower than the 50 allowed during the spring outbreak - would begin on 24 November and be in place for four weeks but could be extended to run over the Christmas and New Year holidays.
More than 6000 people with Covid-19 have died in Sweden since the pandemic began, a death rate per capita several times higher than that of its Nordic neighbours, if somewhat lower than some larger European countries such as Spain.
"We don't believe in a total lockdown," Lofven said.
"We believe that the measures we have taken ... are appropriate."
- ABC
