Coronavirus updates: Global death toll passes 1,000 as China records most deaths in a single day
Live updates: China urges countries to restore ties for sake of global economy as coronavirus deaths pass 1,000
(about 7 hours later)
China tentatively returned to work Monday after an extended Lunar New Year shutdown precipitated by the coronavirus outbreak, but with deaths from the epidemic continuing to rise, much of the country remained at a standstill, and many were working from home. Meanwhile, an additional 65 people on board a quarantined cruise ship have tested positive for the virus.
As deaths from the novel coronavirus topped 1,000 — nearly all of them in China — Beijing on Tuesday urged countries that have enacted travel restrictions aimed at curbing the outbreak to restore normal ties for the sake of the global economy. The appeal from China's Foreign Ministry underscored the economic dangers posed by the unprecedented shutdown of much of the world's second-largest economy, as well as the ruling Communist Party's concerns about the outbreak's capacity to fuel domestic instability.
Here’s what we know:
Authorities in the virus-hit city of Wuhan have announced fresh restrictions on residents, making millions of people virtual prisoners in their own homes. Two provincial health bosses have been fired as the Communist Party struggles to contain widespread anger over the spread of the virus. Here’s what we know:
● An additional 65 people on board the Diamond Princess have tested positive for the new coronavirus, Japan’s Health Ministry says, bringing to 135 the number of people who are known to have been infected. Pressure is mounting to test everyone on the cruise ship.
● The death toll from the new coronavirus surged above 1,000 in mainland China, with more than 100 deaths in a single day, a record. The number of confirmed infections continues to rise, but the rate of growth is slowing.
● China reports 1,016 dead and about 42,600 cases of coronavirus. On Monday alone, officials recorded 108 deaths in mainland China, the most in a single day. More than 7,000 of the affected patients were in critical condition, authorities said Monday. There were 42 confirmed cases in Hong Kong, 10 in Macao and 18 in Taiwan.
● China urged countries around the world to soon restore normal ties, warning that if its economy suffers, so will that of the rest of the world.
● Britain announced new measures allowing the mandatory quarantine of those infected after the coronavirus outbreak was designated a “serious and imminent” threat to British health. Four more cases were confirmed in Britain, doubling its total number to eight.
● Authorities in Wuhan tightened restrictions on citizens, allowing just one member of a household to make one shopping trip every three days and placing entire buildings under quarantine.
● New Chinese research says the virus can be transmitted by saliva, urine and stool, as well as the usual viral route of respiratory droplets. It generally takes three days from the time of infection for symptoms to manifest, and 15 percent of the infected contract severe pneumonia.
● More than a dozen ambulances lined up alongside the Diamond Princess in Yokohama as medical staff evacuated passengers and crew infected with the virus, after 65 more people on board the cruise ship tested positive.
A person under federal quarantine in California has tested positive for coronavirus, marking the 13th confirmed case of the disease in the United States, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Monday.
● China is bracing for the return of some 160 million migrant workers to their cities of employment as the country’s economy sputters back to life after an extended holiday following the outbreak.
The person was among several hundred Americans who were evacuated last week from Wuhan, China, the epicenter of the outbreak.
Stocks in Europe and China climbed on Tuesday, hours after the coronavirus death toll topped 1,000.
“CDC is conducting a thorough contact investigation of the person who has tested positive to determine contacts and to assess if those contacts had high risk exposures,” the CDC said in an emailed statement.
The rises came despite contradictory takes on the economic fallout of the outbreak, with some still fearing a significant impact and others predicting a less serious outcome.
The person was being treated at the University of California San Diego Medical Center. A spokesperson for the hospital did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The Moody’s rating agency said Tuesday that its “baseline assumption is that the economic effects of the outbreak will continue for a number of weeks, after which they will tail off and normal economic activity will resume.”
More than once now, President Trump has suggested that the coronavirus will weaken or go away once the winter months have passed and the weather warms up.
Meanwhile, the Reuters news agency quoted a senior Chinese medical adviser, Zhong Nanshan, as saying that the coronavirus outbreak may peak in February.
But experts said that’s impossible to predict at this stage.
“I hope this outbreak or this event may be over in something like April,” Zhong told Reuters.
Trump first raised the idea in a tweet last week, saying the Chinese government’s efforts to control the virus would succeed “as the weather starts to warm and the virus hopefully becomes weaker, and then gone.”
The predictions came as others urged caution with what they viewed as over-optimistic predictions.
He made a similar prediction in a rally Monday, suggesting that the outbreak could subside “by April.”
A senior official with the Chinese National Institute for Finance and Development government think tank drew a comparison to the 2003 SARS outbreak.
“You know, in theory when it gets a little warmer, it miraculously goes away, that’s true,” he told an audience in New Hampshire.
“The impact of this epidemic on the economy in the first quarter is expected to be comparable,” wrote Zeng Gang, the organization’s vice chair, according to Reuters.
Experts said that’s wishful thinking at best: While it’s true that respiratory viruses tend to follow seasonal patterns, there’s no telling what course the novel coronavirus will take.
“At present, according to different scenario assumptions, researchers expect the negative impact of the epidemic on full-year GDP growth to be in the range of 0.2 percent to 1 percent,” Zeng wrote.
“This virus can do anything it wants,” Allison McGeer, an infectious-disease epidemiologist at the University of Toronto, told The Washington Post last week. “That pattern of how it’s going to spread is completely unknown, but it is critical to what the burden is going to be to all of us.”
Chinese President Xi Jinping said Monday that the Communist Party would work to prevent mass layoffs triggered by the spread of the virus.
A variety of outcomes are possible, McGeer said. The virus could peak and then recede before returning later in the year. It could also take hold in the Southern Hemisphere.
BERLIN — German automotive supplier Webasto said Tuesday that it would reopen its headquarters near Munich on Wednesday, allowing 1,000 staffers to return after the company closed its offices over coronavirus concerns two weeks ago.
“It could be just like another coronavirus, a bunch of colds,” she said. “It could be like a regular flu season. It’s possible it could be different and worse.”
The Webasto headquarters were at the center of one of the biggest clusters of cases in Europe.
Peter Hotez, dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College in Texas, told CNN that nobody yet knows enough about the coronavirus to say how it will behave.
A 33-year-old man became Germany’s first confirmed coronavirus patient there more than two weeks ago, after being infected by a female business visitor from Shanghai.
“It would be reckless to assume that things will quiet down in spring and summer,” Hotez said. “We don’t really understand the basis of seasonality, and of course we know absolutely nothing about this particular virus.”
She and the 33 year-old met at a workshop in the offices of the German automotive supplier.
WASHINGTON — Chinese health officials announced Monday that 108 more people died from coronavirus, the most recorded in a single day, bringing the global death toll to 1,018.
Authorities said that at least 40 individuals had come into close contact with him and the Chinese visitor.
Nearly all of the new deaths were recorded in Hubei province, the epicenter of the public health crisis. The outbreak has now claimed 1,016 lives in mainland China; one person died of the disease in Hong Kong and another in the Phillippines.
In total, authorities in the region have since confirmed 12 cases of the virus — all of them employees or relatives of staffers at Webasto.
The number of new infections in China grew by nearly 2,500, officials said, with 2,097 more people falling ill in Hubei.
SEOUL — North Korea has launched a society-wide effort to contain the new coronavirus, including production of herbal disinfectant from burdock roots.
China has confrmed more than 42,600 cases since the epidemic started. More than 7,000 people remained in critical condition in the hospital, officials said, and nearly 188,ooo were under medical supervision.
North Korea’s official Korean Central News Agency said Tuesday that the new virus cannot be contained by health officials alone. It called for “workers at all levels and fields” to join in the nation’s battle against the virus.
There were 42 confirmed cases in Hong Kong, 10 in Macao and 18 in Taiwan. Chinese officials also reported nearly 4,000 recoveries in the mainland.
One such effort is a “production battle” to make herbal medicine out of burdock roots as an “emergency prevention measure against the novel coronavirus,” North Korea’s state-run outlet Sogwang said Tuesday.
Meghan May, a university professor who researches emerging diseases, seemed an unlikely person to contribute to misinformation about the novel coronavirus. Yet last week, May shared a mea culpa on Twitter, owning up to unwittingly retweeting information that had origins in a Russian misinformation campaign.
Sogwang said the “burdock antiviral solution” developed in North Korea in 2016 has proven to contain “a variety of virus” in an “highly effective manner” with “little or no side effects.”
The story that managed to evade her typically discerning sensors: a claim that a Chinese Internet company had accidentally released death toll and infection totals — ones that exceeded official estimates — before quickly scrubbing evidence of them online. If true, May said at the time, the numbers indicated that the outbreak in the Chinese city of Wuhan was far more severe than the public was warned about.
Sogwang also carried a photo of the solution, on which its name is written in English and German. The propaganda outlet did not mention if the burdock solution is intended for export to foreign countries.
Since the first cases of a then-unidentified pneumonia were reported in late December, hoaxes, half-truths and flat-out lies have proliferated, mostly through social media. BuzzFeed News for several days kept a running list of misinformation, including wildly inaccurate reports that the death toll in China was 112,000 as of late January (reality: around 80 at the time); claims that Chinese people eating bats were the source of the outbreak (a viral photo of a woman biting a bat was not taken in China); and false suggestions that the virus was lab-engineered as a kind of bioweapon.
North Korea has taken extreme measures to seal itself from the outside world following the virus outbreak in neighboring China. It was one of the first countries to completely ban foreign tourists and cut cross-border air and train routes last month.
“I gave it some degree of credence because the artificial numbers would make the scale of the lockdown in Wuhan and the additional cities much more rational,” May told The Washington Post on Monday. “And I saw it shared by a person who is typically very credible.”
Over the past few weeks, North Korea’s propaganda machine has been trumpeting the Kim regime’s battle against the virus.
Parts of the false story seemed rooted in fact: There are signs that Beijing has silenced whistleblowers and underreported cases of infections. But the situation the story described never happened.
North Korea has not reported a single case of coronavirus infection, although nearly 200 virus cases have been confirmed in the Chinese provinces of Liaoning and Jilin that border the isolated nation.
“It’s really insidious when you have this cloud of confusion around details,” May said.
Daily NK, a Seoul-based news service with informants in North Korea, reported Tuesday that a dozen coronavirus patients have been in quarantine at a hospital in Pyongyang, citing unnamed sources inside the country.
Read more here.
A top Thai official indicated that the country has barred travelers onboard the MS Westerdam, a Holland America cruise ship, from disembarking later this week.
TORONTO — A second government-chartered flight evacuating Canadians from the epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak in China has departed, Canadian foreign affairs minister Francois-Philippe Champagne said Monday.
The decision came after Guam, the Philippines and Japan all turned the cruise ship away over coronavirus concerns in recent days, according to the Reuters news agency.
The flight will stop in Vancouver to refuel before making its way to a Canadian military base in Trenton, Ontario, where its 185 passengers will join the 215 evacuees who arrived last week. All of them will spend 14 days in quarantine there.
The cruise ship has no confirmed cases.
Passengers completed health and immigration screenings at the airport in Wuhan. Anyone exhibiting symptoms of the virus would not have been allowed to board the aircraft, but it was not immediately clear if anyone was turned away.
“I have issued orders. Permission to dock refused,” Public Health Minister Anutin Charnvirakul wrote in a Facebook post, in which he did not explicitly name the ship.
Officials conduct regular health checks of those quarantined in Trenton. None of the travelers has been diagnosed with the virus.
Officials added that they were willing to provide medicine, food and other supplies.
Myriam Larouche, a Canadian graduate student, told the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. that she passes the time in quarantine by doing her homework and watching movies. The evacuees are also allowed outdoors to exercise, but must stay within a restricted area and avoid physical contact with each other.
World Health Organization Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus on Tuesday called the coronavirus a “very grave threat” to the rest of the world.
The story of a traveling British business executive who appears to have passed the coronavirus to Britons in at least three countries has prompted concerns over “superspreaders,” who could play an outsize role in transmitting the infection.
His comments at a conference on speeding up the development and testing of vaccines for the coronavirus suggested that he is taking the outbreak much more seriously, after initially counseling against overestimating the danger posed by the epidemic.
A British national, who has not been named, may have unwittingly spread the virus to at least 11 people in the course of his travels from Singapore to France to Switzerland to England, according to public health authorities and accounts in the British media. Infected Britons in England, France and Spain probably caught the virus from him.
On Feb. 5, Tedros told a WHO executive committee meeting that the biggest threat of the coronavirus outbreak was “panic and fear,” since there were only 146 confirmed cases outside of China at that point.
The businessman, one of the first British nationals to test positive for the virus, works for the gas analysis company Servomex, according to the Guardian. He traveled to Singapore for work Jan. 20 and departed Jan. 22, the paper reported. He is thought to have contracted the virus while he was there.
“The 146 means that it is very small, there is nothing to be scared of,” he said at the time. Since then, the number of deaths from the virus inside China has ballooned to over 1,000 while the number of cases outside the country have more than doubled.
Read more: “British coronavirus ‘superspreader’ may have infected at least 11 people in three countries”
On Feb. 9, as WHO delegation departed for Beijing to help contain the outbreak, he tweeted that there could be many more cases outside China than previously known.
Emergency service workers in China are soaking cars, buildings and even airplanes with disinfecting spray in an attempt to eliminate the virus from the city of Wuhan, where the epidemic began.
“The detection of a small number of cases may indicate more widespread transmission in other countries; in short, we may only be seeing the tip of the iceberg,” he said.
In recent days, media outlets linked to the ruling Communist Party have released videos showing the sprayers at work.
Tedros raised eyebrows with his firm praise from the beginning of how China has been handling the outbreak, even as evidence emerged that it had initially ignored the spread of the virus and silenced whistleblowers.
In one video posted Monday to the Twitter account of the People’s Daily, workers in face masks wielding spray guns walk down Wuhan’s narrow, empty streets as they trigger the devices, unleashing white clouds behind them. They appear to be spraying the substance indiscriminately, soaking cars and buildings as they go.
The WHO’s advice against any restrictions on international travel due to the outbreak — even as dozens of countries and airlines restrict ties with China — has been repeatedly cited by Beijing.
Wuhan, the epicenter of the #coronavirus outbreak, began a city-wide sterilization campaign. Chinese netizens hail the move, hoping it will lead the city back to safety. pic.twitter.com/yzsCwO9WvM
LONDON — The British businessman who is believed to have been a “superspreader” of the coronavirus, passing it to at least 11 people in three countries, has been identified as Steve Walsh.
The footage also shows trucks flashing their headlights as huge amounts of the disinfectant spew out of tubes attached to the vehicles.
Walsh, who is said to be in his 50s, is believed to have caught the virus during a business trip to Singapore in late January. He works as a project management lead for Servomex, a gas analytics company.
It’s unclear how effective the method is, especially considering that the entire region is under a travel lockdown and many people are not venturing outside.
From Singapore, Walsh spent a few days at a French ski resort before returning home to Hove, a seaside town on England’s south coast. He is currently being treated at St Thomas’ hospital in London.
Caitlin Rivers, an assistant professor in the health security program at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, said it’s unusual to use any type of spray campaign to try to prevent the spread of a viral respiratory infection.
British coronavirus ‘superspreader’ may have infected at least 11 people in three countries
“I have never seen that be used except for mosquito control, in which case that is warranted,” she said.
In a statement sent to The Washington Post on behalf of his employer, Servomex, Walsh said: “I would like to thank the NHS for their help and care — whilst I have fully recovered, my thoughts are with others who have contracted coronavirus.”
Thus far, experts think the coronavirus is largely transmitted by close person-to-person contact and respiratory droplets. “Some coronaviruses can persist on surfaces, but I usually don’t think of a street as a surface I worry about,” Rivers said.
He said that as soon as he discovered he had been exposed to a confirmed case he contacted health authorities. “I was advised to attend an isolated room at hospital, despite showing no symptoms, and subsequently self-isolated at home as instructed. When the diagnosis was confirmed I was sent to an isolation unit in hospital, where I remain, and, as a precaution, my family was also asked to isolate themselves,” he said.
President Trump said Monday that Chinese President Xi Jinping reassured him that the cases of coronavirus are likely to dwindle during warmer months.
In a separate statement, Servomex said: “We are very pleased that Steve Walsh has made a full recovery. We continue to provide support to him and his family.”
“He feels very confident, he feels very confident,” Trump said. “And he feels that, again as I mentioned, by April, or during the month of April, the heat generally speaking kills this kind of virus. So that would be a good thing.”
“We are working with Public Health authorities to ensure the welfare of our staff and communities and wish anyone with the virus a quick and full recovery,” the statement read.
Trump made the remarks during a meeting with governors at the White House. He had spoken with China’s leader on the phone Friday.
Hospitals in the virus-hit Chinese city of Wuhan are facing big shortages of protective equipment for frontline medical staff, provincial health authorities said Tuesday.
TORONTO — The coronavirus will “undoubtedly” have a “real” impact on the Canadian economy, the country’s finance minister said Monday.
Many hospitals in Wuhan are calling for donations of masks, goggles, gowns and other protective medical gear, Hubei’s health commission said, while also appealing to other provinces to send more medical staff to cope with shortages.
Delivering a keynote address at a meeting of the Economic Club of Canada in Alberta, Bill Morneau said that the virus is likely to disrupt supply chains and hit Canada’s tourism sector. He also noted that oil prices have fallen 15 percent since the outbreak began because of a decrease in demand and fewer flights traveling to and from China.
A user of the Weibo social media service posted on Tuesday that Wuhan Central Hospital is facing an urgent shortage of medical supplies and that many medical staff had already fallen ill.
“The virus is undoubtedly going to have an economic impact” across the country, Morneau said, adding that he expects it to be a topic of conversation when central bankers and finance ministers from the Group of 20 countries meet in Saudi Arabia later this month.
The user, “Shitoudemama 2020,” said she is a nurse who has just been hospitalized with the virus. She said around 150 of her colleagues have been tested and either confirmed or suspected as having contracted the virus.
Last week, Carolyn Wilkins, the senior deputy governor for the Bank of Canada, said the central bank was trying to better understand the potential economic risks posed by the coronavirus. She said much would depend on how long the epidemic lasts.
“Medical material here at Wuhan Central Hospital are running out, we need supplies,” she wrote. “We need aid.”
“It’s never a good time to have an outbreak like this,” she said. “But when the global economy is feeling a little fragile [and] we’ve got mixed data in Canada, it’s certainly not great timing.”
Wuhan Central Hospital was the workplace of whistleblower doctor Li Wenliang, whose death has sparked an outpouring of anger at the Communist Party for suppressing his attempt to warn people about the threat of the new disease.
There have been seven confirmed cases of the coronavirus in Canada.
Her post could not be independently confirmed, but reflects widespread reports of shortages and of medical staff falling sick.
Hong Kong’s Center for Health Protection announced early Tuesday that it would be evacuating some residents of an apartment building after two people were diagnosed with coronavirus, despite living in apartments 10 stories apart.
Of the 1,016 deaths of coronavirus in mainland China, 974 or nearly 96 percent, have occurred in the province of Hubei, while 748 or nearly 74 percent were reported in Wuhan alone, suggesting the shortage of medical supplies, beds and capacity to treat the disease has may have pushed up the death toll.
The evacuation will take place in the Hong Mei House in the Cheung Hong Estate in Tsing Yi, public broadcaster RTHK reported, and only those who live in apartments with the number 7 on each floor will be evacuated.
Wuhan has rushed to build two new hospitals on the outskirts of the city to treat infected people, but although both opened last week, they are not yet fully up and running.
Officials said that engineers from Hong Kong’s housing department would investigate the sewage system in the building to see whether it could have been the source of the virus’s spread.
According to the city’s health commission, the Huoshenshan hospital, supposed to cater for 1,000 people, now has 803 beds, while the Leishenshan hospital, with a target capacity of 1,500 beds, only has 88 beds at the moment. Neither have any vacant beds.
During the 2003 SARS outbreak, more than 300 people were infected in the Amoy Gardens apartment complex in Kowloon, Hong Kong, eventually leading to a quarantine of the apartment complex. Officials later said that the outbreak had spread through bathroom drainpipes.
The National Health Commission says there is also a shortage of medical protective supplies in rural China. The Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs warned people on Tuesday to avoid mass gatherings in villages during spring farm work.
MOSCOW — Russia’s arms export agency Rosoboronexport warned Monday that its exports of the S-400 long-range air defense missile system to China could be delayed by the coronavirus.
SEOUL — South Korea advised its citizens on Tuesday against travel to Japan, Taiwan, Singapore and three other Asian countries as the number of coronavirus cases outside China continues to rise.
Government officials earlier indicated that a delivery of the S-400 system to China would take place in July.
Vice Health Minister Kim Gang-lip rolled out the new advisory to “minimize” travel to Japan, Taiwan, Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia and Vietnam. The goal of new measure is to “prevent the inflow of the new coronavirus through a third country outside China,” according to Kim.
“We’re working out these scenarios just in case. I don’t rule out that certain delays in implementing all of our contracts may arise,” Rosoboronexport chief Alexander Mikheyev said, according to Interfax.
South Korea announced its 28th confirmed case of the new coronavirus on Tuesday. Japan also added two to its tally on Tuesday to reach 28, after the virus was found in two men who had been evacuated from the virus-hit city of Wuhan.
He said the agency had contracts with China for delivery and for training its personnel.
Kim said the World Health Organization has confirmed the occurrence of community transmission in the six countries and regions. The WHO could not be immediately reached for comment.
Russian health authorities are monitoring more than 20,000 people in Russia for signs of the virus, including 6,000 Chinese citizens. Two cases of the virus have been found so far.
Singapore has the highest number of coronavirus cases outside China with 45, followed by Thailand with 32. Malaysia, Taiwan and Vietnam have fewer than 20 cases.
Russia’s Federal Anti-Monopoly Service warned Monday of “economic looting” by retailers seeking to take advantage of the crisis, with a sharp increase in the cost of medical masks across Russia.
Out of 28 cases of coronavirus infection in South Korea, four patients have contracted the virus after returning from countries outside China: Japan, Thailand and Singapore.
“The vast increase in retail prices for medical masks in 68 regions of the Russian Federation has all the indications of ‘economic looting’ during a period of increased demand,” the FAS said in a statement.
South Korea currently applies “special” medical screening for arrivals from mainland China, which requires passengers to submit health forms and get their temperature checked.
Russian President Vladimir Putin said last week that pharmacies that price-gouged on medicines and medical masks should have their licenses canceled.
Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (KCDC) said on Tuesday that the subject of the “special” screening will be widened to arrivals from Hong Kong and Macao starting Wednesday.
U.S. officials confirmed last week that physicians in Wuhan, China, have begun testing an experimental drug called remdesivir on coronavirus patients.
KCDC director Jung Eun-kyeong said Hong Kong and Macao will be newly designated as “contaminated areas” in addition to mainland China, and subject to strengthened quarantine measures.
The drug, made by Gilead Sciences, was successfully used on the first U.S. patient, a 35-year-old man in Snohomish County, Wash. He recovered, but a single case can’t determine the extent to which the drug may have contributed.
BEIJING — China’s more than 100 million strong army of migrant workers are gradually returning to cities as the country slowly gets back to work.
Scientists are hopeful that the drug will work. Although remdesivir failed an ebola clinical trial, it has shown promise in laboratory tests against other coronaviruses, including severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) and Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS).
In a news conference on Tuesday, Xu Yahua, a senior official in the Ministry of Transport, said around 160 million people are expected to return to their workplace and resume work from now until Feb. 18 when the Lunar Festival travel rush ends.
Timothy Sheahan, an assistant professor of epidemiology at the Gillings School of Global Public Health at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, said that instead of developing a new drug for each emerging virus, the hope is that remdesivir could be broadly useful and work against multiple coronaviruses — one drug that could work against multiple bugs.
Xu said that in provinces exporting large numbers of migrant workers, chartered buses will be organized to help them return to work.
“I think starting a clinical trial is essential for determining if this drug will work” against the coronavirus, Sheahan said.
Cong Liang, secretary general of the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), the state’s economic planning agency, says people who return to work should report to local authorities, and those suspected of carrying the virus will be quarantined on the spot and sent for further checks.
One of the clinical studies will test remdesivir on infected patients who are in the hospital but do not have severe symptoms. The other will test it on people with severe infections, who are on supplemental oxygen or have other complications.
Much of China’s economy had ground to a halt because of the virus, with widespread restrictions imposed by local governments around the country and many people simply choosing the stay home.
Gilead is providing the drug to Chinese researchers at no charge, according to spokeswoman Sonia Choi.
But essential services have resumed, and other enterprises are gradually starting back up.
China’s manufacturing industry, which leads the world in terms of output, continues to be hobbled by the coronavirus epidemic. The full impact cannot be measured.
China’s National Development and Reform Commission, the state’s economic planning agency, said on Tuesday that around 75 percent of companies making face masks and protective suits had now returned to work, nearly 95 percent of grain production and processing companies and 58 percent of coal mines had resumed operations.
Smartphone sales in China may dip by 50 percent in the first quarter, in part because manufacturing has not fully resumed, Reuters reported.
Beijing’s subways and streets are busier this week than they have been since before the Lunar New Year holiday, but life is still far from returning to normal. Most restaurants in the capital remained closed, Beijing News reported on Monday.
The slowdown is having ripple effects. Automaker Nissan said Monday it would temporarily halt production at a plant in Japan over shortages of parts in the supply chain from China.
Chinese media reported that most Internet companies have postponed their employees’ return to work until next Monday, although many employees have been working from home.
A Tesla factory in Shanghai is set to resume production, Reuters reported, but many key manufacturing facilities remain closed.
The daily death toll from the virus continues to set consecutive record highs, and the number of confirmed new infections also continues to rise. But the rate of increase of new infections has slowed. Experts fear the return of tens of millions of migrant workers could lead to a new surge in cases unless adequate precautions are taken.
China has blocked the reopening of Foxconn plants, which supply Apple and other international technology giants, over coronavirus concerns, the Nikkei Asian Review reported. Some production may soon resume with a skeleton workforce, a source told Reuters.
A 3-month-old baby became Vietnam’s 15th confirmed case of coronavirus, according to the Health Ministry on Tuesday.
An advance team of World Health Organization experts has arrived in China to help lay the groundwork for a larger team, officials from the body said Monday.
A number of cases of newborns from infected mothers in China testing positive for the virus has raised fears about mother-to-infant transmission, but in this case, the baby appeared to have caught it from her grandmother.
The team is led by Bruce Aylward, a Canadian physician and epidemiologist, who previously worked on the WHO’s response to the 2014 ebola outbreak in West Africa.
On Jan. 28, the baby girl was taken to visit her grandmother in a nearby town and stayed for four days, according to the English language Vietnam News. After the grandmother was diagnosed with the coronavirus, her daughter and granddaughter were tested. On Feb. 6, the baby began to cough. The child is now in quarantine with her mother.
“Bruce and his colleagues will be working with their Chinese counterparts to make sure we have the right expertise on the team to answer the right questions,” Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the WHO director general, told reporters at a daily news conference.
The grandmother contracted the virus from a neighbor who had attended a training course in Wuhan, the Chinese city at the epicenter of the virus.
Officials from the WHO declined to be drawn into specifics about what Aylward’s team would be doing in China, describing the members as medical professionals who would be given a large degree of autonomy to coordinate with local counterparts.
Ten of Vietnam’s 15 cases, including the newborn and grandmother, all come from the northern province of Vinh Phuc.
“The team is there first and foremost to learn,” said Michael Ryan, executive director of the WHO health emergencies program.
China urged countries around the world on Tuesday to resume normal ties as soon as possible to avoid damage to the global economy from the new coronavirus.
Tedros had made a trip to Beijing for preliminary talks with President Xi Jinping and Chinese officials in late January, during which it was agreed that an international mission would be sent, but subsequent deliberations over its format lasted weeks.
“We believe our economic fundamentals that support China’s long-term growth will remain unchanged, and we are capable of minimizing the epidemic’s impact on our economy,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang told reporters, but said the economic impact of the virus depended on controlling the epidemic.
Some public health experts have criticized the Chinese government for initially misleading the world about the threat posed by the outbreak.
China, Geng said, accounts for around 16 percent of global economic output, and around 30 percent of global economic growth.
“We were deceived,” Lawrence Gostin, a professor of global health law at Georgetown University who also provides technical assistance to the WHO, told The Washington Post.
“If our economy is impacted, there will inevitably be spillover effects on other countries and even the world economy,” he said. “Therefore, by fighting against NCP, China is safeguarding both its own country and the world.”
Li Ka-Shing, the richest person in Hong Kong with an estimated net worth of $29.4 billion, has pledged a donation of $12.9 million to help Wuhan, the city at the center of the coronavirus outbreak.
China has named the virus Novel Coronavirus Pneumonia, or NCP.
The donation was made through the Li Ka Shing Foundation, which announced the news Monday that it would be making the donation “in support of the frontline healthcare professionals battling the Novel Coronavirus outbreak in Wuhan.”
“Faced with a public health crisis, one cannot protect oneself by taking a ‘beggar-thy-neighbor’ approach or overreactions,” he said. “The urgent task for everyone is to defeat the virus together and restore normal state-to-state exchange and cooperation as soon as possible. Only by doing so can we support steady world economic growth and anchor expectations around the world.”
Li is one of Asia’s best-known philanthropists and his charitable organization is the second largest private and individual-led foundation in the world, after the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
China’s Foreign Ministry has been especially critical of the United States for drastically cutting travel links between the two countries, including barring foreigners who have recently visited China.
On Feb. 6, the Gates Foundation announced that it would commit $100 million toward the global response to the coronavirus epidemic. A number of other wealthy figures have pledged money to help in the fight against the outbreak.
DUBAI — The United Arab Emirates announced its eighth case of the coronavirus late Sunday, an Indian national that contracted it after coming in contact with another infected.
The Jack Ma Foundation, established by and named after the Chinese billionaire and co-founder of Alibaba Group, pledged $14.4 million toward fighting the outbreak in late January. The funding will primarily go toward vaccine research underway at Chinese institutions. Other big names donating millions in funds include the online food delivery company Meituan Dianping, logistics subsidiary Cainiao Global and Tencent Charity Foundation. Alibaba’s payment and health subsidiaries are also offering loans and free services to affected people.
The UAE remains the only Middle Eastern country reporting coronavirus cases. Its Dubai International Airport is one of the busiest travel hubs in the world.
There’s nothing like a quarantine or an international travel ban to test a relationship.
The first five cases were all Chinese citizens that traveled to the UAE, including a family of four from Wuhan, the epidemic epicenter. One of those, Liu Yujia, a grandmother, has made a full recovery, the Ministry of Health announced Sunday.
As the coronavirus continues to spread around the world, mixed-nationality couples and families looking to leave China have found themselves divided by citizenship status. Frustration and anxiety is running high as people struggle to navigate emergency measures meant to contain the virus, but which critics say have stoked xenophobia and public panic.
On Saturday, two other cases were announced, a Chinese and a Filipino citizen.
Getting out of China, no matter one’s nationality, is becoming harder and harder. Airlines are canceling flights. Countries are imposing bans on people traveling from China. Within the country, movement between and within cities is highly restricted. Chinese regulations and diplomatic relations have further complicated some efforts by governments to evacuate their citizens.
One of the cases is currently in intensive care with the six others in stable condition, according to the ministry which did not specify the nationality of the individual under close observation.
Countless couples and families have faced a maddening array of international barriers.
“In cooperation with key partners, we follow a very effective epidemiological monitoring mechanism — in accordance with the highest global practices and based on World Health Organization’s standards — to respond to any health emergencies,” said a Health Ministry statement.
Read more here: “Love in the time of coronavirus, quarantines and travel bans”
China’s consul to Dubai on Monday told all Chinese returning to the city that have had contact with coronavirus cases or been in affected regions should quarantine themselves at home for 14 days.
A new disease-transmission model created by University of Toronto researchers suggests that the coronavirus epidemic started one month earlier than commonly believed.
BEIJING — China’s Internet supervisor called on Tuesday for stricter controls on personal information, after the widespread leaking of the personal details of people from Wuhan, those who had visited the city and anyone else infected with coronavirus.
The model uses open-access data to replicate epidemiological scenarios, allowing the researchers to test some narratives about the outbreak.
People returning from Wuhan are asked to register with local authorities, but many of them found forms with their personal information — name, home address, ID, phone number, and even college entrance exam scores — being passed around in WeChat groups, sometimes marked as “suspected cases.”
Although it is only a model, it may provide a plausible explanation for how the virus was able to spread so quickly — useful in the absence of hard evidence.
Many people have complained about getting threat messages or harassment calls as a result, and the hashtag #WuhanReturneesInfoLeak has been a trending topic on the Weibo social media platform since late January.
“You can’t get up to that level of cases if the epidemic started in December even if you pushed the reproduction really high,” David Fisman, a professor in the Dalla Lana School of Public Health and one of the model’s creators, said in a statement.
The Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) said on Tuesday that no organization or individual other than authorized health departments should collect personal information “for disease treatment and prevention” without permission, let alone share them on social media,
“If you have a reproduction number of three, the epidemic could not have stated in mid-December because, according to the graph, it is undershooting the cases that were found in December,” Fisman said.
Hong Yanqing, a Peking University researcher and senior CAC official said “big data” analysis of epidemic control involves collecting large amounts of personal information, but said not everyone had the right or capacity to do so.
The findings of Fisman and his colleagues were published in the Annals of Internal Medicine last week. The research suggested not only that the outbreak may have started earlier than widely thought, but also that it has not yet been controlled.
One student studying at a college in Wuhan returned to his home in Hebei on Jan. 11 for the winter holiday, and voluntarily isolated himself for over 20 days at home, without showing any symptoms.
A top Chinese diplomat has been quarantined by Russian authorities as a safety precaution against the coronavirus outbreak, Interfax news agency reported Monday.
But in late January his details appeared on a list widely circulated on social media of nearly 1,000 people who had either studied, worked in, or been to Wuhan.
The diplomat, Consul General Cui Shaochun, had arrived in Yekaterinburg on Thursday to take up his new post but had not yet met with any Russian diplomats, according to Interfax.
“I cooperated with the government and answered their questions because I understood it was standard practice. But how on earth did my detailed personal information get leaked online?” he asked in a social media post.
Russian Foreign Ministry official Alexander Kharlov told Interfax that Cui would be quarantined at home for two weeks and would not hold previously scheduled meetings.
“I already knew that there were people illegally collecting personal information and trading them for one yuan [14 U.S. cents] per 10 names. Imagine how many more people’s information is going to get leaked if such documents continue to be shared online, and imagine these getting into the hands of criminals.”
TOKYO — Japan’s Health Ministry says 65 additional people on board the Diamond Princess cruise ship have tested positive for the new coronavirus, correcting an earlier statement from the vessel’s parent company.
Another Wuhan university student from Hunan province said he had stopped going out or meeting anyone since his personal information was leaked.
The Health Ministry said the 65 cases came from 103 samples taken from people on board. The Diamond Princess’s operator had earlier said 66 more people were infected.
TOKYO — More than a dozen ambulances were waiting near the Diamond Princess in the Japanese port of Yokohama on Tuesday, as medical staff continue to evacuate passengers from the quarantined cruise ship confirmed as being infected with the virus.
The latest data means that 135 people on board the ship have tested positive out of 439 tests carried out, or nearly one person in three.
Japan’s health ministry said on Monday that 65 more people on board the ship have tested positive for the virus, bringing to 135 the total number infected. Many of the passengers are elderly, posing additional health risks as the virus has proved much deadlier among elderly people and those with existing health problems.
Despite growing calls to test everyone on board the ship, Japan’s chief government spokesman Yoshihide Suga said Monday that under current circumstances, that would be “difficult.”
The sharp rise in infected people appeared to take Japanese authorities by surprise, and they were unable to organize evacuations for most of the new cases on Monday.
Officials say Japan has the capacity to test 1,000 people a day but also needs to direct resources to other test centers around the country.
The Health Ministry had been busy talking to hospitals as far away as the city of Nagano northwest of Tokyo to find beds for people, according to a local paper in the city.
Some 3,600 passengers and crew were allowed to disembark from a ferry quarantined in Hong Kong Sunday after all 1,800 crew members tested negative for the virus. It was feared the crew members might have come into contact with infected passengers on a previous trip.
Japanese media reported that further tests will be carried out Tuesday on passengers over the age of 80. But given that nearly one in three people who have been tested have been found to be carrying the virus, pressure is mounting on Japan to test everyone.
“Isn’t that strange?” popular commentator Toru Tamakawa said on TV Asahi, asking why Japan, a much bigger country, had not been able to undertake a similar testing program. “How many people are there in Hong Kong? Isn’t that strange? Why could we not do that?”
However, if those tests showed more infected people, it would place a significant burden on Japan’s health system. The ministry says 410 hospitals across the country have the facility to deal with infectious diseases, with a total of 1,871 beds.
The passengers on board the Diamond Princess were placed under 14-days’ quarantine last Wednesday, largely confined to their cabins apart from brief chances to walk on deck. But the crew have had to continue working, without any quarantine arrangements, and several have now fallen ill. One Indian crew member issued a plea for help on Monday, arguing that he and fellow employees will all soon fall sick if they remain on board.
There are also fears that the virus could still be transmitted on board the ship, especially among the crew — who have not been quarantined from each other, continue to work and are starting to fall sick in greater numbers.
After being largely absent from the public in recent days, Chinese President Xi Jinping was shown donning a face mask and having his temperature taken on Monday.
Read more here: Cruise ship coronavirus infections double, exceeding the total for any country but China
According to the state-run Xinhua News Agency, Xi inspected the “front-line work” to counter the novel coronavirus in the Chaoyang district of Beijing.
A Chinese doctor and leading expert in kidney transplants has died of coronavirus at the age of 62, Chinese media reported Tuesday.
Xi acknowledged Monday that the situation remains serious, but he added that the Chinese leadership would take further measures to contain the spread of the virus and prevent mass layoffs as a result of the economic fallout, according to Chinese state TV.
Lin Zhengbin, a professor at Tongji Hospital in Wuhan, had practiced kidney transplants for 30 years before dying of the virus on Monday morning.
To some, Xi’s recent absence from the public stage — and from the coronavirus epicenter of Wuhan — appeared to be an attempt to distance himself from the mistakes of the regional Communist Party’s leadership.
Co-workers and friends describe him as gentle, slow-tempered, and low profile.
But public frustration — including with the Communist Party in Beijing — mounted last week, following the death of Wuhan doctor Li Wenliang, who succumbed to the coronavirus. Li had been among the first to raise alarm over the new virus. He was subsequently detained and silenced by Wuhan police.
“We had been close friends for years,” his colleague Song Jianxin told the Health Times, a twice-weekly newspaper owned by People's Daily. “He had been in good health and had no existing illnesses, so no one expected his condition to worsen so fast and to get so severe.”
His death last week triggered a short-lived Chinese online campaign under the hashtag #WeWantFreedomOfSpeech, directed against what many viewed as an attempt by officials to cover up the crisis early on.
Song, director of the infectious diseases department at Tongji, said he received a message from Lin asking for help after he was admitted to intensive care, but by then he was already on oxygen and was too weak to speak.
Chinese authorities said Monday they are cracking down on the trade in illegal wildlife, as the dangers of unhygienic wildlife markets where multiple species mix finally begins to sink in.
“It took less than a month for Lin from getting confirmed [as having the virus] to passing away,” Song said.
Any form of wildlife trade will be strictly prohibited on platforms including marketplaces, supermarkets, dining establishments and e-commerce sites, and all sites raising wild animals will be quarantined, the official Xinhua News Agency reported.
Health Times quoted an anonymous doctor as saying that Lin might have got infected during a health checkup at the crowded outpatient department.
Violators will be penalized, and for serious violations, suspects will be handed over to the police for criminal investigation.
“It was the time when staff from our outpatient department were having a group checkup,” the doctor was quoted as saying. “The checkup center is on the third floor, sharing the same floor with the super-crowded pediatrics department. Many people were coming and going, and there weren’t the quarantine measures that are in place now.”
Two weeks ago, China banned the trade of wild animals until the coronavirus epidemic has been eliminated across the country, after evidence emerged that the disease was transmitted to humans through a market in the city of Wuhan that traded in game meat.
Chinese authorities have not disclosed how many medical staff have come down with the virus, but many are believed to have fallen sick.
The SARS epidemic in 2002-2003 was thought to have been transmitted through the trade in masked palm civets, a nocturnal mammal with a long tail that spends much of its life in trees and is considered a delicacy in parts of the country.
Authorities in Wuhan have announced fresh restrictions on residents, effectively making millions of people virtual prisoners in their own homes, as they struggle to control the spread of the epidemic.
Police in the southwestern province of Yunnan, a hub for the illegal trade in wildlife and for transit from neighboring countries, said they have launched their biggest operation in history against the wildlife trade, with 2,351 places where wild animals are bred “closed or controlled” and 16 places for wildlife viewing closed.
Many districts in the city now only allow one member of each household to go shopping every three days. Previously one person had been allowed out every two days.
Police on the island of Hainan said Monday they arrested a man for keeping a rare and endangered python on a farm. Shanghai police said they detained a man accused of illegal hunting, finding 109 dead wild animals, including wild ducks and turtledoves.
In a notice issued Monday, the city also said all residential areas will be put under “closed management” and all buildings with suspected or confirmed cases of coronavirus will be placed entirely under quarantine.
Traditional Chinese medicine — and mystical beliefs in the powers of eating and consuming products made from wild animals in many parts of China — have brought many species close to extinction, with the reclusive pangolin in particular danger.
The closed management system entails tight controls such as strict controls on entry and exit, including registration and temperature checks, and the banning of outside vehicles.
Ironically, a suggestion that the coronavirus might have been transmitted to humans via pangolins might offer a small lifeline to that animal, considered the most trafficked mammal in the world.
Wuhan’s epidemic control command center also urged residents to seek medical treatment in hospitals near their residence and banned fever patients from going to hospitals in other districts.
But a crackdown on illegal wildlife trade after SARS soon petered out. Wildlife experts say the latest ban needs to be made permanent.
On Sunday alone, 103 people died in the province of Hubei, of which Wuhan is the capital, China’s National Health Commission said. Of the total 1,016 deaths in China, more than 95 percent have occurred in Hubei.
Online recruitment company Indeed has asked its employees in Dublin and Sydney to work remotely, amid concerns that some of its staff may have been exposed to the novel coronavirus.
More than 17,000 health workers from around the country have come to Hubei to help in treatment of infected patients, according to Chinese media reports.
In Dublin, the company employs more than 1,000 workers.
MANILA — The Philippines widened travel restrictions amid the coronavirus outbreak to include a ban on arrivals from Taiwan, the self-ruled island over which China asserts sovereignty, leaving hundreds of Taiwanese reportedly stranded.
Company officials said the move was a precautionary measure, taken after one Singapore-based employee was tested for the virus. The staff member has not yet been confirmed to have the virus.
Philippine immigration officials late Monday clarified that a ban on arrivals from China and its special administrative regions, Hong Kong and Macao, also applied to Taiwan. A memo from the Civil Aeronautics Board said this was in line with Manila’s adherence to the “one China” policy.
“Since some employees who visited Singapore have recently visited our Sydney and Dublin offices, we are asking all employees in the Dublin and Sydney offices to work from home until we have received confirmation,” a company statement read, according to the Irish Independent newspaper.
“While not explicitly stated, we have confirmed with the Secretary of Justice that Taiwan is indeed part of the ban, and this expansion shall be implemented immediately,” said Immigration Commissioner Jaime Morente.
The suspension of office work at the company came as many Chinese were heading back to work on Monday after an extended break. Many Chinese companies — including e-commerce giant Alibaba — asked their employees to work from home after the virus’s spread accelerated, in what has been described as the “world’s largest work-from-home experiment.”
A Philippine health official said the policy was clarified last week, but airlines including Cebu Pacific Air and Philippine Airlines only canceled flights between Manila and Taipei on Monday night.
HONG KONG — Panic buying is gripping Hong Kong, where the collapse in trust in the city’s government over the past year is prompting residents spooked by the coronavirus threat to take dramatic measures to procure essential household supplies.
Taiwan News reported that around 500 Taiwanese were consequently stranded in the Philippines.
The frenzy is perhaps best exemplified by a run on toilet paper, which has become extremely difficult to find in the city’s supermarkets. Many other products are scarce, especially hand soap, sanitizer and surgical masks, and even staples such as rice.
Philippine officials stressed that the ban is temporary and does not apply to Filipino citizens and permanent residents.
One Hong Kong woman flew to Myanmar, which until 2016 was under U.S. sanctions, to stock up on surgical masks — a trip that until recently would have been a staggering move for a resident of a financial hub that proclaims itself to be “Asia’s world city.”
Taiwan has recorded 18 cases of the coronavirus. Some critics see its inclusion in the Philippines’ ban as playing into China’s hands, even as Taiwan has fewer reported cases than Singapore, Thailand, South Korea, and Japan. China, meanwhile, has recorded more than 1,000 deaths and 40,000 cases.
Underpinning the panic is the widespread feeling in Hong Kong, reinforced by months of political unrest last year, that the city’s government places the interests of the Communist Party ahead of those of Hong Kong residents.
The dispute over Taiwan’s status dates from the end of the Chinese civil war in 1949, when the defeated Kuomintang fled to the island and Communist leader Mao Zedong proclaimed the People’s Republic of China on the mainland.
Read the full report here: In Hong Kong, toilet paper is in short supply. Trust in the government is even more scarce.
China considers Taiwan a rogue province to be captured by force if necessary, while Taiwan says it has never been part of the People’s Republic. But the “one China” policy widely observed internationally means the democratic island is often unable to participate fully in global bodies such as the World Health Organization.
NEW DELHI — As the number of confirmed coronavirus cases onboard the Diamond Princess cruise ship rises, Indian crew members are making a public appeal for help.
China’s Communist Party has dismissed the two most senior officials in the provincial health commission in the virus-hit province of Hubei, as anger continues to reverberate around the country over the authorities’ handling of the epidemic.
Binay Kumar Sarkar, 31, said he was one of about 160 Indian crew members on the ship. He said the crew was busy serving meals to passengers in their rooms three times a day and that everyone is “scared who will be [infected] next.”
Hubei’s provincial government announced that Zhang Jin, the Communist Party secretary of the provincial Hubei’s health commission, along director Liu Yingzi, were both fired on Monday, for unspecified reasons. Their roles will be filled by Wang Hesheng, a member of the provincial committee of the Communist Party and former deputy director of the National Health Commission.
Sarkar posted a video on Facebook on Monday ]in which he and several other crew members — all wearing masks and Princess Cruises uniforms — implored Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi for assistance.
They are among the most senior officials to be fired over the handling of the coronavirus outbreak, with dozens of lower level officials also losing their jobs.
All those aboard the ship should be tested, and those who are healthy should be allowed to go to their home countries, Sarkar told The Washington Post. Keeping everyone on the boat means “very soon we will all be infected.”
The central government in Beijing also urged members of the public to report any examples of dereliction of duty among local governments.
The Diamond Princess, now docked off Yokohama, was placed under a 14-day quarantine that will last until Feb. 19. It has more than 3,700 passengers and crew onboard, and 136 of them have tested positive for the virus so far.
Experts say the central and provincial governments share responsibility for initially covering up the epidemic, in ways that made the outbreak far tougher to control. But the central government has tried to shift the blame onto local governments.
TOKYO — Eleven Americans are among 66 additional people on board the Diamond Princess who have tested positive for the new coronavirus, the cruise ship operator said Monday.
The death of doctor Li Wenliang, who tried to warn people about the virus but was silenced by Communist Party authorities and then died of the disease himself, has sparked an outpouring of anger among Chinese citizens.
The latest results bring to 136 the number of passengers and crew who have tested positive for the virus, not including a former passenger from Hong Kong who is thought to have brought the virus on board before disembarking.
The death toll from the new coronavirus rose to 1,016, with a new daily record rise of 108 deaths on Monday, China’s National Health Commission announced on Tuesday,
The latest cases were made up of four Australians, one Briton, one Canadian, 45 Japanese, three Filipinos, one Ukrainian and 11 Americans, Princess Cruises said in a statement.
More than 700 people were discharged from hospital, bringing to 3,996 the number of people officially classified as cured.
The ship and its 3,711 passengers and crew were placed under quarantine last Wednesday.
But while the daily death toll continues to accelerate, the rate of growth of new infections has begun to slow slightly. The number of new cases recorded on Monday fell slightly, to 2,478, with the majority in the virus-hit province of Hubei and only 381 in other parts of mainland China.
“Since it is early in the quarantine period of 14 days, it was not unexpected that additional cases would be reported involving individuals who were exposed prior to the start of the quarantine,” the company said. “The quarantine end date remains at February 19, unless there are any unforeseen developments.”
The number of new cases per day had peaked at 3,887 on Feb. 4, while the number of new infections outside Hubei reached a daily high of 890 on Feb. 3.
Given the high number of people on board who have tested positive for the virus, there have been calls for everyone to be tested. Japanese Health Minister Katsunobu Kato said Monday that the ministry was looking into the feasibility of testing everyone before they are discharged, to ensure they do not spread the virus around Japan or elsewhere.
But experts say it is too early to say the virus has peaked, especially with many people around China going back to work after the extended Lunar New Year holiday.
But later, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said that, under current circumstances, testing everyone would be “difficult.” He did not give reasons.
Excluding those who have been cured or died, mainland China has a total 37,626 people confirmed as infected with the virus, including 7,333 in serious condition, and 21,675 suspected cases.
Last week, a Japanese government official said the country has the capacity to test 1,000 people a day.
Some 428,000 people have been classified as having come into close contact with infected people, and 188,000 are under medical observation.
Some 3,600 passengers and crew were allowed to disembark from a ferry quarantined in Hong Kong after all 1,800 crew members tested negative for the virus. It was feared the crew members might have come into contact with infected passengers on a previous trip.
LONDON — Britain announced Monday that four more people tested positive for coronavirus, bringing the total number of cases in the country to eight.
Chris Whitty, chief medical officer for England, said that the “new cases are all known contacts of a previously confirmed U.K. case, and the virus was passed on in France.”
The new cases come amid concerns of a so-called coronavirus “super spreader.” According to media reports, a British man caught the virus in Singapore and is linked to seven other cases in England, France and Spain. Sky News said the British national flew from Singapore to the French Alps, where five British nationals tested positive, before flying to Britain on Jan. 28.
On Monday, the British government declared coronavirus a “serious and imminent threat to public health,” giving health authorities greater powers including forcibly sending people to isolation.
According to local media, the decision was made after one of the people in quarantine attempted to leave the hospital.
China’s health authorities say the proportion of people being cured of the new coronavirus has risen sharply in the past two weeks, indicating an improvement in the country’s ability to provide medical treatment.
The proportion of patients who are cured has risen to 8.2 percent, up from 1.3 percent on Jan. 27, Mi Feng, a spokesman for the National Health Commission, told a news conference. In the worst-hit province of Hubei, the percentage of patients who have been cured rose to 6.1 percent from 1.7 percent on Jan. 27.
Mi said that reflected an improvement in treatment across the country as well as an increase in the supply of hospital beds in Hubei after new hospitals were built.
On Sunday, 632 patients walked out of hospital, bringing the total of people who have been discharged to 3,281.
However, the daily death toll set a record Sunday, with 97 deaths, bringing the total to 908. The number of confirmed cases since the epidemic began rose by more than 3,000 to 40,171.
After accounting for those people who are cured or who have died, China is still treating 35,982 confirmed cases, including 6,484 in serious condition, with 23,589 suspected cases.
Nearly 400,000 people have been identified as having had close contact with infected patients, with nearly 190,000 under medical observation.
Mi said an advance team from the World Health Organization would arrive in Beijing on Monday. China has come under criticism for not allowing in foreign medical experts sooner.
China has released a mobile app that is supposed to show people if they have come into contact with the new coronavirus, and whether they are at risk of catching it.
The “close contact detector” was released Saturday evening, with users scanning a QR code and submitting their name, phone number and ID number to make an inquiry into whether they have come into contact with an infected person, mainly through plane, train and bus journeys.
Those who have been in close contact are advised to stay home and get in touch with local health authorities, state news agency Xinhua reported.
The report did not disclose how the app would work, saying only that it received support from the National Health Commission, the Ministry of Transport, China Railway and the Civil Aviation Administration of China “to ensure accurate, reliable and authoritative data.”
China’s Communist Party operates an extensive system of surveillance over citizens, and identity cards are required to buy train and long-distance bus tickets. But the app will not currently be able to establish whether people might have caught the virus in shopping malls, for example.
The National Health Commission defines close contact as being proximity with a person who is confirmed or suspected of being infected with coronavirus, with no effective protection.
It includes people who work closely together, share the same classroom or live in the same house, as well as medical staff who have been in close contact with patients.
On a flight, Xinhua reported, all passengers in the same row as the infected person, as well as those three rows in front and three rows in back, would be defined as having come into close contact. This also applies to flight attendants who provide cabin services in the area. Other passengers would be referred to as having general contact.
In a fully enclosed air-conditioned train, all the passengers and crew members who are in the same compartment are regarded as being in close contact, Xinhua reported.
The spread of the new coronavirus is a “serious and imminent” threat to public health requiring stricter quarantine measures, Britain’s Health Department announced Monday.
The statement in the name of Health Secretary Matt Hancock also designated Arrow Park Hospital as an isolation facility and declared that all of China’s Hubei province, the epicenter of the outbreak, was an “infected area.”
The statement added that new measures have been adopted, giving the government greater powers to quarantine and isolate people to stop the spread of the virus, which has infected more than 40,000 people worldwide, nearly all of them in China.
The announcement followed the revelation that one British man who caught the virus in Singapore went on to possibly infect seven other people around Europe before returning to Britain.
The British government advises against all travel to Hubei province and all but the most essential travel to the rest of mainland China. “If you’re in China and able to leave, you should do so,” the travel advisory warned.
On Sunday, 200 British and foreign nationals were evacuated from the city of Wuhan, where the outbreak began.
Taiwan announced new restrictions Monday on travelers from Hong Kong and Macao in an effort to stem the spread of the coronavirus outbreak.
Only those traveling for business purposes or with residency in Taiwan will be allowed on the island, said Taiwan’s Mainland Affairs Council. The new restrictions will take effect Tuesday.
Even those allowed in must submit to a 14-day quarantine, either at home or in a hotel. According to the South China Morning Post, 10,840 students from Hong Kong and Macao are studying in Taiwan, 7,900 of them having left the island ahead of the Lunar New Year holidays.
All residents of mainland China were already banned from entering Taiwan on Feb. 6.
People infected with the new coronavirus normally come down with symptoms after about three days, but the disease can incubate in some people for up to 24 days, new research by Chinese scientists shows.
The disease spreads rapidly from among humans, and aside from conventional forms of transmission such as direct contact and respiratory droplets, it can be also be transmitted through saliva, urine and stools, but the fatality rate is “relatively low,” according to the research, co-authored by 37 doctors and researchers, which has not yet been peer-reviewed.
Fewer than half the infected patients who sought medical attention had fevers at the time, although nearly 90 percent developed a fever during hospitalization. Two-thirds of people had coughs, while diarrhea and vomiting were rare. Severe pneumonia occurred in 15.7 percent of cases.
The median incubation period, between infection and the onset of symptoms, was three days, but there was a wide range of between zero and 24 days. One of the authors told Chinese media that the 24-day incubation period occurred only in “individual cases.”
The study looked at 1,099 cases where patients were confirmed to have the virus. Of the group, just over 1 percent had direct contact with wildlife, just over 30 percent had been to Wuhan, the city where the outbreak originated, and nearly 72 percent had contact with people from Wuhan.
Of 62 stool samples tested, four tested positive to the presence of the virus, while evidence was also found of the virus in gastrointestinal tracts, saliva and urine. “Hygiene protection should take into account the transmission via gastrointestinal secretions,” it said.
Chinese scientists have begun animal trials as they seek to develop a vaccine against the new coronavirus, Chinese media outlet Yicai reported Monday.
Samples of the new vaccine were injected into more than 100 healthy mice on Sunday, and if the trials go well, the new vaccine could enter human clinical trials as soon as April, Yicai reported, citing multiple sources including an official from the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, or China CDC.
“This is still at a very early stage, and there are still many steps to be taken before it can be used on humans,” the official was quoted as saying.
The vaccine has been designed and developed by the China CDC, Tongji University School of Medicine and the Siwei (Shanghai) Biotechnology Co.
Calls to China CDC, Tongji University and Siwei were not immediately answered.
TOKYO — Japan’s Health Ministry said on Monday another 60 people on board the Diamond Princess cruise ship have tested positive for the new coronavirus, bringing to 130 the total number known to have been infected on board the ship.
The infected passengers will be taken to local hospitals for treatment.
Calls have been growing for Japanese authorities to test all roughly 3,700 passengers and crew on board the ship, especially since a significant proportion of those tested have been found to have the virus. Those calls have intensified after Hong Kong’s authorities were able to test all 1,800 crew members on board another cruise ship, and when they all tested negative, letting everyone disembark.
Health Minister Katsunobu Kato has insisted that only people who show symptoms or are seen as being at high risk would be tested, but on Monday he said authorities were studying whether it was feasible to test everyone on board before letting them leave the ship at the end of the quarantine period, to prevent the spread of the infection in Japan.
Before Monday’s test results were announced, 70 people out of 336 people tested had been found to have the virus, including six crew members.
On Saturday, Japan’s Defense Minister Taro Kono tweeted that the U.S. government has explained to Japan that it is not thinking of disembarking any passengers on the Princess Diamond before the 14-day quarantine period ends, based on advice from U.S. health authorities.
Some passengers had been asking to be flown home, fearing they could get infected on board the ship, and Japanese media had reported that a plan to take Americans out by another ship was under consideration.
The death toll from coronavirus has soared past 900, surpassing the toll from thee 2002-2003 severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) epidemic, according to data released by China’s National Health Commission on Monday, with 97 new deaths the previous day, the highest daily toll since the outbreak began.
The number of new infections also continues to grow, but the rate of increase appears to be stabilizing or even slowing, especially outside the worst affected province of Hubei.
On Sunday, China added 3,062 new confirmed infections, bringing the total of people known to have the virus to 40,171. It also added 4,008 new suspected infections.
But the number of new infections outside Hubei was only 444, compared to a peak of 890 new infections outside Hubei on Feb. 3.
Chinese health officials said Sunday that the apparent tapering off in new infections outside Hubei could be a result of the strict quarantine measures that have been out in place. The World Health Organization also noted an apparent tapering off in infections, calling it “good news,” but cautioned many people still hadn’t been tested and it was too early to make predictions about the number of new infections.
