Chindia Alert: You’ll be Living in their World Very Soon
aims to alert you to the threats and opportunities that China and India present. China and India require serious attention; case of ‘hidden dragon and crouching tiger’.
Without this attention, governments, businesses and, indeed, individuals may find themselves at a great disadvantage sooner rather than later.
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Faced with a backlash from the West over its handling of the early stages of the pandemic, Beijing has been quietly gaining ground in Asia
Teams of experts and donations of medical supplies have been largely welcomed by China’s neighbours
Despite facing some criticism from the West, China’s Asian neighbours have welcomed its medical expertise and vital supplies. Photo: Xinhua
While China’s campaign to mend its international image in the wake of its handling of the coronavirus health crisis has been met with scepticism and even a backlash from the US and its Western allies, Beijing has been quietly gaining ground in Asia.
Teams of experts have been sent to Cambodia, the Philippines, Myanmar, Pakistan and soon to Malaysia, to share their knowledge from the pandemic’s ground zero in central China.
China has also held a series of online “special meetings” with its Asian neighbours, most recently on Tuesday when Premier Li Keqiang discussed his country’s experiences in combating the disease and rebooting a stalled economy with the leaders of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean), Japan and South Korea.
Chinese Prime Minister Li Keqiang speaks to Asean Plus Three leaders during a virtual summit on Tuesday. Photo: AP
Many Western politicians have publicly questioned Beijing’s role and its subsequent handling of the crisis but Asian leaders – including Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe – have been reluctant to blame the Chinese government, while also facing criticism at home for not closing their borders with China soon enough to prevent the spread of the virus.
An official from one Asian country said attention had shifted from the early stages of the outbreak – when disgruntled voices among the public were at their loudest – as people watched the virus continue its deadly spread through their homes and across the world.
“Now everybody just wants to get past the quarantine,” he said. “China has been very helpful to us. It’s also closer to us so it’s easier to get shipments from them. The [medical] supplies keep coming, which is what we need right now.”
The official said also that while the teams of experts sent by Beijing were mainly there to observe and offer advice, the gesture was still appreciated.
Another Asian official said the tardy response by Western governments in handling the outbreak had given China an advantage, despite its initial lack of transparency over the outbreak.
“The West is not doing a better job on this,” he said, adding that his government had taken cues from Beijing on the use of propaganda in shaping public opinion and boosting patriotic sentiment in a time of crisis.
“Because it happened in China first, it has given us time to observe what works in China and adopt [these measures] for our country,” the official said.
Experts in the region said that Beijing’s intensifying campaign of “mask diplomacy” to reverse the damage to its reputation had met with less resistance in Asia.
Why China’s ‘mask diplomacy’ is raising concern in the West
29 Mar 2020
“Over the past two months or so, China, after getting the Covid-19 outbreak under control, has been using a very concerted effort to reshape the narrative, to pre-empt the narrative that China is liable for this global pandemic, that China has to compensate other countries,” said Richard Heydarian, a Manila-based academic and former policy adviser to the Philippine government.
“It doesn’t help that the US is in lockdown with its domestic crisis and that we have someone like President Trump who is more interested in playing the blame game rather than acting like a global leader,” he said.
Shahriman Lockman, a senior analyst with the foreign policy and security studies programme at Malaysia’s Institute of Strategic and International Studies, said that as the US had withdrawn into its own affairs as it struggled to contain the pandemic, China had found Southeast Asia a fertile ground for cultivating an image of itself as a provider.
China’s first-quarter GDP shrinks for the first time since 1976 as coronavirus cripples economy
Beijing’s highly publicised delegations tasking medical equipment and supplies had burnished that reputation, he said, adding that the Chinese government had also “quite successfully shaped general Southeast Asian perceptions of its handling of the pandemic, despite growing evidence that it could have acted more swiftly at the early stages of the outbreak in Wuhan”.
“Its capacity and will to build hospitals from scratch and put hundreds of millions of people on lockdown are being compared to the more indecisive and chaotic responses seen in the West, especially in Britain and the United States,” he said.
Coronavirus droplets may travel further than personal distancing guidelines
16 Apr 2020
Lockman said Southeast Asian countries had also been careful to avoid getting caught in the middle of the deteriorating relationship between Beijing and Washington as the two powers pointed fingers at each other over the origins of the new coronavirus.
“The squabble between China and the United States about the pandemic is precisely what Asean governments would go to great lengths to avoid because it is seen as an expression of Sino-US rivalry,” he said.
“Furthermore, the immense Chinese market is seen as providing an irreplaceable route towards Southeast Asia’s post-pandemic economic recovery.”
Aaron Connelly, a research fellow in Southeast Asian political change and foreign policy with the International Institute for Strategic Studies in Singapore, said Asian countries’ dependence on China had made them slow to blame China for the pandemic.
“Anecdotally, it seems to me that most Southeast Asian political and business elites have given Beijing a pass on the initial cover-up of Covid-19, and high marks for the domestic lockdown that followed,” he said.
“This may be motivated reasoning, because these elites are so dependent on Chinese trade and investment, and see little benefit in criticising China.”
China and Vietnam ‘likely to clash again’ as they build maritime militias
12 Apr 2020
The cooperation with its neighbours as they grapple with the coronavirus had not slowed China’s military and research activities in the disputed areas of the South China Sea – a point of contention that would continue to cloud relations in the region, experts said.
Earlier this month an encounter in the South China Sea with a Chinese coastguard vessel led to the sinking of a fishing boat from Vietnam, which this year assumed chairmanship of Asean.
And in a move that could spark fresh regional concerns, shipping data on Thursday showed a controversial Chinese government survey ship, the Haiyang Dizhi 8, had moved closer to Malaysia’s exclusive economic zone.
The survey ship was embroiled in a months-long stand-off last year with Vietnamese vessels within Hanoi’s exclusive economic zone and was spotted again on Tuesday 158km (98 miles) off the Vietnamese coast.
Image copyright GETTY IMAGESImage caption The Chinese city of Wuhan recently lifted its strict quarantine measures
The Chinese city of Wuhan, where the coronavirus originated last year, has raised its official Covid-19 death toll by 50%, adding 1,290 fatalities.
Wuhan officials attributed the new figure to updated reporting and deaths outside hospitals. China has insisted there was no cover-up.
It has been accused of downplaying the severity of its virus outbreak.
Wuhan’s 11 million residents spent months in strict lockdown conditions, which have only recently been eased.
The latest official figures bring the death toll in the city in China’s central Hubei province to 3,869, increasing the national total to more than 4,600.
China has confirmed nearly 84,000 coronavirus infections, the seventh-highest globally, according to Johns Hopkins University data.
What’s China’s explanation for the rise in deaths?
In a statement released on Friday, officials in Wuhan said the revised figures were the result of new data received from multiple sources, including records kept by funeral homes and prisons.
Deaths linked to the virus outside hospitals, such as people who died at home, had not previously been recorded.
Media caption Learn how Wuhan dealt with the lockdown
The “statistical verification” followed efforts by authorities to “ensure that information on the city’s Covid-19 epidemic is open, transparent and the data [is] accurate”, the statement said.
It added that health systems were initially overwhelmed and cases were “mistakenly reported” – in some instances counted more than once and in others missed entirely.
A shortage of testing capacity in the early stages meant that many infected patients were not accounted for, it said.
A spokesman for China’s National Health Commission, Mi Feng, said the new death count came from a “comprehensive review” of epidemic data.
In its daily news conference, the foreign ministry said accusations of a cover-up, which have been made most stridently on the world stage by US President Donald Trump, were unsubstantiated. “We’ll never allow any concealment,” a spokesman said.
Why are there concerns over China’s figures?
Friday’s revised figures come amid growing international concern that deaths in China have been under-reported. Questions have also been raised about Beijing’s handling of the epidemic, particularly in its early stages.
In December 2019, Chinese authorities launched an investigation into a mysterious viral pneumonia after cases began circulating in Wuhan.
China reported the cases to the World Health Organization (WHO), the UN’s global health agency, on 31 December.
But WHO experts were only allowed to visit China and investigate the outbreak on 10 February, by which time the country had more than 40,000 cases.
The mayor of Wuhan has previously admitted there was a lack of action between the start of January – when about 100 cases had been confirmed – and 23 January, when city-wide restrictions were enacted.
Around that time, a doctor who tried to warn his colleagues about an outbreak of a Sars-like virus was silenced by the authorities. Dr Li Wenliang later died from Covid-19.
Wuhan’s death toll increase of almost exactly 50% has left some analysts wondering if this is all a bit too neat.
For months questions have been asked about the veracity of China’s official coronavirus statistics.
The inference has been that some Chinese officials may have deliberately under-reported deaths and infections to give the impression that cities and towns were successfully managing the emergency.
If that was the case, Chinese officials were not to know just how bad this crisis would get in other countries, making its own figures now seem implausibly small.
The authorities in Wuhan, where the first cluster of this disease was reported, said there had been no deliberate misrepresentation of data, rather that a stabilisation in the emergency had allowed them time to revisit the reported cases and to add any previously missed.
That the new death toll was released at the same time as a press conference announcing a total collapse in China’s economic growth figures has led some to wonder whether this was a deliberate attempt to bury one or other of these stories.
Then again, it could also be a complete coincidence.
China has been pushing back against US suggestions that the coronavirus came from a laboratory studying infectious diseases in Wuhan, the BBC’s Barbara Plett Usher in Washington DC reports.
US President Donald Trump and some of his officials have been flirting with the outlier theory in the midst of a propaganda war with China over the origin and handling of the pandemic, our correspondent says.
Mr Trump this week halted funding for the World Health Organization (WHO), accusing it of making deadly mistakes and overly trusting China.
“Do you really believe those numbers in this vast country called China, and that they have a certain number of cases and a certain number of deaths; does anybody really believe that?” Mr Trump said at the White House on Wednesday.
On Thursday, UK Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab said: “We’ll have to ask the hard questions about how [coronavirus] came about and how it couldn’t have been stopped earlier.”
But China has also been praised for its handling of the crisis and the unprecedented restrictions that it instituted to slow the spread of the virus.
Image copyright GETTY IMAGESImage caption The Chinese city of Wuhan recently lifted its strict quarantine measures
The Chinese city of Wuhan, where the coronavirus originated last year, has raised its official Covid-19 death toll by 50%, adding 1,290 fatalities.
Wuhan officials attributed the new figure to updated reporting and deaths outside hospitals. China has insisted there was no cover-up.
It has been accused of downplaying the severity of its virus outbreak.
Wuhan’s 11 million residents spent months in strict lockdown conditions, which have only recently been eased.
The latest official figures bring the death toll in the city in China’s central Hubei province to 3,869, increasing the national total to more than 4,600.
China has confirmed nearly 84,000 coronavirus infections, the seventh-highest globally, according to Johns Hopkins University data.
What’s China’s explanation for the rise in deaths?
In a statement released on Friday, officials in Wuhan said the revised figures were the result of new data received from multiple sources, including records kept by funeral homes and prisons.
Deaths linked to the virus outside hospitals, such as people who died at home, had not previously been recorded.
Media caption Learn how Wuhan dealt with the lockdown
The “statistical verification” followed efforts by authorities to “ensure that information on the city’s Covid-19 epidemic is open, transparent and the data [is] accurate”, the statement said.
It added that health systems were initially overwhelmed and cases were “mistakenly reported” – in some instances counted more than once and in others missed entirely.
A shortage of testing capacity in the early stages meant that many infected patients were not accounted for, it said.
A spokesman for China’s National Health Commission, Mi Feng, said the new death count came from a “comprehensive review” of epidemic data.
In its daily news conference, the foreign ministry said accusations of a cover-up, which have been made most stridently on the world stage by US President Donald Trump, were unsubstantiated. “We’ll never allow any concealment,” a spokesman said.
Why are there concerns over China’s figures?
Friday’s revised figures come amid growing international concern that deaths in China have been under-reported. Questions have also been raised about Beijing’s handling of the epidemic, particularly in its early stages.
In December 2019, Chinese authorities launched an investigation into a mysterious viral pneumonia after cases began circulating in Wuhan.
China reported the cases to the World Health Organization (WHO), the UN’s global health agency, on 31 December.
But WHO experts were only allowed to visit China and investigate the outbreak on 10 February, by which time the country had more than 40,000 cases.
The mayor of Wuhan has previously admitted there was a lack of action between the start of January – when about 100 cases had been confirmed – and 23 January, when city-wide restrictions were enacted.
Around that time, a doctor who tried to warn his colleagues about an outbreak of a Sars-like virus was silenced by the authorities. Dr Li Wenliang later died from Covid-19.
Wuhan’s death toll increase of almost exactly 50% has left some analysts wondering if this is all a bit too neat.
For months questions have been asked about the veracity of China’s official coronavirus statistics.
The inference has been that some Chinese officials may have deliberately under-reported deaths and infections to give the impression that cities and towns were successfully managing the emergency.
If that was the case, Chinese officials were not to know just how bad this crisis would get in other countries, making its own figures now seem implausibly small.
The authorities in Wuhan, where the first cluster of this disease was reported, said there had been no deliberate misrepresentation of data, rather that a stabilisation in the emergency had allowed them time to revisit the reported cases and to add any previously missed.
That the new death toll was released at the same time as a press conference announcing a total collapse in China’s economic growth figures has led some to wonder whether this was a deliberate attempt to bury one or other of these stories.
Then again, it could also be a complete coincidence.
But China has also been praised for its handling of the crisis and the unprecedented restrictions that it instituted to slow the spread of the virus. WHO Director General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has hailed China for the “speed with which [it] detected the outbreak” and its “commitment to transparency”.
US President Donald Trump this week halted funding for the WHO, accusing it of making deadly mistakes and overly trusting China.
“Do you really believe those numbers in this vast country called China, and that they have a certain number of cases and a certain number of deaths; does anybody really believe that?” Mr Trump said at the White House on Wednesday.
On Thursday, UK Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab said: “We’ll have to ask the hard questions about how [coronavirus] came about and how it couldn’t have been stopped earlier.”
US$2 trillion rescue package passes US Senate, heads to House
Malaysia’s king and queen in ‘self-quarantine’ after staff test positive
Police commandos in Sri Lanka hand out food to homeless people during a nationwide curfew against the spread of coronavirus. Photo: AFP
More than three billion people are living under lockdown measures as soaring death tolls in Europe and the US underlined a United Nations warning that the coronavirus, which has now infected nearly half a million people globally, threatens all of humanity.
The global death toll from the virus now stands at more than 21,000, with Spain joining Italy in seeing its number of fatalities overtake China, where the virus first emerged just three months ago.
“Covid-19 is threatening the whole of humanity – and the whole of humanity must fight back,” UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres said, launching an appeal for US$2 billion to help the world’s poor.
“Global action and solidarity are crucial. Individual country responses are not going to be enough.”
The G20 major economies will hold an emergency videoconference on Thursday to discuss a global response to the crisis, as will the 27 leaders of the European Union, the outbreak’s new epicentre.
The economic damage of the virus – and the lockdowns – could also be devastating, with fears of a worldwide recession worse than the financial meltdown more than a decade ago.
Here are the developments:
US$2 trillion rescue package passes US Senate
The US Senate passed the nation’s largest-ever rescue package late Wednesday, a US$2 trillion lifeline to suffering Americans, depleted hospitals and an economy all ravaged by a rapidly spreading coronavirus crisis.
The monster deal thrashed out between Republicans, Democrats and the White House includes cash payments to American taxpayers and several hundred billion dollars in grants and loans to small businesses and core industries. It also buttresses hospitals desperately in need of medical equipment and expands unemployment benefits.
The measure cleared the Senate by an overwhelming majority and was headed next to the House of Representatives, which must also pass it before it goes to President Donald Trump for his signature.
US President Donald Trump has voiced hope the US will be “raring to go” by mid-April, but his optimism appeared to stand almost alone among world leaders.
Unemployment benefit filings by Americans workers to surge to 3.3 million last week – the highest number ever recorded, the Labour Department reported on Thursday.
The normally routine report is at the front lines of the economic crisis caused by the outbreak, which has forced widespread closures of restaurants, shops and hotels, and brought airline travel to a virtual halt, prompting the stunning increase in people filing for benefits nationwide in the week ending March 21.
Nearly every state cited Covid-19 for the jump in initial jobless claims, with heavy impacts in food services, accommodation, entertainment and recreation, health care and transport, the report said.
Malaysia’s king and queen in quarantine after staff test positive
The official residence of Malaysia’s monarchy on Thursday confirmed seven of its staff have tested positive for Covid-19 and are currently receiving treatment at the Kuala Lumpur Hospital.
Malaysia’s king, Sultan Abdullah Sultan Ahmad Shah and queen, Tunku Azizah, have also been tested, but their results showed a clean bill of health, a spokesman for the Istana Negara said in a statement.
“Nevertheless, Their Majesties are now observing a 14-day self-quarantine, starting yesterday, ” he said.
Meanwhile, Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin, along with all federal ministers and their deputies, announced they will take a two-month pay cut, with the savings to be donated to Putrajaya’s Covid-19 fund.
The Prime Minister’s Office said the decision was made during a cabinet meeting and showed the government’s sincerity in helping those affected by the pandemic.
“The Covid-19 fund was launched on March 11 as part of the government’s efforts to help those who were affected by the disease outbreak,” the office said, adding that 8.5 million ringgit (US$1.97 million) has been collected, including government grants.
Malaysia on Wednesday announced a two-week extension of a national lockdown as part of stepped-up measures to contain the coronavirus outbreak.
The “movement control order,” which requires people to stay home and was originally set to expire on March 31, will now continue until April 14.
Moscow monitors people in coronavirus quarantine with 100,000 ‘under the skin’ surveillance cameras
Russia to ground international flights
Russia will halt all international flights from midnight on Friday under a government decree listing new measures against the coronavirus outbreak.
The decree published on Thursday orders aviation authorities to halt all regular and charter flights, with the exception of special flights evacuating Russian citizens from abroad.
The announcement came after Russia on Wednesday recorded its biggest daily spike in confirmed coronavirus infections so far, with 163 new cases for a total of 658 across the country.
Denis Protsenko, head doctor of Moscow’s new hospital treating coronavirus patients, told President Vladimir Putin that Russia needed to be ready for an “Italian scenario”, referring to what is now the hardest-hit country in the world in terms of deaths.
Singapore boosts stimulus package to 11 per cent of GDP
Singapore reported 52 new coronavirus cases on Thursday, taking its tally to 683 infections.
The health ministry said that out of the 52, 28 were imported while 24 were locally transmitted.
Drawing on national reserves for the first time since the global financial crisis to support an economy heading for recession, the additional spending will push up the government’s virus-related relief to almost S$55 billion, or 11 per cent of gross domestic product, Finance Minister Heng Swee Keat said in a speech in parliament Thursday. It also will widen the budget deficit for the financial year starting April 1 to 7.9 per cent of GDP, from a previous target of 2.1 per cent.
“This extraordinary situation calls for extraordinary measures,” Heng said. “We have saved up for a rainy day. The Covid-19 pandemic is already a mighty storm, and is still growing.”
Coronavirus: Italy’s slowing infection rate boosts case for lockdowns
26 Mar 2020
‘If you catch it, don’t spread it to others’, 1949 flu advice still applies to coronavirus pandemic
Imported cases rise in China
Mainland China reported a second consecutive day of no new local coronavirus infections as the epicentre of the epidemic Hubei province opened its borders, but imported cases rose as Beijing ramped up controls to prevent a resurgence of infections.
A total of 67 new cases were reported as of end-Wednesday, up from 47 a day earlier, all of which were imported, China’s National Health Commission said in a statement on Thursday.
The total number of cases now stands at 81,285.
The commission reported a total of 3,287 deaths at the end of Wednesday, up six from the previous day.
All of the new patients were travellers who came to China from overseas, with the mainland reporting no locally transmitted infections on Wednesday.
Fearing a new wave of infections from imported cases, authorities have ramped up quarantine and screening measures in other major cities including Beijing, where any travellers arriving from overseas must submit to centralised quarantine.
Coronavirus could become seasonal
There is a strong chance the new coronavirus could return in seasonal cycles, a senior US scientist said Wednesday, underscoring the urgent need to find a vaccine and effective treatments.
Anthony Fauci, who leads research into infectious diseases at the National Institutes of Health, told a briefing the virus was beginning to take root in the southern hemisphere, where winter is on its way.
“What we’re starting to see now … in southern Africa and in the southern hemisphere countries, is that we’re having cases that are appearing as they go into their winter season,” he said.
“And if, in fact, they have a substantial outbreak, it will be inevitable that we need to be prepared that we’ll get a cycle around the second time.
“It totally emphasises the need to do what we’re doing in developing a vaccine, testing it quickly and trying to get it ready so that we’ll have a vaccine available for that next cycle.”
There are currently two vaccines that have entered human trials -one in the US and one in China – and they could be a year to a year-and-a-half away from deployment.
British Columbia is testing for Covid-19 faster per head than South Korea
27 Mar 2020
Spain extends emergency by two weeks
Spain’s parliament has voted in favour of the government’s request to extend the state of emergency by two weeks that has allowed it to apply a national lockdown in hopes of stemming its coronavirus outbreak.
The parliamentary endorsement will allow the government to extend the strict stay-at-home rules and business closings for a full month. The government declared a state of emergency on March 14. It will now last until April 11.
Spain’s government solicited the two-week extension after deaths and infections from the Covid-19 virus have skyrocketed in recent days. Spain 47,600 total cases. Its 3,434 deaths only trail Italy’s death toll as the hardest-hit countries in the world.
The parliament met with fewer than 50 of its 350 members in the chamber, with the rest voting from home to reduce the risk of contagion.
Greece locks down Muslim towns
Greek authorities have quarantined a cluster of Muslim-majority towns and villages in the country’s northeast after several cases and a death from the new coronavirus in the area.
The area in Xanthi prefecture was placed in lockdown as of Wednesday evening as nine people in the region overall have tested positive for the virus over the past six days, civil protection deputy minister Nikos Hardalias told reporters.
“All residents have been temporarily confined at home. No exceptions are allowed,” Hardalias said.
The centre of the outbreak appears to be the small Pomak town of Ehinos, a community of about 2,500.
“Ehinos residents will be provided with food and medicine,” Hardalias said.
Police were deployed on Thursday on a bridge leading into town to enforce the lockdown, television footage showed.
One 72-year-old Ehinos man has died from the virus, local mayor Ridvan Deli Huseyin told Antenna television.
“It’s better to take some measures now than to cry about this later,” said Huseyin, the mayor of the local administrative centre of Miki.
The Pomaks are a Muslim group of Slavic origin who live mainly in neighbouring Bulgaria.
They make up part of Greece’s roughly 110,000-strong Muslim minority in the country’s northeast bordering Turkey.
Many of them work as migrant industrial workers in other European countries.
Economy seats go for business-class fares as travellers flee
27 Mar 2020
Colombia goes into lockdown, Chile extends schools closures
Countries across Latin America tightened measures on Wednesday to halt the spread of the deadly novel coronavirus, with more lockdowns, border closings and school closures as well as increased aid to the region’s poorest.
As cases of Covid-19 cases continue to rise – more than 7,400 and 123 deaths up to now – Bolivia and Colombia became the latest countries to impose a total lockdown, while Chile extended its schools closures until the end of April.
Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro has warned of possible “chaos” and the “looting” of supermarkets if state shutdowns ordered by the governors of Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro aren’t ended.
Bolsonaro, who has repeatedly scoffed at the severity of the deadly pandemic, had previously criticised the closing of schools and businesses in Sao Paulo and Rio states, two of the country’s most populous states.
Germany ramps up testing, approves huge bailout
Germany has boosted its coronavirus test rate to 500,000 a week, Christian Drosten, who heads the Institute of Virology at Berlin’s Charite University Hospital, said on Thursday, adding that early detection has been key in keeping the country’s death rate relatively low.
Drosten also highlighted Germany’s dense network of laboratories spread across its territory as a factor contributing to early detection.
The news came after Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government secured emergency spending, unlocking a historic rescue package designed to cushion the blow of the coronavirus pandemic.
A majority of lawmakers in the Bundestag voted on Wednesday to allow additional borrowing to combat the crisis, according to the legislature’s president. The Bundesrat, or upper house of parliament, will vote on Friday.
The extraordinary authorisation is part of a packet of legislation aimed at protecting German jobs and businesses. The new borrowing of €€156 billion (US$169 billion) is equivalent to half of the country’s normal annual spending.
The country, which tightened lockdown measures this week, has about 32,700 cases and more than 150 deaths.
Trump and Widodo back chloroquine treatment, but fake news is deadly
25 Mar 2020
Ukraine declares ‘emergency situation’
Ukraine on Wednesday declared a month-long “emergency situation” to slow the coronavirus outbreak, as the number of confirmed cases jumped to 113.
Ukraine has already closed schools, universities and public spaces to stem the spread of the disease, but the measures were due to expire at the beginning of April.
The emergency situation announced on Wednesday effectively extends existing measures for 30 days until April 24, a government spokesperson said.
“We are extending quarantine and imposing an emergency situation in Ukraine,” Prime Minister Denys Shmygal said.
Unlike an official state of emergency, the initiative announced by the prime minister does not have to be rubber stamped by both the parliament and president. Ukraine has confirmed 113 cases of Covid-19 and four deaths, according to official statistics.
Prince Charles tests positive for coronavirus
Mexican governor says poor are ‘immune’
The governor of a state in central Mexico is arguing that the poor are “immune” to the new coronavirus, even as the federal government suspends all non-essential government activities beginning Thursday in a bid to prevent the spread of the virus.
Puebla Governor Miguel Barbosa’s comment on Wednesday was apparently partly a response to indications that the wealthy have made up a significant percentage of Mexicans infected to date, including some prominent business executives.
Officials say three-quarters of Mexico’s 475 confirmed cases are related to international travel, and the poor do not make many international trips. Some people apparently caught the virus on ski trips to Italy or the United States. The country has seen six deaths so far.
“The majority are wealthy people. If you are rich, you are at risk. If you are poor, no,” Barbosa said of the coronavirus. “We poor people, we are immune.”
Barbosa also appeared to be playing on an old stereotype held by some Mexicans that poor sanitation standards may have strengthened their immune systems by exposing them to bacteria or other bugs.
There is no scientific evidence to suggest the poor are in any way immune to the virus that is causing Covid-19 disease around the world.
No agreement on ‘Wuhan virus’ name as G7 spars over infection source
26 Mar 2020
Japan belatedly bans entry from Europe, Iran
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has established a task force under the country’s revised emergency law to deal with the global rise in coronavirus infections and deaths.
In Tokyo on Thursday, Abe said it was necessary for people to act as one to overcome what can be described as a national crisis.
Japan will ban entry from 21 European countries as well as Iran, to take effect from Friday, he added.
The country has already begun asking visitors and its nationals arriving from some countries in Southeast Asia, the Middle East and Africa to self-quarantine for 14 days.
Arrivals from a total of seven Southeast Asian countries and four in the Middle East and Africa are also asked to refrain from using public transport.
Similar steps are in place for visitors from China, South Korea, most of Europe and the United States.
Malaysia to lock down two communities to curb spread
Malaysia on Thursday announced that 3,570 residents in two communities in the country’s south will be placed under complete lockdown due to their high coronavirus infection rates.
Defence Minister Ismail Sabri Yaakob said in a statement that the residents in Kluang district of Johor state are banned from leaving home for two weeks beginning Friday, to enable the health authorities to conduct door-to-door screening.
The tough measure was taken after 73 per cent of the 83 infection cases found in the district were traced to the two small communities of Kampung Dato Ibrahim Majid and Bandar Baru Dato Ibrahim Majid.
Ismail said the residents cannot leave home, not even to buy food, as the welfare department will supply them with two weeks’ worth of food. All businesses must close and all access into the two areas will be sealed. The police and army have been deployed to ensure compliance.
The Australian government scrapped a time limit on haircuts following a backlash.
The government had imposed a rule on hairdressers and barbers on Tuesday that haircuts should take less than 30 minutes, as part of social distancing restrictions to deal with the coronavirus outbreak.
The restriction put around 40,000 hairdressers at risk, the Australian Hairdressing Council said in response.
“This decision is outrageous,” the council’s chief executive Sandy Chong said in a statement.
“Whilst many barbers can do a male haircut within that time frame, it really isn’t feasible for a majority of hairdressing salons.”
Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison issued a statement Thursday saying the policy would be reversed with immediate effect.
But salons and barbers must still strictly observe new rules that there may only be one person per four square metres within the premises, Morrison said.
India unveils US$22.6 billion stimulus package
India’s government announced a 1.7 trillion rupee (US$22.6 billion) stimulus package, as it stepped up its response to the coronavirus pandemic.
The measures will include cash transfers as well as steps on food security, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said in New Delhi on Thursday, adding that the package will benefit migrant workers.
Asia’s third-largest economy joins countries from the US to Germany that have pledged spending to contain the economic fallout of the pandemic. India is on a total lockdown for three weeks from Wednesday in the world’s biggest isolation effort, as Prime Minister Narendra Modi seeks to prevent the virus from spreading locally.
The government will also provide an insurance cover of 5 million rupees to medical workers, Sitharaman said.
‘Aggressive and targeted’ tactics needed to curb spread of Covid-19 as more than 100,000 new infections recorded in just four days
Global political commitment and coordination needed to halt trajectory, agency chief says
A customs officer speaks to passengers on board an inbound flight at Beijing Capital International Airport. Photo: Xinhua
The World Health Organisation has warned that the Covid-19 pandemic is accelerating, calling for “aggressive and targeted tactics” to curb its spread after more than 100,000 new infections were recorded in just four days.
The warning, by the UN agency chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, came as the number of deaths from the disease, caused by the new coronavirus, continued to rise, and as mainland China reported a doubling in new cases.
The outbreak, which was first reported in December in China, is rapidly spreading across the globe. Tedros said it had taken 67 days from the first reported case to the first 100,000 infections, and just 11 days for the number to soar to the second 100,000.
“[It was] just four days for the third 100,000 cases. You can see how the virus is accelerating,” he said on Tuesday.
“But we’re not prisoners to statistics. We’re not helpless bystanders. We can change the trajectory of this pandemic.”
China’s National Health Commission reported 74 imported coronavirus infections on Monday – the highest since March 4, when it began including data on such cases and noted two infections that had originated abroad.
They bring the total number of imported cases on the mainland to 427, as of Monday. The total number of infections there now stands at 81,171, and the death toll has risen to 3,277, with seven new fatalities.
Tedros said political commitment and coordination at the global level were needed to stop the spread, but warned against using untested medicines, saying they could raise false hope.
“To win, we need to attack the virus with aggressive and targeted tactics – testing every suspected case, isolating and caring for every confirmed case, and tracing and quarantining every close contact,” he said.
Italy’s number of new Covid-19 cases dropped to a five-day low on Monday, easing the strain on overstretched hospitals, but the situation in Spain continued to worsen.
Italian health authorities announced 4,789 new cases on Monday, a drop from 5,560 on Sunday and 6,557 on Saturday. Spanish authorities announced 462 deaths on Monday, the country’s worst day since the start of the epidemic.
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The British government said on Monday that another 54 people had died in the previous 24 hours after testing positive for the coronavirus, raising the country’s deaths from the pandemic to 335. The number of confirmed cases in Britain rose to 6,650 on Monday, from 5,683 on Sunday.
Mainland China officials have said the risk facing the nation was to contain imported infections. Among the new imported infections, 31 were recorded in Beijing, 14 in Guangdong and nine in Shanghai.
Beijing has stepped up measures to contain imported infections, diverting all arriving international flights from Monday to other cities, including Shanghai and as far west as Xian, where passengers will undergo virus screening.
Guangzhou also requires all travellers to the city, except for those from Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan, to undergo the coronavirus test. Beijing has required the test for incoming travellers with symptoms and epidemic history.
The coastal province of Zhejiang, near Shanghai, will also put all arrivals from overseas in centralised quarantine facilities for 14 days, according to media reports.
BEIJING (Reuters) – China on Sunday reported 46 new cases of coronavirus, the fourth straight day with an increase, with all but one of those imported from overseas, and further stepped up measures to intercept cases from abroad as the outbreak worsens globally.
While China says it has drastically reduced the number of domestically transmitted cases – the one reported on Sunday was the first in four days – it is seeing a steady rise in imported cases, mostly from Chinese people returning from overseas.
In a sign of how seriously China is taking the threat of imported cases, all international flights due to arrive in Beijing starting Monday will first land at another airport, where passengers will undergo virus screening, government agencies said on Sunday, in an expansion of existing measures.
International flights that were scheduled to arrive in the capital will land instead at one of 12 airports. Passengers who clear screening will then be permitted to reboard the plane, which will then fly to Beijing, the regulator said.
Separately, Shanghai and Guangzhou both announced that all arriving international passengers will undergo an RNA test to screen for coronavirus, expanding a program that previously only applied to those coming from heavily-hit countries.
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Among the new cases from abroad reported on Sunday, a record 14 were in the financial hub of Shanghai and 13 were in Beijing, a decline from 21 the previous day.
The new locally transmitted case was in the southern metropolis of Guangzhou and was also the first known case where the infection of a local person was linked to the arrival of someone from overseas, according to Guangdong province.
Hu Xijin, the editor-in-chief of the Global Times newspaper, called for all cities in China to implement 14-day quarantines for people arriving from abroad.
He also called for quarantine policies to apply to people from Hong Kong and Macau as well, he said on his Weibo account on Sunday.
“I am worried that there are similar cases to the Guangzhou one existing in other parts of the country. There were reports previously that people coming back from abroad returned to their homes in Shanghai without any obstacles,” Hu said.
“It matters to the overall situation of China’s next prevention and control efforts if we can plug the leaks.”
The Global Times is a tabloid published by the Ruling Communist Party’s People’s Daily.
The latest figures from China’s National Health Commission bring total reported coronavirus cases in the country to 81,054, with 3,261 deaths, including six on Saturday. On Saturday, China reported 41 new coronavirus cases for the previous day, all of them imported.
Of all 97 imported cases as of end-Saturday, 92 of them are Chinese nationals and 51 are Chinese students returning from studying abroad, said Gao Xiaojun, spokesman for the Beijing Municipal Health Commission during a press conference on Sunday.
The Beijing health commission announced separately on its website it had two more imported cases on Sunday, bringing the city’s total number of imported cases to 99 as of Sunday noon.
BACK TO A KIND OF NORMAL
China is trying to revive an economy that is widely expected to contract deeply in the current quarter, with life slowly returning to normal in cities such as Beijing and Shanghai, albeit with everyone wearing masks in public.
Still, numerous shops and restaurants remain shut – many have gone out of business – and factories and other workplaces are still not operating at full capacity.
On Sunday, a central bank official called for stepped-up global policy coordination to manage the economic impact of the pandemic. He said China’s recent policy measures were gaining traction, and it has capacity for further action.
Chen Yulu, a deputy governor at the People’s Bank of China (PBOC), also said he expects significant improvement in the Chinese economy in the second quarter.
And while the virus will continue putting upward pressure on near-term consumer prices, there is no basis for long-term inflation or deflation, he told a news briefing.
Globally, roughly 275,000 people have been infected with the virus, and more than 11,000 have died, according to a Reuters tally, with the number of deaths in Italy recently surpassing those in China.
“Now I think the epidemic has been controlled. But this definitely doesn’t mean that it’s over,” said a 25-year-old woman surnamed He who works in the internet sector and was visiting the vast Summer Palace complex in Beijing on Saturday.
“I’m willing to come out today but of course I am still afraid,” she told Reuters.
The central province of Hubei, where the outbreak first emerged late last year in its capital Wuhan, reported its fourth straight day of no new cases.
China has used draconian measures to contain the spread of the virus, including locking down Hubei province.
Image copyright EPAImage caption Lee Man-hee is the founder of the Shincheonji Church
The head of the religious sect that has been at the centre of the coronavirus outbreak in South Korea has apologised to the nation for the disease’s spread.
Lee Man-hee, the leader of the Shincheonji Church of Jesus, got on his knees and bowed at a news conference.
About 60% of the country’s more than 4,000 confirmed cases are sect members.
On Monday, South Korea – the biggest hotspot outside China – reported 476 new cases, bringing the total number to 4,212. It has recorded 26 deaths.
Prosecutors have been asked to investigate Mr Lee on possible charges of gross negligence.
“Although it was not intentional, many people have been infected,” said the 88-year-old leader. “We put our utmost efforts, but were unable to prevent it all.”
Media caption Empty shelves as coronavirus ‘panic-buying’ hits Australia
Of the confirmed cases, 3,081 are from the southern city of Daegu and 73% of these cases have been linked to the Shincheonji Church near there.
In the capital Seoul, the mayor urged the city’s 10 million residents to work from home and to avoid crowded places.
But church spokesman Kim Shin-chang told the BBC they had provided a list of members, students, and buildings to authorities.
“We were worried about releasing this information because of the safety of our members,” Mr Kim said.
Media caption ‘We’re often persecuted’: Spokesman for virus-hit S Korean church defends secrecy
Mr Lee claims he is the second coming of Jesus Christ and identifies as “the promised pastor” mentioned in the Bible who will take 144,000 people to heaven with him.
The Shincheonji Church is labelled as a cult within South Korea and also in the Christian community, which results in the group often being discriminated against, persecuted or criticised, Mr Kim told the BBC.
What’s the global situation?
The number of people killed worldwide by the coronavirus has exceeded 3,000, as China reported 42 more deaths. More than 90% of the total deaths are in Hubei, the Chinese province where the virus emerged late last year.
But there have also been deaths in 10 other countries, including more than 50 in Iran and more than 30 in Italy.
Worldwide, there have been almost 90,000 confirmed cases, with the numbers outside China now growing faster than inside China.
In other developments:
In the UK, where there are 36 confirmed cases, Prime Minister Boris Johnson has called a meeting of the emergency Cobra committee on Monday
Indonesia – one of the world’s most populous countries – has announced its first confirmed cases of coronavirus, a 64-year-old woman and her 31-year-old daughter, currently being treated at a Jakarta hospital
Iceland and Andorra also reported their first confirmed cases on Monday
Share prices in Asia and in Europe rose after central banks pledged to intervene to help protect markets from the impact of the coronavirus. Concerns about the outbreak last week wiped more than $5tn (£3.9tn) from global stocks
US sportswear giant Nike has closed its European headquarters in Hilversum city in the Netherlands after an employee tested positive for the virus
In the European hotspot of Italy, the number of infections doubled in 48 hours, the head of the country’s civil protection body said on Sunday.
There have been at least 34 deaths and 1,694 confirmed cases. Amazon said two of its employees in Italy have the virus and are under quarantine.
Countries including Qatar, Ecuador, Luxembourg and Ireland all confirmed their first cases over the weekend. On Monday, Ecuador reported five new cases of the disease, bringing the total number of infected patients in the country to six.
The US state of New York has also confirmed its first case. The patient is a woman in her 30s who contracted the virus during a recent trip to Iran. Two people have died in the US, both in the state of Washington.
A spokesman from China’s National Health Commission said the next stop would be to “focus on the risks brought by the resumption of work”.
China’s economy has taken a hit – with factory activity falling at a record rate.
On Monday, a man was sentenced to death by a Chinese court for fatally stabbing two officials at a virus checkpoint, news agency AFP reported.
Ma Jianguo, 23, refused to co-operate with officials – though it is not clear what he was told to do – and stabbed two checkpoint officials.
What has the WHO said?
On Sunday, the World Health Organization (WHO) said the virus appears to particularly affect those over 60, and people already ill.
It urged countries to stock up on ventilators, saying “oxygen therapy is a major treatment intervention for patients with severe Covid-19”.
In the first large analysis of more than 44,000 cases from China, the death rate was 10 times higher in the very elderly compared to the middle-aged.
But most patients have only mild symptoms and the death rate appears to be between 2% and 5%, the WHO said.
By comparison, the seasonal flu has an average mortality rate of about 0.1%, but is highly infectious – with up to 400,000 people dying from it each year.
Other strains of coronavirus, such as Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (Sars) and Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (Mers), have much higher death rates than Covid-19.
SHANGHAI/SEOUL (Reuters) – Asia reported hundreds of new coronavirus cases on Wednesday, including a U.S. soldier stationed in South Korea, as the United States warned of an inevitable pandemic and outbreaks in Italy and Iran spread to other countries.
World stocks tumbled for the fifth day on fears of prolonged disruption to global supply chains, while safe-haven gold rose back toward seven-year highs and U.S. bond yields held near record lows.
Stock markets globally have wiped out $3.3 trillion of value in the past four trading sessions, as measured by the MSCI all-country index.
The disease is believed to have originated in a market selling wildlife in the central Chinese city of Wuhan late last year and has infected about 80,000 people and killed more than 2,700, the vast majority in China.
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The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention urged Americans to prepare, saying that while the immediate risk there was low the global situation suggested a pandemic was likely.
“It’s not a question of if. It’s a question of when and how many people will be infected,” the CDC’s principal deputy director, Anne Schuchat, said on Tuesday.
World Health Organization (WHO) chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, however, advised against referring to a pandemic.
“We should not be too eager to declare a pandemic without a careful and clear-minded analysis of the facts,” Tedros said in remarks to Geneva-based diplomats.
“Using the word pandemic carelessly has no tangible benefit, but it does have significant risk in terms of amplifying unnecessary and unjustified fear and stigma, and paralyzing systems. It may also signal that we can no longer contain the virus, which is not true.”
‘DON’T WAIT’
The United States has reported 57 cases of the virus. U.S. President Donald Trump, back in Washington after a visit to India, said on Twitter that he would meet U.S. officials for a briefing on the coronavirus on Wednesday.
Dr Bruce Aylward, head of a joint WHO-Chinese mission on the outbreak, told reporters on his return to Geneva that countries’ preparations should not wait.
“Think the virus is going to show up tomorrow. If you don’t think that way, you’re not going to be ready,” he said. “This a rapidly escalating epidemic in different places that we have got to tackle super-fast to prevent a pandemic.”
Aylward said China’s “extraordinary mobilization” showed how an aggressive public health policy could curb its spread.
The WHO says the outbreak peaked in China around Feb. 2, after authorities isolated Hubei province and imposed other containment measures.
China’s National Health Commission reported another 406 new infections on Wednesday, down from 508 a day earlier and bringing the total number of confirmed cases in mainland China to 78,064. Its death toll rose by 52 to 2,715.
The WHO said only 10 new cases were reported in China on Tuesday outside Hubei.
South Korea, which with 1,261 cases has the most outside China, reported 284 new ones including a U.S. soldier, as authorities readied an ambitious plan to test more than 200,000 members of a church at the center of the outbreak.
Of the new cases, 134 were from Daegu city, where the virus is believed to have been passed among members of the Shincheonji Church of Jesus, the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said.
The U.S. military said a 23-year-old soldier based in Camp Carroll, about 20 km (12 miles) from Daegu, had been infected and was in self-quarantine at home.
OLYMPIC WORRIES
In Japan, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe called for sports and cultural events to be scrapped or curtailed for two weeks to stem the virus as concern mounted for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.
Japan’s professional baseball teams would play matches without spectators until March 15 due to virus concerns, Kyodo news agency reported.
Japan has nearly 170 virus cases, besides the 691 linked to a cruise ship that was quarantined of its coast this month. Six people have died in Japan, including four from the ship.
There have been nearly 50 deaths outside China, including 11 in Italy and 19 in Iran, the most outside China, according to a Reuters tally.
Iran’s deputy health minister – seen mopping his brow at a televised news conference – was among its 139 coronavirus infections. Cases linked to Iran have been reported across the region.
Kuwait said six new coronavirus cases, all linked to travel to Iran, took its tally to 18, while Bahrain said its infections had risen to 26 after three new ones on a flight from Iran.
The United Arab Emirates, which has reported 13 coronavirus cases, is prepared for “worst case scenarios” as it spreads in the Middle East, a government official said.
In Europe, Italy has become a front line in the global outbreak with 322 cases. Italians or people who had recently visited the country, have tested positive in Algeria, Austria, Croatia, Romania, Spain and Switzerland.
Two hotels, one in Austria and one in Spain’s Canary Islands, were also locked down after cases emerged linked to Italy. Spain also reported its first three cases on the mainland.
The Lunar New Year’s Eve in Wuhan, ground zero of the novel coronavirus outbreak in central China, is nothing but special. Behind the seemingly quiet streets, people in all walks of life are racing against time to fight against the invisible enemy.
WUHAN, Jan. 25 (Xinhua) — There were far fewer cars on the streets and bustling crowds were not seen in the shopping malls in the central Chinese city of Wuhan on Jan. 24 — the Eve of the Chinese Lunar New Year.
The scene was quite different from the occasion in the previous years because of the novel coronavirus that has claimed over 40 lives and infected over a thousand nationwide. With a population of over 10 million, Wuhan, the capital city of Hubei Province, is the center of the epidemic.
Photo taken on Jan. 24, 2020 shows a medical aid team of Army Medical University leaving for Wuhan in southwest China’s Chongqing. On the Chinese Lunar New Year’s Eve, a group of 150 medical workers from the Army Medical University left for Wuhan, the center of the novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) outbreak, to provide medical aid. (Xinhua)
Yang Yingchen, a volunteer of the Red Cross Society of China’s Wuhan branch, had a busy day answering calls.
“People from across the nation called to check on accounts and addresses to make donations,” said Yang. “Many would say ‘Come on, Wuhan’ to us, which makes me feel especially warm and deeply moved.”
Chen Li, a doctor in a Wuhan hospital, spent the Chinese Lunar New Year’s Eve at home to quarantine herself. She is a little bit worried about having had contact with infected patients, but luckily she has no signs of symptoms for the time being.
“Before joining the fight against the epidemic, I had sent my four-year-old son to my parents. I has disinfected all the articles in my house,” she said.
Chen’s husband is at the forefront of the fight against the epidemic. “We haven’t seen each other for over a week,” said Chen. On Saturday morning, she put on protective clothing again and returned to work.
“Actually, I can’t be isolated for too long. There’s still a lot of work to be done,” she said. “I just don’t know when I can see my boy again.”
Aerial photo taken on Jan. 24, 2020 shows mechanical equipment working at the construction site of a special hospital in the Caidian District of western suburb of Wuhan, central China’s Hubei Province. The central China metropolitan of Wuhan will follow Beijing’s SARS treatment model to build a special hospital for admitting patients infected in the outbreak of pneumonia caused by the novel coronavirus. (Xinhua/Xiao Yijiu)
The virus had resulted in 41 deaths in China by the end of Friday, mostly in Wuhan, according to the National Health Commission. Nationwide, a total of 1,287 cases were confirmed, including 237 in critical condition.
Confirmed cases were also reported in China’s Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan, as well as Thailand, Japan, the Republic of Korea, the United States, Vietnam, Singapore, Nepal and France.
Wuhan is following Beijing’s SARS treatment model in 2003 to build a makeshift hospital with a capability of 1,000 beds for admitting infected patients. Construction on the facility began Thursday night. It will be completed and put into use prior to Feb. 3, less than 10 days away.
“It’s going to be another all-nighter. We need to speed up work and complete the hospital as soon as possible,” said Lyu Jun, a young truck driver at the construction site. This is his first Spring Festival away from home.
For ordinary people, this year’s Lunar New Year’s Eve lacks some gatherings but is still a time to extend greetings and wishes.
Yin Yeqiong, from Hunan Province, refunded her tickets back home after much debate. “I had it in my mind to still go home, but finally decided to stay in Wuhan,” she said. “Our stay will help reduce panic in other places.”
Liu Jie, a dough sculptor, put on a New Year costume and watched the Spring Festival Gala with his family. “We’re now at a critical period, so I texted New Year wishes to friends and relatives this year. I believe this is the best way,” he said.
Liu Jiapeng, a children’s book editor, stayed in Wuhan during the Spring Festival for the past four decades. “I always stayed with my family, and we would have every meal together,” said Liu. “But this year, I haven’t had one meal with them.”
On the day of the Lunar New Year’s Eve, he and his wife bought some goods for their parents, brought them to their house and briefly chatted. As they were waiting for the elevator, Liu looked back and saw his father standing at the windowsill, watching them leave.
Medical workers of Army Medical University assemble before leaving for Wuhan in southwest China’s Chongqing, Jan. 24, 2020. On the Chinese Lunar New Year’s Eve, a group of 150 medical workers from the Army Medical University left for Wuhan, the center of the novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) outbreak, to provide medical aid. (Xinhua)
China is mobilizing medical resources nationwide to aid Wuhan and control the epidemic. Doctors, nurses and experts from across the nation have been selected to join the battle, and manufacturers have restarted their plants to produce medical consumables that have been running short in many places.
A national research team of 14 experts, headed by renowned respiratory scientist Zhong Nanshan, has been set up to help prevent and control the outbreak on Friday.
“This is going to be an unforgettable Spring Festival,” said Chen Ying, a writer. “Because I feel that at this moment, there are so many families that I do not know, in every corner of this city, praying for our home.”
“My New Year wish is simple,” said Liu Jie. “I hope the virus will soon be conquered and everyone in Wuhan and the whole nation would be safe and healthy.”
BEIJING (Reuters) – The death toll from China’s coronavirus outbreak jumped on Saturday to 41 as the Lunar New Year got off to a gloomy start, with Hong Kong declaring a virus emergency, scrapping celebrations, and restricting links to mainland China.
Australia on Saturday confirmed its first four cases, Malaysia confirmed three and France reported Europe’s first cases on Friday, as health authorities around the world scrambled to prevent a pandemic.
Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam on Saturday declared a virus emergency in the Asian financial hub, with five confirmed cases, immediately halting official visits to mainland China and scrapping official Lunar New Year celebrations.
Inbound and outbound flights and high speed rail trips between Hong Kong and Wuhan, the epicentre of the outbreak, would be halted, and schools, now on Lunar New Year holidays, would remain shut until Feb. 17. The territory was also treating 122 people suspected of having the disease.
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The death toll in China rose to 41 on Saturday from 26 a day earlier and more than 1,300 people have been infected globally with a virus traced to a seafood market in the central city of Wuhan that was illegally selling wildlife.
Hu Yinghai, deputy director-general of the Civil Affairs Department in Hubei province, where Wuhan is located, made an appeal on Saturday for masks and protective suits. Hospitals in the city have made similar pleas.
“We are steadily pushing forward the disease control and prevention … But right now we are facing an extremely severe public health crisis,” he told a news briefing.
Vehicles carrying emergency supplies and medical staff for Wuhan would be exempted from tolls and given traffic priority, China’s transportation ministry said on Saturday.
Wuhan said it would ban non-essential vehicles from its downtown starting Sunday to control the spread of the virus, further paralysing a city of 11 million that has been on virtual lockdown since Thursday, with nearly all flights cancelled and checkpoints blocking the main roads leading out of town.
Authorities have since imposed transport restrictions on nearly all of Hubei province, which has a population of 59 million.
In Australia, three men, aged 53, 43 and 35 in New South Wales were in stable condition after they were confirmed to have the virus after returning from Wuhan earlier this month.
A Chinese national in his 50s, who had been in Wuhan, was also in stable condition in a Melbourne hospital after arriving from China on Jan. 19, Victoria Health officials said.
State-run China Global Television Network reported in a tweet on Saturday that a doctor who had been treating patients in Wuhan, 62-year-old Liang Wudong, had died from the virus.
Police officers stand guard in front of the closed gate of Lama Temple where a notice saying that the temple is closed for the safety concern following the outbreak of a new coronavirus is seen, in Beijing, China January 25, 2020. REUTERS/Carlos Garcia Rawlins
It was not immediately clear if his death was already counted in the official toll of 41, of which 39 were in the central province of Hubei, where Wuhan is located.
U.S. coffee chain Starbucks said on Saturday that it was closing all its outlets in Hubei province for the week-long Lunar New Year holiday, following a similar move by McDonald’s in five Hubei cities.
PROTECTIVE SUITS
In Beijing on Saturday, workers in white protective suits checked temperatures of passengers entering the subway at the central railway station, while some train services in eastern China’s Yangtze River Delta region were suspended, the local railway operator said.
The number of confirmed cases in China stands at 1,287. The virus has also been detected in Thailand, Vietnam, Singapore, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Nepal, and the United States.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said on Friday it had 63 patients under investigation, with two confirmed cases. While China has called for transparency in managing the crisis, after cover-up of the 2002/2003 Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome spread, officials in Wuhan have come in for criticism over their handling of the current outbreak.
In rare public dissent, a senior journalist at a Hubei provincial newspaper run by the ruling Communist Party on Friday called for a “immediate” change of leadership in Wuhan on the Twitter-like Weibo. The post was later removed.
REINFORCEMENTS TO WUHAN
The World Health Organization (WHO) declared the new coronavirus an “emergency in China” this week but stopped short of declaring it of international concern.
Human-to-human transmission has been observed in the virus.
China’s National Health Commission said it had formed six medical teams totalling 1,230 medical staff to help Wuhan.
Hubei province, where authorities are rushing to build a 1,000 bed hospital in six days to treat patients, announced on Saturday that there were 658 patients affected by the virus in treatment, 57 of whom were critically ill.
The newly-identified coronavirus has created alarm because there are still many unknowns surrounding it, such as how dangerous it is and how easily it spreads between people. It can cause pneumonia, which has been deadly in some cases.
Symptoms include fever, difficulty breathing and coughing. Most of the fatalities have been in elderly patients, many with pre-existing conditions, the WHO said.
NEW YEAR DISRUPTIONS
Airports around the world have stepped up screening of passengers from China, though some health officials and experts have questioned the effectiveness of such screenings.
There are fears the transmission could accelerate as hundreds of millions of Chinese travel during the week-long Lunar New Year holiday, which began on Saturday, although many have cancelled their plans, with airlines and railways in China providing free refunds.
The virus outbreak and efforts to contain it have put a dampener on what is ordinarily a festive time of year.
Sanya, a popular resort destination on the southern Chinese island of Hainan, announced that it was shutting all tourist sites, while the island’s capital city, Haikou, said visitors from Wuhan would be placed under 14-day quarantine in a hotel.
Shanghai Disneyland was closed from Saturday. The theme park has a 100,000 daily capacity and sold out during last year’s Lunar New Year holiday.
Beijing’s Lama Temple, where people traditionally make offerings for the new year, has also closed, as have some other temples.
CHINDIA ALERT: You'll be living in their world, very soon 