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Live updates: First U.S. death confirmed; travel restrictions announced affecting Iran, Italy and South Korea in response to coronavirus Trump appoints Pence to lead virus response as U.S. confirms its first case of unknown origin
(2 days later)
The Trump administration Saturday announced additional travel restrictions affecting Iran, Italy and South Korea in response to the coronavirus outbreak following the first death from the virus in the United States. Moments after President Trump announced that Vice President Pence will take over the White House’s coronavirus task force, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirmed that a northern California person has contracted the coronavirus without traveling outside the United States or coming in contact with another patient known to have the infection — the first sign that the disease may be spreading within a local community.
Vice President Pence said the existing travel ban on Iran would extend to foreign nationals who had been in that country the past 14 days. The State Department also is increasing its warning advising Americans not to travel to parts of Italy and South Korea affected by the virus. The president said the risk to Americans is “very low” and that people are being screened coming into the country from infected areas.
Right before the White House’s news conference, health officials in Washington state confirmed that a person diagnosed with coronavirus in King County has died. Meanwhile, the Dow Jones industrial average endured its worst two-day slump in four years Tuesday. On Wednesday, it was up 300 points shortly after open, but closed down about 124 points.
President Trump described the patient as a “wonderful woman” and a “medically high-risk patient” in her late 50s, at the news conference. Jeffrey Duchin, chief health officer for Seattle and King County, later clarified that the patient was a man in his 50s with underlying conditions. On European and Asian financial markets, economic alarms continued to flash, however, with cases spreading and little sign that the epidemic was relenting after the CDC warned of the “inevitable” spread in the United States of covid-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus.
More coronavirus infections were reported from South Korea to France to Qatar on Saturday as health officials in Washington state, Oregon and California reported another worrying development: new cases among people who have not traveled recently to countries hit hard by the outbreak or come into contact with anyone known to have the disease, which public health officials refer to as community transmission. France reported the first death of a French citizen from the epidemic as cases grew rapidly across Europe, with Spain confirming eight new cases in the past 24 hours and new infections reported in Germany, Greece, France, Croatia, Austria and Switzerland. A new case in Brazil marks the first known case in Latin America. Although China announced a decline in new confirmed cases on Wednesday, the number of infected people soared in South Korea to more than 1,200, with more expected in the coming days as the country attempts to test 200,000 people.
Washington state on Saturday announced three new cases of the virus — including the person who died — with circumstances that suggest person-to-person spread in the community. The other patients were a health-care worker at a long-term nursing facility and a female resident in her 70s from the same center.
Late Friday, Washington state announced that a high school student in Snohomish County, just north of Seattle, tested positive for the virus and was in home isolation in a suspected community transmission case. State health officials also said a woman in her 50s in King County tested positive after traveling to Daegu, South Korea, the site of a major coronavirus outbreak. She, too, is in home isolation.
Also on Friday, Oregon health officials reported a presumptive positive test in an elementary school employee with no known travel history or contact with infected individuals. California also reported a second case of community transmission, in Santa Clara County, after reporting the nation’s first such case, in Solano County, earlier in the week.
Here are the latest developments:Here are the latest developments:
Mapping the spread of the coronavirus | What you need to know about the virus | How to prepare for coronavirus in the U.S. | Post Reports: Your questions about coronavirus, answered ● A new case of coronavirus was confirmed in the United States on Wednesday, bringing the total number of cases in the country to 60. The CDC later said the northern California person had contracted the virus without traveling outside the United States or coming in contact with another patient known to have the infection.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirmed three new coronavirus cases in Washington state on Saturday, including the first U.S. death from the virus. The new cases bring the total number of infections contracted in the United States to 22. ● France reported the first coronavirus death of a French citizen amid a dramatic uptick in cases within Europe. Most new cases are connected to an outbreak in northern Italy, still the largest on the continent.
The cause of the three new infections is unknown, but the CDC said circumstances suggest person-to-person spread in the community. ● Brazil confirmed its first case, which also marks the first known case in Latin America.
State health officials said the person who died, a man in his 50s with underlying health conditions, had no recent history of travel or contact with people known to be infected. President Trump earlier had said the victim was a woman. ● Statistics released by the Chinese government showed a decline in the number of new cases in mainland China; an additional 406 cases were reported Wednesday morning, along with 52 deaths. All but five of the new cases and all of the new deaths were in Hubei province.
The other two new cases signaled the first possible outbreak in a long-term nursing facility and raise the level of concern for certain communities, said Nancy Messonnier, director of the CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases. Jeffrey S. Duchin, the chief health officer for Seattle and King County, identified the nursing facility as Life Care in Kirkland, Wash. ● South Korea reported 284 additional cases of the coronavirus Wednesday, raising the national tally to 1,261. That number is expected to rise in coming days as the country begins the mass testing of more than 200,000 members of a messianic religious movement at the center of an outbreak in the city of Daegu.
One of the infections there involves a female health-care worker in her 40s who is in satisfactory condition at Overlake Hospital, state health officials said. She has no known recent travel outside the United States. Mapping the spread of the coronavirus | What we know about the virus
Another patient from Life Care is a female resident in her 70s, who is in serious condition at EvergreenHealth hospital. Officials have not said whether she had recently traveled. Asian stock markets extended losses Thursday as the spread of the coronavirus outbreak kept investors on edge.
Duchin said he would not be surprised to find additional cases at the nursing home as an investigation continued. Of Life Care’s more than 108 residents and roughly 180 staffers, Duchin said 27 residents and 25 staffers have shown coronavirus symptoms. The growing fears of a pandemic had already wiped more than $3.6 trillion from global stock markets by Wednesday’s close, Reuters reported.
The death occurred at EvergreenHealth, but is not associated with the long-term nursing facility. MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan fell 0.5 percent and is down more than 4 percent for the week.
The CDC said it was sending a team of experts to Washington to support their investigation. Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 dropped 1 percent and has lost 7 percent this week. Japan’s Nikkei fell 1.7 percent to its lowest since October. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng fell 1 percent.
In addition to the cases contracted in the United States, 47 other people who have been repatriated to the United States from Wuhan, China, and from the Diamond Princess cruise ship also have the coronavirus. The government has involuntarily quarantined hundreds of people who were exposed to the virus. U.S. oil futures were down nearing $48 a barrel in Asia.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) on Saturday sent a letter to colleagues announcing plans to bring an emergency funding bill for the coronavirus to the floor for a vote next week. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) issued separated statements criticizing Donald Trump’s response to coronavirus Wednesday, which the sepaker called “opaque and chaotic.”
Although she did not indicate a price tag, she said the funding package must be new money and “not stolen from other accounts.” She said House appropriators will work to ensure there is a firewall around the funds so the president cannot use the money for anything other than fighting the coronavirus. “The American people need a well-coordinated, whole-of-government, fully-funded response to keep them safe from the coronavirus threat,” Pelosi wrote. “The Trump Administration has left critical positions in charge of managing pandemics at the National Security Council and the Department of Homeland Security vacant.”
“An important step that Congress must take is to ensure the government has the resources needed to combat this deadly virus and keep Americans safe,” Pelosi wrote. “To that end, House appropriators are working to advance a strong emergency funding supplemental package that fully addresses the scale and seriousness of this public health crisis, which we hope to bring to the Floor next week.” In a tweet, Ocasio-Cortez responded to Trump’s decision to place Vice President Pence in charge of the White House’s coronavirus task force, writing, “Mike Pence literally does not believe in science.”
Pelosi said the funding package should also include money to make eventual vaccines available to everyone, loans for small businesses hurt by disruptions, and reimbursement for state and local governments responding to outbreaks. “It is utterly irresponsible to put him in charge of US coronavirus response as the world sits on the cusp of a pandemic,” she tweeted, citing Pence’s response to HIV as governor of Indiana . “This decision could cost people their lives.”
Trump has said repeatedly that he will accept any amount of money Congress agrees on for the coronavirus, leaving the perennial fight over how much to spend on a crisis and where to get it from to House Democrats and Senate Republicans to figure out. Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar, who has been leading the coronavirus task force, was blindsided by the White House decision to put Vice President Pence in charge of the response to the virus outbreak, according to five people familiar with the situation, who said Azar learned of the decision only moments before the Wednesday evening news conference.
Ecuadoran health officials on Saturday reported the country’s first case of coronavirus: a woman who traveled to Ecuador from Spain and did not have symptoms when she arrived. Pence is scheduled to run a coronavirus task force meeting at HHS on Thursday, two sources familiar with the plans said. One senior administration official said Pence was going to HHS to lead the meeting, instead of the White House, “as a show of support to Azar.”
The woman then developed a fever and began to feel ill, Health Minister Catalina Andramuño Zeballos said at a news conference. She said the woman tested positive for the virus. Earlier in the day, Azar pushed back on reports that the administration was considering appointing a czar to run the response. President Trump said he did not consider Pence a czar, but noted that everyone involved in the response would report to the vice president.
The patient was older than 70 and was in critical condition, the Associated Press reported. She arrived in Ecuador on Feb. 14, according to the AP. The Chinese government on Thursday reported 433 new confirmed coronavirus infections, 29 new deaths and 508 new suspected cases by the end of the day Wednesday. Twenty-six of the deaths were in the Hubei province.
Ecuador’s Interior Ministry has banned large gatherings in the cities of Guayaquil — where the infected woman was — and Babahoyo, the AP reported. This brought China’s cumulative totals to 78,497 cases and 2,744 deaths. Experts have warned against gleaning too much from Chinese statistics and day-to-day changes.
There have been two other coronavirus cases confirmed in South America, both in Brazil. As South Korea’s total number of coronavirus cases continued to grow Thursday, the U.S. Department of State issued a Level 3 travel advisory for the country — urging citizens to “avoid travel due to serious risks to safety and security.”
Iran is preparing for the possibility of needing “tens of thousands” of coronavirus tests, Health Ministry spokesman Kianoush Jahanpour said Saturday, while disputing a recent BBC Persian report that put the country’s death rate at four times the official number. If travel to South Korea is essential, the State Department recommends adhering to CDC guidelines for the prevention of coronavirus.
Iran’s health-care system, already weak in part due to restrictions from U.S. sanctions, has struggled to cope with a sudden spike in coronavirus infections over the past 10 days. The virus that causes covid-19 has killed 43 people and infected 593 people, according to the Health Ministry, making Iran’s death toll the highest outside of China. SEOUL — The U.S. and South Korean militaries said Thursday they are postponing a key joint military exercise as South Korea reported another jump in coronavirus cases.
Iran now has 15 laboratories testing for coronavirus, according to Jahanpour. “In light of the ROK government’s declaration of the highest alert level ‘severe’ on COVID-19, the ROK-US Alliance made the decision to postpone the combined command post training for the ROK-US Combined Forces Command until further notice,” U.S.-South Korean Combined Forces Command said in a statement.
Some inside and outside of the country have questioned the official rates, given the repressive government’s reputation for covering up and controlling information. The number of reported infections versus deaths puts Iran’s coronavirus mortality rate at 7 percent, which is much higher than the average of around 2 percent elsewhere. That’s led to speculation by experts that Iran could be underreporting the extent and spread of the virus. China has faced and rejected similar accusations. With 334 new virus cases, South Korea’s national tally of the virus jumped to 1,595, which includes a U.S. soldier stationed in the country.
Friday’s BBC Persian report placed the death toll at around 210, or four times the official rate, citing anonymous medical officials. Jahanpour on Saturday dismissed the report as politically motivated. Iran’s government has banned the BBC, as it does with other media and journalists whose coverage it dislikes. The 23-year-old man is the first member of the U.S. military to contract the virus.
Inside Iran, coronavirus has infected and killed civilians and government officials, even prompting parliament to temporarily shut down after several lawmakers contracted the virus. Thursday’s jump was expected as South Korea conducted over 10,000 virus tests the previous day.
The virus’s spread, coupled with anxiety over a coverup, has fueled panic among some of the public. Unverified videos shared Saturday showed a group setting fire to a medical clinic in Bandar Abbas in southern Iran. The crowd reportedly thought the clinic had coronavirus patients, according to the Associated Press, citing semiofficial media. President Trump said the United States may need to restrict travel to virus-hit countries outside China.
ROME — Italy on Saturday became the third country, after China and South Korea, to have more than 1,000 confirmed coronavirus cases following a week in which the country became the apparent epicenter of Europe’s outbreak. At a news conference on Wednesday, Trump responded to a question about travel restrictions on Italy and South Korea, saying, “At the right time we may do that. Right now it’s not the right time.”
The latest data, according to the Italian government, shows that 1,049 people nationwide are positive for the virus, and another 29 have died. More than half of the cases are in the wealthy northern region of Lombardy, which includes Milan. But a handful of cases have popped up as far south as Sicily and Puglia. He said the two countries have been “hit pretty hard” by the coronavirus.
Of those who have the virus, only 401 are hospitalized. A slightly larger share are managing the illness at home in isolation. A northern California person has contracted the coronavirus without traveling outside the United States or coming in contact with another patient known to have the infection, the first sign that the disease may be spreading within a local community, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported Wednesday night.
The outbreak has emerged relatively suddenly: As of nine days ago, Italy had only three confirmed cases. But the number has risen steadily as the country has performed widespread testing, including on people who show no symptoms. In Lombardy alone, nearly 6,000 people have been tested. A growing list of countries, including Mexico and Nigeria, have reported their own cases with links to Italy. How the person acquired the respiratory disease is unknown.
The University of Connecticut is among the latest group of colleges to cancel study-abroad programs in countries dealing with coronavirus epidemics and to arrange for students to return to the United States. “It’s possible this could be an instance of community spread of covid-19, which would be the first time this has happened in the United States,” the CDC said in a statement. The health agency left open the possibility, however “that the patient may have been exposed to a returned traveler who was infected.”
On Saturday, school officials announced that all 88 students studying in Italy must fly back to the United States as soon as possible, a decision made after the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention upgraded its travel advisory for the European nation to a Warning Level 3 — which advises against nonessential travel. The university also suspended school-sponsored travel to China, South Korea and Iran. The state of California, however, called the case its first instance of community transmission. The case was first reported by The Washington Post.
The State Department on Saturday also recommended against traveling to certain regions of Italy and South Korea, as well as further restrictions on travel to Iran. Community spread would represent a significant turn for the worse in the battle against the virus. To date, the United States has 60 known cases of the infection, with 59 among people who traveled to Asia or were spouses of people who went there. The vast majority, 42, picked up the virus while quarantined on the Diamond Princess cruise ship off Japan.
Hundreds of thousands of U.S. students study abroad every year, The Washington Post previously reported. The CDC said the case “was detected through the U.S. public health system — picked up by astute clinicians.” The agency said only that the person lived in California.
In the past few weeks, more than a dozen colleges and universities have canceled study abroad programs or overseas spring break trips out of an abundance of caution. School officials are offering students hybrid learning options, including online classes to keep their educational track on schedule. If the infection is confirmed to be a case of “community spread,” said Jennifer Nuzzo, epidemiologist and senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, “it would confirm what we have long suspected — that there is a good chance there already are people infected in this country and that the virus is circulating undetected. It points to the need for expanded surveillance so we know how many more are out there and how to respond.”
President Trump gave the initial details Saturday about the first death inside the United States from the new coronavirus, saying the victim in Washington state was a woman in her 50s who had underlying health problems. (Jeffrey Duchin, chief health officer for Seattle and King County, later said the patient was a man in his 50s with underlying conditions.) The individual is a resident of Solano County, according to the California Department of Public Health. The patient is being treated at UC Davis Medical Center, according to a person familiar with the case who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the details are not public.
Trump said additional cases are likely in the United States but said the illness will be survivable for the vast majority who contract it. He called for calm and said he will meet at the White House on Monday with representatives of major drug companies about accelerated development of a vaccine.
Vice President Pence said the risk to most Americans remains low, as he announced additional travel restrictions on Iran, where the virus is spreading rapidly. On top of existing travel restrictions on that country, the United States will now exclude any foreign national who has visited Iran in the last 14 days, Pence said.
The State Department has also raised its warning about travel to Italy and South Korea, Pence said. The recommendation is now “do not travel to certain regions of both countries,” Pence said.
Pence and Trump addressed reporters in a hastily called news conference at the White House. Trump assured Americans that “our country is prepared for any circumstance."
“We are having very good initial feedback” about a vaccine, Trump said.
Trump downplayed the long-term economic impact of the coronavirus outbreak on Saturday, saying during a White House news conference that “the markets will take care of themselves.”
Trump did not himself bring up the effect of the outbreak on the U.S. financial markets or the wider economy, but when asked, the president answered with a critique of federal monetary policy and the role of the Federal Reserve.
Trump blamed the Fed for not moving swiftly enough to adjust interest rates, and he expressed optimism that stock markets will rebound quickly. He also said he plans to propose a tax cut later this year that would benefit middle-income households.
“The markets will all come back. The markets are very strong,” Trump said.
“We have one problem. We have to get this problem brought into focus,” Trump said, adding that the government response is doing just that.
“For a period of time, we’re going to have to do whatever is necessary. Safety, health, number one. The markets will take care of themselves.”
The president added that he hopes Americans “don’t change their routine” over fears of the virus.
President Trump said Saturday that he is considering further travel restrictions across the southern border as a means to limit transmission of the coronavirus.
“Yes, we are thinking about [the] southern border,” Trump said during a White House news conference when asked whether he might close the border with Mexico in response to the virus spreading around the world.
“We are looking at that very strongly,” he added.
Trump did not elaborate but later suggested he is not considering completely sealing the border, a step that would have profound economic effects because of the heavy flow of goods and people across the border daily.
“We have ports of entry that we are keeping open, and we’re not talking about — if we’re thinking about all borders, we have to think about that border — but right now that is not a border as it pertains to what we’re talking about here,” he said. “This is not a border that seems to be much of a problem. We hope we won’t have to do that.”
Mexico has four coronavirus cases, compared with 22 in the United States.
Vice President Pence outlined additional travel restrictions involving Iran, South Korea and Italy, all of which have significant outbreaks of the respiratory illness, even as federal health officials called in to brief reporters stressed that the risk of illness to most Americans is extremely low.
“The American public needs to go on with their normal lives, okay?” said Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Robert Redfield.
“And we are continuing to aggressively investigate these new community links. We’re going to continue to be transparent in relating that to the American public,” he said. “But at this stage, again, the risk is low, we need to go on with our normal lives.”
The first covid-19 patient to die in the United States came to EvergreenHealth in Kirkland, Wash., with “serious respiratory issues,” the hospital said in a statement Saturday, though it remains unclear when the patient was admitted, when the symptoms first appeared and how long it took health officials to test the person for the novel coronavirus.
According to EvergreenHealth’s statement, the patient was tested for covid-19 per guidelines set forth by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The test came back positive, the hospital said. A second patient also tested positive and is in isolation receiving appropriate treatment.
“We are working with the CDC and the Washington Department of Health to ensure that those who have come into contact with the patient are screened and tested as appropriate,” EvergreenHealth’s statement said.
The name of the patient who died has not been released. At a news conference at the White House on Saturday, President Trump initially erroneously identified the person as a “wonderful woman” in her late 50s. Jeffrey Duchin, chief health officer for Seattle and King County, later clarified that the patient was a man in his 50s who had underlying health problems.
In a letter obtained by KIRO-TV News in Seattle, officials advised patients and their families of the death at EvergreenHealth and offered additional information that was not included in the hospital’s official statement.
Here’s the letter @KIRO7Seattle got from a source. It’s the notice from @EvergreenHosp sent to patients and families about the #coronavirus death in the Seattle area. #COVID19 pic.twitter.com/aNk1snAaGo
The letter said the two patients tested positive at the hospital Friday night. “While the patients have no travel history, they were both receiving treatment for severe respiratory illness in our emergency department and critical care units,” the letter said.
Officials assured EvergreenHealth patients and their families that the hospital was working closely with state and local health departments to ensure that anyone who may have had contact with the patients is screened for the novel coronavirus.
Vice President Pence said that the average American does not need to buy face masks because of the coronavirus, echoing recommendations by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) that hoarding emergency essentials like masks can put at risk health-care workers who do require these items.
“Seriously people- STOP BUYING MASKS!,” the U.S. surgeon general’s official account tweeted Saturday. “They are NOT effective in preventing general public from catching #Coronavirus, but if healthcare providers can’t get them to care for sick patients, it puts them and our communities at risk!”
Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar previously said the U.S. may need to purchase millions of masks and other protective gear.
In a statement released Saturday, the Washington State Department of Health and Seattle and King County health officials confirmed the death and said they would offer more details at a 1 p.m. news conference, local time. They will discuss the death and new confirmed cases in the county.
“It is a sad day in our state as we learn that a Washingtonian has died from COVID-19,” Washington Gov. Jay Inslee (D) said in a statement. “Our hearts go out to his family and friends. We will continue to work toward a day where no one dies from this virus.”
Inslee said the state departments of health and emergency management are working closely with local officials to strengthen preparedness and response efforts.
“I am committed to keeping Washingtonians healthy, safe and informed,” the governor said.
Roughly 2 million tweets peddled conspiracy theories about the coronavirus over the three-week period since the outbreak began to spread outside China, according to an unreleased report from an arm of the State Department, raising fresh fears about Silicon Valley’s preparedness to combat a surge of dangerous disinformation online.
The wrongful, harmful posts floated a number of hoaxes — suggesting, for example, that the coronavirus had been created by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation or was the result of a bioweapon. These and other identified falsehoods represented 7 percent of the total tweets the government studied, and they might have been “potentially impactful on the broader social media conversation,” according to the report, which was obtained by The Washington Post on Saturday.
Tech firms take a hard line against coronavirus myths. But what about other types of misinformation?
The Global Engagement Center, the propaganda-fighting program at the State Department whose name appears on the document, said it focused its analysis on countries excluding the United States between Jan. 20 and Feb. 10, a period during which the World Health Organization declared coronavirus an international health emergency. In total, the GEC explored 29 million foreign posts, the report said.
Some of the misinformation exhibited “evidence of inauthentic and coordinated activity,” according to the report, raising the specter that foreign governments or other malicious actors may have deliberately tried to sow fear and discord about the international health emergency — much as Russian agents had done during the 2016 presidential election in the United States.
But the report did not detail fully what led to this conclusion, nor did it attribute the information to a specific government source. Previously, agency officials signaled in public news reports that some of the activity may be tied to agents of the Kremlin, though Russia is not mentioned in the study.
Read more here.Read more here.
SEOUL — The windows are sealed shut in the psychiatric ward at South Korea’s Daenam Hospital to prevent suicide attempts. The patients sleep together on futons in communal rooms. Trump announced at a news conference that Vice President Pence will take over the White House’s coronavirus task force.
And when the coronavirus made its way inside earlier this month, hospital administrators and South Korean health officials put the psychiatric ward — and its more than 100 patients — on lockdown in an attempt to contain the virus. The hospital is in Cheongdo County, the center of South Korea’s outbreak. The president said the risk to Americans is “very low” and that people are being screened coming into the country from infected areas.
Of South Korea’s more than 3,150 confirmed cases, 101 were from patients in the psychiatric ward. Seven patients from the ward have died — among a total of 17 around the country. All but two in the psychiatric ward contracted the virus. “We have quarantined those infected and those at risk,” he said.
For South Korea’s public, the actions by hospital overseers touch on difficult issues of ethics and efficacy as the country struggles to cope with the growing health crisis. South Korean officials have vowed not to follow China and impose sweeping citywide lockdowns. Trump said he’ll leave it up to Congress to decide how much money to allocate in emergency funding, that he’s willing “to spend whatever is appropriate” and “be satisfied with whatever” amount.
But the hospital’s decision has underscored the challenges facing health-care institutions, nursing homes and other live-in settings if coronavirus flares. He also said the United States is “rapidly developing a vaccine,” but did not provide any more details. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, contradicted the president, saying a vaccine won’t be ready for more than a year.
Read more here: Trump sought to play down the impact on Americans focusing instead on the first 15 U.S. cases, referring to them as “the original 15.”
New York Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo said Saturday that the Food and Drug Administration has approved a test for New York state’s health laboratories to use to detect the coronavirus. Saudi Arabia suspended religious visits to the holy cities of Mecca and Medina on Thursday because of concerns about coronavirus, its Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced.
Laboratories at hospitals as well as state public health laboratories have struggled in recent weeks to use tests they develop without approval from the FDA. The decision, which will affect those seeking to perform pilgrimage travel to the country, such as the Umrah pilgrimage, was aimed at forestalling the spread of the disease, according to the Saudi-owned Al Arabiya news channel. The suspension will also affect those seeking to visit the Prohpet’s Mosque in Medina.
The U.S. response to covid-19 has been hampered by testing issues. Experts have consequently worried that the small number of U.S. cases may be a reflection of limited testing rather than of the virus’s restricted spread. It wasn’t immediately clear how long the suspension would last.
Cuomo (D) said he spoke in recent days to Vice President Pence, who heads the White House’s coronavirus response, and urged him to approve the test developed by New York state health officials. ROME — For nearly a week, he has been one of the most visible political figures in Italy, the president of the region at the center of the country’s coronavirus outbreak.
With the approval New York received Saturday, Cuomo said, state officials will begin testing immediately at the Wadsworth laboratory in Albany. But Wednesday night, Lombardy regional President Attilio Fontana said he would be voluntarily placing himself in quarantine for the next 14 days.
“This approval will expedite wait time and improve New York’s ability to more effectively manage the coronavirus situation as it unfolds,” Cuomo said. Fontana said he is taking the precaution after a “close collaborator” of his was found to have contracted the virus. Fontana underwent testing — causing the cancellation of his scheduled news conference — and though his tests were negative, he said he would follow the same protocol that health officials were asking of other Italians.
Across the country, Asian American-owned businesses and restaurants are suffering because of misinformation and xenophobic assumptions about how the novel coronavirus is spreading, creating stigmas not supported by scientific facts. “So for two weeks I’ll try to live in a kind of self-isolation so as to chiefly protect those around me,” Fontana said in a Facebook video, in which he strapped on a sea-green face mask as he spoke.
At a news conference Friday outside the U.S. Capitol, members of the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus condemned racist rhetoric and “fake news” they say is harming people in their home districts. “So when you see me like this in the next few days,” Fontana said, “don’t be scared, it’s always me.”
Rep. Judy Chu (D-Calif.), who chairs CAPAC, said restaurant owners in her majority-Asian Los Angeles-area district have reported a 50 percent drop in business. Add Microsoft to the list of companies lowering earnings expectations over coronavirus worries.
“The common thread in all of this xenophobia has been the steady flow of misinformation around covid-19 and how it spreads,” Chu said. The Redmond, Wash., software giant said Wednesday that it would not meet the fiscal third-quarter guidance it offered in January for the unit that includes its Windows operating system sales. At the time, Microsoft said it expected $10.75 billion to $11.15 billion in quarterly revenue for its More Personal Computing segment.
Health officials have emphasized that the best way to prevent the spread of the novel virus is to practice good hygiene, which includes frequent hand washing. While demand from personal computer makers for Windows remains strong, the company said the supply chain for the business is “returning to normal operations at a slower pace than anticipated” because of the coronavirus outbreak. As a result, the company believes it will not meet its earlier guidance for the segment.
“Ethnicity is not a risk factor,” Mitch Wolfe, chief medical officer at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), said at the news conference. Microsoft did not provide an updated forecast. But Stifel Nicolaus & Co. analyst Brad Reback, who had expected Microsoft to generate between $3 billion and $4 billion in sales of Windows to PC makers in the quarter, said it is not “absurd to think half of that could be impacted.” And “several hundred million dollars” of sales from Microsoft’s Surface PC business also could be at risk, he said.
Despite clear guidance from the CDC, misinformed rumors continue to circulate, which is what prompted CAPAC members to issue a letter to their congressional colleagues last week calling on them to “share only confirmed and verifiable information” with their constituents. But those sales, Reback noted, are not lost, just deferred until the effect of the coronavirus subsides.
The letter referenced a claim made by Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) without evidence that the virus was created in a Chinese lab. Chu said that false claim only “reinforces a narrative that China is an enemy, which puts Chinese Americans particularly at risk." Last week, Apple warned that it expects to miss revenue goals in the current quarter because of the coronavirus outbreak.
Other lawmakers and advocates at the news conference cited drops in Asian-owned or operated businesses in New York City and Houston. Romania’s health minister on Wednesday confirmed the first case of coronavirus in the country, Reuters reported. The man was reportedly from the county of Gorj, but additional information about him was not immediately available.
“Across the country, our chapters are reporting diminished patronage to Asian American-owned businesses, from restaurants to grocery stores, to nail salons and to other places and forcing owners into financial crisis and sending workers home,” said Rita Pin Ahrens, the executive director of Asian American advocacy group OCA-Asian Pacific American Advocates. “The man had been in direct contact with an Italian citizen who traveled to Romania earlier this month,” Health Minister Victor Costache told reporters, according to Reuters. “He is in a good condition and will be transferred to a Bucharest infectious hospital.”
The United States’ response to the coronavirus in recent weeks has been hampered by problems with its testing. Experts have worried that the small number of U.S. cases we are seeing may be a reflection of limited testing, not of the virus’s spread. Rep. Donna Shalala (D-Fla.), who served as the health and human services secretary in Bill Clinton’s administration, chastised Trump over his planned news briefing this evening, arguing that only medical professionals and scientists should be speaking to the public about the coronavirus.
One of the three components in the initial test kit created by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention wasn’t working properly, preventing some labs from being able to offer it. Shalala said during an appearance on MSNBC that this was especially so when it comes to Trump.
“This has not gone as smoothly as we would have liked,” top CDC official Nancy Messonnier admitted at a news conference on Friday. “Please remember that our laboratories developed this test kit before there were U.S. cases,” she added. “This is an anti-science administration,” she said. “The last person the American people trust is the president of the United States talking about science.”
In recent days, testing capacity has improved. Millions of Christians around the world marked Ash Wednesday, the start of the 40-day Lent period ahead of Easter — even as the coronavirus led to some unconventional observances.
The “Berlin test” was created by researchers in Germany and is being widely used. Hong Kong has its own test. China has another. Some attending Pope Francis’s mass in St. Peter’s Square donned face masks, while other churches in Italy declined to hold mass at all as the coronavirus outbreak there continues to grow. In Asia, some congregations broadcast services online. In the Philippines, Catholic nuns sprinkled ash on congregants’ heads rather than rubbing it in with their fingers, after Catholic leaders there recommended the alternative practice to minimize physical contact. In Singapore, where nearly 100 people have been diagnosed with the virus, churches broadcast services online to prevent people from crowding together.
Some have questioned why the United States hasn’t switched to a test being successfully used by other countries with larger numbers of cases. Hong Kong banned Catholic masses as a preventive measure earlier this month. And in South Korea, where two churches have been identified as key conduits for the spread of the virus, churches remained closed Wednesday. It was the first time since Catholic churches were established there more than 200 years ago that they were closed, the Associated Press reported.
Still, the good news is that testing in the United States is improving. As of the end of last week, about eight labs reported the original CDC test was working. About 40 public health laboratories in the United States received permission this week to go online with the two working components. BEIRUT — Iraq’s Ministry of Health announced new restrictions to combat the spread of coronavirus late Wednesday, suspending schools and universities and closing cafes, theaters, clubs and any public gathering areas in the country for 10 days, from Thursday until March 7.
Announcements then began to trickle in: Massachusetts can now test and Arizona plans to start processing tests Monday. New CDC tests are expected to be sent out next week, prioritizing a small handful of labs that also had trouble with the first component, called N1. It also banned citizens from traveling to nine countries, including Iran, China, Bahrain and Kuwait, and banned the entry of travelers from Kuwait and Bahrain.
Even this capacity will be limited. What most clinicians want is a commercial test they can run rapidly, and companies are working toward that goal. Hospital laboratory directors have been extremely frustrated by the rules of a public health emergency, which have made it difficult to increase testing capacity. The announcement came a day after four new cases were reported in Iraq. The four patients were the first citizens to contract the virus, bringing the total of infected to five in the country.
That’s why the Food and Drug Administration on Saturday took new steps to expand testing for the coronavirus by speeding up hospitals’ ability to test for the virus. The action followed complaints from hospital laboratories that the previous policy was too burdensome and was slowing their efforts to create and use their own tests. Iraq has closed crossings along its borders with Iran, which has emerged as an epicenter for the spread of the virus in the Middle East. Cases linked to Iranian tourists or visits to Iran have emerged in Lebanon, Bahrain, Oman and Kuwait.
Nonetheless, some lab directors say it doesn’t go far enough to ease the red tape holding back U.S. testing. Senior Defense Department officials told lawmakers Wednesday that they had no initial answer to whether they anticipated asking for more money to deal with the virus threat within the military.
Testing is going to be crucial if we want to contain and mitigate the coronavirus’s spread in the United States. But labs — which have been hampered by delays — have limited capacity. “We have not had that discussion yet,” Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper said at a budget hearing before the House Armed Services Committee. “This is moving very quickly,” he acknowledged, but “I want to discuss it with the Chairman, the combatant commanders,” including the commander of the U.S. Northern Command.
Officials also want to make sure the testing adheres to a high standard to prevent false positives, which would set off panic and sow doubts about the reliability of the testing. Mark A. Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that, in the absence of those discussions, “we can’t give you a definitive answer right now” about funding.
That’s why, for weeks, the criteria for testing patients was very narrow — for people with a travel history or close contact with a confirmed case, although exceptions could be made. Then, on Thursday, U.S. officials expanded the criteria to include people with severe respiratory symptoms that had no explanation. Esper said he has been in direct contact with Gen. Robert Abrams, commander of U.S. forces in South Korea, which has the second largest number of confirmed cases outside China. One U.S. soldier, diagnosed with the virus this week was transferred by ambulance to an isolation unit at Camp Humphreys, the main U.S. base on the divided Korean Peninsula, the independent military newspaper Stars and Stripes reported from Seoul. The paper said that “several service members and others” had also been quarantined on the base “as a protective measure.”
Testing more widely is important because it will determine how far the virus has spread undetected in the United States. There is a plan to expand testing to flu surveillance in five U.S. cities, but the rollout has been delayed by frustrating problems. Abrams has taken some actions, including restricting access to U.S. bases, Esper said. At Camp Humphreys Wednesday, lines as long as five hours formed at entry gates, where soldiers wearing gloves and face masks took temperatures and questioned morning commuters, Stars and Stripes said.
New data from China shows just how widely testing may have to be done to find cases. In Guangdong province, officials said they had tested 320,000 people at fever clinics, but less than 0.5 percent were positive. JERUSALEM — Israel’s Ministry of Health updated its travel warning Wednesday, cautioning the Israeli public against traveling abroad, and in particular against participating in large gatherings such as conferences or religious events as the coronavirus outbreak continues to spread.
No test is perfect, and in the early days of using a test, laboratories are still gaining field experience that will help inform how the test is used in broader populations. The new advisory also added new restrictions for visitors from Italy, where an outbreak is growing.
Steven Hinrichs, director of microbiology and virology at the University of Nebraska Medical Center, said he has gotten the original Centers for Disease Control and Prevention test to work and they have identified 14 positive cases in the lab. He is also working for authorization from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for a test that could be used in the hospital in a broader set of patients who may not fit the criteria but raise clinical suspicion. Starting Wednesday, anyone arriving from Italy will be required to self-quarantine for 14 days. The mandate is delayed to allow travelers time to prepare, the Ministry of Health said in a statement.
Even as there’s an urgent need to broaden testing, he emphasized that the test must be held to a high standard. With U.S. doctors and nurses just starting to gear up for the spread of coronavirus, Chinese medical workers have posted a remarkable account of what life is like there — a warning of sorts about what other countries may experience in coming weeks and months.
“It’s important for all laboratorians to realize the impact of this test — and they need to be as rigorous for this test as any other, and perhaps even more so,” Hinrichs said. “Can you imagine what a false positive would do in a community when they really didn’t have the disease?” In a letter published in the Lancet, a medical journal, two nurses describe how medical workers in Wuhan have developed ulcers on their ears and foreheads from wearing protective masks all the time. They said equipment shortages are so severe, they are cleaning and reusing plastic goggles to the point they are hard to see through anymore.
The Food and Drug Administration on Saturday took new steps to expand testing for the coronavirus by speeding up hospitals’ abilities to test. The action followed complaints from labs that the previous policy was too burdensome and was slowing hospitals’ efforts to create and use their own tests. Yingchun Zeng, from the Guangzhou Medical hospital, and Yan Zhen, from the Sun Yat-sen Memorial hospital, are among the 14,000 nurses from across China sent to Wuhan as reinforcements.
Certified hospital labs typically can develop their own tests for in-house use, but the rules of a public health emergency — which are now governing the coronavirus outbreak — mean those tests first need to get “emergency use authorization” from the FDA. The lab officials have repeatedly said the FDA’s emergency use requirements are too onerous. Their account paints a stark, vivid picture of the front lines. Putting on protective gear takes so much time and energy, they said, many now abstain from eating and drinking two hours before going into an isolation ward so they won’t have to go to the bathroom. As a result, some nurses’ mouths are covered in blisters. Others have fainted from hypoglycemia.
Under the policy announced Saturday, the labs can begin using their own tests after validating them and before the FDA has finished reviewing their request for emergency use authorization. On top of the physical exhaustion and challenges, medical workers are being stretched to their limits psychologically, say the two nurses, who arrived in Wuhan on Jan. 24. “While we are professional nurses, we are also human. Like everyone else, we feel helplessness, anxiety, and fear,” they said. “Even experienced nurses may also cry, possibly because we do not know how long we need to stay here and we are the highest-risk group for COVID-19 infection.”
“We believe this policy strikes the right balance during this public health emergency,” FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn said in a statement. “We will continue to help to ensure sound science before clinical testing and follow up with the critical independent review from the FDA, while quickly expanding testing capabilities in the U.S.” They ended their letter in the Lancet — one of the world’s most prestigious medical journals — with a plea: “We need much more help. We are asking nurses and medical staff from countries around the world to come to China now, to help us in this battle.”
He said the agency wasn’t changing its standards for issuing emergency use authorizations, but that it was addressing “critical public health needs” and responding to a “dynamic and evolving situation.” TORONTO — A woman who recently traveled to Iran has tested positive for coronavirus in Canada, public health officials said Wednesday, bringing the total number of people with the virus in the country to 12.
But Melissa Miller, director of the clinical microbiology laboratory at the UNC School of Medicine, said the change fell short. The Toronto-based woman, who is in her 60s, returned from Iran on Feb. 15, Eileen de Villa, the city’s chief medical officer, told reporters. The woman had a cough, a sore throat, a fever and body aches and went to a Toronto hospital on Feb. 24, where she was tested for the virus.
“To still have to file the EUA is disappointing,” she said. She called it “burdensome and unnecessary” given that the labs already are certified to do high-complexity testing. Health officials declined to provide details on the woman’s flight. They are investigating whom she may have had contact with during the nine days between her arrival in Toronto and her visit to the hospital. She is now in self-isolation at home.
The FDA policy goes into effect immediately. Most of the people with coronavirus in Canada had recently traveled to China or had close contact with people who had done so and were later found to have the virus. This is the third case in Canada involving a patient with a recent history of travel to Iran or contact with someone who recently traveled there.
The agency said that following the completion of their test validation, the labs should communicate with the FDA, via email, to notify the agency that the test has been validated. Laboratories should submit a completed EUA request within 15 business days of notification. David Williams, Ontario’s chief medical officer of health, said that the risk to Ontarians posed by the novel coronavirus is “low.” Officials are working to determine whether people can be reinfected with the virus, he said, as well as whether those who are infected develop immunity to it.
Read more here: Earlier this week, the last group of Canadians who were repatriated from Wuhan, China, were released from their 14-day quarantine at an Ontario military base. None has tested positive for the virus, Williams said.
Japanese baseball players put on a show Saturday — only spectators weren’t allowed in to see it. U.S. officials have discovered a new coronavirus case in the United States just since Wednesday morning, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar told a congressional committee Wednesday.
Japan’s professional baseball body, the Nippon Professional Baseball Organization (NPB), decided Wednesday to keep its opening 2020 games spectator free to limit large gatherings in which coronavirus could spread. “As of this morning, we still had only 14 cases of the novel coronavirus detected in the United States involving travel to or close contacts with travelers,” Azar said. “Coming into this hearing, I was informed that we have a 15th confirmed case, the epidemiology of which we are still discerning.”
On Saturday, the Chiba Lotte Marines faced off against the Rakuten Eagles at Japan’s Zozo Marine Stadium in one of six preseason baseball games set to be played in a closed-door and otherwise empty field, the Associated Press reported. That brings the total number of cases in the United States to around 60, because the U.S. has brought back 42 people from the Diamond Princess cruise ship in Japan who have the virus, and there are another three cases as well.
Fans of Japan’s oldest and most popular team, the Yomiuri Giants, usually fill Tokyo’s 55,000-seat stadium to capacity. Saturday night, the Giants are competing against the Yakult Swallows without any cheers from the stands. “While the immediate risks to the American public remain low, there is now community transmission in a number of places, including outside of Asia, which is deeply concerning,” Azar said. “We are working closely with state and local and private-sector partners to prepare for mitigating the virus’s potential spread in the United States as we expect to see more cases here.”
Japan is slated to host the 2020 Summer Olympics in July, putting extra scrutiny on the country as it struggles to contain the spread of coronavirus. The country has had 941 cases and 11 deaths, though more than 700 of the infections have been from the Diamond Princess cruise ship, according to the AP.
Japan’s horse racing association also held a spectator-less competition on Saturday. The country’s domestic soccer team, the J-league, has opted instead to postpone 94 matches planned to run through March 15.
The Japan Sumo Association is meeting Sunday to decide whether to continue as planned with a spring tournament scheduled for March 8-22 in Osaka. Authorities already limited Sunday’s Tokyo Marathon to elite runners, a big leap down from the event’s typical 38,000 participants.
In Italy, the epicenter of Europe’s coronavirus outbreak, the governing body for the Serie A soccer games announced Thursday that Sunday’s match — one of the biggest of the season — would be one of five upcoming games similarly played in spectator-less stadiums.
France on Saturday banned public gatherings with crowds of 5,000 or more as a preventive measure against the spread of coronavirus after the government announced an additional 16 cases of infection.
“All public gatherings of more than 5,000 people in a confined space are temporarily banned across France,” Health Minister Olivier Véran told journalists, Reuters reported.
“These measures are temporary and we will likely have to revise them,” he added. “They are restrictive and, paradoxically, we hope they don’t last long, because that means we will have contained the virus’s spread.”
Two people in France have died from coronavirus, and there have been 73 confirmed infections. France’s health ministry said Saturday that the country is preparing for an epidemic.
Authorities announced Saturday that they were also postponing the Paris half-marathon, which some 44,000 runners had planed to complete Sunday.
Switzerland on Friday also announced a ban on public events with more than 5,000 people, while Italy’s three virus-hit northern regions have temporarily closed schools and universities for the second week.
The first wave wasn’t that bad. In the spring of 1918, a new strain of influenza hit military camps in Europe on both sides of World War I. Soldiers were affected, but not nearly as severely as they would be later.
Britain, France, Germany and other European governments kept it secret. They didn’t want to hand the other side a potential advantage.
Spain was neutral in the war; when the disease hit there, the government and newspapers reported it accurately. Even the king got sick.
Months later, when a bigger, deadlier wave swept across the globe, people thought it had started in Spain, even though it hadn’t. Simply because the Spanish told the truth, the virus was dubbed the “Spanish flu.”
Now, as fears about the coronavirus spread, at least one historian is worried the Trump administration is failing to heed the lesson of one of the world’s worst pandemics: Don’t hide the truth.
Read more here:
The head of Italy’s hotel federation on Saturday said the U.S. government’s latest travel advisory, which cautioned Americans to avoid nonessential travel to the nation, could be the “final blow” to his country’s tourism industry.
Italy has quickly become Europe’s center for the coronavirus outbreak, now registering 888 confirmed cases — the greatest number outside Asia.
“We had already registered a slowdown of Americans coming to Italy in recent days,” Bernabo Bocca, president of hotel federation Federalberghi, said in a statement to the Associated Press. “Now the final blow has arrived.”
The Level 3 warning, issued by the U.S. State Department and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, is one step below banning travel to the country altogether.
The Associated Press reported that more than 5.6 million Americans visit Italy every year and represent 9 percent of foreign tourists to the country. They infuse a collective 5 billion euros a year into the Italian tourism industry and economy, Federalberghi told the AP.
On Friday, before the CDC’s upgraded travel advisory, the Italian government placed a moratorium on mortgages and delayed deadlines for tax payments in an effort to provide relief to the tourism industry.
Bocca said the move wasn’t enough and called on officials to safeguard the jobs of 1.5 million people who operate more than 300,000 companies across Italy.
While there is no vaccine for covid-19, preventive steps and awareness are the best tools to prepare and protect yourself in the event of an outbreak. Learn more here:
Routine care and elective surgeries — such as knee replacements and gallbladder removal — could be scaled back if the coronavirus spawns a pandemic, hospital executives are warning, delivering economic shocks to the hospital system beyond the immediate challenges of protecting health-care workers and dealing with those stricken with the virus.
Rural hospitals could bear the early brunt. They sit furthest from international airports and urban hubs where outbreaks are more likely, but they are at the tail end of supply chains for vital medical goods such as protective masks and gowns.
In addition to preparing for victims and the demands of protecting health-care workers from infection, fragile hospital networks also are readying for disruptions to the bottom line. If the spreading coronavirus puts heavy demand on health systems, billable work that keeps revenue flowing on a weekly basis to hospitals small and large will be curtailed, executives said.
The hospital industry warned policymakers this week that Congress needs to quickly pass emergency funding for the crisis and direct some of the funding to plug anticipated gaps in hospital operating budgets. In the event of widespread sickness, costs would soar for isolation rooms for infected patients, equipment and training.
Read more here:
The global coronavirus outbreak dominated headlines this week as it entered the political debate and sent markets tumbling. In response, Americans did what we always do when confronted with something new, big and scary: We dumped our anxieties into the nearest Google search bar.
Here are a number of charts illustrating search terms that saw big jumps this week, which give a sense of our collective coronavirus-related worries, as well as a few hopes.
One important caveat about Google trends data: It doesn’t reveal exactly how many people are searching for a given term; it just gives a sense of whether that term has risen or fallen in popularity. So to approximate absolute search volume, presumably popular search terms like “Donald Trump” and “Kim Kardashian” will serve as guide posts.
Read more here:
As numbers of coronavirus infections continued to rise around the world, governments ramped up travel advisories for citizens and even travel bans on incoming travelers from affected countries.
The U.S. State Department raised its travel advisory for Italy to level three, urging citizens to reconsider all nonessential travel. Italy is the center of Europe’s coronavirus outbreak, with 888 confirmed cases.
Russian officials on Saturday urged citizens not to leave the country. Kuwaiti health officials have also discouraged traveling, as the small Gulf country grapples with 45 confirmed cases of the virus. Saudi Arabia likewise urged its citizens to cancel all nonessential travel to Lebanon, where four coronavirus cases have been confirmed.
“In order to consider yourself protected today, first of all, possible future trips outside the native country need to be reduced as much as possible,” Anna Popova, a Russian public health official, told local news affiliates, according to Reuters.
Kuwait has evacuated hundreds of citizens from Iran, the regional focal point of the virus outbreak in the Middle East. The two latest cases involved people who had entered Kuwait from Iran, according to the Kuwaiti health ministry.
Following the case of a woman who tested positive for the virus who had recently returned to Australia from Iran, the Australian government is imposing a travel ban on Iran to begin March 1.
After that date, Australian Health Minister Greg Hunt told reporters Saturday, Australian travelers returning from Iran will be required to self-isolate for a period of 14 days after their arrival.
All non-citizens, non-permanent residents and those who are not family of Australian citizens and permanent residents will be denied entry into the country unless their departure from Iran occurred more than 14 days before their arrival date in Australia.
Travelers who fit this category will be required to spend 14 days in another country before being granted permission to enter Australia.
“There is likely at this stage a high level of undetected cases, and therefore those cases won’t be intercepted or identified on departure from Iran,” Hunt said.
BAGHDAD — Qatar announced its first case of coronavirus Saturday, days after the country’s ruler ordered the evacuation of its citizens from Iran.
The country’s state-run news agency did not provide further details about the individual’s background or travel history.
The Qatari government announced Thursday that it had completed the evacuation of its citizens from Iran, the focal point of the region’s outbreak. “A hotel has been set up as a quarantine facility to be used by the Qatari citizens for a 14 day period and will be cared for and monitored by medical,” the Government Communications Office said. “They have arrived in Doha.”
Qatar is one of a growing number of Middle Eastern states to publicly announce the detection of coronavirus, and Iraq said Friday a sixth citizen had tested positive.
Although the Baghdad government has ordered a temporary shuttering of public spaces including cafes and cinemas, the capital’s streets were still busy Friday night as residents wore protective masks but did not stay home.
The arrival of coronavirus in Baghdad has even delayed the formation of a new government: Parliament announced last week that a planned vote on the new cabinet would not be possible Saturday, since the chamber was being disinfected.
PARIS — France confirmed 19 additional cases of coronavirus late Friday, bringing the national total to 57. Health officials warned that an epidemic was now imminent.
“We are preparing for an epidemic,” French Health Minister Olivier Véran said. He added that “we are now moving to stage two. The virus is circulating in our country and we must stop its spread.”
Twenty additional cases had been confirmed in France late Thursday; the new 19 cases were diagnosed in the 24 hours since then.
Authorities on Saturday were still struggling to identify the initial source of an outbreak in the Oise region north of Paris, with particular attention being paid to links between the Creil military base in that region and the nearby Charles de Gaulle international airport, one of the busiest passenger airports in Europe.
On Friday, France’s Le Monde newspaper, citing airport security officials, reported that one airport worker who lives in the Val d’Oise region had tested positive for the virus.
The rapidly growing numbers of coronavirus cases come at a time of general malaise among public health workers in France. Earlier this year, hundreds of hospital department heads resigned over complaints about insufficient resources and staffing.
“We are facing an epidemic that will affect the whole system and will very quickly impose a reorganization of care,” Xavier Lescure, an infectious disease specialist at Bichat hospital, one of the three designated coronavirus treatment hospitals in the Paris region, told Le Monde.
ISTANBUL — Iran on Saturday confirmed more than 200 new cases of the coronavirus — as well as nine deaths — amid a widening outbreak that has put other Mideast nations at risk.
At least 205 new infections appeared in Iran in the last 24 hours, including in provinces with no previous known cases, bringing the total number of patients to 593, Health Ministry spokesman Kianush Jahanpur said.
The death toll from the virus, which causes the disease known as covid-19, rose to 43, Jahanpur said. Iran has suffered the highest number of deaths from virus outside of China, where it originated in December. It was first detected in the Iranian holy city of Qom earlier this month.
Jahanpur and other officials have warned citizens that the number of cases will rise in the coming days and weeks. In Iran, several senior officials have also been infected, including a vice president, the deputy health minister and as many as four parliamentarians. A former ambassador to the Vatican also died this week after contracting the virus.
Authorities suspended the activities of parliament, banned Friday prayers in multiple cities and shuttered schools and theaters in an effort to contain the outbreak.
TOKYO — Acknowledging widespread public criticism of the government’s handling of the coronavirus epidemic, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said it had been a “tough” but necessary decision to request schools across the country to close in March and also promised to expand and enhance virus testing capacity.
“We understand that people have various views and criticism to any decisions made by the government that would directly affect your lives,” Abe said at a televised news conference on Saturday. “Of course, we need to sincerely listen to your voices. However, as the prime minister of Japan, I need to protect the lives and health of the people.”
Abe reiterated the government’s view that the next one to two weeks are a critical time to curb the speed at which the new coronavirus will spread around Japan and said the government “must never allow a mass infection” of children at school.
“The closure of schools will put a burden on parents, especially families with small children,” he said. “I understand the difficulties these people will have to go through, yet we need to put children’s health and safety first.”
Abe pledged additional spending to tackle the impact of the virus, as well as an expansion of child care services.
Abe’s government has also been widely criticized for a shortage of virus tests, which has left doctors around the country unable to get tests for patients they believe could be infected.
Abe vowed to increase testing capacity so anyone who doctors felt needed a test could obtain one and also pledged to roll out a new test in March that could give results in 15 minutes. He said three drugs are being used to treat patients with the virus.
“All those drugs have been confirmed to have efficacy to a certain degree in the basic study using new coronavirus,” he said. “Therefore, we will use them with the consent of patients so as to develop therapeutic drugs as soon as possible.”
Japan has more than 200 confirmed coronavirus cases, not including more than 700 people from the Diamond Princess, but medical experts believe the real number of infections is significantly higher.
Read more here.Read more here.
BAGHDAD — Saudi Arabia urged citizens Saturday not to travel to Lebanon, after the number of confirmed coronavirus edged steadily upward. Georgia confirmed its first coronavirus case Wednesday, joining a growing list of countries from Europe and the Middle East reporting new infections as the epidemic grows.
In a statement, the Saudi Embassy in Beirut asked Saudi nationals to postpone non-urgent travel and, if in Lebanon, stay away from crowded places, according to Lebanon’s National News Agency. Georgian Health Minister Ekaterine Tikaradze said the patient is a Georgian citizen who had been traveling back from Iran via Azerbaijan, which borders both countries, Reuters reported.
Lebanon confirmed its fourth coronavirus on Friday, with Beirut’s Rafik Hariri Hospital describing the individual as a Syrian national, now in quarantine. It was unclear whether she had recently traveled to China or Iran, where many other cases appear to have been contracted. “He was immediately taken to a hospital from the border checkpoint,” the news agency reported Tikaradze as saying. In recent days, Iran and Italy joined Japan and South Korea as key clusters of the virus outside China, where the outbreak began.
Lebanon is in the throes of its worst economic crisis since its civil war and the downturn has hit the health care system hard. As foreign reserves evaporate, doctors have staged sit-ins at hospitals to warn that lifesaving medicines are in short supply. Health care professionals have also pointed to an increasing shortage of medical equipment. Several other countries that have announced coronavirus cases in recent days have also linked them to the growing outbreak in Iran.
The Lebanese government has been slow to react to the spread of coronavirus, only stopping flights from affected countries on Friday, a week after the first case was confirmed there. Shortly afterward, Lebanon’s education ministry announced Friday that it would close all universities and schools until March 8, as a precautionary measure. The World Health Organization has pressed China for information about coronavirus infections among health-care workers, but Beijing has not provided it — leaving a data gap that could hurt the global response.
“In the interest of the health of students and their families ... the minister of education Dr. Tarek Majzoub requests all educational institutions including kindergartens, schools, high schools, vocational institutions and universities to close,” the education ministry said in a statement. In response to questions from The Washington Post, WHO said it has repeatedly asked Chinese officials for “disaggregated” data — meaning specific figures broken out from the overall numbers — that could shed light on hospital transmission and help assess the level of risk facing front-line workers.
South Korean health officials on Saturday reported the country’s biggest single-day increase in new coronavirus cases since infections there began to surge earlier this month. “We received disaggregated information at intervals, though not details about health-care workers,” said Tarik Jasaravic, a spokesman for the Geneva-based organization.
The Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said it had confirmed 594 new cases, bringing the country’s total number of infections to nearly 3,000. Before Saturday, South Korea had not tallied more than 334 new cases in a single day, according to the KCDC. The comment, in a Saturday email to The Post, was one of the first instances that the U.N. health agency has directly addressed shortcomings in China’s reporting or handling of the coronavirus crisis.
Seventeen people have died from the novel virus in South Korea, and 27 have recovered, according to the country’s health officials. It could renew fear that Beijing is either unable or unwilling to share all of the information that scientists and public health experts need to understand the virus.
Nearly all of the new cases came from the sprawling southeastern city of Daegu, where earlier in February officials linked a sudden burst of infections to an obscure church. Details about front-line worker infections are “critical for developing preparedness plans in countries around the world,” said Jennifer Nuzzo, an epidemiologist and senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security.
South Korean vice health minister Kim Kang-lip said the country has reached a “critical moment” in stopping the spread of the virus, and advised citizens to refrain from going outside or taking part in public events this weekend, as Reuters reported. “Giving that information to the World Health Organization is also important from a credibility standpoint,” she said.
BEIJING — Taiwan on Saturday reported five new confirmed coronavirus cases, including nurses and a cleaner working at a hospital and a woman who began showing symptoms while traveling through the Middle East. WHO’s credibility is also on the line. In recent weeks, as evidence mounted that China silenced whistleblowers and undercounted cases, WHO has continued to heap praise on Beijing.
Including the five, Taiwan’s case count now stands at 39. “China should be transparent, and WHO should be transparent with the broader community,” said Lawrence Gostin, a professor of global health law at Georgetown University who also provides technical assistance to the WHO.
Three nurses became infected while treating a coronavirus patient at an emergency ward, and one of the nurses came in contact with the cleaner, who subsequently contracted the disease, Taiwan’s Central Epidemic Command Center said. “This is health communication 101,” he continued. “Tell us everything you know, tell us what you don’t know and tell us what you are doing to find out what you don’t know.”
In a statement, the command center did not positively pinpoint where the fifth case, a woman in her 60s, contracted the illness but noted that she was in the United Arab Emirates and Egypt between Jan. 29 and Feb. 21, when she began coughing. Authorities are now following up with other people she traveled with. The Food and Drug Administration is stepping up its monitoring of the drug supply for potential shortages, including 20 products that may be at risk due to the coronavirus outbreak that has shut down much of China and is raising concerns about the nation’s convoluted and highly outsourced pharmaceutical supply chain.
The Emirates, a regional transportation hub with a significant population of Chinese businesspeople, has seen a slight uptick in cases, with the total reaching 21 on Friday. Several of its other cases include travelers from Iran, where officials have reported at least 245 cases. The crisis highlights a growing vulnerability: Not only are many medications used in the United States manufactured overseas, but critical ingredients — and the chemicals used to make them — also are overwhelmingly made in China and other countries. The supply chain’s roots now run so deep that it is difficult to fully anticipate where critical shortages could emerge.
BEIJING — China reported its lowest manufacturing numbers on record for the month of February, as the epidemic-stricken economy ground to an unprecedented standstill. Rosemary Gibson, author of the book “ChinaRx” and a senior adviser at the Hastings Center, a bioethics think tank, said China has a “global choke hold” on the chemical components that make up key ingredients.
China’s National Statistics Bureau said Saturday that the Purchasing Managers’ Index plummeted to 35.7, a reading below the previous record low of 38.8 in November 2008, during the global financial crisis. Any reading below 50 signals that manufacturing activity contracted. The FDA said no companies are reporting drug shortages linked to the coronavirus. But in a sign of its efforts to get ahead of any problems, an FDA spokeswoman said the agency has contacted 180 China-based prescription-drug manufacturers, asking them to evaluate their supply chains and reminding them that they are required to notify the FDA of any coming disruptions. Many U.S. drug companies buy Chinese-made active pharmaceutical ingredients, called APIs, in bulk, insulating themselves against a supply disruption for weeks, months or even a year.
Aside from languishing factories, the services industry also reported record-low activity, the statistics bureau reported. The 20 products the agency is watching especially closely use raw materials that all come from China, the FDA said.
“There was a plunge in demand for consumer industries,” the bureau said, noting a deep freeze in restaurants, transportation and tourism. Read more here.
The extent of the historic drop will likely fuel fears that China will struggle to mount a swift economic recovery, with knock-on effects for the rest of the world. China’s factories remain at the heart of the global supply chain. ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Pakistan has confirmed two cases of coronavirus, the country’s top health official said Wednesday, marking the first recorded cases of the virus in the country.
Chinese monetary authorities have promised to take drastic action to jump-start the economy, including breaking ground on massive new infrastructure projects. The government is also pressuring banks to pump out loans and landlords to forgive late payments to help businesses back on their feet. “Both cases are being taken care of according to clinical standard protocols & both of them are stable,” Zafar Mirza, the state minister of health, tweeted Wednesday. “No need to panic, things are under control.”
Chinese manufacturers say they have had difficulty staffing factories with their rural employees reluctant to return to work and in some cases even running into logistical difficulties, such as quarantine controls and roadblocks erected by fearful communities. Mirza said he would hold a news conference Thursday.
In recent weeks, the state railway and other transportation authorities have been chartering trains and buses to shuttle workers from the countryside back to factories. An economic planning official said this week that three-fourths of industrial firms have restarted production. The health official previously had expressed concern about the growing outbreak in neighboring Iran. Pakistan has temporarily closed its border with Iran to try to prevent the virus from spreading.
Several Pakistani students studying in China also have been diagnosed with the virus. The Pakistani government has refused to repatriate hundreds of its citizens stranded in Wuhan, China, the epicenter of the outbreak.
Boston Red Sox prospect Chih-Jung Liu was scheduled to start spring training in Fort Myers, Fla., last week. But the Taiwanese pitcher had to put his plans on hold when coronavirus fears prompted the team to quarantine him in his hotel room.
A Red Sox spokesman told the Boston Globe that the team is acting out of an “overabundance of caution” by keeping Liu in temporary isolation. The Globe reported that Liu wrote on Facebook that he is passing his time reading and “watching information about the team” online. He’s being monitored by Red Sox health officials.
The promising right-hander signed with the team late last year, earning a $750,000 bonus.
Another Taiwanese Red Sox player, infielder Tzu-Wei Lin, was temporarily quarantined earlier this month, the Globe reported. “I had been here for a week and they said I needed to go back to my apartment,” the Globe reported Lin as saying. “I was fine. I stayed away for one day and that was it.”
More than 30 cases of the virus have been confirmed in Taiwan.
A Chinese national infected with the coronavirus could face up to six months behind bars in Singapore over allegations that he lied to authorities about his movements within the city.
Singaporean authorities said they charged the 38-year-old man from Wuhan, China, on Wednesday under the city-state’s rarely used Infectious Disease Act, Reuters reported. The man came down with the coronavirus in late January, and his wife was quarantined at the time as a precaution.
Officials allege that the man failed to comply with Singapore’s rigorous contact-tracing protocols. He has been charged “in view of the potentially serious repercussions of the false information … and the risk they could have posed to public health,” Singapore’s Health Ministry said, according to Reuters.
He is facing a fine of about $7,000 or six months in prison as a first-time offender.
In a related move Wednesday, Singaporean authorities revoked the residency of a 45-year-old man who they said did not comply with a mandated 14-day quarantine after returning from China, Reuters reported.
Human Rights Watch has warned that Singapore has a “stifling” political environment, in which “citizens face severe restrictions on their basic rights to freedom of expression, association, and peaceful assembly through overly broad criminal laws and regulations.”
That infrastructure for government control has enabled the city-state to react swiftly to the spread of the coronavirus, eliciting both praise and criticism for its tactics.
China, where the outbreak started, also has made use of its top-down government infrastructure to impose wide-ranging forced quarantines, among other policies that the World Health Organization has repeatedly praised. Public health experts have questioned the effectiveness of many of these tactics in containing the virus.
Heavy-handed governmental responses have spread along with the coronavirus. In Iran, where cases have skyrocketed over the past week, authorities resorted to a familiar response Wednesday: arresting 24 people accused of spreading “misinformation” about this virus on the Internet, the semiofficial Iranian Students’ News Agency reported.
Congressional leaders planned to begin designing a large emergency spending package Wednesday for dealing with the coronavirus outbreak, revealing the wide gulf between lawmakers who have demanded more action and a White House that has sought a more measured response.
Even government officials have been split internally about how to respond, with some health officials urging more public preparedness while a number of political appointees have sought to downplay the risks. Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar, appearing at a congressional hearing Wednesday, sought to clarify that the near-term risk to Americans was low, but that the number of cases would most likely increase.
“The risk right now is very low to Americans,” Azar said. “From a public health perspective, we technically are in a state of containment in the United States. … We have always been clear … that could change rapidly,” and added that U.S. officials “fully expect we will see more cases here in the United States.”
RIO DE JANEIRO — Brazilian officials said Wednesday that a Brazilian man has tested positive for the coronavirus, marking the first registered case in Latin America and opening up a new front in a global struggle against a virus that has already left thousands of people dead.
The patient was a 61-year-old Sao Paulo man who had just flown in from Italy, where he had traveled alone for work through the Lombardy region, one of the most heavily affected areas in Europe. He traveled home without symptoms, which only manifested Sunday, causing him to go to the hospital Monday.
“Ultimately, this is a situation … we are trying to map to understand the movement of people and of the virus,” said Luiz Henrique Mandetta, the Brazilian minister of health. “We are increasing our surveillance and preparations to attend to people. Sao Paulo is our most populous city.”
Until now, Latin America had remained untouched by the virus. But already the virus’s economic impact was expected to be significant for a region that counts China among its most vital trading partners.
Officials said the patient had a sore throat and cough, but his symptoms overall were not severe. He has since returned home to recover.
José Henrique Germann Ferreira, the Sao Paulo secretary of health, said a “new phase” has begun as officials plot how to contain the spread of the disease. He said the number of suspected cases is expected to increase, as officials work to see with whom the patient had been in contact.
“We are beginning a new phase in measures to mitigate the effects of disease in the state of Sao Paulo and in all of Brazil,” he said.
ISTANBUL — Iran is emerging as the center of an outbreak of the coronavirus across the Middle East, where cases in at least five countries have been linked to patients who had traveled to Iran in recent weeks, authorities said.
In Iran, 139 people have contracted the virus, including the deputy health minister and a prominent member of parliament. Nineteen people have died, according to the Health Ministry — the largest death toll from the virus outside China, where it first appeared. More than 2,400 have died in China.
The government has struggled to contain the spread of infections after reporting the first confirmed cases in the holy Shiite city of Qom last week. Since then, the virus has appeared in multiple Iranian cities, and infections in Bahrain, Iraq, Kuwait, Lebanon and Oman have all been traced back to Iran.
Several countries have halted flights to the Islamic republic. On Wednesday, Bahrain said that its number of coronavirus infections has risen to 26, after three more cases were detected among people who had recently returned from Iran, state media reported.
In Iraq, which borders Iran, authorities closed border crossings, and medical teams at the country’s airports monitored arriving passengers after five people were confirmed infected. Hundreds of thousands of Iranians visit Iraq’s holy city of Najaf each year, and shrines and schools there were shuttered Wednesday, and the streets were largely empty, residents said.
But even as regional governments moved to control the outbreak, Iranian authorities came under fire for what critics said is an inadequate response to the threat. Iranian officials have rejected calls to quarantine major cities and have allowed communal prayer services to continue in places such as Qom, where the virus first emerged in Iran. Nurses and other medical personnel have complained in interviews and on social media that authorities were preventing health workers from wearing masks and were forcing staff to purchase their own gloves.
Read more here: Iran struggles to contain coronavirus outbreak, putting Mideast countries at risk
The World Health Organization said Wednesday that there are more new cases of coronavirus outside China than inside China, a watershed moment in the global path of the disease.
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director general of the WHO, briefed diplomats in Geneva on Wednesday, assuring them that “yesterday, the number of new cases reported outside China exceeded the number of new cases in China for the first time,” according to Agence France-Presse.
According to the United Nations Health Agency, the number of new cases recorded in China was 411, but the number recorded outside the country — in Iran, Europe and elsewhere — was 427.
The coronavirus outbreak has become a decidedly global phenomenon, with governments around the world struggling to plan effective responses while assuring increasingly anxious citizens.
At a news conference in Rome on Wednesday, Hans Kluge, the WHO’s regional director for Europe, specified that there are 80,000 cases worldwide, although the vast majority are still in China. In the last 24 hours, four new WHO member states, including Afghanistan, Bahrain, Oman and Iraq, have all reported new cases, he said.
France reported the death of the first French citizen from the virus Wednesday morning, and authorities were struggling to understand how the 60-year-old patient had contracted the virus in the first place, as he had not traveled recently either to China or Italy, the center of the European outbreak.
The Japanese Health Ministry likewise reported the death of an 80-year-old man Wednesday. He had contracted the virus and died of pneumonia, officials said.
Panic gripping Wall Street showed some signs of easing Wednesday, with the Dow Jones industrial average up 300 points shortly after open, although the coronavirus’s rapid spread in Italy, Iran and South Korea seems to have investors elsewhere worrying that the worst is still to come.
Investors are increasingly waking up to the potential fallout of an outbreak that already has claimed thousands of lives; it’s upended global supply chains, dramatically slowed travel, and taken a bite out of a corporate earnings. Oxford Economics is predicting the virus could slow global growth to its lowest levels since the financial crisis.
Wall Street’s demeanor darkened significantly Tuesday after officials from the national Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warned that the virus would inevitably take its toll on the United States and asked businesses and local communities to brace for impact. The Dow Jones industrial average endured its worst two-day slump in four years, with the blue-chip index chalking back-to-back 3 percent declines. But Wednesday’s rebound suggests investors are wading back in after the bloodbath.
“This kind of sell-off creates some of the best buying opportunities for bulls but uncertainty regarding the virus remains high, and volatility is likely here to stay until the global situation stabilizes,” Gorilla Trades strategist Ken Berman wrote in commentary Tuesday.
Overseas investors did not share Wall Street’s optimism. Europe’s benchmark Stoxx 600 index was down 0.6 percent in midday trading, while Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index closed down 0.7 percent and Japan’s Nikkei 225 closed down nearly 0.8 percent.
Brent crude, the global oil benchmark, fell 1.5 percent to $53.47 a barrel. The yield on the 10-year Treasury note rebounded slightly from Tuesday’s all-time low. Yields drop as the price of bonds rises.
Read more here: Coronavirus spread sends global markets reeling as Wall Street looks for a comeback
TOKYO — More than 800,000 South Koreans have signed a petition calling for President Moon Jae-in to be impeached over his handling of the coronavirus epidemic, arguing that he was more worried about currying favor with the Chinese government than curbing the spread of the disease.
Moon has been widely criticized by his conservative opponents for failing to suspend travel from China, with restrictions applying only to people from the worst-affected province of Hubei and its capital, Wuhan.
“The most important thing for the president of the Republic of Korea is protecting its own people. Had he thought of his fellow Koreans, he should have banned entry of visitors from all parts of China,” the petition says.
The petition also criticizes Moon for sending 3 million face masks to China, while failing to address a spike in the price of masks in his own country.
“Seeing Moon Jae-in’s response to the new coronavirus, I feel that he is more of a president for China than Korea,” the petition says. “We cannot just watch this catastrophe anymore.”
South Koreans are fond of petitions and demonstrations, but with legislative elections in April, this could mark the first time that the international coronavirus epidemic becomes an active election issue.
South Korea has reported 1,146 coronavirus cases and 12 deaths, the second-highest national tally after China.
The presidential Blue House has to respond to any petition that garners more than 200,000 signatures in a month.
President Trump on Wednesday attacked CNN and “MSDNC (Comcast)” — a reference to MSNBC — for “doing everything possible to make the Caronavirus look as bad as possible, including panicking markets, if possible.” (He misspelled coronavirus in his tweet.)
“Likewise their incompetent Do Nothing Democrat comrades are all talk, no action,” Trump added. “USA in great shape!”
In a separate tweet, he said he would hold a news conference at the White House at 6:30 p.m. Wednesday, alongside representatives of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
On Tuesday, Trump defended his administration’s response to the coronavirus epidemic against a flurry of criticism from Democratic presidential candidates, who said in Tuesday night’s primary debate that he was not doing enough to address the deadly outbreak.
“CDC and my Administration are doing a GREAT job of handling Coronavirus, including the very early closing of our borders to certain areas of the world,” Trump tweeted on Tuesday.
White House struggles to contain public alarm over coronavirus
“No matter how well we do, however, the Democrats talking point is that we are doing badly,” he wrote. “If the virus disappeared tomorrow, they would say we did a really poor, and even incompetent, job. Not fair, but it is what it is.”
The president’s tweets came as Democrats on the debate stage in South Carolina blasted the way the administration has handled the public health crisis.
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) ridiculed Trump’s recent unfounded assertion that the outbreak could “miraculously” subside by April — a claim that health experts say is dubious at best.
On Tuesday, Trump also played down the economic impact of the outbreak in the United States, even as analysts voiced concerns.
BERLIN — Concerns over the spread of the coronavirus mounted in Europe, as case numbers continued to surge in Italy and new cases were confirmed in a number of countries, including Germany and Greece.
Italy reported a total of 374 cases by noon local time Wednesday, with more than 90 new confirmed cases within 24 hours. The death toll rose from seven to 12 within the same time period. Most cases continued to be in the province of Lombardy.
On Wednesday, the Greek government also confirmed the first recorded case of coronavirus in the country, a 38-year-old woman who had recently visited Italy.
The patient is being treated in a Thessaloniki hospital and shows no life-threatening symptoms, a Health Ministry spokesman told Agence France-Presse.
In Germany, two federal states reported one new case each Tuesday night, with no apparent links between the two. In the federal state of Baden Württemberg, a 25-year-old man who had returned from a trip to northern Italy tested positive for the virus.
Meanwhile, in the state of North-Rhine Westphalia, a man who tested positive for the virus was in a critical condition, according to the regional Health Ministry. His wife is also showing symptoms but is still awaiting test results, the ministry said. Schools and kindergartens near the couple’s home remained closed Wednesday.
LONDON — Britain will begin random testing of patients with flulike symptoms as part of its latest measures to contain the spread of the coronavirus, health officials announced Wednesday.
The ratcheting up of testing comes as the number of cases on the European continent has risen sharply in recent days. On Wednesday morning, France reported a death from the virus.
In England, random testing for the virus will take place at 11 hospitals and 100 general medical offices. Paul Cosford, Public Health England’s medical director, told the BBC on Wednesday that people who have similar symptoms to those caused by the coronavirus — a cough, shortness of breath, a fever — will be tested at random, even if they have not been to a “country of concern.”
“That’s to check whether we have any transmission that we are not aware of,” he said.
“This testing will tell us whether there’s evidence of infection more widespread than we think there is. We don’t think there is at the moment,” Cosford said. He added: “The other thing it will do is, if we do get to the position of more widespread infection across the country, then it will give us early warning that that’s happening.”
So far in Britain, 13 people have been infected with the virus.
On Tuesday, British government officials urged travelers who have flulike symptoms returning from northern Italy to self-isolate. At least six schools in England have closed amid concerns that pupils could be infected following ski trips to Italy.
TOKYO — The government of the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido urged some schools Wednesday to temporarily close their doors, as it battles to contain the spread of the coronavirus.
It was the first prefecture-wide order to close schools in Japan since the epidemic began.
Shortly afterward, the prefectural government announced the first death from covid-19 on the island, saying that an elderly person who died on Tuesday was subsequently confirmed as having the virus.
Three more people on the island were also found to have the virus, bringing the total to 39 people in Hokkaido, including students, a teacher, a school bus driver and a child day care worker, Kyodo News reported.
The prefecture’s education board urged all 1,600 public elementary and junior high schools to close until March 4, but it exempted high schools since students are deemed old enough to decide for themselves if precautions are needed.
TOKYO — Japan dismissed comments from a senior member of the International Olympic Committee suggesting that the Tokyo Olympics might have to be canceled if the coronavirus epidemic still poses a threat in late May.
Dick Pound told the Associated Press that a decision would have to be made by late May and that a cancellation was more likely than a postponement or a decision to move the Games if the virus is not under “sufficient control.”
But Pound also stressed that athletes should continue to prepare for the Games, explaining that “all indications” were that they would still go ahead.
Japan’s Olympics minister, Seiko Hashimoto, told parliament that organizers of Tokyo’s 2020 Summer Games had sought an explanation from the IOC about the comments and were told that Pound’s remarks did not represent an official view.
“All we’ll be doing is to prepare to host the Games with ease of mind and to satisfy the IOC,” said Hashimoto, a former Olympic speed skating medalist, according to Kyodo News.
Tokyo Gov. Yuriko Koike called Pound’s comments “personal views.”
“I have emails from IOC members in charge of the Tokyo Games telling me to work hard in preparing for the event,” she told reporters, according to Kyodo. “The metropolitan government will pursue measures against the virus.”
Nineteen people have died in Iran from the novel coronavirus outbreak, Iranian Health Ministry spokesman Kianush Jahanpur told state television on Wednesday.
Iran has the highest number of deaths from the coronavirus outbreak outside China. Jahanpur said the number of confirmed cases in the country now stands at 139.
Jahanpur said Iranians should cancel nonessential travel and urged people to avoid Gilan and Qom, areas of the country with lots of confirmed coronavirus cases.
The large number of novel coronavirus infections in Iran has stretched the country’s health system, already under pressure from international isolation caused by punishing U.S. sanctions.
Speaking on Wednesday, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said the country would bring the outbreak under control within weeks.
Rouhani emphasized that more common illnesses such as influenza kill people every year, adding that deaths from the coronavirus “are no more than influenza.”
“The point I want to emphasize is that [the] coronavirus should not become a weapon at the hand of our enemies,” Rouhani told a cabinet session, according to a transcript on his website.
PARIS — The French Health Ministry confirmed three new cases of coronavirus in France on Wednesday, one of which led to the death of the first French citizen in the outbreak.
That patient, a 60-year-old man, died at a Paris hospital overnight. The other two new cases involved a 55-year-old man hospitalized in the northern French city of Amiens and a 36-year-old man hospitalized in the eastern French city of Strasbourg, said Jérôme Salomon, France’s director general of health.
The Strasbourg patient had recently returned from Lombardy in northern Italy, the center of Europe’s coronavirus outbreak, Salomon said. The Amiens patient was in critical condition and was placed in the hospital’s intensive care unit, he said.
These three new cases were the latest in a rapid spike of new coronavirus infections across Europe.
French Health Minister Olivier Véran is expected to announce further details Wednesday evening.
PARIS — Spain has confirmed eight new cases of coronavirus in the 24 hours since a hotel in Tenerife was placed on lockdown after an Italian guest tested positive for the virus. Two of the new cases were confirmed in Madrid and one in Barcelona.
The numbers represented a dramatic uptick, with most new cases connected to an outbreak in northern Italy, still the largest in Europe.
Other European countries also reported new infections related to the Italian outbreak: France, Croatia, Austria and Switzerland all reported new cases late Tuesday or early Wednesday.
As in Tenerife, Austrian authorities placed a hotel in the Alpine city of Innsbruck under lockdown when a receptionist — an Italian who had recently visited Lombardy, one of the affected regions — tested positive for the virus.
The virus’s rapid European spread — and the mystery behind its arrival in Italy — have triggered anxieties across the continent. Government ministers have urged passengers not to pursue nonessential travel to affected regions, and other politicians have called for border closures.
“There is no prohibition,” said Spain’s health minister, Salvador Illa, according to El Pais. “But unless it is essential, do not go to a risk zone. It’s common sense.”
BEIRUT — Bahrain said Wednesday the number of coronavirus infections in the tiny island nation has risen to 26 after three more cases were detected among people who had recently returned from Iran, according to the state news agency.
Bahrain now has the highest number of infections in the Middle East outside Iran, which is emerging as a new focal point of the virus. Cases linked to Iran have been detected in the United Arab Emirates, Iraq, Lebanon, Oman and Kuwait, which reported two new infections on Wednesday, bringing the total to 11.
Bahrain on Tuesday ordered all schools to close for two weeks, and airlines across the region have begun suspending flights to and from Iran, as well as to hubs that connect with Iran.
SEOUL — South Korea confirmed 115 more cases of the novel coronavirus late Wednesday local time, as the U.S. military reported its first infection in a service member stationed in the Asian country.
The latest jump brought the number of confirmed the cases of the day to 284, according to the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (KCDC). More than half of South Korea’s 1,261 coronavirus cases are in southern city of Daegu.
The U.S. military command in South Korea, known as U.S. Forces Korea (USFK), said a 23-year-old soldier stationed at Camp Carroll near Daegu tested positive for the virus. The patient is in self-quarantine at his off-base residence, according to the military.
“KCDC and USFK health professionals are actively conducting contact tracing to determine whether any others may have been exposed,” the military said in a statement.
U.S. Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper said Tuesday that planned joint military exercises with South Korea could be scaled back because of concerns about the virus.
South Korea also reported its 12th death from the virus, a 73-year-old man. Additionally, it announced that a Mongolian man in his 30s who had the novel coronavirus died in Gyeonggi province near Seoul.
Except for the Mongolian man’s case, all of South Korea’s 12 fatalities occurred in Daegu and surrounding North Gyeongsang province.
The South Korean government has designated Daegu and North Gyeongsang as “special care zones” where support will be concentrated.
MANILA — As the number of cases of the novel coronavirus continues to grow in South Korea, Asian countries are responding with travel bans.
The Philippines on Wednesday announced an immediate ban on entry for travelers from North Gyeongsang province, where the coronavirus-hit city of Daegu is located, and said officials would consider widening the ban to other parts of South Korea.
Filipinos who are permanent residents, students and overseas workers are authorized to travel, provided they sign a declaration that they are aware of the risks.
Presidential spokesman Salvador Panelo told reporters that officials expect tourism to take a hit due to the ban, but “the safety and security of Filipinos here and outside the Philippines remain our primary concern.” South Korea is one of the Philippines’ top sources of tourists, with more than 1.6 million visitors from the country in 2018.
The move comes as other countries impose restrictions on visitors from South Korea, which has the second-highest national tally of coronavirus cases after China.
Japan announced Wednesday that it would bar visitors who had traveled to the Daegu or Cheongdo, another afflicted city, in the past two weeks. Vietnam and Singapore have also imposed similar restrictions. In addition, Mongolia said it was suspending flights from Japan.
BEIJING — Beijing is asking all banks in the region to disinfect paper cash and keep the notes in a dry place for at least seven days before putting them in circulation.
The request was made by Beijing’s Banking and Insurance Regulatory Bureau on Wednesday as it issued guidelines for controlling the novel coronavirus outbreak.
The bureau also asked financial institutions to intensify disinfection at counters and public facilities in all customer-facing banking and insurance establishments.
After cash is withdrawn from circulation, financial institutions are required to disinfect the bills using ultraviolet light and keep them in a dry environment for at least a week.
Money returned from hospitals will be stored separately after disinfection, the bureau said.
Banks in other regions of China have installed similar measures in a bid to stop the spread of the novel coronavirus. On Monday, China Construction Bank in the southeastern province of Fujian announced it had disinfected bank notes worth 6.9 billion yuan — roughly $980 million — between Jan. 28 and Feb. 23.
TOKYO — Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe recommended on Wednesday that major sporting and cultural events in the country taking place over the next two weeks should be postponed or canceled to slow the spread of the novel coronavirus.
Abe’s government believes the next two weeks is a critical time for Japan as it seeks to limit the spread of the virus, reduce mortality rates and save the Summer Olympics in Tokyo.
Already Japan’s J-League soccer has postponed all matches until March 15, while the Yomiuri Giants announced they would play two preseason baseball games this weekend behind closed doors. Japan’s Rugby Football Union announced on Wednesday it would postpone two rounds of games due to have taken place over the next two weekends.
Concerts from Japanese boy bands News and SixTones as well as American rockers the Pixies have also been canceled in recent days.
Japan has announced 171 cases of coronavirus, including 14 of its citizens evacuated from the Chinese city of Wuhan, but not including more than 700 people who contracted the virus on board the cruise ship the Diamond Princess.
BEIJING — After a surge in coronavirus cases in South Korea and Japan, the northeastern Chinese city of Dalian on Wednesday announced a 14-day quarantine on all arrivals.
The move, which came a day after nearby Qingdao and Weihai imposed similar measures, shows how many in China are now less worried about the domestic spread of the novel coronavirus and more worried about it coming from abroad. Chinese social media users had appealed on local governments to protect China’s northeastern regions, which are home to a substantial number of Korean and Japanese expatriates and businesses.
“Please put those who return from overseas under centralized quarantine and keep our current promising situation,” wrote one user on Weibo, China’s Twitter-like social network.
Another user also subscribed to the government resolution: “We cannot lose hold of our port of entry now …”
Topics about South Korea’s coronavirus outbreak were among the most searched on Weibo on Wednesday, with many users expressing shock and concern for their neighbors.
“It wouldn’t be like this if only they copied our earlier method,” wrote one user who noted that South Korea’s numbers were growing too fast. South Korea, a democracy, has declined to mimic China’s approach of placing entire cities or regions under forced lockdown.
Chinese Internet users also discussed whether the Tokyo Olympics, due to be held this summer, would go ahead. “This is unfair to athletes,” one user complained.
Despite the large number of cases of novel coronavirus across China, outside of Hubei province many provinces have not announced new cases in several days. Confirmed cases in South Korea have surged past 1,000 this week, while Japan has had 171 confirmed cases, not including the hundreds who eventually tested positive on the Diamond Princess cruise ship.
MANILA — Over 400 Filipinos who were on board the virus-hit Diamond Princess cruise ship arrived in the Philippines by Wednesday morning in government repatriation operations.
A total of 445 people were brought back on two flights, escorted by a four-member repatriation team and a nine-member health response team. Everyone will undergo two weeks of quarantine at the Athletes’ Village — a former Southeast Asian Games housing facility — in New Clark City, north of Manila.
Eighty out of 538 Filipinos on the Diamond Princess tested positive for the coronavirus. There are at least 70 who are still being treated in hospitals in Japan.
This is the second batch of repatriates since the Philippines brought home returnees from Wuhan, China.
BEIJING — As of Wednesday, 13 Chinese provinces have lowered their emergency response level as they assess that the threat posed by the novel coronavirus has receded, according to the state-run People’s Daily.
China has four public health emergency alert levels, with Level 1 the most serious.
All 31 provincial-level regions in China activated a first-level emergency response to try to contain the spread of the virus by Jan. 29.
Shanxi, Guangdong, Xinjiang, Jiangsu, Sichuan and Anhui have adjusted their measures from level one to level two, while Gansu, Liaoning, Guizhou, Yunnan, Qinghai, Guangxi and Inner Mongolia have dropped theirs to level three.
The moves come as Beijing has tried to compel people in areas unaffected by the coronavirus outbreak to return to normal economic activity, hoping to avoid a prolonged downturn as the crisis drags on.
Though China continues to report hundreds of new coronavirus cases every day, almost all of these cases are in the epicenter of the outbreak, Hubei province, where strict quarantine requirements have been in place since Jan. 23.
HONG KONG — Asian markets extended losses Wednesday, though the declines were modest compared with those on U.S. markets on Tuesday, when the Dow Jones industrial average dropped 879 points.
Japan’s Nikkei 225 was down about 1 percent in midafternoon trade, while Hong Kong’s Hang Seng was 0.8 percent lower. Crude oil and U.S. stock futures were slightly higher.
The Chinese government announced stimulus measures on Tuesday, encouraging financial institutions to defer loan payments and increase lending for small and medium sized businesses.
Hong Kong also announced its own stimulus package on Wednesday, including a payment of over $1,200 to all adult permanent residents.
SEOUL — The number of South Korean coronavirus cases is widely expected to jump in coming days, as the country begins the mass testing of more than 200,000 members of a messianic religious movement at the center of an outbreak in the city of Daegu.
South Korea reported 169 additional cases of the coronavirus on Wednesday, bringing up the national tally to 1,146.
Of latest cases, 134 are in southern city of Daegu, according to the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (KCDC).
More than half of South Korea’s covid-19 cases have been traced to a regional branch of the secretive Shincheonji Church of Jesus, formally known as the Temple of the Tabernacle of the Testimony.
Shincheonji members believe leader Lee Man-hee is the second coming of Jesus. The church is widely considered a cult and some members have been accused of hiding from health workers.
South Korean President Moon Jae-in visited the virus-hit city with aides on Tuesday. After one of the attendees at a Daegu meeting with Moon tested positive for the virus, presidential aides and reporters who attended the meeting have been advised to quarantine themselves, according to South Korea’s state-funded Yonhap News Agency. A spokesman for the president said he could not confirm the media report.
South Korea’s military said 18 soldiers have been diagnosed with the virus as of Wednesday. Defense Minister Jeong Kyeong-doo told soldiers not to leave their barracks other than for exceptional situations.
HONG KONG — In a bid to stem the financial damage caused by the coronavirus outbreak, Hong Kong’s government has announced a number of measures to aid individuals and firms.
Financial Secretary Paul Chan Mo-po revealed the measures in a speech on Wednesday, announcing that each adult permanent resident in the city would receive a handout of 10,000 Hong Kong dollars, about $1,280.
Other measures included a full guarantee on loans of up to 2 million Hong Kong dollars — more than $250,000 — for small and medium-sized businesses, and government support for commercial utility payments.
Chan warned that the financial outlook for Hong Kong, already rough after the U.S.-China trade war and a police clampdown on pro-democracy protests last year, would be tough in 2020. Hong Kong’s economy contracted by 1.2 percent last year, the annual decline since 2009, figures showed Wednesday.
“Hong Kong has been intensely affected by the profound changes in the international political and economic landscape,” Chan said. “Meanwhile, we had an extraordinary year with the occurrence of local social incidents.”
Carrie Lam, Hong Kong’s chief executive, is facing historically low popularity ratings over perceptions that she prioritizes the needs of Beijing and the Chinese Communist Party over those of residents. Authorities are hoping that the budget relief package will help quell the deep dissatisfaction and stave off further protests against the government.
“I believe that given the extraordinary challenges that our community is facing, this is a justifiable and effective measure,” Lam said. “For some people, the cash payout will help to make ends meet in their hour of need.”
The number of confirmed coronavirus cases in Hong Kong reached 85 on Tuesday, with two known deaths from the outbreak.
HONG KONG — The Chinese government announced 406 new cases of the novel coronavirus on Wednesday morning, along with 52 deaths. As in line with a recent trend, all but five of the new cases were in Hubei province, the epicenter of the current outbreak; all of the deaths were in Hubei.
The numbers marked another dip in new cases, though health experts have cautioned against reading too much into the declining numbers, noting both the unpredictability of new outbreaks like this and the Chinese state’s opacity.
The new numbers mean that mainland China has seen a total of 78,064 infections and 2,715 deaths.