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Fears of China’s Coronavirus Prompt Australia to Screen Flights China’s Coronavirus Outbreak Tests the Communist Party’s Transparency
(about 4 hours later)
HONG KONG — Australian officials said Tuesday that the country would begin screening passengers on flights from Wuhan, the Chinese city where a new coronavirus has infected more than 250 people and killed at least six, as global concern has grown about the spread of the disease. WUHAN, China — Nervous residents are buying up face masks and flooding hospitals to report fevers and coughs. The authorities are banning group tours out of the city and checking vehicles for live animals. Some schools are canceling classes and even Buddhist temples are turning away the faithful.
Adding to worries about the outbreak was confirmation by a prominent Chinese scientist on Monday night that the disease is capable of spreading from person to person. Dr. Zhong Nanshan, a scientist leading a group of experts in examining the outbreak in Wuhan, said the virus could be present in particles of saliva and that in one case, a patient appeared to have infected 14 medical workers. A sense of urgency is growing in the central city of Wuhan, the epicenter of an outbreak of a new pneumonialike coronavirus that has sickened around 300 people in China and killed at least six. At home and abroad, pressure is rising on China’s ruling Communist Party as the virus emerged this week in other major cities and officials confirmed that it spreads among people.
The number of reported cases in China more than tripled earlier this week as the authorities expanded testing across the country. Most of the cases were found in Wuhan, where the disease was first reported last month. Already, cases have been confirmed in Taiwan, Japan, Thailand and South Korea. Airports around the world, including in the United States and Australia, are screening passengers from Wuhan. The World Health Organization has called an emergency meeting on Wednesday to discuss the outbreak, and on Tuesday, worries that the outbreak could worsen and hit the Chinese economy sent financial markets down across Asia.
China’s health commission said Tuesday that 291 cases had been reported nationwide, with 270 in Hubei, the province that includes Wuhan. Major Chinese cities including Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen have also reported cases of infections. The outbreak is testing China’s leader, Xi Jinping, and the party’s penchant for secrecy in moments of crisis, 17 years after Beijing drew widespread criticism for withholding information and acting slowly in handling the outbreak of SARS, which killed more than 800 people and infected more than 8,000 worldwide.
Zhou Xianwang, Wuhan’s mayor, said in an interview with state television on Tuesday that the city had tallied 258 confirmed cases, with six dead and 12 in critical condition. Mr. Xi, who has sought to expand China’s global influence, seems eager to shake the shadow of SARS and show that Beijing can handle a public health crisis like a responsible world power. A top party committee on Tuesday said in stark terms that it would not tolerate any efforts to hide infections.
Taiwan confirmed its first case on Tuesday, a woman who worked in Wuhan and returned to Taiwan on Monday evening. She was taken directly to a hospital from the airport after it was determined she had a fever, health officials said. “Whoever deliberately delays or conceals reporting for the sake of their own interests will be forever nailed to history’s pillar of shame,” the committee said in a post on a popular social media site.
Infections have also been confirmed in Japan, South Korea and Thailand, all in people who traveled from Wuhan. The World Health Organization said it would hold an emergency meeting on Wednesday to determine whether the outbreak was an international public health emergency. On Monday, China’s health commission said it would respond with measures intended to manage outbreaks of the most virulent diseases, including mandatory reporting of cases. It classified the virus as a class B infectious disease — a category that includes diseases such as SARS.
“It is now very clear from the latest information that there is at least some human-to-human transmission,” said Dr. Takeshi Kasai, the Western Pacific regional director for the World Health Organization. But the government, wary of letting fear run rampant, is also working meticulously to control the narrative about the virus by censoring news articles and social media posts. The police in Wuhan investigated eight citizens this month for spreading what it described as rumors on the internet.
Dr. Kasai said that the infections among health care workers added to the evidence that the virus was spreading between humans, but more analysis of the data was necessary to understand the full extent of such transmission. Now, even as the government works to isolate sick patients amid China’s busiest travel season — with millions of people making visits for the Lunar New Year holiday — and infections reported in Beijing, Shanghai and other major cities, there is concern that the party’s long-held reluctance to divulge damaging news could hinder the effort to contain the virus.
Worries that the outbreak could worsen and hit the Chinese economy sent financial markets down across Asia on Tuesday. The Chinese currency, the renminbi, weakened in value against the American dollar. Stock markets in Europe also opened generally lower. For weeks, the government had mostly treated the outbreak as a problem isolated to the city of Wuhan. It was only after the Hong Kong news media reported that cases of the coronavirus had been detected elsewhere that the government began acknowledging, early Monday, that the virus had spread to other cities.
On Monday, China’s health commission said it would respond with measures intended to manage outbreaks of the most virulent diseases, including mandatory reporting of cases, and classified the virus as a class B infectious disease — a category that includes diseases such as SARS. Many wondered why the central government waited until Monday to even send a top public-health expert to Wuhan. The expert not only corroborated what the Hong Kong news media had already reported but confirmed alarming new information: that the virus spreads between people and that one patient had infected more than a dozen medical workers.
The authorities in Wuhan will begin barring group tours from traveling outside of the city and carry out checks of vehicles to search for live animals, state media reported on Monday. The city has also installed infrared thermometers at airports, and bus and train stations. “The response is not fast enough, it’s not strong enough,” said Shen Zhengjiang, 57, a teacher, as he looked for masks at a pharmacy in Wuhan on Tuesday. “The local officials are paying attention to this now only because Xi Jinping spoke up.”
The potential for the disease to spread across more countries has prompted health authorities to step up checks at their borders. The outbreak presents Mr. Xi, who rose to power in 2012, with one of the most serious public health crises of his tenure. It will be a significant test of his leadership at a time when China is seeking to strengthen trust in the party and to project confidence in Mr. Xi’s authoritarian approach.
In Australia, border security and biosecurity staff will meet and screen passengers from three direct flights from Wuhan to Sydney, Brendan Murphy, the government’s chief medical officer, said Tuesday. Any missteps could undermine the party’s credibility in the eyes of the public, experts said.
Professor Murphy warned, however, that such measures were not foolproof. Some people who are carrying the virus might not show symptoms, he added. “This is the sort of thing that could absolutely gnaw at the confidence and legitimacy of the whole regime,” said Kerry Brown, director of the Lau China Institute at King’s College London.
“You cannot absolutely prevent entry into the country of a disease like this,” he said. Experts said the challenge for Mr. Xi would be daunting, as the world looks to China to stop the virus before it spreads on a global scale.
Australia is also considering expanding the screening to cover more of the 160 flights that come from China each week.
In the Australian state of Queensland, health officials placed in quarantine a man who had traveled to Wuhan and returned with a respiratory illness. Yanzhong Huang, director of the Center for Global Health Studies at Seton Hall University, said that it appeared Mr. Xi was seeking to show that the virus is under control and would not cause social unrest.
“The man will remain in isolation until his symptoms have resolved,” the Queensland health department said. But he said the government’s failure to initially detail the spread of the virus to mainland cities and to disclose that medical workers had been infected were worrying.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Friday that the United States would begin screening passengers arriving from Wuhan at airports in New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles. “So far this pattern of a lack of transparency and inaction has unfortunately not changed,” said Professor Huang, an expert on the SARS epidemic. “The politics continue to constrain the government to respond effectively.”
In Hong Kong, the authorities have reported more than 100 potential infections. So far, none have tested positive for the new coronavirus, and most have been discharged. But the possibility of the illness emerging in the territory remained, Matthew Cheung, the city’s second-highest official, said Tuesday. The Chinese government, which has been praised by the W.H.O. for its efforts so far, has said it took time to analyze the coronavirus, which experts believe appears to be mostly transmitted to humans by animals.
High-speed rail passengers will have their temperatures checked on arrival in Hong Kong. Air passengers from Wuhan will be required to declare their health status, and people suspected of having an infection will be “forcibly transferred to public hospital to be treated in isolation,” Mr. Cheung said. The delay in reporting the spread of the disease was attributed to technological but also bureaucratic challenges. Some hospitals lacked testing kits, according to remarks on Monday by Dr. Zhong Nanshan, a prominent scientist who is leading a government-appointed panel of experts assisting in controlling the outbreak. The process was also slowed down, he said, because local hospitals were required to submit cases to the central health commission in Beijing for review before going public.
Elaine Yu in Hong Kong and Javier C. Hernández in Wuhan, China, contributed reporting. For weeks, the authorities in Wuhan, a transportation hub with more than 11 million people, seemed to play down the threat posed by the virus. The health department said it had only been found in people who visited a local market that had sold live fish, birds and other animals, and that workers had disinfected and shut down the site.
As cases began to appear overseas, involving travelers from Thailand and Japan who had visited Wuhan but had not all visited the market, questions emerged on Chinese social media about whether the government was being forthcoming. Many articles and posts, including some using the hashtag #WuhanSARS, were censored.
After his stepmother died of viral pneumonia last week, Kyle Hui, 32, an architect from Shanghai, turned to Weibo, a Twitterlike site, to report her case. Mr. Hui’s stepmother was never formally tested for the virus, and he was concerned that the Wuhan government was underreporting cases of the illness. But his post soon disappeared from the internet.
“People accuse me of spreading rumors, but I’m just trying to tell my stepmother's story,” he said in an interview at a cafe in Wuhan.
Even as the authorities came under attack, they doubled down on their approach. At one point, in an apparent effort to dispel rumors that the virus had spread to other mainland cities, the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention issued a statement saying that the virus did not resemble SARS.
The authorities in Wuhan will begin barring group tours from traveling outside of the city and will carry out checks of vehicles to search for live animals, state media reported on Monday. The city has also installed infrared thermometers at airports, and bus and train stations.
It was not until Monday that the government changed course, after news outlets in Hong Kong reported over the weekend that there were several potential cases of the illness in Shanghai and Shenzhen, a southern city. The central government dispatched Dr. Zhong, a renowned expert with a reputation for bluntness, to Wuhan.
Dr. Zhong, in candid television appearances, revealed for the first time that the virus could spread from person to person — noting, for example, that one patient had been able to infect 14 medical workers. He warned that the virus could be present in particles of saliva and urged people to avoid unnecessary travel to Wuhan.
Dr. Zhong won wide praise from the Chinese public, and memes circulated online contrasting his urgent tone with the calm words of local officials.
The spread of the virus has upended the Lunar New Year holiday this week, when millions of Chinese return to their hometowns to celebrate. The authorities have encouraged people showing symptoms of the virus, including high fever, difficulty breathing and lung lesions, to see a doctor.
In Wuhan, residents have canceled plans to go out to lavish meals for the new year and say they are avoiding enclosed spaces like movie theaters. Some firms have instructed employees to stay home. Many people now wear masks throughout the day, as they make dinner, play cards or chat with friends.
Some residents are packing up and leaving Wuhan, vowing to stay away until the virus is contained.
At the Wuhan airport on Tuesday, Luo Jie, 62, a retiree, rushed to catch a flight to Beijing that she had booked that morning. She said she wanted to “escape” because the outbreak reminded her of the SARS crisis.
“I hope the government will report the epidemic honestly,” she said. “That’s how to set people’s minds at ease.”
Austin Ramzy and Elaine Yu in Hong Kong contributed reporting. Albee Zhang in Beijing and Elsie Chen in Wuhan contributed research.