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.
The POSTs (front webpages) are mainly 'cuttings' from reliable sources, updated continuously.
The PAGEs (see Tabs, above) attempt to make the information more meaningful by putting some structure to the information we have researched and assembled since 2006.
The authorities suspect the current outbreak in South Korea originated in Cheongdo, pointing out that a large number of sect followers attended a funeral of the founder’s brother from 31 January to 2 February.
On Friday, a second person who contracted the coronavirus died.
The victim was a woman in her 50s. She died in the south-western city of Busan after being transferred there from a hospital in a nearby country, according to Yonhap news agency.
Reports say she had earlier been a patient at the same mental hospital in Cheongdo as the country’s first victim – an elderly man. Another 15 patients there have also tested positive.
On Thursday, 53 new cases were reported. South Korea now has a total of 204 cases making it the largest cluster outside mainland China and the cruise ship docked off Japan.
The new virus, which originated last year in Hubei province in China, causes a respiratory disease called Covid-19.
What measures are being taken?
From the 100 new cases reported on Friday, 86 were in Daegu, a city 300km (186 miles) south-east of the capital Seoul, and nearly all of those were from a cluster involving the religious sect.
Image copyright AFPImage caption South Korea is trying hard to stop the local spread of the new coronavirus
Reacting to the quickly deteriorating situation, the government promised swift measures to prevent further spread of the virus.
“It is urgent to find people who have contacted infected people and cure patients,” PM Chung said, according to Yonhap.
He said the government was readying resources like sickbeds, medical equipment and health workers and warned the virus was now spreading locally.
“The government has so far focused on curbing infections coming from outside the country. From now on, the government will further prioritise preventing the virus from spreading locally.”
Health Minister Park Neung-hoo said authorities would allow hospitals to isolate respiratory patients from others in an effort to prevent any spread within medical institutions.
He also said that all pneumonia patients in Daegu hospitals would be checked for the virus.
What happened in Daegu?
The city’s biggest cluster appears to be at a branch of a religious sect which calls itself the Shincheonji Church of Jesus, Temple of the Tabernacle of the Testimony.
South Korean health officials believe these infections are linked to a 61-year-old woman who tested positive for the virus earlier this week.
Image copyright AFP/GETTY IMAGESImage caption Workers have been disinfecting the streets of Daegu, South Korea’s fourth-largest city
The Shincheonji, which has been accused of being a cult, said it had now shut down its Daegu branch and that services in other regions would be held online or individually at home.
As of Friday, more than 400 members of the church were showing symptoms of the disease, though tests were still ongoing, the city mayor said.
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Daegu is the country’s fourth-largest city, with a population of 2.5 million people.
Residents are now being asked to remain at home after authorities described the church cluster as “super-spreading event”.
Hand sanitizers and warning signs
By Hyung Eun Kim, BBC Korean Service, Seoul
Many people in South Korea are wearing masks on a daily basis.
Hand sanitizers have been placed at public transport stops and building entrances.
Warning government signs are everywhere. They say: “Three ways to prevent further infection: wear a mask at all times; wash your hands properly with soap for more than 30 seconds; and cover yourself when coughing.”
Image copyright EPAImage caption New norm: Mask-wearing crowd in Seoul
Koreans have also developed several apps and websites that tell you how much risk you face where you are. They show where the infected people are within a 10km radius.
“I can’t miss work, what I can do is minimise contact with others and stay at home during the weekend,” Seung-hye Lim, a Seoul resident, told the BBC.
“I do wonder if we reacted too laxly initially or if it really is because of the specific service practices of the Shincheonji sect.”
So-young Sung, a mother of two in Seoul, told the BBC: “It feels like my daily life is collapsing.”
She said she was struggling to find pharmacies that had masks.
She added that checking coronavirus-related alarms from her children’s schools and kindergartens was now a daily routine for her.
What about China and elsewhere?
The latest figures from China put the death toll from the disease at 2,236 people and total infections at more than 75,000.
The virus has now hit the country’s prison system, with more than 500 inmates confirmed infected.
Senior officials have already been sacked for mishandling management of the outbreak.
The virus has also spread around the globe with more than 1,000 cases and several deaths in the rest of Asia, in Europe, the Middle East, the US and Africa.
On Friday, Iran confirmed 13 new cases, saying that two of those infected had died.
Health ministry official Minou Mohrez was quoted by the state-run Iran news agency as saying the coronavirus has spread to several cities, including the capital Tehran.
South Korea is now the worst affected country after mainland China and the more than 600 infections on a cruise ship docked in Japan.
Media caption Coronavirus: Quarantined passengers released from Japan ship
Passengers of the Diamond Princess who have tested negative continue to disembark the ship in Yokohama after more than 14 days quarantined on board.
More than 150 Australian passengers have been evacuated from the ship and have already arrived in Darwin, where they will begin two more weeks of quarantine.
Australian officials said on Friday that six people had reported feeling unwell on arrival in Darwin and were immediately tested.
Two of those people tested positive despite having received negative tests before leaving Japan.
The first batch of people from Hong Kong have also flown back to the city, where they will similarly be quarantined.
It started with a cough by a passenger who had visited China, leading to the two-week quarantine of some 3,700 passengers and crew
At least 218 cases have been detected on board the Diamond Princess, which has been described as ill-equipped to prevent the spread of infections
Passengers and crew on the Diamond Princess cruise liner are under quarantine until February 19, 2020. Photo: Reuters
For almost a fortnight and counting, the Diamond Princess has resembled a floating hospital more than a luxury cruise liner, as 3,711 passengers and crew have remained under quarantine in Japan due to an outbreak of the deadly coronavirus on board.
The UK-flagged vessel, which set out on a 29-day voyage from Singapore to Yokohama on January 6, has been in lock-down since arriving at the Japanese city on February 3, after an elderly passenger who disembarked in Hong Kong tested positive for the virus, which causes the respiratory disease officially known as Covid-19.
Along the way, the ship had stopped at 14 ports, including Ho Chi Minh City in
Kobe and Osaka in Japan, and Taipei in Taiwan, with repeat visits to a number of destinations, including Hong Kong.
How did the outbreak start?
While the exact source of the outbreak on the Diamond Princess is yet to be determined, it is suspected to be linked to a 80-year-old man from Hong Kong who had recently made a brief visit to mainland China.
The man boarded the ship on January 20 in Yokohama before disembarking five days later in Hong Kong, where he tested positive for the virus after seeking medical attention for symptoms including a cough.
Coronavirus: 44 more cases on Diamond Princess cruise ship
13 Feb 2020
How many people have tested positive for the coronavirus on board?
Japanese Health Minister Katsunobu Kato announced on Thursday that 44 new cases
of the virus had been detected on the Diamond Princess, including a quarantine officer who tested positive, bringing the total number of infections on board to at least 218.
The hike in infections came after officials announced 40 fresh cases on Wednesday. Authorities have so far tested 713 people on board, fewer than one-fifth of the total, but the outbreak already ranks as the largest single cluster of infections outside mainland
Japan has confirmed 247 cases overall since the virus was first detected in the Chinese city of Wuhan in late December.
Passengers are allowed short visits above deck for fresh air. Photo: Reuters
What has it been like for passengers on board?
Passengers who have not been diagnosed with the coronavirus have been asked to stay in their cabins, except for short visits above deck for fresh air, until the quarantine period ends on February 19.
Those who have tested positive have been evacuated to onshore medical facilities. Health officials announced on Thursday that they intended to move elderly people and those with pre-existing conditions off the ship in the coming days even if they tested negative.
Many of those on board have described the tedium of being confined to their cabins and anxiety about the virus spreading further, or expressed frustration at the lack of timely information about the outbreak coming from Japanese authorities.
“It’s getting tougher by the day, and certainly for passengers with the inside cabins, it’s not easy,” said British passenger David Abel in a Facebook live-stream on Thursday.
The sorry state of Hongkongers stuck aboard quarantined cruise ship in Japan
11 Feb 2020
Some passengers have praised the efforts of the crew to keep up people’s spirits, including putting together videos featuring magic tricks and dance and stretching routines.
Matthew Smith, a passenger from the United States, has racked up thousands of followers on Twitter with his regular upbeat appraisals of the ship’s food.
“Don’t believe the honeymooners who would rather be in an American hospital,” he wrote in one post last week. “You might have to drag me off the ship when the quarantine ends.”
The event on the Diamond Princess cruise would fit the description of a super spreading event. David Hui, infectious diseases expert
Why has Japan’s handling of the outbreak been so controversial?
Some medical experts have questioned the wisdom of placing the passengers and crew in quarantine in the close confines of a ship, rather than removing them to dedicated facilities on the shore.
“Ideally, the crew members and the passengers should be quarantined at holiday camps,” said David Shu-Cheong Hui, the director of the Stanley Ho Centre for Emerging Infections Diseases in Hong Kong. “The event on the Diamond Princess cruise would fit the description of a super spreading event.”
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Kumar Visvanathan, an infectious diseases expert at the University of Melbourne, said a cruise liner such as the Diamond Princess would be ill-equipped to prevent the spread of infections.
“It seems that though isolation in individual cabins is somewhat effective, the increasing numbers of symptomatic infections seems to suggest active infections even with the best precautions are occurring,” Visvanathan said.
“It is clear that cruise ships and their individual cabins are not made for isolation purposes and depend heavily on individual participation in the isolation procedures, including respiratory hygiene, cough etiquette and hand hygiene,” he said.
Japanese city encourages travellers in coronavirus quarantine after return from China
Visvanathan said, however, that gauging the correct response was difficult as authorities had to consider the welfare of both the general public and those on the ship.
“I think the way to look at it is there are two disparate concerns that need to be balanced,” he said. “The first is the protection of the outside community which I think the Japanese government is taking as most important, and in this case isolation on board is the most efficient way to prevent infection of the Japanese population.”
Criticism has also been levelled at authorities for not testing all of those on board from the start. After initially insisting that they did not have the resources to test everyone on board, health officials said on Thursday that they were now aiming to test 1,000 people a day.
The World Health Organisation, however, has defended Japan’s handling of the situation, saying the country was ensuring those who were ill received proper treatment, the most important consideration during such an outbreak.
A government task force has estimated a US$5 billion loss if Chinese students – angered and frustrated by the ban – cannot enrol for university
The tourism sector is also likely to be hit by restrictions on travel from the mainland as Chinese visitors spend about U$8 billion in Australia each year
Some 150,000 Chinese nationals are enrolled at Australian universities, making up around 11 per cent of the student population. Photo: Shutterstock
Abbey Shi knows first hand the anger and frustration felt by Chinese students left stranded by the Australian government’s decision to ban travel from the mainland in response to the coronavirus outbreak.
Shi, general secretary of the Students’ Representative Council at the University of Sydney, is in contact with more than 2,000 Chinese students who went home for the Lunar New Year holiday and now cannot return to Australia with just weeks to go until the start of the new academic year.
“There is a lot of confusion about the ban and anger towards the government,” said Shi, an international student from Shanghai. Currently in Australia, she is sharing information with the stranded students via WeChat.
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“The education sector in Australia is being commercialised and students are being treated like cash cows,” she said. “Universities don’t care about our affected career path, life, tenancy issues, our pets at home.”
Prime Minister Scott Morrison on Saturday announced that non-citizens – excluding permanent residents and their immediate family members – who arrived from or passed through mainland China within the previous 14 days would be denied entry to Australia as part of efforts to halt the spread of the coronavirus, which was first detected in December in the Chinese city of Wuhan.
Other countries including the United States, Singapore and the Philippines have introduced similar travel restrictions in response to the outbreak, which has sickened more than 19,000 people in at least 26 countries and territories outside mainland China and claimed 425 lives.
The travel ban, which is due to be reviewed on February 15, has upended the plans of numerous Chinese students who were due to begin or return to their studies from late February following the summer break.
Tony Yan, a mathematics undergraduate at Australian National University (ANU), said he had been left out of pocket for several weeks’ rent after being stranded in his home province of Jiangsu, but hoped he could return before classes started on February 24.
“I think the Australian government should have given a few days earlier notice,” Yan said. “I haven’t paid the tuition yet, many others haven’t as well.”
About 150,000 Chinese nationals are enrolled at Australian universities, making up around 11 per cent of the student population – a far greater proportion than in Britain and the United States, which came in at 6 per cent and 2 per cent respectively, in a 2017 report from an Australian think tank.
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ANU Vice-Chancellor Brian Schmidt on Saturday described the travel ban as “disappointing”, pledging that the university would be “generous and flexible in supporting our students” through the coming weeks.
Monash University in Melbourne has delayed the start of its academic year, while other universities are exploring options such as online tuition and intensive summer courses.
Australian universities, some of which rely on Chinese students for nearly one-quarter of their revenue, are bracing to take a major financial hit due to the ban.
Phil Honeywood, the head of a government task force initially set up to manage the reputation of Australia’s international education sector in the wake of the country’s bush fires crisis, on Sunday warned the ban could cost universities A$8 billion (US$5.34 billion) if Chinese students could not enrol for the first semester of the year.
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Education minister Dan Tehan on Monday met with peak body Universities Australia to discuss ways to minimise fallout for the sector.
“Australia will remain an attractive study destination for Chinese students, but it may take several years for Chinese student numbers to recover,” said Salvatore Babones, associate professor at the University of Sydney and adjunct scholar at the Centre for Independent Studies. “Students who are already in the middle of a degree are likely to return at the first possible opportunity, even at the cost of missing one semester, but students who have not yet started may make other plans.”
But ANU tertiary education expert Andrew Norton said there remained too many unknowns, including the number of Chinese students stranded abroad, to gauge the impact of the ban.
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“This travel ban is a short-term policy to minimise the risk of disease spreading, which would be a more serious problem than a disruption to university timetables,” he said. “One of Australia’s major [education] competitors – the US – has a similar policy, and due to travel restrictions within China and the cancelling of commercial flights to and from China Australia’s competitors are unlikely to be able to take advantage.”
Norton noted that the sector had weathered previous outbreaks such as the 2003 outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome (Sars), and “although there were sometimes short-term dips in numbers, none of them have changed the long-term trend towards growth”.
The ban has also sent jitters throughout the tourism industry, which relies on Chinese visitors for a quarter of international spending. Nearly 1.5 million
visited Australia in 2018-19, Australian Bureau of Statistics records show, accounting for about one in eight arrivals.
Nearly 1.5 million Chinese nationals visited Australia in 2018-19, according to Australian Bureau of Statistics records. Photo: SCMP / Alkira Reinfrank
With Chinese tourists spending about A$12 billion (US$8 billion) in Australia each year, according to Tourism Research Australia, every month the travel ban remains in place could amount to billion-dollar losses for the sector.
Tourism Tropical North Queensland on Monday said the outbreak had already cost operators for Cairns and the Great Barrier Reef 25,000 direct bookings worth A$10 million. Chief executive Mark Olsen said the situation constituted a crisis for the industry that called for “unprecedented action” by the government.
David Beirman, senior lecturer in tourism at the University of Technology Sydney, said the ban was especially damaging for the industry as it came on the heels of devastating bush fires that had kept visitors away.
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“There is no doubt that the coronavirus outbreak following on so closely to the bush fires will combine to hit international tourism to Australia very hard,” Beirman said. “Later this month the Australian Bureau of Statistics will reveal the December 2019 tourism figures, which are expected to show at best a 25 per cent downturn in international visitor arrivals compared to December 2018. January 2020 is likely to be far worse as the impact of coronavirus will certainly be a factor.”
Others have raised concerns about the impact of the travel restrictions on public attitudes toward Chinese and Chinese-Australians, warning they could stoke latent prejudices.
“This is an overreaction from the Australian government, and in many ways it feels like it is a form of racial targeting,” said Erin Chew, national convenor of the Asian Australian Alliance. “When previous viruses happened such as mad cow disease or the swine flu, Australia didn’t ban non-citizens from Britain and the US. Nor was the blame placed on the people in [those countries].
“Since the coronavirus outbreak it has been coined that this virus is the fault of Chinese people, not just in mainland China, but really all over the world.”
Forty countries will be able to diagnose the disease, and the Africa CDC is training health workers
Until two weeks ago, there were only two laboratories on the continent that could test for the virus, in Senegal and South Africa
A scientist researches the coronavirus at the Pasteur Institute in Dakar, Senegal, which until two weeks ago was one of just two labs in Africa that could test for the disease. Photo: AFP
Forty countries in Africa will be able to test for the deadly new coronavirus
by the end of the week, the WHO said, after Egypt confirmed the first case on the continent last week.
The World Health Organisation said many of those nations had been sending samples elsewhere for testing and waiting several days for results.
“Now they can do it themselves, within 24 to 48 hours,” WHO director general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in a media briefing on Tuesday.
Until about two weeks ago, there were only two laboratories in the continent of 54 countries – in Senegal and South Africa – with the reagents needed to test for the virus. That meant dozens of nations that had quarantined suspected patients were sending samples to South Africa or Senegal to be tested.
The WHO earlier this week sent reagent kits for coronavirus diagnosis to more than 20 countries in Africa to step up diagnosis of the virus, which causes a disease now known as Covid-19. The global health body said more countries in Africa were expected to receive testing kits this week.
In addition, the WHO last week sent testing kits to Cameroon, Ivory Coast, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Egypt, Ethiopia, Gabon, Ghana, Kenya, Morocco, Nigeria, Tunisia, Uganda and Zambia.
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Tedros said some countries in Africa, including the Democratic Republic of Congo, were using systems developed to test for the deadly Ebola virus to now test for the coronavirus.
“This is a great example of how investing in health systems can pay dividends for health security,” Tedros said.
Several countries, including Ethiopia and South Sudan, were prioritising surveillance and monitoring at ports of entry, he said. “We’re also working with partners in some of the most fragile contexts, from Syria to the Central African Republic, to prepare countries for the arrival of the virus,” he said.
The WHO and Egyptian health officials on Friday confirmed that a 33-year-old foreigner had tested positive for the coronavirus. Egypt’s health ministry said the patient had tested positive for the virus without any symptoms, raising concern that there could be undetected cases on the continent, as countries scramble to equip labs to test for the disease.
The asymptomatic patient in Egypt was identified through contact screening of an index case who travelled to Cairo on a business trip from January 21 to February 4 and tested positive for the virus on February 11 in China, the WHO regional office said.
The new virus strain has killed more than 2,000 people and infected over 74,000 since the outbreak began in central China in December. It has spread to more than 20 countries.
Screening measures have been stepped up across Africa, including quarantining all passengers arriving from Chinese cities, amid fears that poorer countries with weaker health systems may struggle to cope if the virus spreads on the continent. More than a dozen countries still do not have the capacity to test for the pneumonia-like illness.
There are concerns that Africa’s close links with China put it at high risk for the spread of the new virus. Africa has become home to millions of Chinese since Beijing started looking to the continent for raw materials for its industries and markets for its products. China has been Africa’s largest trading partner since 2009, after it overtook the United States, with two-way trade standing at US$108 billion last year, according to China’s commerce ministry.
Africa CDC director John Nkengasong said it had been “investing in preparedness and response to the disease”. Photo: Reuters
John Nkengasong, director of the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC), said it was working closely with the WHO and other partners to ensure that Egypt had the diagnostic tools it needed, and that the right actions were taken to contain the spread of the virus.
“We anticipated that the Covid-19 outbreak would inevitably impact Africa. That is why the Africa CDC has been working actively with African Union member states and partners in the past four weeks and investing in preparedness and response to the disease,” he said.
“[Last week in Dakar, Senegal] we conducted training and supplied test kits to 16 African laboratories, including from Egypt. Egypt also received additional test kits from the WHO,” Nkengasong said.
The Africa CDC would train 40 health workers from nine countries, including Egypt, in Nairobi this week, he said, on “enhancing detection and investigation of Covid-19 at points of entry”.
The Chinese medical workers on the front line of the coronavirus fight in Wuhan
On Monday, Ethiopia, home to one of the continent’s busiest airports, said it had received equipment and reagents for virus detection and control. “We are working hard day and night with the government to improve the critical measures needed to ensure that the country is ready to effectively respond to an outbreak of Covid-19,” said Boureima Hama Sambo, the WHO representative in Ethiopia.
despite pressure for it to suspend services to the country. Many countries on the continent have restricted travel to and from mainland China, while six out of eight African airlines with Chinese routes have halted flights until the virus is contained, including EgyptAir.
Egypt has suspended all flights to and from the mainland until the end of the month and has evacuated more than 300 Egyptians from Wuhan, the epicentre of the epidemic.
“The Chinese people do not welcome media that publish racist statements and maliciously attacks China,” Mr Geng said, without naming the journalists being expelled.
The Wall Street Journal identified the reporters as two US citizens – Josh Chin, who is the deputy bureau chief, and Chao Deng – as well as Australian citizen Philip Wen. The newspaper has not yet commented.
It is the first time in more than two decades that journalists holding valid credentials have been ordered to leave China, the BBC’s John Sudworth in Beijing reports.
The Foreign Correspondents Club of China called the decision “an extreme and obvious attempt by the Chinese authorities to intimidate foreign news organizations”.
The measure comes a day after the US said it would begin treating five Chinese state-run media outlets that operate in the country in the same way as foreign embassies, requiring them to register their employees and properties with the US government.
The decision affects the Xinhua News Agency, China Global Television Network and China Daily Distribution Corp.
Press freedom in China
China is consistently rated poorly for press freedom and can be a difficult place for foreign journalists to work
Nine journalists have been either expelled or effectively expelled through non-renewal of visas since 2013, according to the Foreign Correspondents Club of China
Last year, the government declined to renew the credentials – necessary for the work of foreign journalists in the country – of another Wall Street Journal reporter.
The journalist, a Singaporean national, had co-written a story that authorities in Australia were looking into activities of one of China’s President Xi Jinping’s cousins suspected of involvement in organised crime and money laundering.
And in 2018, the Beijing bureau chief for BuzzFeed News Megha Rajagopalan was unable to renew her visa after reporting on the detention of Muslim minority Uighurs and others in China’s Xinjiang region.
Meanwhile, two Chinese citizen journalists who disappeared last week after covering the coronavirus in Wuhan, the epicentre of the outbreak in Hubei province, remain missing.
Fang Bin and Chen Qiushi had been sharing videos and pictures online from inside the quarantined city.
Media caption Footage appearing to show people held in quarantine in a makeshift facility in Wuhan, has been shared across social media
China was widely expected to announce a gross domestic product (GDP) growth target for 2020 of ‘around 6 per cent’ following 6.1 per cent growth in 2019
Zhang Yansheng, who is an adviser to China’s economic policymakers, says ‘there will definitely be adjustments’
(190305) — BEIJING, March 5, 2019 (Xinhua) — Xi Jinping (C, front), Li Keqiang (3rd R, front), Wang Yang (3rd L, front), Wang Huning (2nd R, front), Zhao Leji (2nd L, front), Han Zheng (1st R, front) and Wang Qishan (1st L, front) attend the opening meeting of the second session of the 13th National People’s Congress at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, capital of China, March 5, 2019. (Xinhua/Li Xueren)
China may revise down its annual economic growth target for 2020 in response to the impact of the coronavirus outbreak, but will still not give up the overall target of maintaining economic growth “in a reasonable range”, according to a Chinese government researcher.
The Chinese government has never officially published its goal for 2020, but it is widely expected that the specific gross domestic product (GDP) growth target for 2020
would be “around 6 per cent”, marking a potential slight slowdown from 6.1 per cent growth in 2019 but enough to achieve Beijing’s grand goal of doubling the size of its economy in 2020 from 2010.
China’s 2020 growth target was originally to be released during Premier Li Keqiang’s government work report at the National People’s Congress, but the March 5 annual parliamentary meeting is set to be postponed due to the coronavirus outbreak.
“There will definitely be adjustments. For the central government, it hasn’t defined what the ‘reasonable range’ should be after the outbreak of coronavirus. People are still watching how the outbreak will develop and influence the economy,” Zhang Yansheng, the chief research fellow at the Beijing-based think tank, the China Centre for
International Economic Exchanges, told the South China Morning Post on Tuesday.
As for the final GDP target figure, we have to be true to facts. The GDP target was not a compulsory requirement but a soft forecast figureZhang Yansheng
“As for the final GDP target figure, we have to be true to facts. The GDP target was not a compulsory requirement but a soft forecast figure – strictly speaking, a forecast figure could be revised three or four times in a year.”
Zhang, though, referenced the fact that 29 of China provincial-level regions, out of a total of 31, had published their 2020 economic growth targets at the Central Economic Work Conference in December.
“The direction and the goals are clear. It’s not the case that people have not known what they should do this year,” added Zhang, who is an adviser to China’s economic policymakers.
has repeatedly said over the last two weeks that China will still strive to achieve its economic and social development goals for 2020 despite the outbreak, which has claimed over 1,800 lives and infected over 70,000 people, and remain on course to build the country into a “comprehensively well-off society”.
China to postpone the year’s biggest political gathering amid coronavirus outbreak
One key aspect of that vision is that China will double the size of its GDP in 2020 from 2010, which would require a minimum 5.6 per cent growth rate in 2020, although Beijing has never clearly defined the full details of the goal.
On Tuesday, Ren Hongbin, vice-chairman of the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission of the State Council, said that the annual production goals and reform tasks set earlier in the year for state-owned enterprises would also not change despite the outbreak.
“The impact of the epidemic is temporary and phased, will not change the long-term positive fundamentals of the Chinese economy,” he said.
We should neither view 6 per cent as a red line nor take doubling the GDP size as a bottom line Song Xiaowu
Before the country fell into an economic standstill around the extended Lunar New Year holiday as the virus spread from the city of Wuhan, economists and analysts have been engaged in a heated debate over whether China needs to keep its growth rate above 6 per cent in 2020.
Song Xiaowu, former president of the China Society of Economic Reform, a state-backed think tank, said at a forum on Saturday that China’s GDP growth rate could drop to 3 per cent in the first quarter and 5 per cent for the whole of 2020.
“We should neither view 6 per cent as a red line nor take doubling the GDP size as a bottom line,” said Song, in a speech published by the China Development Research Foundation, who organised the forum.
WUHAN/SHANGHAI, Feb. 16 (Xinhua) — Twenty recovered coronavirus patients donated their plasma to those in severe condition in Wuhan, capital of the hard-hit province of the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19), said the province’s COVID-19 scientific research team Sunday.
The donors are doctors and nurses who have recovered from the disease for 10 days at the Jiangxia District’s No. 1 people’s hospital and traditional Chinese medicine hospital.
Twelve patients in severe condition have received the plasma treatment. An expert with Jiangxia District’s No. 1 people’s hospital said that the patients have shown improved clinical symptoms about 12 to 24 hours after they received the treatment.
“We are observing the therapeutic results and improving our treatment plans,” the expert said, adding that plasma donation won’t hurt the donor once he or she has been cured for 10 days.
Zhang Dingyu, head of Wuhan Jinyintan Hospital, a major designated hospital to admit confirmed cases in Wuhan, called upon cured patients who were infected with COVID-19 to donate plasma as initial results had indicated the effectiveness of convalescent plasma-derived therapeutic products in curing infected patients in severe and critical conditions.
In Shanghai, official data showed 124 patients have recovered from COVID-19 and discharged from hospitals by Saturday afternoon, of whom 14 have shown willingness to donate their plasma to assist coronavirus research and treatment.
Some recovered patients regard the donation as a way to pay back to the society after they received timely and effective treatment.
“Before being discharged from the hospital, I learned from the nurses that I can donate plasma, which I think is very helpful,” said a recovered patient surnamed Liu who is willing to become a donor.
“We were helped by others and we want to help other patients as well,” Liu said.
Media caption Americans are taken from the docked ship to Haneda airport in Tokyo
Two planes carrying hundreds of US citizens from a coronavirus-hit cruise ship have left Japan, officials say.
One plane has landed at a US Air Force air base in California, and its passengers will be isolated at military facilities for 14 days.
There were some 400 Americans on board the Diamond Princess. The ship with some 3,700 passengers and crew has been in quarantine since 3 February.
Meanwhile, China reported a total of 2,048 new cases on Monday.
Of those new cases, 1,933 were from Hubei province, the epicentre of the outbreak.
More than 70,500 people across China have been infected by the virus. In Hubei alone, the official number of cases stands at 58,182, with 1,692 deaths. Most new cases and deaths have been reported in Wuhan, Hubei’s largest city.
In other developments:
In Japan, a public gathering to celebrate the birthday of new Emperor Naruhito later this week has been cancelled, due to concerns over the spread of the virus while organisers of the Tokyo marathon due to take place on 1 March are considering whether to cancel the amateur part of the race, reports say
In China, the National People’s Congress standing committee said it would meet next week to discuss a delay of this year’s Congress – the Communist Party’s most important annual gathering – because of the outbreak
At the weekend, an American woman tested positive for the virus in Malaysia after leaving a cruise liner docked off the coast of Cambodia
A Russian court has ordered a woman who escaped from a quarantine facility to go back and stay there until she is confirmed to be disease-free, Fontanka news agency reports. Alla Ilyina has until Wednesday to return
What’s happening on the Diamond Princess?
The cruise ship was put in quarantine in Japan’s port of Yokohama after a man who disembarked in Hong Kong was found to have the virus.
On Monday, Japanese officials said there were 99 new cases of infections on board the ship, bringing the total to 454 confirmed cases. It is the largest cluster of cases outside China.
A Russian woman who was on board and tested positive is thought to be the first Russian national to contract the virus after the two previous cases found in Russia were Chinese nationals, Reuters news agency reports.
She will be taken to a hospital for treatment, the Russian embassy in Japan said.
At least 40 US citizens who were on board are infected and will be treated in Japan, Dr Anthony Fauci, Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases told US broadcaster CBS.
Image copyright AFPImage caption Those bound for the US left from Tokyo’s Haneda Airport
The two aircraft chartered by the US government left Tokyo’s Haneda Airport in the early hours of Monday. The second flight was due to land at another base in Texas.
More than 300 passengers are being repatriated voluntarily, the US state department said. Fourteen of them were reported during transit to have tested positive for the virus and were being kept separate from the other passengers, it said.
we would like to just finish the quarantine on the ship as planned, decompress in a non-quarantine environment in Japan for a few days, then fly back to the U.S. pursuant to our own arrangements. What’s wrong with that?
The smartphones were distributed so people could use an app, created by Japan’s health ministry, which links users with doctors, pharmacists and mental health counsellors. Phones registered outside of Japan are unable to access the app.
Other evacuation flights have been arranged to repatriate residents of Israel, Hong Kong and Canada. On Monday, Australia announced that it would evacuate 200 of its citizens too.
What is happening in China?
According to official figures for 16 February, 100 people died from the virus in Hubei, down from 139 on Saturday.
The Chinese authorities are tightening curbs on movement to combat the outbreak. People in Hubei province, which has 60 million people, have been ordered to stay at home, though they will be allowed to leave in an emergency.
In addition, a single person from each household will be allowed to leave the building or compound they live in every three days to buy food and essential items.
On housing estates, one entrance will be kept open. It will be guarded to ensure that only residents can enter or leave.
All businesses will stay closed, except chemists, hotels, food shops and medical services.
“The effects of epidemic prevention and control in various parts of the country can already be seen.”
The proportion of infected patients considered to be in a “serious condition” has dropped nationwide from more than 15% to just over 7%, according to China’s State Council.
Taiwan has reported a death from the illness – a taxi driver, 61, who had not travelled abroad recently but had diabetes and hepatitis B, Health Minister Chen Shih-chung said.
The minister said many of his passengers had come from China.
Outside China, there have been more than 500 cases in nearly 30 countries. Four others have died outside mainland China – in France, Hong Kong, the Philippines and Japan.
Meanwhile, a plane carrying 175 evacuated Nepalis, mostly students, has arrived in Kathmandu from Wuhan.
Authorities say a foreigner tested positive without any symptoms and has been isolated in hospital in stable condition
WHO is racing to equip laboratories so they can test for the virus and avert an outbreak on the continent, which has close ties with China
Egyptian quarantine officers prepare to screen travellers arriving at Cairo’s airport. The country has reported its first coronavirus case. Photo: AFP
Africa has reported its first case of the new coronavirus that has so far claimed more than 1,600 lives, with Egypt’s health ministry confirming that a foreigner had tested positive there.
Health experts and African leaders have expressed concern that poorer countries may struggle to cope if the virus spread to the continent. Fears for nations with weaker health systems prompted the World Health Organisation to declare the outbreak of the virus – which originated in China – a global public health emergency in January.
Its director general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus last week said the WHO was racing to equip laboratories in vulnerable African countries with the “capacity to rapidly diagnose cases” to avert an outbreak.
The WHO and Egypt’s health ministry on Friday confirmed the country’s first case was a foreign national who had been isolated in hospital and was in stable condition. Health ministry spokesman Khaled Megahed said the patient had tested positive for the virus without any symptoms, and the WHO had been informed and measures taken to limit its spread.
The WHO said its Egypt office was working closely with health officials in the North African nation, taking “outbreak investigation and response actions”.
The country’s Eastern Mediterranean neighbour, the United Arab Emirates, had reported eight cases, the WHO said.
The Chinese medical workers on the front line of the coronavirus fight in Wuhan
The virus, which causes a disease known as Covid-19, has infected more than 68,000 people since the outbreak began in the Chinese city of Wuhan in December, and it has spread to more than 20 countries.
The first case in Africa comes as countries on the continent have stepped up screening at border checkpoints to prevent the spread of the pneumonia-like illness. Many countries have imposed restrictions on travel to and from mainland China, while six out of eight African airlines with Chinese routes have halted flights until the virus is contained, including EgyptAir.
Egypt has suspended all flights to and from China until the end of the month and has evacuated more than 300 Egyptians from Wuhan.
Egyptian Health Minister Hala Zayed waits with a medical team at Alexandria’s airport to meet passengers evacuated from Wuhan on February 3. Photo: Reuters
John Nkengasong, director of the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC), said the Addis Ababa-based organisation was “on standby to work closely with the government of Egypt to rapidly contain the spread of the virus”.
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African nations are also equipping laboratories so that they can test for the virus, with the help of the WHO and others.
Until about two weeks ago, there were only two laboratories in the continent of 54 countries – in Senegal and South Africa – with the reagents needed to test for the coronavirus.
That meant dozens of countries that had quarantined suspected patients were sending samples to South Africa or Senegal to be tested. Since then, four more labs have been equipped – in Ghana, Nigeria, Madagascar and Sierra Leone – to test for the virus, according to the WHO.
The global health body has also sent testing kits to Cameroon, Ivory Coast, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Egypt, Ethiopia, Gabon, Ghana, Kenya, Morocco, Nigeria, Tunisia, Uganda and Zambia.
Tedros on Monday said the WHO’s immediate “objective remains containment. We call on all countries to use the window of opportunity we have to prevent a bigger fire”.
The Africa CDC has trained health workers from 12 countries in early detection and prevention in Senegal, using testing kits sent by the WHO. Further training would take place in South Africa next week, Tedros said.
“Without vital diagnostic capacity, countries are in the dark as to how far and wide the virus has spread – and who has coronavirus or another disease with similar symptoms,” Tedros said.
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Many countries in Africa are still reeling from the 2014-16 outbreak of Ebola, which killed 11,325 people and infected 28,600. The deadly virus is yet to be contained, with new cases reported in the Democratic Republic of Congo last week.
China disinfects entire cities to fight coronavirus outbreak, some twice a day
There are concerns that Africa’s close links with China put it at high risk for the spread of the new coronavirus. Africa has become home to millions of Chinese since Beijing started looking to the continent for raw materials for its industries and markets for its products, and China has been Africa’s largest trading partner since 2009, after it overtook the United States.
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China is also a major trading partner of Egypt, with two-way trade standing at US$13.8 billion in 2018, according to the China Africa Research Initiative at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies. Beijing is pouring billions of dollars into infrastructure projects in the country, including building a business district in its new administrative capital, 50km east of Cairo. Chinese firms are also investing billions of dollars in the Egyptian Suez Canal Economic Zone, a project under Beijing’s sprawling trade and infrastructure scheme the Belt and Road Initiative.
The measures China has taken to stop the spread of the coronavirus are starting to have an impact, Mi Feng, a spokesman at the National Health Commission, said on Sunday.
In other developments:
The number of people who have tested positive on the Diamond Princess cruise ship, which is being held in quarantine in Japan, has risen to 355. The US and Canada are sending planes to evacuate their citizens
A Chinese tourist has died in France – the first fatality outside Asia
An 83-year-old American woman has tested positive after disembarking another cruise ship that was turned away by a number of countries before being allowed to dock in Cambodia
In the UK, all but one of nine people being treated have been discharged from hospital
On Saturday, World Health Organization (WHO) head Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus praised Beijing’s response to the outbreak.
“China has bought the world time. We don’t know how much time,” he said. “We’re encouraged that outside China, we have not yet seen widespread community transmission.”
How is China coping?
Tens of millions of Chinese still face heavy restrictions on their day-to-day life as part of the government’s efforts to halt the spread of the disease, which causes a disease named Covid-19.
Much of the response has focused on the hard-hit province of Hubei and its capital Wuhan, where the outbreak began. The city is all but sealed off from the rest of the country.
Foreign Minister Wang Yi said that along with a drop in infections within Hubei there had also been a rapid increase in the number of people who had recovered.
China’s central bank will also disinfect and store used banknotes before recirculating them in a bid to stop the virus spreading.
Media caption Medics in Wuhan resort to shaving their heads in a bid to prevent cross-infection of the coronavirus
In another development Chinese state media published a speech from earlier this month in which Chinese President Xi Jinping said he said he had given instructions on 7 January on containing the outbreak.
At the time, local officials in the city of Wuhan were downplaying the severity of the epidemic.
This would suggest senior leaders were aware of the potential dangers of the virus before the information was made public.
With the government facing criticism for its handling of the outbreak, analysts suggest the disclosure is an attempt to show the party leadership acted decisively from the start.
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CHINDIA ALERT: You'll be living in their world, very soon 