Hong Kong experts reject mosquito ‘weaponising' as effective chikungunya control
Specialists said on Wednesday that Hong Kong should instead strengthen its existing measures used to combat the spread of diseases through the deployment of additional monitoring sites and big data collection.
They were responding to comments made on Tuesday by Secretary for Environment and Ecology Tse Chin-wan, who said authorities planned to test biological control strategies deployed in the mainland Chinese city of Foshan, which is the epicentre of the current outbreak.
Chikungunya fever is a viral disease transmitted by the Aedes mosquito. While rarely fatal, it can lead to symptoms such as fever, rash, and joint pain.
The mainland's Guangdong province has recorded more than 8,000 new cases of chikungunya fever over the past three weeks, mostly in Foshan. Hong Kong, meanwhile, reported two new imported cases on Thursday, bringing the total to eight since August 2.
The latest cases involved a 50-year-old man and his eight-year-old daughter who had travelled to Bangladesh between July 20 and August 10.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
South China Morning Post
37 minutes ago
- South China Morning Post
China's new 600Wh battery triples drone endurance. Will it shatter EV ‘range anxiety'?
Chinese researchers have set up a pilot production line for a new type of lithium battery that has twice the energy density of the most advanced electric vehicle (EV) batteries on the market. The team from Tianjin University's school of materials science explained their approach to designing and manufacturing lithium batteries in a paper published in the top journal Nature on Wednesday. This new type of battery can achieve an energy density – the amount of energy that can be stored per mass – of over 600 watt-hours per kilogram (Wh/kg). In comparison, the energy density of Tesla's 4680 battery is around 300Wh/kg. BYD's widely used Blade Battery is only 150Wh/kg. It also surpassed Beijing's goal for EV batteries to reach 400Wh/kg under the 'Made in China 2025' plan to upgrade the country's hi-tech industries and reduce its reliance on imports. If this new battery can be put into large-scale use, it could double or even quadruple the range of electric vehicles and shatter 'range anxiety', or the fear that a car will not have enough charge to reach its destination – considered the last great barrier to EV dominance. The team's battery has shown resilience in tests against low temperatures, fire, and even nail punctures, showing superior thermal and mechanical stability.
South China Morning Post
2 hours ago
- South China Morning Post
China rises up ‘elite quality' league table as AI investment booms
Thanks to its combined strengths in artificial intelligence and manufacturing, China rose two places to rank 19th out of 151 countries in the 2025 Elite Quality Index – a Swiss study that assesses the extent to which national elites create sustainable value for their nations. Advertisement Singapore topped this year's rankings, followed by the United States and Switzerland, in the annual report produced by the Foundation for Value Creation Activities in partnership with the University of St. Gallen. Asian economies performed strongly overall, with Japan maintaining fourth place and South Korea rising to fifth. In contrast, several European countries including the Netherlands, Denmark and Finland fell down the rankings this year. 'China ranks at 19th in the index, up two places from last year, maintaining its upward trend in Elite Quality and an outcome that is particularly commendable given the dramatic changes in the global economic order,' the report said. The index assessed 151 countries based on 149 indicators, which are designed to gauge the overall impact of elite business models in terms of creating positive value or engaging in negative rent-seeking behaviour. Advertisement China scored particularly highly in the AI value creation sub-index, placing fourth behind the US, Singapore and South Korea. This year's report increased the number of AI indicators from two to seven based on the industry's growing importance as a source of value creation. Zhang Jun, dean of the School of Economics at Shanghai's Fudan University, said China's rise in the rankings showed that its elite-led model of governance had been effective in promoting the country's economic development.
South China Morning Post
4 hours ago
- South China Morning Post
Why this small vacuum tube can be China's big advantage in electronic warfare
In a defence tech laboratory in Beijing , a research team powers up a vacuum tube about the size of a pistol. Advertisement Inside, a stream of electrons surges through thin coiled wires, amplifying microwave pulses ranging from 8 to 18 gigahertz with more than 500 watts of output – performance metrics that until recently were only achievable in devices much bigger. It is the new heart of China's advanced radar and electronic warfare systems – a miniaturised travelling-wave tube (TWT), and a symbol of how relentless refinement of microscopic details is propelling the country to the forefront of military electronics. For decades, TWTs have powered high-end radar and electronic warfare systems, capable of amplifying broadband microwave signals with efficiency and power that solid-state amplifiers cannot match. But their size – especially their height – has long limited their integration into next-generation phased arrays, particularly in aircraft, satellites and stealth platforms where space and weight are at a premium. Advertisement Squeezing hundreds or even thousands of tubes into a radar has always been a headache, but Chinese engineers have shrunk a high-power X-Ku band TWT to just 20 millimetres (0.8 inches) in height – less than half the thickness of comparable Western models – with a boost in performance.
