Covid_19 > Trump Right, Fauci Wrong - CNN journo

 

Former CNN ‘Journalist’ Makes a Stunning Admission About Fauci

Jan 29, 2025 6:00 am By Robert Spencer

New in PJ Media:

Throughout Chris Cillizza’s long career as a “journalist” and “political commentator,” he has shown himself repeatedly to be a dutiful propagandist for the left, never daring to get even close to an independent thought and instead faithfully reflecting whatever the political and media elites wanted him to think. And that is still largely the case, but these are unusual times, and even Cillizza has demonstrated a shocking level of independence for a leftist journo, even daring to say that Donald Trump, the veritable focus of evil in the modern world, may have been right about something. Et tu, Cillizza? Yes: for the left, it has come even to this.

Cillizza wrote on X Monday: “I screwed up. Back in May 2020, I wrote how Anthony Fauci had ‘crushed’ Donald Trump’s lab-leak theory for how Covid-19 originated The CIA said over the weekend that they now believed the virus leaked from a lab.”

To get an idea of how big this admission is, consider that Cillizza’s Substack bears a heading that boasts about Trump’s disdain for him: “So What: Donald Trump once called me ‘one of the dumber and least respected of the political pundits.’ So I got that going for me. I write about politics — mostly — with humor, transparency, and authenticity. 2-3 posts a day.” Well, he writes about politics, anyway, and actually approached some transparency and authenticity in his Monday thread on X.

Cillizza noted a recent assessment from the CIA — and they wouldn’t lie to us, now, would they? “Here’s a CIA spokesperson: ‘CIA assesses with low confidence that a research-related origin of the COVID-19 pandemic is more likely than a natural origin based on the available body of reporting.’” Since this so sharply differs from what the CIA and the entire political and media establishment were telling us at the time, it is worth crediting, even though it does come from the CIA. And Cillizza was man enough to recognize its implications for his previous “reporting.”

Cillizza followed up the CIA assessment with this: “Which, if you’re keeping track, is what Donald Trump and lots of prominent conservatives — most notably Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton — have been saying for a very long time now. And, candidly, they have taken a lot of s**t for it. Including from me.” He even added: “My belief back then was that if this was a debate between Donald Trump and Anthony Fauci on the origins of a pandemic-level virus, I was going to go with the guy who spent his entire career studying this stuff, not the reality TV-star-turned-president.” And: “Except, it now appears that the reality TV-star-turned-president was right. And Anthony Fauci was wrong.”

There is more. Read the rest here.

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Military Madness > Misclassified US military document contains proposal to create the SARS-CoV-2 virus

 

COVID-19 cover-up claims swirl after whistleblower

reveals disease ‘blueprint’ may have been wrongly classified

Federal grant documents that contained a “blueprint” for creating the virus that causes COVID-19 may have been wrongly classified by the Defense Department, leading to a “flawed” probe of the pandemic’s origins by US intelligence agencies, according to whistleblower documents exclusively obtained by The Post.

The whistleblower, Marine Corps. Lt. Col. Joseph Murphy — who now runs the military branch’s Warfighting Lab based at Quantico, Va. — discovered in July 2021 that the unclassified grant proposal, known as Project DEFUSE, had been uploaded to a classified portal and notified his chain of command.

The DEFUSE proposal, which has since been cited by scientists as “smoking gun” evidence that COVID was engineered in a Chinese lab, was not included — despite being unclassified — in a final Office of Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) report on the virus’ origins released in August 2021.

Murphy was unable to uncover why the proposal had been over-classified, and it was never used in the ODNI report, despite the fact that it had been submitted to the Intelligence Community (IC) by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), where he worked at the time.

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Federal grant documents that contained a “blueprint” for creating the virus that causes COVID-19 may have been wrongly classified by the Defense Department, leading to a “flawed” intel probe.

Getty Images

Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kan.) revealed the whistleblower files in a Thursday letter to Intelligence Community Inspector General Thomas Monheim and called for a thorough investigation into whether “the DEFUSE records were impeded, misdirected or if the significance of the proposal was downplayed by advisors or staff.”

“The ODNI assessment remains flawed,” added Marshall, pointing to the documents as well as earlier reports that “conflicted individuals may have censored the laboratory-origin related intelligence.”

“[I]f true, this signals an alarming breach of integrity in the investigative process,” he said. “Today I write with urgency to request that your office investigate the federal government’s COVID-19 origin analytical process and results.”

On May 26, 2021, President Biden ordered ODNI to launch a 90-day investigation into whether the COVID-19 pandemic, which killed more than 1.2 million Americans, began with a laboratory accident or was the product of natural spillover from animals to humans.

The review resulted in the US Intelligence Community returning a “divided” verdict on COVID origins, saying a lab leak and and natural spillover were equally likely. Only the FBI and Energy Department pointed to a lab leak as the most likely cause.

The DEFUSE papers, however, reveal plans to engineer a coronavirus that would have had identical characteristics to SARS-CoV-2.

Manhattan-based nonprofit EcoHealth Alliance submitted the proposal to DARPA in May 2018 — but it was never funded.

EcoHealth has since been suspended, however, from receiving all federal grants after it “likely violated protocols of the NIH regarding biosafety” and failed to submit reviews of experiments it conducted at the now-infamous and debarred Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV).

Please continue reading on the New York Post at:

The COVID pandemic originated in the same Chinese city — more than 800 miles from the closest bats that could have infected humans with the SARS-CoV-2 viruses — at a lab that was world-renowned for its research on bat coronaviruses and conducted US-taxpayer funded, gain-of-function experiments on them from 2014 to 2021.

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Covid_19 > Wuhan Lab safety questioned in 2017

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NIH doctor sounded alarms about Wuhan lab safety in 2017

By Ryan King, NYPost

Published Sep. 22, 2023, 4:21 p.m. ET

A doctor working for the US government visited the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) in October 2017 and raised safety concerns almost exactly two years before the COVID-19 pandemic began to emerge in the central Chinese city.

“It is clear to me by talking to the technician that certainly there is a need for training support,” Dr. Ping Chen, who worked at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), wrote in a report the following month, according to excerpts seen by The Post.

“I think the institute would welcome any help and technical support by NIAID.”

Now, Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) is pursuing additional information about the concerns Chen raised.

A 2018 State Department cable Johnson believes referenced Chen and other scientists’ misgivings about the lab was more pointed.

Wuhan Lab - China infamously restricted domestic travel out of Wuhan when the virus first surfaced, but permitted international travel. REUTERS

Ron Johnson

Sen. Ron Johnson has accused the Health and Human Services Department of stonewalling his requests.

Getty Images

“[D]uring interactions with scientists at the WIV laboratory, they noted that the new lab has a serious shortage of appropriately trained technicians and investigators needed to safely operate this high-containment laboratory,” the cable said.

Some of Chen’s private worries about the lab have previously been documented.

Johnson and Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) pressed the Department of Health and Human Services for additional information back in 2021 and ultimately acquired a redacted copy of Chen’s report and were granted an in camera review of it.

Ron Johnson letter - “It is clear to me by talking to the technician that certainly there is a need for training support,”

Dr. Ping Chen wrote. Sen. Ron Johnson's office

But Johnson was irritated by the redactions in the version of the report given to his team after the review. HHS officials conceded that not all the redactions pertained to national security concerns.

“In the public FOIA document, HHS redacted Dr. Chen’s entire report claiming that it contains privacy and deliberative information,” Johnson wrote in a letter to the head of HHS and the National Institutes of Health on Thursday.

“It seems apparent that the only reason that HHS redacted this information was to hide the report’s contents from the American people. Perhaps HHS did not want the public to fully understand the fact that NIH and NIAID officials were aware of safety concerns at the WIV dating as far back as 2017.”

Scientists - Senators have voiced concerns about riskier gain of function research and sought to bar the government

from funding that. Future Publishing via Getty Images

Proponents of the so-called “lab leak” theory have long suggested that the coronavirus that triggered the pandemic emerged from the WIV, where risky so-called “gain-of-function” research on bat coronavirus was performed, some of it funded by US taxpayer dollars.

On Tuesday, HHS informed Congress that the Wuhan Lab has been “disbarred” from receiving US government support until at least July 2033.

HHS cited failure to comply with government regulations, but there had been mounting political pressure as well.

Wuhan Lab - Scientists are split over whether or not the virus came from a lab leak or a natural spillover. 

AFP via Getty Images

Johnson, the ranking member of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, is demanding an interview with Chen, unredacted copies of her 2017 report and private communications about it, as well as other material referring to the Wuhan Lab.

“HHS and NIH continue to obstruct my oversight efforts. It is unacceptable that HHS and NIH had Dr. Chen’s report in its possession and only provided a slightly-less redacted version for my staff to review in camera,” Johnson said.

His letter detailing those demands was sent to HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra and NIH acting director Lawrence Tabak.

HHS did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

COVID-19 has caused 6.9 million deaths globally, with 1.1 million occurring in the US, per data from the World Health Organization.

In January, 2020, China shut down all train and bus routes from Wuhan, but not the airport. Regional and international flights continued.

Covid-19 > Two New Studies Try to Whitewash Wuhan Lab's Guilt of Creation of Covid-19

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COVID-19's origins were at Wuhan market in China, two new studies suggest

By HealthDay News

   

Markets in Wuhan, China, sell fresh meat in the open air, often offering live animals for slaughter.

File Photo by Stephen Shaver/UPI | License Photo

Two new studies strongly suggest that COVID-19 most likely began with a jump to humans from animals sold at the Huanan Seafood Market in Wuhan, China.

It's not clear from what type of animal the virus jumped to a human, but the first animal-to-human transmission appears to have happened around Nov. 18, 2019, one study found.

According to the researchers, the Wuhan market contained a wide range of live wild animals, with badgers, birds, muskrats, snakes and other species sold for food.

Two strains of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, already were present at the market by the fall of 2019, the studies found.

I wonder how they determined that?

"While I'm hesitant to call it proof, what we presented is the most comprehensive explanation for the SARS-CoV-2 genomic diversity at the outset of the pandemic," study co-author Joel Wertheim, an associate adjunct professor of medicine at the University of California, San Diego, said in a university news release.

"There are really no other good explanations for both of these strains being at the market except for multiple jumps into humans."

The two studies first were posted online in February as preprints, but they've now undergone peer review and were published Tuesday in the journal Science.

Other theories about how the virus began in humans include the "Chinese lab leak" hypothesis widely circulated on the internet. The World Health Organization has recommended that scientists continue research on that and other theories.

But the researchers behind the two new studies believe their findings deliver convincing evidence on the virus' origins.

"It's a real thing," said Michael Worobey, a co-author of the first study and department head of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Arizona, told CNN. "It's just not plausible that this virus was introduced any other way than through the wildlife trade."

Seriously! Can this idea be anything other than a Deep State propaganda project? When you have a virology lab working on making the Coronavirus "gain-of-function" abilities which would make it easier to infect humans and animals, just down the street from where 2 new strains of Covid appeared, how can you possibly draw the conclusion that the two facts are not connected?

Coronavirus: Chinese CDC Now Says The Wuhan Wet Market Wasn't The Origin of The Virus

Man-Made Coronavirus Leaked from Wuhan Lab - Ex-MI6 Boss

Covid-19 > FBI Inquiry into Wuhan Lab as Possible Source of Covid -19

Coronavirus: Dossier Lays Out Case Against China Bat Virus Program; Designer Virus

Covid-19 > FBI Inquiry into Wuhan Lab as Possible Source of Covid -19

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Some things are so blatantly obvious, but with American money involved,

it is much more likely that the truth will be covered up rather than revealed.

An aerial view shows the P4 laboratory at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in Wuhan in China's

central Hubei Province on April 17, 2020. (Hector Retamal/AFP via Getty Images)

FBI Launched Inquiry Into NIH Funding of Wuhan Lab, Emails Show

By Eva Fu July 15, 2022 Updated: July 16, 2022 

INSIDE CHINA

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) launched an inquiry into the National Institutes of Health (NIH) funding of bat research in the Wuhan Institute of Virology, newly released emails show.

The interest from the top U.S. intelligence agency adds to the international scrutiny on the Wuhan facility, which houses one of China’s highest-level biosecurity labs that has been considered a possible source of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“In preparation for our call on Tuesday, Erik [Stemmy] (cc’d) has provided responses to your initial questions below (also attached),” wrote Ashley Sanders, an investigation officer at the NIH’s division of program integriy, in an email (pdf) dated May 22, 2020 with the subject “Grant Questions – FBI Inquiry,” and directed to FBI agent David Miller.

The email was obtained by government transparency watchdog Judicial Watch through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, which asked for records of communications, contracts, and agreements with the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV).

The scope of the inquiry is unclear because the rest of the email correspondence, five pages in total, are entirely redacted. But the name of the email attachment “SF 424 AI110964-06 (received date 11/05/2018),” corresponds to the NIH grant “Understanding the Risk of Bat Coronavirus Emergence.”

The project in question is headed by Peter Daszak of EcoHealth Alliance, which then funnels money to the lab in Wuhan. From 2014 to 2019, the New York nonprofit received six yearly grants totaling $3,748,715 from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases under the NIH to fund the project, which was expected to end in 2026.

The FBI inquiry had focused on at least two of the grants, in 2014 and 2019 respectively, the email subject line suggests.

The 2014 grant aimed to “understand what factors increase the risk of the next CoV emerging in people by studying CoV diversity in a critical zoonotic reservoir (bats), at sites of high risk for emergence (wildlife markets) in an emerging disease hotspot (China),” according to the project description. Specifically, the researchers would assess the coronavirus spillover potential, develop predictive models of bat coronavirus emergence risk, and use virus infection experiments as well as “reverse genetics” to test the virus’s transmission between species.

WHO team member Peter Daszak leaves his hotel after the World Health Organization (WHO) team wrapped up its investigation into the origins of the COVID-19 coronavirus in Wuhan in China’s central Hubei province on February 10, 2021. (Hector Retamal/AFP via Getty Images)

In the project summary for the 2019 grant, EcoHealth stated that they had found that “bats in southern China harbor an extraordinary diversity of SARSr-CoVs,” and some of those viruses can “infect humanized mouse models causing SARS-like illness, and evade available therapies or vaccines.”

Recently disclosed documents show that, under one grant, the WIV had conducted an experiment that resulted in a more potent version of a bat coronavirus.

In the project that took place under the fifth grant, from June 2018 to May 2019, the researchers infected two groups of laboratory mice, one of which with a modified version of a bat coronavirus already existing in nature, and another with the original virus.

Those infected with the modified version became sicker, Lawrence Tabak, a principal deputy director at the NIH, wrote in a letter in response to a Congressional inquiry. (not sure if we need to specify who it’s from)

“As sometimes occurs in science, this was an unexpected result of the research, as opposed to something that the researchers set out to do,” wrote Tabak. He acknowledged that EcoHealth had violated the grant terms by failing to notify the NIH “right away” about the finding.

Security personnel keep watch outside the Wuhan Institute of Virology during the visit by the World Health Organization (WHO) team tasked with investigating the origins of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), in Wuhan, Hubei Province, China, on Feb. 3, 2021. (Thomas Peter/Reuters)

The experiment appears to fit the definition of gain-of-function research regardless of its intentions, according to some experts.

“The genetic manipulation of both MERS and the SARS conducted in Wuhan clearly constituted gain-of-function experiments,” Jonathan Latham, executive director of The Bioscience Research Project, previously told The Epoch Times. He said the NIH’s wording choice “unexpected” was “absurd,” “when clearly these experiments were expressly designed to detect increased pathogenicity.”

An April 2020 memo (pdf) reveals that the State Department assessed lab leak as the most likely origin of COVID-19.

“The Wuhan labs remained the most likely yet least probed. All other possible places of virus’ origin have been proven false,” the memo stated, citing circumstantial evidence such as safety standard lapses, experiments on bats by WIV researchers, and the lab’s role in a “deliberate coverup, especially destruction of any evidence of leaks and disappearance of its employees as Patient Zero.”

The Epoch Times has reached out to the FBI for comments.

Covid -19 > Documents, DARPA Officer condemn Fauci for Wuhan research; Fauci blames Paul for Murder plot; WHO criticizes booster strategy; Omicron in NS in early November

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New documents allege Fauci funded gain-of-function research in China

Military official reportedly claims that Covid-19 was “American created”

Anthony Fauci testifies before a Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, January 11, 2022 © AFP / Greg Nash

New documents published by Project Veritas claim that White House Chief Medical Advisor Dr. Anthony Fauci directly funded controversial research into bat coronaviruses in China. Fauci has previously denied this.

Fauci has testified under oath that the National Institutes of Health did not fund so-called “gain-of-function” research into bat-borne coronaviruses at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China. Fauci’s testimony was called into question when it was revealed that the NIH did pay grants to a private research firm, EcoHealth Alliance, to conduct this research, and research papers revealed that scientists at the Wuhan institute were indeed studying the potential for these viruses to infect humans.

These academic papers do not conclusively prove that Covid-19 originated in a lab, but documents published on Monday by Project Veritas, a conservative investigative outlet, apparently show that the US military was aware of this research, and passed over the opportunity to fund it due to its inherent danger.

The madness of this research was even too crazy for the military, but not for Fauci!

According to the documents, EcoHealth Alliance approached the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) in 2018 seeking $14 million for a program it called ‘Project Defuse’. The program sought to sample bat coronaviruses from caves in Yunnan, China, modify them to more easily infect humans, and then re-release these modified pathogens in aerosol form back into the bat population to vaccinate the animals. 

DARPA, a wing of the Pentagon that funds scientific and technological projects with potential military applications, rejected the proposal, according to a document purportedly from the agency. The rejection letter stated that EcoHealth Alliance had “failed to mention or assess potential risks of Gain of Function (GoF) research,” or the “ethical, legal, and social issues” surrounding it.

Research in US too

DARPA in 2018 was soliciting research into novel viruses from around the world, according to another document released by Veritas on Monday. In it, the agency called on scientists to submit proposals involving the vaccination of host animals before the pathogens they carry can adapt to infect humans.

Covid-19 an “American-created recombinant bat vaccine"

A letter allegedly written by Marine Corps Major Joseph Murphy, a DARPA Fellow, to the Pentagon’s inspector general last August claims that EcoHealth Alliance’s project was eventually funded by Fauci’s NIH and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, and took place in Wuhan and at “several sites in the US.” 

“Several sites in the US.”

Murphy, based on what he said were the DARPA documents and his own intelligence analysis, described Covid-19 as an “American-created recombinant bat vaccine,” created by “an EcoHealth Alliance program at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.” The Marine Corps Major goes on to claim that effective treatments for Covid-19 were suppressed in favor of “ineffective” vaccines.

Effective treatments for Covid-19 were suppressed in favor of “ineffective” vaccines

The document trove was allegedly found on a “top secret” drive at the DARPA Biological Technologies Office, despite them not being classified. Murphy suggests in his letter that this indicates a “cover-up” as someone in DARPA did not want the files to be found. 

“Who at DARPA made the decision to bury the original report?” Project Veritas CEO James O’Keefe asked on Monday. “They could have raised red flags to the Pentagon, the White House, or Congress, which may have prevented this entire pandemic that has led to the deaths of 5.4 million people worldwide.”

Fauci confronts Rand Paul over murder plot

US government’s Covid czar says senator’s fundraiser inspired a murder plot

as Kentucky Republican blames him for pandemic deaths

Dr. Anthony Fauci and Dr. Rochelle Walensky testify before a Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee hearing to examine the federal response to Covid-19 on Capitol Hill in Washington, Jan.11, 2022. © Shawn Thew / Pool via AP

Senator Rand Paul (R-Kentucky) has accused Dr. Anthony Fauci of being responsible for over 800,000 US deaths from the coronavirus. The Biden administration’s covid czar said Paul’s criticism put his life in danger.

The latest clash between Paul and Fauci came on Tuesday at the Senate Health Committee hearing on the US response to Covid-19 variants.

At one point, President Joe Biden’s chief medical adviser held up a printout of a page on the Kentucky senator’s website, with a “Fire Dr. Fauci” banner, to claim that such rhetoric inspired a California man arrested last month for allegedly plotting to murder him. The man, arrested in Iowa on December 21, had an AR-15 rifle and multiple magazines, and told police he was driving to Washington, DC to kill Fauci, the doctor told senators.

“You are making a catastrophic epidemic for your political gain,” Fauci told Paul.

Paul pointed to Fauci, as the lead architect of the US government’s pandemic response, and asked how he could call any of it – the lockdowns, mask and vaccine mandates, boosters – a success when over 800,000 people have died.

The libertarian-leaning Republican also called out Fauci for being a central planner whose arrogance led to compounding mistakes.

“The idea that a government official like yourself would claim unilaterally to represent science and that any criticism of you would be considered a criticism of science itself is quite dangerous,” Paul said.

“A planner who believes he is The Science leads to an arrogance that justifies in his mind using government resources to smear and destroy the reputations of other scientists that disagree with him,” the senator added. “This is not only antithetical to the scientific method, it is the epitome of cheap politics and it is reprehensible.”

I love Rand Paul!

This was a reference to last month’s revelations that Fauci had worked with National Institutes of Health (NIH) Director Francis Collins in 2020 to discredit critics of lockdowns who signed the Great Barrington Declaration. Emails released by Congress showed Collins asking Fauci for a “quick and devastating published take down of its premises” and later praising him for an “excellent” job.

Fauci and Paul have clashed repeatedly in Senate hearings, with the Kentucky Republican even referring the doctor to the Justice Department for perjury.

Tuesday’s confrontation comes after a bombshell report by the conservative outlet Project Veritas, which published documents from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) indicating “gain of function” research into coronaviruses by EcoHealth Alliance, a nonprofit that received funding from Fauci’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and the NIH.

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WHO experts criticize ‘repeated booster’ strategy

The World Health Organization’s vaccine advisory body has voiced concerns

about using current Covid-19 vaccines as boosters

© Getty Images / Morsa Images

Using the original vaccines against Covid-19 as boosters against emerging variants is the wrong approach, said a WHO expert group, adding that the world needs new vaccines that protect against infection and transmission.

“A vaccination strategy based on repeated booster doses of the original vaccine composition is unlikely to be appropriate or sustainable,” the Technical Advisory Group on Covid-19 Vaccine Composition (TAG-Co-VAC) said on Tuesday.

Yeah, but think about how rich Big Pharma is getting! Isn't that what's important here?

While some countries may recommend boosters, “the immediate priority for the world is accelerating access to the primary vaccination, particularly for groups at greater risk of developing severe disease,” the group added, pointing out the “need for equity in access to vaccines across countries to achieve global public health goals.”

Which means western countries need to pay more for these experimental drugs so third world countries can pay less. Otherwise, you cut into the profits of Big Phama and that is just not acceptable. 

While the currently available vaccines focus on “reducing severe disease and death, as well as protecting health systems,” there is a need for vaccines “that have high impact on prevention of infection and transmission.” Until such jabs are developed, the existing vaccines may need to be updated to better target emerging virus variants such as Omicron, the group said.

Developers should work to create vaccines that “elicit immune responses that are broad, strong, and long-lasting in order to reduce the need for successive booster doses,” the TAG-Co-VAC urged.

On Tuesday, the EU drug regulator EMA’s head of Biological Health Threats and Vaccines Strategy said they don’t yet have enough data to recommend a second booster – the fourth jab so far – even as some countries urged such a move.

Marco Cavaleri said they were “rather concerned about a strategy that entangles repeat vaccination within a short term,” adding that “we cannot really continuously give a booster dose every three-four months.”

The WHO said that Omicron could infect more than half of the EU population over the next two months and urged the bloc’s authorities not to treat the virus as endemic.

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Omicron revelation surfaces in Canadian wastewater

The variant was noted by researchers before it was detected in South Africa

(FILE PHOTO) © Photo by: MICROBIOLOGY HKU/BSIP/Universal Images Group via Getty Images

Scientists in Nova Scotia, Canada have said they started detecting the Omicron variant of Covid-19 in local wastewater before it was officially discovered in South Africa in late November.

Last week, Professor Graham Gagnon, director of the Dalhousie University Centre for Water Resource Studies in Nova Scotia, told CBC that they found Omicron in wastewater samples from early November. 

“It was surprising to us to see a viral signal in early November. Only in retrospect were we able to see that it was a variant and not the original,” he said. The cases were confirmed to be Omicron on December 13 and were linked to a Covid-19 outbreak at St. Francis Xavier University in Antigonish.

The Omicron variant was formally identified in South Africa in late November. 

The research director said he was surprised to find the virus in November because students at the residences were all vaccinated and those tested provided negative results. He said the results were passed on to officials at the university who warned students. 

“For us, it's been a successful project,” Gagnon told CBC, adding, “It's a tool that can be used to help make decisions.”

The Dalhousie researchers have been testing wastewater for signs of the deadly virus since December 2020 at four main wastewater treatment plants in Halifax and five student residences on the Dalhousie campus. 

Covid-19 can live longer in the gastrointestinal tract than in the respiratory tract, despite being a respiratory virus. Thus, wastewater testing can be a useful tool for monitoring its prevalence.