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South Korea coronavirus cases surge as Italy confirms first death from the virus Coronavirus infections in China exceed 75,000; cases surge in South Korea
(about 5 hours later)
For the third time in eight days — and the second time in 24 hours — Chinese public health officials made changes Friday to their criteria for counting coronavirus cases, once again sowing confusion over the widely fluctuating figures. In a further sign of potential inconsistencies, an official in China’s Hubei Health Commission suggested that agencies were not being transparent and accurate in their reported case numbers. Authorities worldwide warned about the spread of the coronavirus beyond China on Thursday as Japan reported the first two deaths from the Diamond Princess cruise liner, South Korea reported its first fatality, and new cases in Iran sparked fears about many new cases appearing in the Middle East.
Another death amid a surge in coronavirus cases in South Korea — many traced to a church — also provoked fresh alarm Friday, after Chinese authorities reported hundreds of new infections at prisons, undercutting Beijing’s effort to show progress in containing the deadly epidemic. A Japanese man and woman, both said to be in their 80s, were among more than 600 passengers who contracted the disease while on board the Diamond Princess. They left the ship last week and were hospitalized, but they died Thursday, Japanese public broadcaster NHK reported. A day earlier, an infectious disease specialist slammed officials for failing to observe proper quarantine practices on the vessel.
The prison outbreaks underscored the high transmissibility of the virus, officially called SARS-CoV-2, in confined spaces. People on board the Diamond Princess cruise ship docked in Japan also have been hit hard by covid-19, the disease caused by the virus. In South Korea, cases soared by nearly two-thirds, mostly in the southern part of the peninsula, national authorities said. The mayor of Daegu, the city where 10 South Koreans contracted the disease from a church service, asked residents to stay indoors.
Meanwhile, Lebanon and Israel reported their first coronavirus cases, and infection numbers rose in Italy. By Friday night, Italy had reported its first death from the virus: a 78-year-old man. Authorities in Iran also reported two deaths among 13 new infections, raising the tally there to 18 cases. Many international experts say the disease will continue to spread globally even as the Chinese government seeks to present the image that it is coming to grips with the epidemic. New cases inside China dropped again Wednesday, officials reported Thursday, after national authorities changed for the second time in a week the criteria for how cases are diagnosed and counted. Here’s what we know:
Here are the latest developments: ● China tallied a total of 889 new infections and 118 new deaths through the end of Thursday. There is a cumulative total of 75,465 infections and 2,236 deaths, most in central Hubei province. Wild swings in numbers in recent days have raised suspicions over counting methods.
●A second person died of covid-19 and cases in South Korea soared, with investigators focusing on a church and hospital as clusters of infection in the southern city of Daegu. ● South Korea reported its first coronavirus death, and the mayor of the South Korean city of Daegu urged its 2.5 million people Thursday to stay indoors, as cases of the new virus soared. Cases in the country rose to 156 by Friday morning, making it the country with the highest number of virus cases outside China.
● Hundreds of passengers were disembarking from the Diamond Princess, but the massive case load left questions about the rigor of quarantine and testing procedures on board. ● In Ukraine, police clashed with protesters angered by plans to allow more than 70 people evacuated from China’s Hubei province to enter the country.
● Italy confirmed its first death from the virus Friday night. Earlier, Israel announced its first coronavirus case — a Diamond Princess passenger — while Lebanon reported its first infection — someone who had just traveled from Iran. ● Iran reported three new cases Thursday, a day after two people died of covid-19, the disease caused by the virus, in the holy city of Qom. Iraq’s Health Ministry called for travel restrictions on Iran.
● Beijing braced for a potential explosion of infection numbers in the capital after two hospitals were put under quarantine. ● Meanwhile, researchers still do not know for sure how contagious the virus is, a crucial detail to predict how big the epidemic could get. The virus has spread to more than two dozen countries outside China.
● World Health Organization Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said that Friday’s “significant decrease in confirmed cases is partly due to another change in the way China reports numbers.” In its latest nationwide tally, China’s National Health Commission on Friday morning reported 889 new coronavirus infections and 118 new deaths from the virus through the end of Thursday.
Chinese health officials on Saturday morning reported 109 new deaths and 397 new confirmed coronavirus cases on Friday, bringing the country’s total to 2,345 deaths and 76,288 confirmed cases. There are now a cumulative total of 75,465 infections and 2,236 deaths, mostly in the central Hubei province.
Friday’s new cases were a dramatic drop from Thursday, when National Health Commission officials reported 889 new infections. The new tallies come as China has made even more changes to its criteria for counting coronavirus cases, causing confusion amid fluctuating numbers. The latest numbers show a significant increase in new infections from Wednesday, when the NHC reported 394 new cases. National authorities recently changed the criteria for classifying cases, leading to wild swings in numbers in recent days.
SEOUL — South Korea reported 142 additional cases of the coronavirus, Korea’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said on Saturday. SEOUL — South Korea reported on Friday that 52 more people contracted the coronavirus, making it the country with the highest number of virus cases outside China.
About two-thirds of the new cases have been traced to an existing cluster at a hospital in southern Cheongdo County, North Gyeongsang province. The majority of the remaining cases are linked to a church in nearby city of Daegu, according to the KCDC. South Korea’s national tally of virus infection jumped by half to 156 from 104 the previous day, according to Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (KCDC).
South Korean government has designated Daegu and North Gyeongsang as “special care zones” to which support will be concentrated. About two-thirds of the country’s cases have been reported in the southern city of Daegu and surrounding North Gyeongsang Province.
The latest cases have brought up the national tally of the virus to 346, an 11-fold jump from the beginning of the week. Out of the 52 latest cases, 33 are linked to an existing cluster of infections centered on a church in Daegu, the KCDC said.
“Apart from the Diamond Princess cruise ship, [South] Korea now has the most cases outside China, and we’re working closely with the government to fully understand the transmission dynamics that led to this increase,” Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of the World Health Organization, told a briefing in Geneva on Friday. At a hospital in neighboring Cheongdo County, North Gyeongsang, 16 infection cases were reported in total, including the country’s first death from the virus.
On Friday, Iran’s health ministry announced two new deaths and 13 coronavirus cases, raising the total tally to 18 infections, including four deaths, since the first case there was announced Wednesday. South Korean Prime Minister Chung Sye-kyun said early Friday that the country is facing a coronavirus “emergency.” Chung designated Daegu city and Cheongdo County as “special care zones” to mobilize all available resources, including military medics, and set up quarantine facilities.
The spike in coronavirus cases have spurred panicked school closures and border restrictions aimed at curbing Covid-19’s spread. The International Air Transport Association (IATA) warned Thursday that it expects the drop in flights due to the coronavirus outbreak to cause the first global decline in airline passengers in 11 years.
In response, the Tehran province ordered the closure of all schools on Saturday, which is a school day in Iran, state-run Fars News Agency reported. Overall, the IATA predicted a 4.7 percent reduction in global traffic, which would cancel out its previous growth estimates for 2020. Such a steep decline would be the first overall loss for the airline industry since the 2008-09 financial crisis.
In the holy city of Qom, the center of Iran’s outbreak about 100 miles south of Tehran, authorities called for the suspension of religious gatherings and schools and seminaries. It’s “challenging times for the global air transport industry,” the IATA’s Director General and CEO Alexandre de Juniac said in a statement.
Iran is holding nationwide parliamentary elections Friday. The IATA’s forecast predicts a potentially 13 percent decline in demand for flights in the Asia-Pacific region in 2020 based on the already thousands of flights canceled as the epidemic has spread. This could translate into a nearly $28 billion loss in revenue for airline companies in the region, including a nearly $13 billion decline just in China’s domestic market.
Iran’s neighbors and allies have also reacted with travel bans and movement restrictions. On Friday, Lebanon’s health ministry announced that the country’s first coronavirus case was a 45-year-old woman who had just traveled from Qom to Lebanon, prompting the ministry to request that any visitors from Iran self-quarantine for 14 days, the virus’ incubation period. “The estimated impact of the COVID-19 outbreak also assumes that the center of the public health emergency remains in China,” IATA said in a statement. “If it spreads more widely to Asia-Pacific markets then impacts on airlines from other regions would be larger.”
Turkey’s health minister on Friday announced tighter screening procedures of travelers from Iran and said the country would deny anyone showing symptoms of Covid-19. Turkey additionally said it would deny entry to Iranians who had traveled to Qom within the last 14 days. Eleven out of 13 people being held at the University of Nebraska Medical Center tested positive for the coronavirus, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirmed Thursday. All 13 people were former passengers of the Diamond Princess cruise ship who were evacuated to the United States on Monday.
On Thursday, Iraq, which neighbors Iran, suspended visas on arrival for Iranians. That same day Iraq and Kuwait, which is also along the Persian Gulf, both suspended direct flights to and from Iran. In a statement, Nebraska Medicine said 10 of the patients were being held in its national quarantine unit, while three were in the Nebraska biocontainment unit.
Iraq, Turkey and Kuwait are all important business and trading partners with Iran, while Qom is a popular pilgrimage site among Shiite Muslims from all over. “Most of them aren’t showing symptoms of the disease; however, several others are exhibiting minor symptoms,” the statement read.
Iranian authorities said that no one who tested positive with the disease had recently traveled to China. Minoo Mohraz, an Iranian health ministry official, told Iranian media that the virus “possibly came from Chinese workers who work in Qom and traveled to China,” the Associated Press reported. She provided no further evidence to back up the claim. A solar power plant in Qom is being built by a Chinese company. TORONTO — A government-chartered plane evacuating Canadian citizens and permanent residents aboard the Diamond Princess cruise liner has left Tokyo, Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne said Thursday.
Two more passengers evacuated from the Diamond Princess cruise ship and repatriated to Australia have tested positive for coronavirus, bringing the number of confirmed cases to six, according to the Austrlian Broadcasting Corp. There were 256 Canadians on the ship, according to Global Affairs Canada, including 47 who tested positive for the novel coronavirus. Passengers were screened before boarding the airplane, and only those not exhibiting symptoms of the deadly virus were allowed to fly home.
The announcement comes after Australian health authorities on Friday announced four people from the Diamond Princess has contracted the virus. The country’s foreign ministry said that if space allowed, it would allow non-Canadian immediate family members of Canadian citizens to also board the flight in order to keep families together.
“We will continue to screen every day and have that very precautionary approach to testing and ensuring that we are picking up early and isolating early anybody who is positive for COVID-19,” Austrailian medical officer Dianne Stephens told ABC. It is unclear how many passengers were allowed to board.
The satellite captured how concentrations of nitrogen dioxide, a pollutant released by burning fossil fuels, were down in China during this period – just when the government started to impose quarantines that dramatically cut the use of cars, flights, and freights that rely on coal and other fossil fuels. The plane will take the evacuees to a military base in Trenton, Ontario, where nearly 300 Canadians who were evacuated from the virus-stricken Chinese city of Wuhan are being quarantined. After being screened there, the cruise ship passengers will be taken to the Nav Canada training institute in Cornwall, Ontario, where they will also be quarantined for 14 days.
Weather conditions and seasonal patterns can affect pollution, but Jessica Seddon, an air quality specialist at the Washington-based World Resources Institute, said that’s unlikely the case here given the stark contrast between the two images. Nitrogen dioxide is also quick to decompose, so it’s typically been emitted where the satellite catches it, she said. Patty Hajdu, Canada’s health minister, said on Thursday that none of the evacuees quarantined in Trenton have tested positive for the virus. The first group of evacuees will finish its quarantine on Friday.
Seddon said “it’s very plausible the coronavirus would affect” nitrogen dioxide emissions, given the sudden cut in everyday activities from factory production to transportation. Ottawa has faced criticism for being too slow to evacuate its citizens from the luxury cruise ship, which has been quarantined at a Yokohama dock since Feb. 5.
In South Korea, coronavirus cases quadrupled over two days, as 144 members of a religious sect tested positive. In Singapore, clusters of infection have been traced to two churches, a hotel business meeting, a health products shop and a construction site. In Iran, an outbreak has seeded new cases in Lebanon and Canada — a worrisome sign that the disease could be spreading more widely than was realized. Two passengers from the Diamond Princess cruise ship who arrived home to Australia on Thursday morning in a repatriation flight have tested positive for coronavirus, according to the Austrailian Broadcasting Corp.
There are outbreaks. There are epidemics. And there are pandemics, where epidemics become rampant in multiple countries and continents simultaneously. The novel coronavirus that causes the disease named covid-19 appears to be on the verge of that third, globe-shaking stage. The news comes after a chartered flight carrying 164 people from the ship, including Australian citizens and permanent residents from Japan, arrived at a quarantine facility in Darwin.
Amid an alarming surge in cases with no clear link to China, infectious disease experts think the flulike illness may soon be impossible to contain. The World Health Organization has not declared covid-19 a pandemic, and the most devastating effects, including more than 2,200 deaths, are still in China. But the language coming from the organization’s Geneva headquarters has turned more ominous in recent days as the challenge of containment grows more daunting. In a statement, the Austrailian government’s chief medical officer, Brendan Murphy, said six people who were identified as having minor respiratory symptoms were separated at the airport. Two of them later tested positive for coronavirus.
“The window of opportunity is still there, but the window of opportunity is narrowing,” WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said Friday. “We need to act quickly before it closes completely.” The passengers on the repatriation flight had been quarantined on the Diamond Princess cruise ship and were required to pass a health check before boarding the Boeing 747 at Tokyo’s Haneda Airport. Murphy said the two infected passengers “remain well and are being housed in separate isolation.”
If the coronavirus becomes a true pandemic, a large portion of the human population — a third, a half, two-thirds even — could become infected, although that doesn’t necessarily mean they will get sick. The word “pandemic” invokes fear, but it describes how widespread an outbreak may be, not its deadliness. “Given there was continued evidence of spread of infection on board the Diamond Princess in recent days, the development of some positive cases after return to Australia is not unexpected, despite all of the health screening before departure,” Murphy wrote.
Kuwait Airlines announced Thursday that it has indefinitely suspended all flights to Iran after three new cases of coronavirus were reported in the country Thursday.
In a statement, the airline said it had received instructions from the Kuwaiti Health Ministry and civil aviation authority.
On Wednesday, two Iranians infected with the virus died in the city of Qom, a holy city and pilgrimage site for Shiite Muslims. Iraq’s Health Ministry prompted the government to stop issuing tourist visas to Iranian nationals, citing the new coronavirus cases across the border.
The U.S. Department of State urged U.S. citizens Thursday to reconsider travel via cruise ship to or within the East Asia and the Asia-Pacific region.
The department cited countries that have implemented strict screening procedures amid the spread of the novel coronavirus, adding that those traveling by ship “may be impacted by travel restrictions affecting their itineraries or ability to disembark, or may be subject to quarantine procedures implemented by the local authorities.”
“While the U.S. government has successfully evacuated hundreds of our citizens in the previous weeks, repatriation flights should not be relied upon as an option for U.S. citizens under the potential risk of quarantine by local authorities,” the department wrote. “Passengers who plan to travel by cruise ship should contact their cruise line companies directly for further information on the current rules and restrictions, and continue to monitor the Travel.state.gov website for updated information.”
The Federal Bureau of Investigation is trying to avert the spread of coronavirus in the United States by purchasing $40,000 worth of hand sanitizer and face masks, according to CNBC.
An acquisition document acquired by the news station showed that the intelligence agency ordered its “pandemic preparedness” hand sanitizer and masks from two contractors in case coronavirus spreads across the United States.
The face masks from manufacturing conglomerate 3M and hand sanitizer from medical device company PDI Healthcare will be delivered to the FBI on Friday, according to CNBC. The items were ordered directly from the companies due to “the urgency” of the request, according to CNBC’s review of the document.
The FBI awarded the no-bid contract to PDI because its products destroy “54 different microorganisms within [one] minute so this disinfectant has both speed and power,” according to CNBC’s review of the order.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirmed 15 cases of coronavirus in the United States last Thursday. The Trump administration declared the virus a public health emergency late January.
In the wee hours of a rainy Monday, more than a dozen buses sat on the tarmac at Tokyo’s Haneda Airport. Inside, 328 weary Americans wearing surgical masks and gloves waited anxiously to fly home after weeks in quarantine aboard the Diamond Princess, the luxury liner where the coronavirus had exploded into a ship-wide epidemic.
But as the buses idled, U.S. officials wrestled with troubling news. New test results showed that 14 passengers were infected with the virus. The State Department had promised that no one with the infection would be allowed to board the planes.
A decision had to be made. Let them all fly? Or leave them behind in Japanese hospitals?
In Washington, where it was still Sunday afternoon, a fierce debate broke out: The State Department and a top Trump administration health official wanted to forge ahead. The infected passengers had no symptoms and could be segregated on the plane in a plastic-lined enclosure. But officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention disagreed, contending they could still spread the virus. The CDC believed the 14 should not be flown back with uninfected passengers.
“It was like the worst nightmare,” said a senior U.S. official involved in the decision, speaking on the condition of anonymity to describe private conversations. “Quite frankly, the alternative could have been pulling grandma out in the pouring rain, and that would have been bad, too.”
The State Department won the argument. But unhappy CDC officials demanded to be left out of the news release that explained that infected people were being flown back to the United States — a move that would nearly double the number of known coronavirus cases in this country.
The tarmac decision was a pivotal moment for U.S. officials improvising their response to a crisis with few precedents and extraordinarily high stakes.
Read more here.Read more here.
A 78-year-old man who tested positive for coronavirus in Italy died late Friday, according to Corriere Della Sera, the country’s newspaper of record. Iranian health officials urged the holy city of Qom to suspend religious gatherings Thursday after Iran reported a sudden spike to five coronavirus cases, the semiofficial news agency ISNA reported.
The death, which reportedly took place in the city of Padua, marks the first in Italy from the virus and comes as confirmed cases in the country continue to climb. Two people on Thursday tested positive for the virus in Qom, south of the capital Tehran, and another in Arak, a city about 100 miles southwest of Qom, Iran’s health ministry spokesman reported. Two other Iranians died of the coronavirus in Qom on Wednesday, just hours after authorities first reported the infections.
The newspaper, as well as the country’s ANSA news agency, reported 16 coronavirus cases in the country by Friday evening. Earlier in the day, ANSA confirmed the first cases of local transmission of coronavirus in Italy. Kianush Jahanpur, the health ministry spokesman, told ISNA that the infected patient in Arak was a doctor from Qom.
Officials say the first to locally contract the virus was a 38-year-old man in the northern region of Lombardy, who became sick after having dinner with a friend who recently returned from China. He then passed the virus on to his wife and another close friend, according to Reuters. Qom is a holy seminary and pilgrimage site for Shiite Muslims, who are the majority in Iran. Worshipers from all over gather in the revered city to pray and study.
Australian health officials confirmed Friday that four people who had gotten off the Diamond Princess cruise ship have tested positive for coronavirus, the Australian Broadcasting Corp. reported. Jahanpur told ISNA that the health ministry recommended restricting traffic to Qom’s major shrines, mosques and other pilgrimage places, as well as temporarily canceling seminars, conferences, camps and touristic trips in the city.
Two Queensland women, ages 54 and 55, and a South Australian woman, 24, are among the four who tested positive for the virus, the news station reported. Iranian authorities reported that they still don’t know how the patients contracted the virus. But in other places, such as Hong Kong and South Korea, religious sites such as churches have been cited as clusters for infections.
The 24-year-old woman initially tested negative for coronavirus in Yokohama, Japan, but started experiencing mild flulike symptoms when she arrived in Darwin, the capital city of Australia’s Northern Territory, the outlet reported. Last week, the Catholic Church in Hong Kong announced it was suspending Mass as a precaution to prevent the virus’ spread.
She will be flown to Royal Adelaide Hospital, where she’ll be treated in an isolated unit. The other two women will receive medical attention in Brisbane, according to the Australian Broadcasting Corp. Steve Conlee always had a habit of collecting reserves of food, water and other essentials at his home in case of the unknown. Now his Salt Lake City-based preparedness company, Emergency Essentials, is riding a rise in people across the United States looking to buy stashes of items such as water filters, face masks and stores of food amid fears over how far the coronavirus outbreak could go.
No details about the fourth patient were reported. “The coronavirus has definitely sparked a huge demand across the board for companies like ours,” Conlee said. “We suspect this will be a longer-term demand spike, as opposed to something like hurricanes,” when demand rises for just a few weeks.
Brendan Murphy, Australia’s chief medical officer, told the outlet that the new diagnoses aren’t abnormal. The preparedness industry, which targets a contingent often called “preppers,” markets the goods and advice needed to survive anything from a tornado to a quarantine to a full-blown apocalypse.
“Given there was continued evidence of spread of infection on board the Diamond Princess in recent days, the development of some positive cases after return to Australia is not unexpected, despite all of the health screening before departure,” he said. There are different subsets within the community, said Conlee. He’s part of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, colloquially called Mormons, among whom a culture of emergency preparedness is common. But he said 90 percent of his customers now come from across the United States and range from anyone fearful of natural disasters to more apocalyptic doomsayers to Silicon Valley tech circles.
Australian passengers aboard the cruise ship arrived Thursday in Darwin, where many of the evacuees are being quarantined at an unused workers’ camp. They joined 266 other Australians who were moved out of Wuhan, the Australian Broadcasting Corp. reported. At the end of January, Conlee started seeing a rise in searches around coronavirus and an uptick in the scale and scope of purchases. Within days, the company’s supply of N95 masks ran out.
At least 46 Australians aboard the cruise ship were infected with the coronavirus, the outlet reported. Jon Stoke, deputy editor of the Prepared, a website dedicated to the preparedness industry, said he’s also seen a surge in traffic to his site since late January. In early February, he put up a page specifically dedicated to tips for preparing for and surviving an outbreak.
A coronavirus patient in China who was discharged after recovering from the illness has been readmitted because of another positive test result for the virus, Reuters reported. There are only 15 confirmed cases of coronavirus in the United States, and the vast majority of infections remain centered in certain parts of China. The World Health Organization has warned that shortages of protective gear like face masks is due to people stocking up, and has put health-care workers and those at the center of the outbreak at greater risk.
The patient recuperated in Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan province, and entered a recommended quarantine period at home, according to Reuters. Despite the fact that the outbreak remains many miles and time zones away, Stoke, who lives in Texas, said he didn’t think those stocking up on emergency essentials were driven by panic.
The city’s public health clinical center told the news organizations that similar cases have been reported in other regions of the country. “I wouldn’t say there’s panic yet,” he said. “But the kind of paradox we deal with in preparedness is that it’s better to be early and wrong.”
Patients who recover from coronavirus are advised to monitor their health for two weeks, wear face masks and limit their time outside to avoid contracting diseases, according to China’s National Health Commission. A Washington state hospital will treat four patients who have tested positive for coronavirus, according to a joint statement Wednesday from hospital and public health officials.
In similar coronaviruses, 14 days is the longest incubation period that has been observed. Providence Sacred Heart Medical Center in Spokane, Wash., will care for the patients at the request of the Department of Health and Human Services, according to the news release.
At a daily media briefing Friday, WHO officials were asked repeatedly whether the coronavirus outbreak was likely to become a pandemic. The health center is one of only 10 hospitals in the country with airborne infection isolation rooms. At a Thursday afternoon news conference, Christa Arguinchona, manager of special pathogens with Providence Health and Human Services, said the DHHS on Wednesday night had clarified that the health center would receive four patients instead of five.
In their responses, they seemed to take pains to avoid the p-word as much as possible. The exact process for transferring patients is still being determined, though partner agencies have practiced for this kind of scenario, according to Bob Lutz, a Spokane County health officer with the Spokane Regional Health District.
The WHO officially defines a pandemic as “the worldwide spread of a new disease.” Many experts use the word to describe the stage of an outbreak when a virus is transmitting in a self-sustaining way across multiple countries and regions. “We are coordinating with local partners to safely transport these patients to Sacred Heart,” Lutz said in the statement. “This is all being done following our jointly developed infectious disease protocols that we train and prepare for. The risk to the public from this novel coronavirus remains low.”
For now, most new coronavirus cases are still tied to China. Lutz reiterated that point while addressing reporters Thursday, adding that the risk to the general community is “zero.”
But Sylvie Briand, director of the WHO’s infectious hazard management department, said health investigators are concerned about the new cases spreading in Italy, Iran and elsewhere, with no clear link to China or contact with previously confirmed cases. Health officials at the news conference declined to provide specific details about the incoming patients.
“I think one of the things people misunderstand when it comes to pandemics is it’s not about how severe it is or how many cases there are or even how worried we need to be,” said Caitlin Rivers, an epidemiologist at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. “It’s about literal geography.” “There is no risk to the general public,” Lutz stated. “I reiterate that as much as I can.”
The pandemic designation is not one that WHO officials will make lightly. That’s because it comes with massive political and economic consequences. The Washington State Department of Health listed 779 people under health supervision. That number includes people who are at risk of having been exposed to the virus, close contacts of confirmed cases, and people who have returned from China in the past two weeks.
The last time WHO declared a pandemic — during the H1N1 outbreak in 2009 — the decision later came under harsh criticism from some countries, which thought that it spread fear and led to unnecessarily aggressive responses. KREM, a Spokane news channel, reported an increase of 87 people since the beginning of the week.
H1N1, also known as swine flu, turned out not to cause the massive deaths and chaos some initially feared. But the pandemic declaration triggered requirements, for example, for some governments to buy vaccines — which a number of governments came to feel was a waste of money. The World Health Organization (WHO) said Thursday that China’s reduction in new reported coronavirus infections was “encouraging,” but warned against complacency.
There was even a mini-scandal when the WHO revised the definition it had published online during the 2009 outbreak, deleting a reference — after a reporter asked about it — to pandemics causing “enormous numbers of deaths and illness.” “This is the time to attack the virus while it is manageable,” the WHO’s director general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said at a daily news briefing in Geneva. “You will get sick of me saying that the window of opportunity remains open for us to contain this covid-19 outbreak.”
The Council of Europe accused the WHO afterward of changing the definition to make it easier to declare a pandemic. The WHO said the website was outdated and that it had not changed its definition. In his remarks, Tedros has sought to both praise China’s response to the outbreak and push the international community to react with urgent measures of its own, branding the virus “public enemy No. 1.”
BEIJING — Nie Mingtao arrived at Wuhan Union Hospital’s tumor center on Feb. 9, hoping to continue with chemotherapy treatment for the late-stage lung cancer that left him unable to eat or sleep. He warned Thursday that while covid-19 cases have remained limited outside of China, countries still needed to act, as “that may not stay the same for very long.”
When Nie showed up, paperwork in order, a doctor apologized and turned him away: The hospital was emptying its cancer ward to make room for patients suffering from the coronavirus that was ravaging Hubei province, said his son, Nie Wenjie. A WHO-led mission of international experts, including the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), is in China reviewing available research and data on the virus and China’s responses to it. On Thursday, Tedros provided further details on the team’s makeup, listing Singapore, Nigeria, South Korea, the United Kingdom, Germany and Russia as some of the other participants.
A month into its battle to contain the outbreak, China is overseeing an unprecedented triage on a national level by scaling back or suspending public health services for patients with ailments unrelated to the epidemic. Last week, Tedros declined to provide details on who would be part of the mission after Larry Kudlow, the director of the U.S. National Economic Council, said China was preventing U.S. experts from entering, which WHO and China denied.
Within Hubei province at the outbreak’s epicenter, hospitals are so overwhelmed by the disease that they lack manpower or beds to treat nearly anything else. Beyond Hubei, hospitals from Chongqing in the southwest to Beijing in the north are choosing to shutter departments and reject patients seeking surgeries, kidney dialysis, diabetes medication and help for a variety of other conditions in an all-out effort to minimize the chance of virus transmission. Tedros also announced Thursday that WHO would begin coordinating meetings weekly with diplomatic missions in Geneva about coronavirus. In addition, he said he expected preliminary results in three weeks from WHO’s initial clinical trials of two anti-viral drugs that scientists hope could combat covid-19.
A United Nations program said this week that one-third of Chinese living with HIV say they are at risk of running out of antiretroviral medication and that many don’t know how they can get their next refill. The Chinese port city of Wenzhou is set to somewhat pare back coronavirus-related lockdown measures to aid in economic recovery, according to a social media post from the city’s government Thursday, Reuters reported.
“This is not right,” said Nie Wenjie, 28, this week from his rural village in northern Hubei as he watched his father heave and moan, his condition worsening. “All the lives not touched by the coronavirus — are those lives not worth saving?” The government will reopen highway entrances and exits and cancel some freeway checkpoints.
Read more: In China’s ‘war’ on coronavirus, hospitals turn away other patients — with dire results. The industrial city of more than 9 million residents has been under lockdown since late January due to the spread of the coronavirus, Reuters reported.
Twenty-eight U.S. residents brought home from the Diamond Princess cruise ship Monday are infected with the coronavirus, and health officials expect to see more infections among that group in coming days, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced Friday. The city, in Zhejiang province, is the metropolis most affected by the virus outside of Hubei province, the outbreak’s epicenter, Singapore’s The Straits Times reported.
Eighteen of the Americans who were passengers on the cruise ship in Yokohama harbor had positive results in CDC tests, Messonnier said. Ten others showed positive results in tests conducted by the Japanese, but those results have not yet been confirmed by the CDC through additional testing. The CDC is not yet including them in their official count. Wenzhou government officials have stringently restricted the movement of residents and on Feb. 2 closed many roads, allowing one person per household to emerge every other day to purchase necessities, Reuters reported.
The 28 cruise ship passengers, along with three infected people previously returned from Wuhan, China, brings the total number of repatriated patients with the covid-19 infection to 31. BAGHDAD — Iraq’s health ministry urged the government here Thursday to stop issuing tourist visas to Iranian nationals, after five cases of coronavirus were confirmed across the border in the seminary city of Qom. Millions of Iranians enter Iraq every year to visit its Shiite holy sites, especially the cities of Najaf and Karbala in the south, and Samarra with its golden-domed shrine.
That is more than double the 13 U.S. patients who so far have either picked up the infection by traveling to China or from close contact with a family member. Iraq’s health ministry said Thursday that visitors from Iran should be barred from entering the country until further notice, citing an inability to stop the virus spreading if it crossed the border.
The cruise ship passengers are “considered at high risk of infection and we do expect to see additional cases,” Nancy Messonnier, director of the agency’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, said in a media briefing. “It’s going to be very hard to contain this disease if it enters Iraq, God forbid,” said Jaffar Allawi, the health minister, in a letter to the country’s prime minister.
The Japanese government quarantined nearly 3,700 passengers and crew aboard the ship for nearly two weeks, a policy that resulted in widespread transmission of the virus. More than 600 people from the Diamond Princess have tested positive — the second-largest number of any place outside China. Iraq’s government has formed a crisis cell to monitor the spread of coronavirus to Iran. In his letter, Allawi said that all travelers should be banned from entering Iraq via an Iranian border crossing until further notice. Diplomatic missions should be exempted, he said, although they must be screened for the virus. Iraqis returning from Iran should also be quarantined, according to the new measures. It was unclear how that would be implemented.
On Monday, the State Department flew 329 U.S. residents home from the ship on two separate aircraft. The Washington Post reported that the evacuation was delayed by a last-minute disagreement between government officials when 14 infections were found as the passengers arrived at the airport in buses. CDC officials did not want to put infected people on the plane with uninfected passengers, but were overruled by the State Department and another top government health official. Iraqi Airways said Thursday that it was suspending its flights to Iran. The country’s interior minister, Yassin al-Yasiri, also visited Baghdad airport to inspect screening procedures. A photograph circulated by his office showed the politician pointing at what appeared to be a temperature scanner.
At Friday’s briefing, the State Department said the tests for those 14 people were conducted 48 to 72 hours before they boarded the buses. Global health officials have not designated the coronavirus epidemic a pandemic, which scientists define as an outbreak affecting a wide geographic region or population. While cases have been detected around the world, experts have not seen widespread local transmission outside China.
TORONTO — A plane carrying 129 Canadians and accompanying family members from the coronavirus-stricken Diamond Princess cruise ship in Japan has arrived in Canada, government officials said Friday. But if the epidemic were to develop into a pandemic, it could cost the global economy more than $1 trillion, according to Oxford Economics, a U.K.-based economic forecaster.
The government-chartered flight landed at a Canadian air force base in Trenton, Ontario. The evacuees, who had already been quarantined aboard the cruise liner, must complete another 14 days of quarantine at a facility in Cornwall, Ontario, some 270 miles east of Toronto. “Our scenarios see world GDP hit as a result of declines in discretionary consumption and travel and tourism, with some knock-on financial market effects and weaker investment,” the consultancy told the Guardian.
Global Affairs Canada, the country’s foreign ministry, said that none of the passengers had symptoms of the coronavirus upon arrival. Anyone exhibiting symptoms was not allowed to board the plane in Tokyo. It is unclear whether anyone was turned away. According to Oxford Economics’s models, the coronavirus outbreak has already had a “chilling effect” on the global economy. In recent weeks, leading companies, from Apple to Jaguar, have warned of looming shortages and declines in revenue because of disruptions in supply flows and demand from China. Oil prices and stock markets have fluctuated up and down amid differing projections over how long the virus will last and how far into the future it could continue to impede business.
Of the 256 Canadians aboard the Diamond Princess, 47 tested positive for the virus and are being treated in hospitals in Japan. Oxford Economics’s projection reports a larger loss of output than do some other forecasters.
Lolita Wiesner, a passenger who was repatriated, said in a Facebook post that “riotous applause” broke out when the plane landed in Trenton and that she is “glad to be on Canadian soil.” The United States Army Garrison Daegu in South Korea restricted access to its base as of Thursday, according to a statement.
“Everyone we have seen since we landed has welcomed us home,” she wrote. “It made my eyes all weepy.” People who have Department of Defense identification cardholders registered with the Defense Biometric Identification System, contract workers and their crews and others who have reason to be on the installation will be the only ones allowed in.
World Health Organization officials said Friday they were particularly concerned with the appearance of coronavirus cases in several countries, in which it is unclear how the patients were infected. Visitors, such as relatives or Department of Defense identification cardholders who don’t have Defense Biometric Identification System access for bases throughout Korea, will not be allowed.
“Although the total number of cases outside Flag of China remains relatively small, we are concerned about the number of cases with no clear epidemiological link, such as travel history to Flag of China or contact with a confirmed case,” said WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. “Travel to and from Daegu is restricted for U.S. service members and highly discouraged for civilians, retirees and family members,” the base announced. Personnel who are either on leave, on temporary duty assignments and those returning to the Daegu base continue to be permitted on base.
Health officials are focused on determining whether instances of local transmission have occurred and where — because that would indicate containment is not working and that the outbreak is instead spreading geographically. Upcoming temporary duty assignments and preapproved leaves from the base will not be affected.
Apart from the Diamond Princess cruise ship where local transmissions occured, South Korea now has the most cases outside China, and WHO officials said they’re working with the Korean government to understand the exact transmission dynamics that caused that increase. “The 19th [Expeditionary Sustainment] Commanding General will grant any other exceptions to this policy on a case-by-case basis, and this policy will be reassessed daily,” the announcement stated.
Iran is another hotspot WHO officials said they are focused on. In three days, Iran has gone from zero cases to 18 cases and four deaths. The WHO has supplied testing kits and said it plans to provide further support to Iran in coming days. LONDON — Britons who have been under coronavirus lockdown on the Diamond Princess cruise ship since Feb. 3 will be allowed to fly home Friday providing they have no symptoms of the deadly virus, British officials said Thursday.
But the biggest concern, WHO officials said, continues to be the possible spread of the coronavirus to developing countries with weaker health systems that are ill-equipped to handle such an epidemic. “I can confirm the evacuation flight out of Tokyo on Friday for British nationals from the Diamond Princess cruise ship,” Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab said, adding that the British government would “continue to support British nationals who wish to stay in Japan.”
Because of that, Tedros said he would be meeting with African health ministers on Saturday to talk about their preparation efforts. The British government and its Foreign Office have come under criticism for their handling of the incident, with many arguing that not enough has been done to return British passengers home amid the outbreak. More than 70 British nationals are thought to have been on board the ship when it was quarantined.
Within China, Tedros said that although the number of cases in the epicenter Hubei province continues declining, “we are concerned about an increase in the number of cases in Shandong province, and we are seeking more information about that.” Two British passengers, David and Sally Abe, have gained a following on social media through updates from the ship. Their son, Stephen Abel, told the BBC that his parents were “not getting any communication” from Britain and were feeling “unloved.”
BEIJING — Two hospitals have been put under quarantine amid fears of a coronavirus outbreak in China’s capital, with one district reporting an “infection density” second only to Wuhan, the epicenter of the epidemic. Earlier this week David Abe said on Facebook that he and his wife had both contracted the virus and were beginning treatment in a hospital in Japan.
The sudden rise in cases in Beijing this week has people worried both about a potential explosion of infection numbers in the capital and what may happen as millions of Chinese return to work after weeks of relative isolation. Online reports of possible treatments for the novel coronavirus, from drugs to herbal medicines, have spread nearly as fast as the virus. The unfortunate truth is there are not yet any effective treatments. There are many scientific laboratories and companies racing to test and develop drugs and vaccines, but no medicine is yet approved for Covid-19, or any other coronavirus.
Even the Global Times, a nationalist newspaper affiliated with the ruling Communist Party, described the increase in cases in Beijing this week as “whopping.” Food and Drug Administration commissioner Stephen Hahn tweeted a request for people who see products making fraudulent claims to be reported.
There are 396 confirmed cases of the coronavirus in Beijing, a city of 22 million people. Haidian district has the most, with 61, while the much smaller area of Xicheng has 53, according to Beijing government figures. “There are no FDA- approved drugs to treat #COVID19 or other coronaviruses,” Hahn tweeted. “Products claiming otherwise should be reported to FDA.”
The central district of Xicheng — home to the Zhongnanhai compound that houses the offices of the Communist Party’s leaders, many government branches and the central bank — is second to Wuhan in the number of confirmed cases per about a half square mile, the Global Times reported. Physicians and scientists remain hopeful that drugs that are already on pharmacy shelves could be rapidly repurposed to fight the virus. Clinical trials in China are testing a variety of possible drugs, including one originally developed for Ebola. But anyone claiming to have a cure or treatment now would be leaping ahead of the necessary testing to show a drug is both safe and effective.
That, along with entirely unconfirmed but persistent rumors in the capital that a senior member of the Communist Party has been infected, has led to speculation that the recent increase in security measures is designed to protect the nomenklatura. KYIV — Ukrainian police clashed Thursday with protesters angered by plans to allow more than 70 people evacuated from China’s Hubei province — the epicenter of the coronavirus — to enter the country.
Read more here: Two Beijing hospitals quarantined amid fears coronavirus infections will spike in the capital The 45 Ukrainians and 27 evacuees of other nationalities are under orders to spend 14 days in quarantine at a National Guard medical facility in Novi Sanzhary. The group arrived Thursday in the eastern Ukrainian city Kharkiv after a flight from Wuhan. It was the latest evacuation flight staged by various countries, including the United States, from the Chinese city.
SEOUL — A South Korean church with a messianic leader was identified Friday as a hotbed of coronavirus cases as the outbreak grows in parts of the country. Several hundred protesters set up roadblocks and burned tires in Novi Sanzhary in attempts to prevent the arrival of the evacuees, which included people from Belarus, Kazakhstan and various countries in Latin America, Ukrainian media reported.
The leader of the sect, Lee Man-hee, said all gatherings and other outreach have been suspended after health authorities linked Lee’s followers to more than two-thirds of all confirmed coronavirus cases in South Korea. More than 10 protesters were detained by authorities.
Lee denounced the coronavirus as a “devil’s deed” to curb the growth of his church, which extols Lee as a prophet-like figure who can decode hidden meanings from the Bible before a coming apocalypse. Critics describe Lee’s network as a cult. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky posted a Facebook message assuring that authorities have “done everything possible and not possible in order to guarantee that the virus doesn’t come to Ukraine.”
The Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (KCDC) said more than two-thirds of South Korea’s 204 confirmed coronavirus cases are traced to Lee’s secretive religious movement, called Shincheonji Church of Jesus the Temple of the Tabernacle of the Testimony. He also noted the demonstrations did not “show the best side of our character.”
KCDC Director Jung Eun-kyeong told reporters that Shincheonji services, which often gather followers in a crowded spaces, possibly led to mass transmissions. A 36-year-old Chinese national in Singapore has been confirmed to have the coronavirus, bringing the country’s total number of infected people with the flu-like virus to 85, according to Singaporean newspaper the Straits Times.
South Korean President Moon Jae-in called for a full investigation into transmission clusters at a Shincheonji church in Daegu, in South Korea’s southeast, and at a funeral in Cheongdo County. The man did not recently travel to China. Health officials are still tracing his recent contacts to find connections to previous cases, Channel News Asia reported.
Read more here: South Korean coronavirus spike linked to doomsday sect with messianic leader Announcement of the new case of coronavirus was coupled with another report Thursday that a 57-year-old Singaporean woman is the only known case of a person to have both coronavirus and dengue fever, the Straits Times reported.
TOKYO — Tokyo Gov. Yuriko Koike said Friday it was inappropriate to suggest that London could host the 2020 Olympics if the coronavirus outbreak forces organizers to look for an alternative site. The unidentified woman sought medical attention Feb. 13 and Saturday before being admitted as a dengue patient in a general ward on Saturday, the newspaper reported.
On Wednesday, Shaun Bailey, the Conservative Party candidate in the London mayoral election, tweeted that London could host the Games, due to be held in the Japanese capital in July and August. “We have the infrastructure and the experience. And due to the #coronavirus outbreak, the world might need us to step up,” he wrote. She was tested for coronavirus when she started having respiratory problems, the Straits Times reported. Her positive test result Tuesday prompted medical staff to place her in an isolation room, according to the paper.
The International Olympic Committee said last week that it had been advised by the World Health Organization that there was no need for a contingency plan or to consider canceling or moving the Games. Those who were in the ward with her when she was being treated only as dengue patient have been quarantined, the paper reported.
Yet the number of cases in Japan has tripled to 92 since then, excluding cases on the quarantined Diamond Princess cruise ship that are counted separately, and officials said it is impossible to prevent the virus from spreading further. The Ministry of Health confirmed three patients with coronavirus were discharged from a hospital Thursday, according to the Straits Times. About 37 people have fully recovered and were released from medical care after contracting the illness, according to the newspaper.
Nevertheless, Japan’s chief government spokesman Yoshihide Suga said Friday the government would continue to prepare to host the Tokyo Olympics and Paralympics this summer as planned, adding that the IOC has “confidence” in Japan’s response to the virus. Singapore’s hospitals are still treating 48 confirmed cases of coronavirus. Most patients are reported to be in either stable or recovering conditions, according to the Strait Times. Four people are being treated in the intensive care unit.
“We will coordinate closely with the IOC, the organizing committee and the Tokyo metropolitan government, and move ahead with preparations to make sure athletes and spectators can feel safe and secure throughout the games,” Suga told a news conference. Coronavirus has also hampered certain sectors of the country’s economy.
On Feb. 19, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention moved Japan onto a Level 1 watch list, noting the virus had spread to the country, and advising travelers to practice “usual precautions” such as avoiding contact with sick people and washing hands with soap and water for at least 20 seconds. Foreign Minister Toshimitsu Motegi said nine countries have now placed some “restraint” on their citizens traveling to Japan. Singapore’s government is stepping in to help Changi Airport tenants and employees by offering a 50 percent rental rebate for six months, Channel News Asia reported.
Tokyo and Nagoya have both been forced to scale back marathons planned for March, only opening them to elite runners. On Friday, the ruling Liberal Democratic Party postponed a convention scheduled for March 8 at a Tokyo hotel, which was to be attended by about 3,000 party members, Kyodo News reported. The rebate and other assistance are part of an overall government effort called the Stabilisation and Support Package, which aims to boost sectors that have been affected by the impact of the coronavirus, according to Channel News Asia.
Japan’s Health Ministry has asked organizers to reexamine the need to hold big events, warning the risk of infection will increase if people are not given adequate personal space at indoor facilities, Kyodo reported. TOKYO — Japan’s Health Ministry released new information about the deaths of two passengers from the Diamond Princess on Thursday but was not able to answer some of the pressing questions about the treatment of those on board.
Koike, Tokyo’s mayor, said Bailey was trying to make coronavirus a mayoral election issue, Agence France-Presse reported. Koike said the virus in her country has attracted global attention mainly because of the Diamond Princess cruise ship, which she emphasized was a British vessel. An 87-year-old man and an 84-year-old woman died of the new coronavirus on Thursday, while another 27 people from the ship are in serious condition.
The Olympics will run from July 24 to Aug. 9, with the Paralympics scheduled to take place from Aug. 25 to Sept. 6. But officials had no immediate explanation as to why the woman who died had to wait a week between falling ill with a fever Feb. 5 and finally being hospitalized Feb. 12.
Wuhan, the Chinese city hardest hit by coronavirus, plans to build 19 additional makeshift hospitals to care for patients, health officials announced Friday, according to Singapore’s Straits Times newspaper. The woman also developed diarrhea Feb. 6, which is when a doctor first visited her. She tested positive for the virus Feb. 13, developed respiratory problems the following day and died on Thursday morning, eight days after being transferred to a hospital.
Hu Yabo, deputy mayor of the city, said the ad hoc hospitals will offer 30,000 beds beginning Tuesday, the newspaper reported. They will be equipped with CT scanners, EKG heart monitoring devices, and other necessary medical equipment. Masami Sakoi, a senior ministry official, said he would “like to refrain from guessing” why it had taken a week between her complaining of a fever and her entering the hospital, but said health officials on board the ship were making their “utmost efforts” to dispatch sick people to medical facilities as quickly as possible.
A factory that will be converted to a hospital will have the largest number of beds among the other temporary hospitals, the paper reported. But it is not the only incident indicating how doctors have struggled to cope with the situation on board the ship, as cases of the virus have multiplied.
Hu said that Wuhan has 13 locations, including gyms and convention centers, which have been transformed into temporary medical facilities for ill patients, in addition to 9,313 beds for those with mild symptoms, the Straits Times reported. So far, 634 people from the ship have tested positive.
A total of 13,348 beds are still open at these makeshift hospitals to receive coronavirus patients, according to China’s Global Times. An American, John Haering, 63, says he came down with a fever of up to 39.8 degrees Celsius (103.6 Fahrenheit) in the evening of Feb. 10 but was not seen by a doctor until 5 p.m. the following day. It was not until Feb. 13 that he was evacuated from the ship and taken to a hospital. His fever had subsided by then.
More than 70 medical professionals have been dispatched to treat ill patients in the city, where more than 45,000 cases of coronavirus were reported as of Thursday, according to the Straits Times. On Feb. 13, Health Minister Katsunobu Kato — facing mounting criticism of his ministry’s approach — relaxed the quarantine on board the ship, announcing that passengers over 80 and those with underlying health problems would be able to disembark early, provided they test negative for the virus.
MANILA — Almost 50 people in quarantine north of Manila, most of them evacuated from the epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak in China, have been declared virus-free and can now return to their homes. There were more than 200 people in their 80s on board the ship.
Health officials announced Friday that the 49 individuals, who were in isolation for two weeks, were “well and safe.” Thirty were Filipinos previously based in Hubei province, while the rest were part of the repatriation team. The man who died Thursday suffered from bronchial asthma. He developed a fever on Feb. 10, was tested and hospitalized the following day, developed pneumonia Feb. 18 and died two days later.
A send-off will be held for them Saturday, ahead of the arrival of new evacuees from the cruise ship Diamond Princess docked in Japan. At least 44 Filipinos on board the ship have contracted the virus. There were 538 Filipinos on the Diamond Princess, mostly crew members. The government is expecting between 460 to 480 to return to the Philippines on Sunday. Sakoi said he could not be certain, but it was “natural to think” both patients had been infected before quarantine was imposed Feb. 5. He said both patients had been given antiretroviral drugs normally used to combat HIV.
World Health Organization officials said Friday that the number of coronavirus cases in China have dropped because of changes China has made — yet again — in how it is counting those numbers. MOSCOW — Russia’s temporary entry ban for Chinese tourists, workers, students and private travelers came into force Thursday, amid concerns of a coronavirus outbreak — a measure some have criticized as extreme, considering that just two cases have been confirmed in the country.
The change in counting methods has frustrated and concerned epidemiologists around the world and sowed confusion in general, but WHO officials took pains to defend China’s decision, even as they appeared to admit that they have not been told the exact reason for the methodology change. Chinese visitors account for nearly 30 percent of Russia’s total tourism traffic, according to the World Without Borders travel association. Tour operators expect losses of roughly $44 million in January and February. They fear the figure could climb significantly if the ban is not lifted until summer, the Association of Tour Operators in Russia told the Interfax news agency.
China started off counting only cases confirmed by laboratory testing, which led to concerns that the country was undercounting cases, especially as the number of cases climbed and overran the ability of Chinese labs to keep up. The country then switched to including cases that were “clinically confirmed” by doctors and clinicians in hospitals but not yet confirmed by labs. Then, the country announced Friday that it was switching back to counting only lab-confirmed cases. The group’s director has said it intends to ask for compensation from the government.
“This may indicate the system in Wuhan has regained ability to test all suspected cases,” the WHO’s Tedros Adhanom said. When pressed on why China had made the previous change to including clinically confirmed cases, Tedros said, “We also understand they were using clinically confirmed cases; it could be because lab capacity was low because of the big number of cases.” “The only thing that can be ascertained is that all necessary measures are being taken to prevent the coronavirus from getting into our country and spreading around,” Russian presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Wednesday.
Global health experts have expressed concerns about the transparency of Chinese officials amid the outbreak, with many worrying that there is internal pressure by the country’s Communist Party to manipulate its numbers to show that it is making progress — a common practice among Chinese officials when it comes to such statistics as economic benchmarks and pollution measures. The two individuals who tested positive for coronavirus in Russia were Chinese citizens, and they have since recovered. Japanese doctors have diagnosed another three Russian citizens on board the quarantined Diamond Princess cruise ship with the disease.
WHO official Sylvie Briand defended China’s change, saying: “As we observed in other epidemics, it’s not unusual to count things in different ways as an epidemic evolves. … What is important in epidemiology when you observe an epidemic is to remember that surveillance or monitoring a disease aims at taking the best possible decision. It’s really numbers for action, not numbers for numbers.” The suggestion by a London mayoral candidate to host the 2020 Olympics in the British capital instead of in Tokyo sparked fierce Japanese reactions Thursday.
Another frustration regarding China’s transparency is the inability of global experts to gain access to the epicenter of the outbreak in Wuhan. While WHO teams have been working in Beijing, Sichuan and Guangdong, Tedros said that on Saturday a WHO may finally be able to travel to Wuhan on Saturday. On Wednesday, Conservative Party candidate Shaun Bailey had tweeted: “London can host the #Olympics in 2020. We have the infrastructure and the experience. And due to the #coronavirus outbreak, the world might need us to step up.”
The United Arab Emirates announced two new cases of coronavirus Friday, in addition to nine that had been identified in the past few weeks. In Japan, a hashtag in response to the remarks was trending on Twitter on Thursday, with many expressing anger at the suggestion. “It’s completely irresponsible suggestion,” wrote one user in English.
The two new patients had come in contact with a Chinese citizen who was identified as having contracted the virus Sunday, the Ministry of Health and Prevention said. The 37-year-old was the sixth Chinese citizen found to have the disease in the United Arab Emirates, whose Dubai International Airport is one of the world’s largest travel hubs. Bailey’s remarks came amid mounting concerns that the coronavirus outbreak may disrupt the Tokyo Olympics in July, after qualifiers in Asia had to be canceled or moved elsewhere. Japan itself has seen the number of cases surge in recent days, forcing officials to acknowledge that local transmission has entered a new phase.
The ministry said the two new patients, one from the Philippines and one from Bangladesh, are both in stable condition. Bailey is running against incumbent London Mayor Sadiq Khan in elections set for May, but has trailed his opponent in the polls.
The two new cases bring the total number of people with covid-19 in UAE to 11, three of whom had been confirmed as fully recovered. As of Sunday, six remained under intensive care, the ministry announced then. There has been no update provided on the condition of the six since. TOKYO — Japan says 13 more people on the Diamond Princess tested positive for the coronavirus Thursday, bringing the total to 634 passengers and crew on the ship who have the virus.
The statement came on the heels of the announcement of the first virus case in another Arab country, Lebanon. Health ministers from gulf states held an emergency meeting in Saudi Arabia’s capital Wednesday “to discuss growing concerns over the novel coronavirus,” the Emirati News Agency said. Testing of the 2,666 passengers who were on the ship when it was placed into quarantine Feb. 5 is complete, but some tests still need to be finished for the 1,045 crew members.
U.S. stock markets plunged Friday as signs of the coronavirus’ chilling effect on the global economy continued to surface in earnings and manufacturing data. The Dow Jones industrial average was down more than 300 points in midmorning trading. The disembarkation of most of the passengers who tested negative for the virus will be completed Friday, but some foreign nationals may remain on board as they await evacuation flights to their home countries. Other passengers whose cabin mates were infected with the virus face an additional quarantine period, while crew members will also have to stay as they were not isolated from one another during the quarantine period.
Investor fears were reflected in gold’s extended rally, which lifted the safe-haven 1.3 percent to a seven-year high. Meanwhile, the yield on the 30-year Treasury fell to an all-time low, suggesting that investors’ confidence in the economy has been shaken. Two passengers in their 80s died of the virus Thursday.
“While the number of new cases of coronavirus continues to slow in China, the spread outside the country is escalating and it seems the market is waking up to the impact on both individual companies and the wider economy,” Russ Mould, investment director at AJ Bell, wrote in commentary Friday. “Profit warnings linked to the health crisis, as companies are either hit by slowing consumer demand in China or impact on their supply chain, are starting to trickle out with the impact on iPhone sales revealed by Apple earlier this week the most high profile of these.” A report by the Health Ministry’s National Institute of Infectious Diseases that analyzed the onset of symptoms on board the ship concluded that the quarantine was effective at “reducing the transmission” of the virus and that most of the people infected after Feb. 5 were crew members or people sharing cabins.
Fresh Purchasing Managers index data revealed that U.S. economic output shrank for the first time since October 2013 in January, the contraction driven by a severe drop-off in the services sector. Services business activity fell to 49.4 in February, down from 53.4 in January, the report showed. Figures under 50 indicate a contraction, while figures over 50 indicate growth. People leaving the ship who have tested negative for the virus have been asked to go home, stay inside “unless absolutely necessary,” wear a mask if going out and monitor their own temperatures.
Read more: Dow drops 300 points as evidence of coronavirus fallout continues to emerge Around Japan, the government announced an additional eight people had contracted the virus, bringing the national total to 92 cases outside the ship. The latest cases included a Health Ministry official and a cabinet official who worked on the ship during the quarantine period.
The Pyongyang marathon in April has been canceled as North Korea shuts its borders and limits travel, according to a tour agency that operates there. Landmarks in the Australian state of Victoria will be lit up in the Chinese flag colors red and gold on Friday, in a sign of solidarity with Chinese communities abroad.
The marathon, which snakes around North Korea’s capital city, has been open to international competitors since 2000. It is recognized as one of about 100 “label road races” by World Athletics, the international governing body for athletics and most running sports. The campaign will include color projections on Melbourne Town Hall and Flinders Street railway station. It accompanies a broader effort by the Victorian government to support Chinese expats amid the coronavirus outbreak. China and Australia are close trading partners, even though the extent to which Canberra should make itself dependent on Beijing is a frequent topic of heated debate among Australian lawmakers.
North Korean officials and the World Health Organization have both said the country is free of any cases of the coronavirus. Nonetheless, analysts of the isolated country have speculated that there could be cases after Pyongyang ordered schools closed for the next month and put foreigners under a month-long quarantine. “We have a long history of standing by our Chinese communities — and that’s what we need to be doing right now,” Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews said in a release.
During the height of the Ebola epidemic, the 2015 Pyongyang marathon was closed and later reopened to foreigners, Reuters reported at the time. The Victorian government said it will also lead a delegation of regional businesses to China, with the aim to boost trade. The coronavirus outbreak has had a particularly severe impact on China’s output, but is also expected to hit other regional economies, including Australia’s.
A separate marathon in September is still set to go ahead in Pyongyang, according to Young Pioneer Tours, one of several companies that operates trips for foreigners to North Korea. Earlier this month, Philip Lowe, governor of the Reserve Bank of Australia, said the economic fallout of the coronavirus on Australia’s economy could become more significant than the impact of the severe acute respiratory syndrome epidemic in 2002-2003.
Otto Warmbier, a U.S. college student, had entered the country on a Young Pioneer Tours trip before his arrest and death. “China is a larger part of the global economy and more closely integrated with other economies, including Australia,” he told a parliamentary panel. “I think it is quite likely that the international spillovers will be larger than they were back in 2003 with SARS.”
A British repatriation flight scheduled to carry more than 70 Britons quarantined on the Diamond Princess cruise liner has been delayed, according to the British Embassy in Japan. SEOUL — A church and a hospital in South Korea have been identified as likely clusters of coronavirus transmission after 43 and 15 infection cases were linked to the two locations respectively.
The flight, initially scheduled for Friday night, will now leave early Saturday. Organizing the flight was “logistically complicated,” the embassy told the BBC. The departing passengers will be allowed to leave the quarantined ship on Friday instead. The church is in southern city of Daegu and the hospital is in the surrounding North Gyeongsang Province.
The Diamond Princess, carrying more than 3,700 passengers and crew members, has provided one of the most dramatic plotlines in the coronavirus saga. South Korea added 53 new cases of the coronavirus on Thursday, more than doubling its national tally to 104. All but two of the latest cases came in Daegu and North Gyeongsang, according to Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (KCDC).
Ten people on board were initially diagnosed with the disease in early February. Since then, while the ship has remained under quarantine in Japan’s Yokohama harbor, 634 on board have tested positive for the virus. The church is a branch of the Shincheonji Church of Jesus, a fringe religious sect.
That total includes four Britons, but Saturday’s repatriation flight will carry only those who have tested negative. After a 61-year-old woman who attended the church was diagnosed with the virus on Tuesday, health authorities ordered all 1,001 churchgoers to quarantine themselves. Daegu Mayor Kwon Young-jin told a briefing early Thursday that 90 of them said they were symptomatic, while nearly 400 could not be reached by phone.
When it departs Japan on Saturday morning, the United Kingdom-bound flight will land at Boscombe Down military base. The arriving passengers will then be quarantined for an additional 14 days at Arrowe Park Hospital. The church’s founder Lee Man-hee claims he is the second coming of Jesus Christ who will save his 144,000 followers from a forthcoming apocalypse.
Nine people in Britain have tested positive for coronavirus so far. Shincheonji said in a statement on Thursday that the church is wrongfully accused as “the main culprit of coronavirus transmissions,” by those who label the church as a “cult.” Shincheonji said churchgoers inevitably gather in a small space for their services because the church was denied approval to build a larger structure by those who view the group as illegitimate.
Lebanon confirmed its first case of coronavirus on Friday, Health Minister Hamad Hassan said in a news conference, adding that the patient was a 45-year-old woman who arrived in Lebanon from Iran on Thursday. A hospital in Cheongdo County, less than 20 miles from the church, has emerged as the other main center of mass transmission after 15 cases were reported there on Thursday, including the first death from the virus in South Korea.
Hassan said the Lebanese patient, who flew to the capital, Beirut, from Qom, Iran, was placed in quarantine. He also confirmed two other suspected cases and designated a hospital in Beirut as an isolation center for those who show symptoms. The KCDC said it is investigating the hospital’s possible connection to the church since the 61-year-old patient from the church visited Cheongdo County in early February. Some of the infections occurred at the hospital’s locked psychiatric ward and inspection is underway on all patients and staff members at the hospital, according to the KCDC.
Hassan also requested that any Iranian visitors self-impose quarantine in their residences for 14 days, until they confirm they have not contracted the virus. Iran has confirmed a total of 18 cases so far, including four deaths from covid-19, centered in Qom, a Shiite holy city south of Tehran. South Korea’s Vice Health Minister Kim Gang-lip said on Thursday “local transmission” of the coronavirus has begun in parts of the country.
The health minister and the head of the Lebanese Red Cross warned against the spread of hysteria after voice notes and false news circulated via messaging services and on social media in Lebanon, including a rumor that two dead bodies were on the plane — which the minister denied. South Korea’s military also saw its first coronavirus case in a soldier who visited Daegu, the country’s state-funded Yonhap News agency reported on Thursday citing unnamed sources.
Hassan emphasized the importance of preventive treatment at this stage. “Do not mix with those infected with respiratory diseases who are isolated at home,” Hassan said during the news conference. “Leave your neighbors in their houses: now is not the time for visits.” TOKYO — The Japanese city of Nagoya said it would only allow elite runners to compete in its women’s marathon on March 8, recognized as the largest women’s marathon in the world, due to fears of spreading the new coronavirus, while an open city marathon due to take place on the same day was canceled.
MOSCOW — Ukrainian model Anastasiya Zinchenko refused to be evacuated from Wuhan, the epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak, because she was not allowed to take her dog with her, she wrote Thursday on Instagram. The decision follows a similar decision taken by Tokyo on Monday, which also decided to restrict its March 1 race to elite runners.
Still in Wuhan with Misha, her Pomeranian pup, Zinchenko received a phone call Friday from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, posting video of the exchange on Instagram. Zelensky’s office confirmed that he called Zinchenko, according to the BBC’s Jonah Fisher. On their websites, the organizers of the twin marathons in Nagoya said the races had been expected to attract 40,000 runners, but “cannot help but create crowded areas and close contacts between runners and visitors.”
“We won’t leave you there,” Zelensky says to Zinchenko in the video, adding that he only recently heard of her situation. “Much to our regret, we reached a conclusion that it is extremely difficult to stage a safe and secure event that all runners can participate [in] without worries,” it said, explaining that only elite runners who can complete a marathon in under three hours will be allowed to compete in the women’s race.
Zinchenko said the Ukrainian Embassy initially told her she would not be allowed to evacuate with the dog but later relented on the condition that “everything meets the sanitary standards.” She said she got veterinary approval but was then told by the Ukrainian Embassy that Chinese authorities refused to let the dog evacuate with her. “We are terribly sorry for our nonelite runners who have been practicing hard for the race and for everyone else who were looking forward to seeing and cheering runners on race day,” the organizers said.
“I wanted to call you personally because I find it very important,” Zelensky told Zinchenko. “We will surely find means and ways.” Meanwhile, the Japan Para Sports Association (JPSA) postponed a boccia tournament that doubles as a test event for the Tokyo Paralympics, to protect athletes.
SEOUL — South Korea on Friday reported its second death from the new coronavirus, according to the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (KCDC). Boccia is a game, similar to bowls and pétanque, involving throwing small blue and red leather balls, toward a white jack, and is open to people with severe physical disabilities.
The woman in her 50s died after being diagnosed with the virus at Daenam hospital in Cheongdo, in the southern North Gyeongsang province. The JPSA “concluded that further time is necessary to fully analyze the potential impacts should the novel coronavirus affect an athlete,” Tokyo 2020 said in a statement, adding that it will nevertheless will carry out the test event “in some form, after ensuring a safe and secure environment.”
The hospital has recorded 16 coronavirus cases, including South Korea’s first death from the virus on Thursday, according to the KCDC. Of the 16, five were doctors and staff members at the hospital. The decisions are the latest in postponements and cancellations of pre-Olympic and other sporting events due to coronavirus fears, underlining the uncertainties surrounding the summer Tokyo Olympic and Paralympic Games.
The woman had been hospitalized at Daenam and was transferred to a bigger hospital in nearby Busan after contracting the virus. She died around 6.p.m. Hundreds of crew members aboard a cruise ship docked in Cambodia have all tested negative for covid-19, the vessel’s operator said, despite fears they had possibly been exposed to coronavirus while aboard.
KCDC Director Jung Eun-kyeong told reporters Friday that the confined environment at Daenam hospital’s locked psychiatric ward could have given rise to transmissions there. It was not immediately clear if the woman had been hospitalized at the psychiatric ward. In a statement Thursday, Holland America Line said that all 747 crew members on the Westerdam had been cleared following tests ordered by Cambodian health officials.
The KCDC is investigating the hospital’s link to a bigger cluster of coronavirus infections at a church in the nearby city of Daegu. After the cruise had docked in Sihanoukville, Cambodia last Thursday, several governments — including the American one — assumed the ship was virus-free and allowed passengers to disembark and travel to other destinations around the world.
More than two-thirds of South Korea’s 204 coronavirus cases are traced to the Daegu church, according to the KCDC. That conclusion came into question when an 83-year-old American woman tested positive for the virus days later in Kuala Lumpur. Public health officials have since been scrambling to determine if passengers had been exposed to the virus while on board.
Iran raised its coronavirus count Friday, reporting two deaths among overall 13 new confirmed cases, the state-run Mehr News Agency reported. All 781 guests still aboard the ship tested negative for coronavirus on Wednesday.
On Wednesday, two elderly Iranians were the first in the country reported to both have and then die of covid-19. So far, there have been 18 cases in total, according to Iran’s health ministry. Holland America said that 25 crew members were supposed to disembark the ship on Feb. 15, at the end of their work contracts, but are now cleared to travel home. All others will remain with the docked vessel as its future itinerary is finalized.
The outbreak has centered in the Shiite holy city of Qom, where authorities have closed all schools and seminaries and requested the suspension of religious gatherings. Authorities in Hubei province reported good news Thursday: There were only 349 new coronavirus cases the previous day, the lowest tally in weeks.
Kianoush Jahanpur, a Health Ministry spokesman, said the latest cases all involved people either from Qom or who had recently visited there, Mehr reported. The bad — and puzzling — news? Wuhan, the capital of Hubei, reported 615 new cases all by itself.
In response to the outbreak, neighboring Iraq and nearby Kuwait banned travelers from Iran. The two countries both have citizens who frequently travel to Iran for pilgrimages, as well as strong business and trade ties. As Chinese leaders and state media strike a coordinated note this week about the government’s ability to contain the outbreak, inconsistencies and sudden changes in official data are leaving international experts struggling to plot meaningful trends — or even place any confidence in the figures coming from government.
Israel’s Health Ministry confirmed Friday the first case of an Israeli citizen having contracted covid-19 while aboard the Diamond Princess cruise ship, docked in a port in Japan. The female patient is under supervision and in isolation, the ministry said, according to Israeli media. Hubei authorities have changed their criteria for counting cases twice in the past week. An earlier change that was applauded by international researchers led to a sudden spike in case numbers on Feb. 12. And the latest shift — the sixth time that national guidelines have been edited since Jan. 15 — caused an overnight drop in new cases from 1,693 to 349.
Officials stressed that the patient did not contract the virus in Israel. Jonathan Read, an epidemiologist at the University of Lancaster, said case definitions sometimes do need to be edited as authorities come to grips with how a novel pathogen manifests itself.
Eleven Israeli citizens were among the more than 3,000 passengers and crew quarantined on the cruise liner after a coronavirus outbreak on board. In total, 634 of the ship’s occupants have tested positive for the virus and two have died of covid-19, according to Japanese health authorities. “That said, it is very unhelpful for surveillance purposes to change how you define a case too often,” he said.
The 11 Israelis were flown out of Japan and sent directly Friday into isolation at Sheba Tel Hashomer Hospital, where they will remain for a quarantine period. The latest inconsistency — how one city appeared to have more cases than the total in the province — apparently arose because Hubei province deducted cases that have not been confirmed through genetic tests from a total reported case number, which includes all diagnoses made by physicians using other methods.
In an effort to prevent the entry of the virus into Israel, Israel’s government on Monday announced a temporary travel ban on all foreign nationals who in the past 14 days had traveled to Thailand, Singapore, Hong Kong and Macao. At best, the constant changes have frustrated scholars. At worst, they have raised suspicions.
Thailand has asked Israel to reconsider including it on the ban, which affects about 25,000 Thai workers employed largely in agriculture in Israel. “Sloppiness of cheating the case # is getting to level of ridiculous,” Eric Feigl-Ding, a visiting scientist at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, said on Twitter.
BEIJING — Reporting of case statistics at the epidemic epicenter in China appeared to descend into disarray Friday as public health officials said they had been ordered to change how they count cases for the third time in eight days — and the second time in 24 hours. To be sure, there is no smoking gun suggesting that Chinese officials fabricate numbers out of whole cloth — at least not since late January. But researchers widely say that the official figures likely underestimate the true infection numbers because of limited testing capacity in China and the prevalence of cases with mild or no symptoms. That is why at least having case numbers collected with consistent methodology would help scholars chart the general contours, if not the precise values, of how the epidemic is unfolding.
In remarks to the state news agency Xinhua, a Hubei Health Commission official suggested that agencies were not being transparent and accurate with their reported case numbers at a time when statistics have fluctuated wildly and inconsistencies have emerged in Chinese official data. When cases spiked on Feb. 12, coinciding with the Communist Party naming several new officials to oversee Hubei and Wuhan, Chinese political observers predicted that the move allowed the new regime to wipe the slate clean and be able to show progress as the numbers steadily decreased from there. That prediction has been largely borne out.
Tu Yuanchao, deputy director of Hubei’s health commission, told Xinhua on Friday that the newly installed Communist Party chief of Hubei province, Ying Yong, reversed an earlier decision to deduct coronavirus cases that were not confirmed by genetic tests from the total case number, which included diagnoses made by physicians. Meanwhile, the newly installed officials in the region have said they need accurate statistics. The party boss of Wuhan, Wang Zhonglin, has ordered a citywide sweep to find all remaining cases of coronavirus infections so that the city would have “baseline” statistics to work with.
The order from Ying, the former Shanghai mayor brought in by the Communist Party leadership to take charge in Hubei, reversed an earlier move that allowed the province to report sharply lower numbers as the Chinese government looks to present an image of normalcy slowly returning across the country this week. As a result, Hubei announced a sharp surge in new cases again on Friday to more than 1,000 — as well as the startling revelation that the coronavirus was spreading inside prisons and has infected hundreds of inmates, without the information being disclosed to the public. “If we can’t see the baseline, our resistance campaign isn’t reliable,” he said. At the same time, he issued a warning to local party cadres: If one more case were to be found in a household, he said, that district’s party secretary would be held accountable.
“Next, we will further strengthen discipline and tighten management to ensure the openness and transparency, timeliness and accuracy of epidemic statistics,” Tu was quoted by Xinhua as saying. MANILA — After two weeks on board the coronavirus-hit Diamond Princess cruise ship, about 500 Filipinos are set to return to the Philippines on Sunday.
A senior-ranking official in the Communist Party’s political and legal apparatus also warned cadres on Friday in a widely disseminated speech that “hiding” cases or manipulating numbers will no longer be tolerated. Health Secretary Francisco Duque said Thursday that all of those repatriated will undergo a 14-day quarantine in a facility that housed athletes during the Southeast Asian Games.
Inconsistencies in China’s epidemic data, particularly in Hubei, have presented frustrations for biostatisticians trying to gain a crucial understanding of how the outbreak is progressing. More than 40 Filipinos have been infected with the novel coronavirus, and all have received treatment in hospitals in Japan, where the ship is docked. The patient in the first case has since tested negative for the virus and been released.
Statistics in China are politically sensitive, and Communist Party officials at every level are rewarded or punished based on their performance against certain numerical benchmarks. Only those who are asymptomatic will be allowed to board the two flights, set to land at Clark Airport north of Manila.
In one particularly glaring moment that drew ridicule this week, Wuhan, a city with one-sixth the population of Hubei, reported twice the number of new coronavirus cases as the entire province. A total of 538 Filipinos were on board the Diamond Princess, mostly crew members and seven passengers.
Six people in a city near Milan have tested positive for coronavirus, marking the first cases of local transmission of the virus in Italy, the country’s ANSA news agency reported. Authorities in Iran confirmed three new cases of the coronavirus Thursday as they shuttered schools and evacuated hospitals, just one day after two Iranians infected by the virus died in the city of Qom.
Officials say the first to locally contract the virus was a 38-year-old man in the northern region of Lombardy, who became sick after having dinner with a friend who recently returned from China. All of the patients who tested positive for the virus were from Qom, a holy city and pilgrimage site for Shiite Muslims. One of the patients is a doctor under quarantine in the nearby city of Arak, according to a Health Ministry spokesman.
He then passed the virus on to his wife and another close friend, according to Reuters. Seven more patients with viral-like symptoms were being monitored at hospitals in the capital, Tehran, and in the northern city of Babol.
ANSA reported that the man is in serious condition, including respiratory insufficiency, and has been admitted to the intensive care unit at a hospital in Codogno, about 35 miles southeast of Milan. Both other patients have also been hospitalized. Authorities said they did not know how the patients — two of whom died late Wednesday — contracted the virus, which originated in China in December.
After initially reporting three cases, Italian officials raised the count Friday to six. “The victims in Qom did not travel abroad and were not in touch with foreigners or any Chinese people,” Mohammad Mehdi Gouya, director general of the department of infectious disease management at the Ministry of Health, told the state-run Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA).
Local police have since tried to retrace the couple’s steps over the past four days, including where they went to work, exercised and had contact with other people, ANSA reported. The 38-year-old man’s family and the friend who came from China have all been placed in isolation. Another health official, Massoud Mardani, said family members of the two deceased patients, both of whom were elderly, were placed under quarantine. One of the victims was a 65-year-old war veteran who suffered from the lingering effects of exposure to chemical weapons during the Iran-Iraq War, the Mehr News Agency quoted Iran’s health minister as saying.
As of Tuesday, about 40 cases of the novel coronavirus had been confirmed elsewhere in Europe. “It is likely that many more people among the relatives and friends of the two deceased victims in Qom are infected,” said Mardani, a member of the Health Ministry’s infectious diseases committee, the Iranian Students’ News Agency reported.
Correction: An earlier version of this post reported incorrectly that the three new cases were Italy’s first coronavirus infections. They were the first cases of local transmission. In Qom, authorities closed schools and universities and cleared two hospitals to receive patients suspected of having contracted the virus. In Tehran, 10 hospitals were designated to receive suspected cases, state media reported.
YOKOHAMA, Japan — When Wayne and Susan Hidalgo heard that a fellow passenger on the Diamond Princess had been diagnosed with the new coronavirus, he was not too worried. BEIJING — The coronavirus may never disappear fully and instead come around seasonally like the flu, a Chinese expert said Thursday.
When he discovered that one of the people he regularly dined with on board had shared a bus with the infected passenger on a shore excursion, he didn’t think too much about it, at first. Wang Chen, vice director of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, said in a popular state television talk show “News 1+1” that unlike its viral sibling, the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) coronavirus that spread for several months before fading away in 2003, the novel species may simply never go away.
“But as time went on, after a day or so, I wondered, why are we eating dinner with these people? Why is everybody out dancing? Why are they having these shows going on?” the 77-year-old from Kansas City said by telephone from his hospital bed in Tokyo. “It could become chronic and coexist with humans like the flu,” Wang said. “We have to make good preparations for this.”
Japan’s Health Ministry says 88 Americans on board the ship have been diagnosed with covid-19, with most taken to hospitals. Some 14 people with the virus were controversially allowed to board charter flights bound for California and Texas, after their test results came back just before they were due to take off. Wang said the new coronavirus, technically known as SARS-CoV-2, appears less lethal to humans than its predecessor. The disease caused by the virus has been named covid-19 by the World Health Organization.
That left many Americans behind in Japan searching for answers. The original SARS “kills its host, and then it’s eliminated itself,” said Wang, as he called for more resources to be spent on researching the pathogen.
The Hidalgos’ children want them to be brought home, arguing that it’s “not fair” they’ve been left behind in Japan while other Americans have been brought home. Researchers worldwide are racing to study the structure of SARS-CoV-2 and develop a vaccine after Chinese scientists shared its genome in a database earlier this month. An approved vaccine remains far off.
Susan, 76, says they just want to get back to Kansas City, but Wayne says he knows that isn’t going to happen until they are given the all-clear by Japanese doctors, for which they each need two successive negative tests. Two firms, Johnson & Johnson’s Janssen pharmaceutical unit and Sanofi Pasteur, said this week they are partnering with the Department of Health and Human Services to work on a vaccine.
Wayne says he is suffering from mild pneumonia, and has been put on oxygen, but only had a fleeting fever. He’s taking antibiotics, but doctors haven’t felt it necessary to put him on antiretroviral tablets that are being given to the most severely ill patients. Susan doesn’t have any symptoms. SEOUL — South Korea reported its first death from the coronavirus outbreak on Thursday.
An official from the U.S. Embassy has paid a visit, bringing them some clothes and some local currency, while Princess Cruises, the owner of the ship, has been in regular contact, with their Tokyo representative calling every day. Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (KCDC) said in a statement that the dead patient who tested positive for the virus was linked to a preexisting cluster centered on a hospital in Cheongdo, North Gyeongsang Province, where 15 patients are believed to have contracted the virus.
But he does wonder if the cruise liner operator “dropped the ball” by allowing passengers to continue to mingle freely with each other for two to three days, after news broke that the passenger from Hong Kong had been infected. He was in his early 60s and died at the hospital on Wednesday. He tested positive for the virus posthumously on Thursday, according to the KCDC.
MOSCOW — Ukrainians evacuated from the Chinese city of Wuhan, the epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak, were met with protests and violence Thursday upon arriving back in Ukraine. The KCDC said the cause of his death is identified as pneumonia, at the moment, but the exact cause is under investigation.
Residents fearful of potentially infected people in the town of Novi Sanzhary threw stones at the 45 Ukrainian and 27 foreign evacuees and clashed with police, according to local media reports. The stones smashed a window of the bus carrying the evacuees. It was not immediately clear whether anyone was injured. Videos posted on social media showed scores of police dragging protesters away. South Korea’s national tally of coronavirus infections more than doubled to 104 on Thursday from 51 the previous day.
The incident appeared to have been sparked by the circulation of a fraudulent email that Ukrainian intelligence officials said originated outside the country. The email, which coincided with the arrival of Wuhan evacuees, purported to be from Ukraine’s Health Ministry and was sent to the ministry’s entire contact list. It falsely said there were five cases of coronavirus in the country. MANILA — Airlines in the Philippines will offer tickets on sale in a bid to make up for lost revenue caused by the coronavirus outbreak.
Just two Ukrainians have been infected — both were quarantined in Japan on the Diamond Princess cruise ship — and they have since recovered. One major airline, Cebu Pacific Air, posted on Thursday lower prices for flights to Hong Kong, Macao, and Taipei, where a travel ban was recently eased.
“Those events that took place yesterday, in my opinion, are the result of, among other things, the information war that is ongoing against our country, both from the inside and the outside,” Ukrainian Prime Minister Oleksiy Honcharuk said Friday in an address to parliament. International travel dropped by around 16 percent from the same period last year, according to airport authorities. There was also a 3 percent drop in domestic travel.
“I suppose that the provocations will continue,” he added. “I think that the information field will continue to swing, to create a panic, to sow distrust and discord among us.” The Department of Tourism said lower prices for domestic destinations will be available soon — and Air Asia and Philippine Airlines would follow suit.
Angola has released 50 travelers who arrived from China, ending what may be one of the first quarantines in Africa meant to stop the possible spread of coronavirus. It added the sale is the first leg of a recovery campaign targeted toward domestic travelers. Upcoming plans will cover lower rates with partner hotels, tour operators and malls.
The group of travelers held in the capital, Luanda, included 13 people from Angola, 36 from China and one from Brazil, according to the country’s official ANGOP news agency. The department is also mounting a month-long, nationwide sale in March with over a dozen partner malls and associations. Officials clarified that this effort was already planned ahead of the outbreak.
While there are no confirmed cases of coronavirus in Africa, global health officials have expressed concerns that some countries on the continent may be especially ill-equipped to handle the virus in the event of an outbreak. Tourism officials initially estimated around $790 million in losses between February and April.
The World Health Organization has identified 13 countries across the continent, including Angola, as “vulnerable” because of high volumes of travel or their direct links to China. About 10,000 Chinese firms operate in Africa, and the continent’s largest airline, Ethiopian Airlines, has continued its flights to China despite intense public pressure. The global epidemic has taken a hit on Southeast Asian countries that rely heavily on tourism. In the Philippines, an archipelago known for its beaches, the sector accounted for over 12 percent of the economy in 2018.
WHO has sent kits to 29 labs on the continent to equip them to handle the virus, the BBC reported, with the ultimate goal of ensuring that 36 African countries are prepared. BEIJING — To minimize the economic impact, Chinese officials have been trying to kick-start businesses after weeks of near-total paralysis. But it’s not easy.
Outside of Angola, more than 100 people were quarantined earlier this month after arriving in Uganda. Botswana, Ethiopia, Ghana, Ivory Coast and Kenya have all also dealt with suspected cases, though only Egypt has confirmed a case so far. Chinese businesses have been slowly getting back to work in the past 10 days, and local governments have rolled out favorable policies to facilitate the process. Some manufacturers have offered cash rewards to workers that agree to come back and man production lines.
TOKYO — Tokyo’s governor said Friday that her government would cancel or postpone many large-scale official events for the next three weeks to prevent the spread of the new coronavirus. But stories are cropping up around the country of companies resuming work, only to send employees home or to quarantine after infections are discovered.
Gov. Yuriko Koike told a news conference that her government regards the period until March 15 as “an important period for the prevention of the spread of infection” and will “in principle” cancel or postpone events organized by the government that might pose risks to participants. A company with more than 400 employees in the southwest metropolis of Chongqing was forced to halt production this week after the discovery of cluster of coronavirus cases. At least three employees have been confirmed to have been infected and more than 100 have been quarantined at Chongqing Titanium Industry Co., Ltd., Caixin reported.
Some events, such as graduation ceremonies, will be allowed to go ahead provided they implement measures to prevent the virus from spreading. Outdoor events that do not serve meals will also be held after conducting risk assessments, she said. In eastern China, four companies reported new clusters of infection this week, according to Hangzhou Daily. More than 200 employees resumed work but were quickly quarantined after one employee became unwell in a Suzhou company, the paper said.
The announcement came just 154 days before the opening of the Tokyo Olympics. Over the past week, Tokyo has reported 25 confirmed cases of covid-19, including several related to a party held by a taxi drivers’ union. The government has set up a special task force panel to discuss measures against the spread of virus. On Wednesday, the Chinese e-commerce company Dangdang reported a case within its ranks and promptly sent all its workers home again.
Koike told reporters that in view of recent trends, she sees the next three weeks as a “crucial moment.” The epidemic has already deeply affected countless businesses. Chinese Internet has been awash with reports of businesses cutting wages or laying off staff. A survey by Tsinghua University and Peking University showed that 85 percent of businesses did not have cash to survive longer than three months under current conditions, and many were already cutting positions, according to the Chinese tech news blog 36KR.
BEIJING — Chinese researchers are reporting progress in developing a coronavirus vaccine. TOKYO — Japan’s government said two more government officials working on board the Diamond Princess had fallen sick with the new coronavirus, bringing to six the number of support staff who have contracted covid-19 and reinforcing concerns about inadequate infection controls on board the cruise ship.
The first vaccine is expected to be submitted for clinical trials around late April, Chinese vice minister of Science and Technology Xu Nanping told reporters on Friday. Animal models of mice and monkeys infected with the novel coronavirus have also been constructed, which will provide support for drug screening, vaccine development and research on viral transmission mechanism. The latest cases were a Health Ministry official in his 40s, and an official from the cabinet office in his 30s, both of whom fell sick with fevers on Feb. 18, between six and seven days after starting work on board the boat.
China set up a coronavirus scientific research group about one month ago, with 14 experts led by renowned pulmonologist Zhong Nanshan. Earlier the government reported that a quarantine officer, a Health Ministry official, an ambulance driver and a medical staffer had all fallen sick after entering the boat or dealing with infected passengers or crew.
“One month is a very short time for scientific research, but a very long time for patients struggling with the disease. The scientific and technological community nationwide will put the safety of people’s lives and health first and spare no effort to continue to produce tangible and effective scientific research results,” Xu told reporters, adding that vaccine development in China was “synchronized” with that of teams in other countries. A leading infectious disease expert published a damning video this week after visiting the ship, complaining of chaotic and scary conditions on board, and a “completely inadequate” system to control the spread of the virus.
Pharmaceutical firms including Johnson & Johnson’s Janssen unit and Sanofi Pasteur have been working with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services on a vaccine. The video received well over a million views, and became a major embarrassment for the government. On Thursday, Kentaro Iwata of Kobe University removed his video from YouTube, saying it had served its purpose, that procedures had since been improved and leaving it up any longer would be “divisive.”
BEIJING — Across China, governments are continuing to wrestle with the coronavirus — and the concept of transparency. The government vigorously pushed back against the criticism, with the Health Ministry insisting infection control experts had been involved in establishing proper infection control measures on board the ship, including proper zoning between areas where protective suits are needed and areas free of the virus. It denies forcing Iwata to remove his video.
The health commission in Xiantao, west of Wuhan, issued a gag order on Tuesday warning employees not to speak to reporters or leak documents that would “incite online discourse and cause negative social impact.” It leaked anyway. But the latest test results showing two more officials fell sick will reinforce the impression that Iwata’s criticisms were valid, and may raise the question of whether people who worked on board the ship should themselves be placed in quarantine.
The document touched a nerve once it landed online: Chinese Internet users drew parallels with how police in late December silenced doctors in Wuhan who had shared documents proving the existence of a novel coronavirus. That delayed the government’s response to the epidemic during a crucial period and later became a national scandal. The Health Ministry said both officials diagnosed with the virus wore gloves and masks while carrying out their duties.
“Do you know how Wuhan and Hubei’s epidemic became so severe in the first place? When these things happen, you only know one thing: suppression!” the top commenter on a Weibo thread said. Other commenters wondered if the Xiantao government was breaking the law by warning employees from speaking out. At least 65 crew members are among the 621 people who have contracted the virus on board the ship. The Japanese government says its data analysis shows that most of the passengers who contracted the virus did so before the quarantine was imposed on Feb. 5, apart from people who shared cabins with infected people.
On Wednesday, Xiantao officials backtracked. Asked to explain the document by reporters from Chongqing’s Shangyou Daily, they said the earlier directive was “inappropriate” and had been retracted. That shows, it said, that the quarantine was effective.
National-level officials have expressed worry about the epidemic’s spread in less-developed parts of Hubei in places like Xiantao, which is about 90 minutes’ drive from Wuhan and has a population of over 1 million. As of Thursday night, Xiantao reported 568 confirmed cases, a relatively low number among Hubei cities. But it acknowledged that crew members apparently continued to pass the virus to each other during the quarantine period, noting that it was not possible to isolate them from each other as they needed to keep working to maintain the ship’s operations.
Chinese citizens have fumed in recent weeks about the culture of secrecy and coverups that pervades their government. Some Internet users have compared Beijing’s approach to the ossified Soviet Union portrayed in last year’s television series Chernobyl, which has been a minor hit on Chinese streaming sites. The crew will have to undergo a further quarantine period.
Wuhan’s original “whistleblower doctor,” Li Wenliang, contracted the disease and died Feb. 7, becoming a martyr in the eyes of many Chinese who were moved by his calls for freedom of speech. But in the wake of his death, online memorials and criticism of government censorship have been quickly suppressed. On Thursday, Japan continued to allow passengers to disembark from the ship and rejoin the general population provided they have tested negative for the virus.
The city of Moscow has placed 2,500 travelers who came from China under two-week quarantine orders, its mayor said, adding that officials will continue to apply such measures. The United States and other nations take a different view about the effectiveness of the quarantine, insisting that their citizens from the ship undergo a further 14-day quarantine period in their home countries.
In a post on his personal blog, Mayor Sergey Sobyanin said that all airline passengers coming to Moscow from China, whether directly or through other countries, will also undergo tests for coronavirus. Anyone with a fever or other symptoms will be immediately hospitalized. On Thursday, Japan said two passengers from the cruise ship had died, a man and a woman both in their 80s who had contracted the virus on board the vessel.
A temporary entry ban on all Chinese travelers took effect Thursday in Russia, but Sobyanin’s order also looks to address the possible spread of the virus among those who are already in the city. Any passengers who took one of 58 recent flights from China to Moscow are being instructed not to leave their homes or hotels for two weeks, he said. Read more about criticism of conditions on board the ship here: Japan’s coronavirus response on cruise ship ‘completely inadequate,’ says health expert
To enforce the quarantine order, Sobyanin said that the Moscow government is conducting raids on homes and hotels and employing automated facial recognition systems and other technical measures. A major Korean electronics company has instructed hundreds of employees to stay home out of concerns regarding coronavirus, a spokesperson for SK Hynix said.
On his blog, he described how this might work in practice: After erroneously testing positive for coronavirus, one Chinese citizen was caught on security cameras violating her quarantine by leaving her apartment to meet a neighbor. The order was put in place following an orientation session for new employees on Wednesday, during which one person reported feeling ill and another confirmed they had been in contact with a coronavirus patient. Neither individual has tested positive for the virus so far.
In addition, the taxi driver for one recent arrival from China was tracked down using cameras at the Moscow airport, though she tested negative for coronavirus and quarantine was not required. The company, which is the world’s second-largest maker of memory chips, employs 27,000 people across three locations in South Korea. The quarantine applies to just one building at its headquarters in Icheon.
Elsewhere in Russia, the passengers of a train traveling from Kyiv, Ukraine, to Moscow were quarantined in the city of Bryansk, about halfway along that route, after a Chinese citizen on board was removed and taken to a hospital, according to Interfax news agency. Yet SK Hynix is nonetheless taking precautions with all of those who may have come in contact with the two possible patients, said the spokeswoman, Hyun Kyung Olivia Lee, whether in the training building or on shuttle buses that take workers to the Icheon campus.
SEOUL — Russian diplomats in North Korea are kept in a “house arrest-like” quarantine in their embassy building and residential complex, Moscow’s top envoy to Pyongyang told the Russian news agency Tass. The order was in effect on Thursday, and SK Hynix is awaiting the two individuals’ test results before determining whether to extend the quarantine.
Russia’s ambassador to North Korea Alexander Matsegora told the state-run Tass on Thursday that officials at the embassy are “going through difficult times” in a quarantine “not much different from house arrest.” Elsewhere in South Korea, a home shopping TV network had reportedly closed earlier this month after one of its employees was confirmed to have contracted covid-19.
Matsegora said he and his colleagues cannot leave the diplomatic compound since all foreigners in the country have been put under strict quarantine until March 1. Even within the compound, no movement is allowed except for taking out trash and visiting a grocery store inside the grounds, according to Matsegora. BEIJING — One of the world’s most notorious fugitive financiers may have gotten out of the frying pan and into the hot zone: Wuhan.
Embassy work is also disrupted as staff members have not had any meetings with North Korean officials nor diplomats from other countries, he said. Malaysian officials said Wednesday they have intelligence showing that Jho Low, the businessman wanted by several governments and accused of siphoning more than $4 billion from a public Malaysian fund, had been hiding in the Chinese city at the center of the coronavirus outbreak.
North Korea’s official Korean Central News Agency said last week that mandatory quarantine period for all foreigners has been doubled from two weeks to a month under an “emergency” measure. “Previously, he [Low] was confirmed to have been hiding in Wuhan, based on international investigations,” Malaysian Inspector-General of Police Tan Sri Abdul Hamid Bador told reporters, according to the New Straits Times. “There has been no new information on whether he has fled the city following the covid-19 outbreak.”
Since the coronavirus outbreak in neighboring China, North Korea has maintained that there is no evidence of the virus in the country. The World Health Organization, too, said on Tuesday that there is “no indication” of coronavirus outbreak in the isolated nation. Low was widely rumored to be hiding in either China or Cyprus the last four years since the unraveling of an extraordinary scheme involving the Malaysian sovereign wealth fund 1MDB. In one of the biggest heists in history, Low allegedly spent billions from the fund on art and jewelry purchases, real estate investments, a super yacht — and the production of the Martin Scorsese film “Wolf of Wall Street.” Aside from Malaysia, Low is also wanted by the United States and Singapore.
However, South Korean news outlets reported multiple cases of the virus in the North earlier this month, citing unnamed sources. It’s unclear why Low has enjoyed Chinese state protection, but Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad told reporters in November that Malaysia did not have enough leverage to pressure Beijing to hand over the fugitive because “we are not a very strong nation.”
North Korean state media said on Friday that the country is making efforts to “prevent the coronavirus from ever entering.” It also described strict quarantines on people who recently returned from countries where coronavirus infection was reported. Inspector general Abdul Hamid joked Wednesday that Low should voluntarily come home if he contracted the coronavirus.
North Korea has also cut cross-border air and train routes since the virus outbreak. The Malaysian Health Ministry is “among the best,” he quipped. “They cured nine people already.”
Authorities in three Chinese provinces on Friday announced viral outbreaks inside prisons that added roughly 500 cases to the cumulative case count and the stark prospect of contagion now spreading through the densely packed facilities. Thailand called on Israel to reconsider its travel ban on the country in light of the novel coronavirus outbreak, according to local reports.
In Hubei province at the heart of the epidemic, 230 cases were found at a women’s prison in Wuhan, while 41 more cases were reported in a nearby county. Shandong province announced that 10 percent of the 2,077 inmates and staff at Renchang prison were infected. Zhejiang province reported 34 infections were reported at a jail. Thousands of Thai nationals work as laborers in Israel’s agricultural sector under a pact between the two countries, providing a vital source of remittance income, but the Israel restrictions have officials in Bangkok worried.
It’s not clear why the cases came to light in quick succession on Friday, or when the infections were first discovered. Various authorities appeared to disclose the outbreaks only after Shandong province announced the dismissal of its justice department’s Communist Party chief Friday and revealed the scale of infections at Renchang prison. Israel has implemented restrictions on entry for noncitizens who have been in China in the past 14 days, but this week extended that to also cover those coming from Thailand, Singapore, Hong Kong and Macao.
Within hours, several other provinces announced that they, too, had outbreaks inside penal facilities. The Bangkok Post on Thursday quoted Foreign Affairs Ministry deputy spokesperson Natapanu Nopakun as saying the Thai ambassador in Israel explained Thailand’s efforts to control the spread of the virus to their counterparts.
Wu Lei, head of Shandong Prison Administrative Bureau, told reporters Friday that two police officers were confirmed to have the coronavirus on Feb. 12 and 13 and the prison began “transferring prisoners to a single room” as a precautionary measure on Feb. 14. “We felt really guilty. It revealed the ineffectiveness of our preventive measures,” he said, according to Chinese media. “Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs listened and understood,” said Natapanu. “It will contact other agencies, particularly Israel’s Ministry of Public Health.”
The Hubei health commission said in a statement Friday that because prisons were not linked to its centralized case reporting system, the provincial commission only updated their tallies after receiving reports from prisons “by hand” late Thursday. In an earlier statement, the Thai Embassy in Tel Aviv stressed that the country had no reported deaths and was contributing to research on treating the virus.
The prison case counts appeared to further scramble the case data reported by the Chinese government. Hubei province revised its statistics on Friday to at least partially — but not fully — account for prison cases, but discrepancies in the arithmetic remained. Thailand has 35 recorded cases of the coronavirus.
National officials have not publicly addressed how they would confront the problem. SEOUL — After a sudden jump in coronavirus cases, the mayor of South Korea’s fourth largest city, Daegu, urged all its 2.5 million residents Thursday to stay indoors.
Days before the announcements, speculation had surfaced on Chinese social media that prisons in Shandong and Zhejiang may be ravaged by the coronavirus but never officially confirmed. “Dear citizens, from today, please refrain from going out,” Kwon Young-jin said after 30 new cases of the virus were reported in the city and surrounding North Gyeongsang Province on Thursday.
After several days of widely fluctuating statistics, state-controlled media Friday began to circulate remarks by the secretary general of the Communist Party’s powerful political and legal commission, Chen Yixin, warning the entire bureaucracy to report accurate numbers and not “hide” cases. Daegu has temporarily shut nurseries in the city. Schools could also have their winter holiday extended to prevent the spread of the virus, according to the city’s education authorities.
“Behind the numbers lies the lives of the people and the credibility of the government,” Chen said. Posts on social media reported that malls and restaurants in downtown Daegu were nearly empty following the spike in virus cases.
North Korea has closed all of its schools as of Thursday in response to fears about the spreading coronavirus, the Daily NK reported. Some 23 out of the 30 cases were linked to a Daegu church that a 61-year-old patient had attended, according to Korea’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The church has been shut down and the churchgoers are being tested for the virus, according to Kwon.
The closure affects all of the country’s educational institutions, from child-care centers though secondary schools and most colleges, except for universities in Pyongyang, according to the Seoul-based news website. South Korea has confirmed 82 cases of covid-19.
Pyongyang university students who live in the capital have been told to stay at home, while those who come from other parts of the country have been ordered not to leave their dormitories, the Daily NK reported. A chartered flight carrying more than 150 Australian citizens and permanent residents from Japan landed home on Thursday morning, local media reported.
Although the coronavirus originated in neighboring China, which has since documented tens of thousands of cases, North Korea has insisted it is free of the virus. On Wednesday, officials with the World Health Organization said there are “no indications” of covid-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus. Passengers on the Qantas repatriation flight had been quarantined on the Diamond Princess cruise ship off the coast of Yokohama, Japan, which had been put on lockdown for two weeks amid hundreds of new cases.
The school closure has nonetheless sparked some fears that an outbreak is already underway in North Korea, according to the Daily NK, even as all foreign tourists have been blocked from entering the country. The evacuees, including many elderly people, were required to pass a health check to disembark the vessel and go through several additional screenings before boarding the Boeing 747 at Tokyo’s Haneda Airport.
BEIJING — Wuhan has dumped nearly 2,000 tons of disinfectant in the city’s drainage networks in a bid to prevent the coronavirus from spreading through the sewer system, which has been a growing concern with troubling historical precedent. On the plane, passengers had no in-person contact with Qantas crew members, and food was waiting for them at their seats as they boarded, according to news.com.au. Upon landing in Australia, they were screened for the virus several times and will now spend two weeks at a quarantine facility near Darwin, on the country’s northern coast.
Since Jan. 29, Wuhan — the epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak — has mobilized over 6,500 people to pour 1,936 tons of disinfectant down the drains, targeting pipelines, septic tanks and sewage wells in hospitals, centralized quarantine facilities and other “high risk” areas, the city’s water authority said on Thursday. Prime Minister Scott Morrison said the evacuees will be quarantined at a separate part of the facility from more than 250 evacuees who had been brought home from Wuhan, the Chinese city at the center of the virus, and who are expected to be released on Sunday.
The move came after research showed the virus can survive in human feces and that the pathogen could be transmitted along the fecal-oral route, despite repeated assurances from the government in the early days that it is only transmitted through direct contact with virus-laden droplets from an infected person. About 10 of the Australians set to leave the ship and join the repatriation flight were ordered at the last minute to stay behind after being told they had tested positive for coronavirus, the Australian reported.
In 2003, over 300 residents in Hong Kong’s Amoy Gardens compound were infected with the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) virus due to the defective design of its sewer system. Another 15 potential passengers decided against joining, largely to stay with family members who are receiving medical treatment in Japan, Morrison said. They will not be allowed to return home for another two weeks. About 220 Australians were initially aboard the Diamond Princess.
Wuhan’s 26 water treatment plants and sewage pumping stations have taken similar measures in the past three weeks, having poured sodium hypochlorite into wastewater for extra disinfection and oxidation around the clock. Separately on Thursday, Australia’s government extended a ban on arrivals from mainland China for another week, until Feb. 29.
Renowned respiratory expert Zhong Nanshan, who was a leading medical adviser in China’s management of the coronavirus outbreak, on Tuesday had warned the public to keep their drainage pipes unblocked as the virus might spread through drainage systems. HONG KONG — The Hong Kong government on Thursday said it would further extend work-from-home arrangements for civil servants until March 1, and would continue providing only limited public services to control the spread of the coronavirus infection.
“If a waste pipe is blocked, the contaminated air, or the aerosol carrying the novel coronavirus, may lead to infection,” Zhong said at a news conference in Guangzhou. The city has recorded 65 confirmed cases of coronavirus infection, but there are fears this number will continue to increase. More than 100 Hong Kong passengers aboard the Diamond Princess, a coronavirus-hit ship that has been moored near Tokyo under quarantine, returned home on Thursday. They will have to spend 14 days in a quarantine center.
“I think the virus was spread and inhaled through aerosol that contained dried and contaminated feces, not taken in through the digestion tract,” Zhong added. The government said work-from-home arrangements could be further extended beyond March 1 depending on the spread of the epidemic. Schools have been closed since the Lunar New Year holiday in late January, and will continue to be shuttered until mid-March.
Two research teams, one led by Dr. Zhong, announced last week that they had isolated novel coronavirus strains from feces of infected patients. The city has recorded two deaths from the coronavirus outbreak.
Earlier this month, dozens of homes in Hong Kong’s Tsing Yi area were evacuated after two tenants from different floors of one building were infected. Authorities have yet to conclude whether the infections were caused by a modified drainage pipe, as suspected.
BEIJING — China is grieving the death of another young doctor in Wuhan, a 29-year old pulmonologist at Jiangxia District No. 1 People’s Hospital named Peng Yinhua.
Peng was scheduled to hold his wedding on Feb. 1 but postponed it to continue treating patients who began flooding into Wuhan’s hospitals in January as the coronavirus outbreak escalated. He had wedding invitation cards stored in his office desk, unsent, as he rushed back to work, according to Wuhan’s Changjiang Daily newspaper.
Peng Yinhua, a frontline doctor at Jiangxia First Hospital in virus epicenter #Wuhan, died of #COVID19 on Thursday night. He had earlier delayed his wedding as he wanted to treat patients with the disease at hospital. pic.twitter.com/zEQaUMAnJV
Peng worked practically nonstop for weeks, telling his colleagues that he did not need rest because he was young, before falling ill and admitting himself into his hospital Jan. 25.
Despite several weeks of treatment at Wuhan’s advanced Jinyintuan hospital and a successful blood transfusion, he died Thursday, becoming the latest high-profile case of a young, seemingly healthy adult succumbing to Covid-19.
China’s battle against the epidemic has been particularly costly for medical professions. More than 1,700 health workers have ben infected so far, with at least seven deaths, including Peng.
On Tuesday, Wuhan doctors and nurses stood at attention outside Wuhan’s Wuchang hospital to mourn the passing of hospital director Liu Zhiming’s hearse. Liu became infected on the job and died age 51, the Wuhan Health Commission said.
YOKOHAMA, Japan — As hundreds of passengers disembark from the Diamond Princess on Friday, the Japanese government insists that the quarantine was effective in reducing transmission of the virus on the ship.
It also says its choices were limited at the start, because it lacked facilities on land to isolate all 3,711 people on board.
Still, with at least 634 people on board confirmed to have contracted the virus, many questions remain unanswered. Here are a few of them.
After the first case was diagnosed, why did it take more than three days before the passengers were placed in quarantine?
A former passenger from Hong Kong was diagnosed with the virus on Feb 1. Princess Cruises said it learned about this on social media the following day and reached out to Hong Kong authorities. On Feb. 3, after receiving formal notification from Hong Kong, the captain told passengers the ship would wait in Yokohama for Japanese health ministry officials to assess the situation.
But passengers continued to mingle, including at a buffet dinner on Feb. 4. It was only later that the captain told passengers to remain in their cabins. Those three days provided a crucial window for the virus to spread.
Was it ethical to leave more than 1,000 crew members on board to run the ship, with no effective quarantine or isolation, and no choice in the matter?
Indian crew members appealed to their government to get them off the ship, saying they feared for their lives. But their calls went unanswered. In the end at least 74 crew members contracted the virus, with many falling sick after the quarantine was imposed.
Was it right to confine more than 200 people over the age of 80 on board?
Eight days into the quarantine, Japan’s government changed course and began to bring the oldest passengers off the ship, but many people believe it should have acted sooner.
Why did it take a week to bring one 84-year-old woman off the ship after she came down with fever, and did this delay contribute to her death?
Asked about this case, Japan’s government spokesman Yoshihide Suga said only that doctors gave “the highest priority” to people with a fever or over 80 years old.
Did the ship act as a breeding ground for the virus?
The U.S. government seems to think so, mandating an additional two weeks’ quarantine for its evacuated citizens. The Japanese government says the quarantine was effective “in reducing the transmission” of the virus, with most of the infections after Feb. 5 occurring among crew members and within cabins.
Were the conditions safe for people brought in to manage the quarantine?
Infectious disease expert Kentaro Iwata called the conditions on board chaotic and scary, with no effective infection control. The government has pushed back against the criticisms, yet six workers — four government officials, one medic and one ambulance driver — all contracted the virus.
SEOUL — South Korea designated a southern city and surrounding area a “special care zone” after a surge in coronavirus cases centered on a church there.
Prime Minister Chung Sye-kyun said early Friday that South Korea faces a coronavirus “emergency” and vowed to mobilize “utmost resources” to Daegu city and surrounding North Gyeongsang province, where more than two-thirds of the country’s 156 virus cases have occurred.
President Moon Jae-in on Friday described South Korea’s coronavirus situation as “grave” and ordered inspections of the Daegu church and a nearby hospital identified as two clusters of infection. More than 80 coronavirus patients are linked to the local branch of Shincheonji Church of Jesus, a fringe religious sect. The hospital in nearby Cheongdo County reported 16 infection cases, including the country’s first death from the virus.
Three members of South Korea’s military also tested positive for the virus since Thursday. Defense Minister Jeong Kyeong-doo said all soldiers will be banned from leaving their barracks except for special situations.
After several cases were reported in capital, Seoul, since Thursday, mayor Park Won-soon said large demonstrations often held in the city on weekends will be banned.
Meanwhile, Daegu Mayor Kwon Young-jin said Friday the city’s 2.5 million residents should “refrain from movement.” Daegu officials ordered schools and nurseries to postpone classes by a week to prevent the virus from spreading.
“Concerns of local transmission are growing with the jump in confirmed cases in Daegu and North Gyeongsang,” Moon said, while urging the public to “trust the government’s efforts.”
TORONTO — A woman who recently returned to Canada after a trip to Iran has tested positive for the novel coronavirus, public health officials said Thursday, bringing the total number of cases in the country to nine.
The woman, who is in her 30s, lives in British Columbia and has a “relatively mild” form of the virus, said Bonnie Henry, the provincial health officer. She and some of her close contacts are in self-isolation at home.
The case, which Henry described as “unusual,” is prompting new questions about how the coronavirus may be spreading.
“This could be an indicator that there’s more widespread transmission,” Henry said. “This is what we call an indicator, or a sentinel event.”
Iran has reported five cases of the novel coronavirus and two deaths.
Henry said that public health officials are investigating the details of the woman’s travel and when exactly she began to experience symptoms, to determine whether the other passengers on her flight need to be notified.
There have been six cases of the novel coronavirus in British Columbia and three cases in Ontario.