The BBC’s China correspondent Stephen McDonell met people venturing out for the first time in weeks.
20/03/2020
Why China’s ‘zero new coronavirus infections’ could be cause for optimism – or caution
- The country’s only new infections confirmed in the past two days have been imported from overseas, suggesting containment measures worked
- But there are still likely to be infected people with mild or no symptoms, and questions over how the data was compiled, experts say
A makeshift hospital in Wuhan, converted from a sports arena, closed on Sunday after its last patients were discharged. Photo: Xinhua
China reached an apparent milestone this week in the fight against the Covid-19 pandemic, announcing zero new non-imported infections on Thursday and Friday, but experts said the figures needed to be treated with caution.
After reporting thousands of daily new infections for much of February, China had a sharp decline this month while the wider world experienced the opposite trend as the coronavirus spread.
As China closes makeshift coronavirus hospitals in the outbreak’s initial epicentre of Wuhan because of a lack of patients, and eases some quarantine restrictions in the city and the broader Hubei province, there is consensus that its unprecedented measures changed the direction of the epidemic, offering hope for other countries.
But there are concerns over whether China’s rock-bottom case numbers reflect the full picture in the country. The high incidence of mild cases of Covid-19 is one reason, health experts said, warning that there could be infected people who were not counted but still able to spread the disease.
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“It is important that China is doing a good job testing and screening throughout the country to ensure that there are no pockets of infection remaining,” virologist Jeremy Rossman, of Britain’s University of Kent, said, adding that the news was “exciting” but needed to be “treated with caution”.
“With many of these cases having mild to no symptoms, ensuring that the whole country remains prepared and is actively looking for new cases is essential,” he said. “While it is possible there are no new cases, it is also very possible that somewhere in the country there are mildly infected people.”
Missing mild cases, and those infected but showing no symptoms, are a “legitimate concern”, according to Xi Chen, an assistant professor at the Yale School of Public Health.
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“Eighty per cent of cases have mild symptoms, so zero cases is a milestone, but not the end of the epidemic in China,” he said. Patients with mild symptoms or who are asymptomatic can still spread the disease to others, he added, and this needed to be monitored carefully in the coming weeks.
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China has come under scrutiny for how it treats asymptomatic cases. The National Health Commission excludes patients who test positive yet show no symptoms from its number of confirmed cases, although it monitors those cases when it knows of them.
The extent to which asymptomatic carriers contribute to spreading the disease is yet to be understood by scientists.
In addition, Hubei province in mid-February changed how it classified its confirmed cases, which caused a surge in infection numbers. This decision, which allowed doctors to diagnose a person by a clinical examination, not only by a positive laboratory test, was later reversed, leaving confusion about the true extent of the disease.
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Other commentators said it could not be ignored that political considerations may play a part as China looks to highlight its communist governance model and portray itself as a global leader in combating the disease.
“We are in the midst of the most intensive propaganda operation of the [Communist] Party state in living memory, in trying to project its success in dealing with the virus,” Steve Tsang, director of the University of London’s SOAS China Institute, said. “That narrative requires statistical backup.
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“I’m not saying [the zero number] is necessarily wrong; I’m simply saying we don’t know. What we do know is that there is now a political imperative for the statistics to be [low], and now we have statistics that serve the political imperative.”
Data can be trusted when it comes with transparency about how it was collected, so that it can be independently evaluated, Tsang said.
Nis Gruenberg, an analyst with Berlin-based independent think tank the Mercator Institute for China Studies, said that the numbers could be viewed as an “indicator” of a reduction of cases in China.
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“Some [Western critics] have been saying China and its system are ill-equipped to handle this outbreak, and now the Chinese government is trying to invert that argument and say, ‘Look at you, you are not doing it well enough,’” Gruenberg said.
The message from the Chinese government that it has succeeded in containing the virus may “politicise” the figures and is a potential driver for under-reporting around the country, according to Gruenberg.
“If history is any guide in China then there is a massive history of under-reporting for various reasons, both within the system and internationally,” he said. “I’m sceptical that this is the true number, or that anyone really knows the true number.”
Source: SCMP
20/03/2020
South Korea discusses coronavirus with China, Japan; plans to quarantine Europe entries
SEOUL (Reuters) – The foreign ministers of South Korea, China and Japan held a video conference on Friday to discuss cooperation on the coronavirus pandemic amid growing concern over the number of infected people arriving in their countries from overseas.
Though the epidemic erupted in China in December, and South Korea at one stage had the second-most infections, both subsequently succeeded in stifling domestic transmission of the virus. [L4N2BC3SC]
The number of cases in Japan has been far smaller, but Tokyo has the extra worry of whether to press ahead with hosting the Olympics this summer.
Japan was given expressions of support for hosting the Olympics during the video-conference call between the minister, according to South Korea’s foreign ministry.
The government remains committed to holding Games as planned in July, despite expectations that some 600,000 spectators and athletes would descend on Tokyo.
Japan has had 963 domestically transmitted cases and 33 deaths, according to public broadcaster NHK. That does not include more than 700 cases and seven deaths from a cruise ship moored near Tokyo last month.
TWO-WEEK QUARANTINE
During their call, the ministers shared information on the outbreaks in their countries.
“I think the three countries need to work together to contain the spread of the coronavirus and minimise any resulting reduction on exchanges and cooperation between the peoples, as well as its economic and social impact,” South Korean Foreign Minister Kang Kyung-wha said at the outset of the call.
South Korea’s government said on Tuesday it will conduct a coronavirus check on all travellers from Europe and impose a two-week mandatory quarantine, starting Sunday, for those who intend staying long term.
“This is the toughest step we could take without banning entries from Europe, where the virus is spreading at an unexpected speed,” Yoon Tae-ho, director-general for public health policy at the health ministry, told a briefing.
“We’re also closely monitoring developments in the United States where the rate of the transmission has been increasing over the last few days.”
The move came a day after tighter border checks took effect for all people arriving from overseas.
South Korea has established special entry procedures for visitors from hard-hit countries like China, Italy and Iran, requiring them to sign up by a smartphone application to track whether they have any symptoms such as fever.
Despite strong diplomatic and economic ties between the three North Asian neighbours, historic grievances dog their relations. And reduced flights, stronger border controls, and quarantine requirements introduced in response to the epidemic have proved irksome.
Earlier this month, Seoul suspended visas and visa waivers for Japan in a tit-for-tat move following Tokyo’s own travel restrictions on Koreans, triggering fears that their defences against the virus could spark a fresh feud.
The Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (KCDC) reported 87 new coronavirus cases on Friday, bringing the total national infections to 8,652.
As of Thursday, there were 79 cases involving infected people who had recently arrived in the country, up from 44 on Sunday. Most of them were South Koreans, 27 came from Europe, 16 from China, and 12 from other Asian countries, according to the KCDC.
The daily tally for new infections has been trending downward over the past week, despite a slight uptick on Thursday as small-scale outbreaks continued to emerge across the country. South Korea’s death toll rose to 101, from 94.
South Korea’s election commission said on Friday it will disinfect all polling stations and carry out checks on voters when they show up to cast their ballots in the April 15 parliamentary election.
Source: Reuters
20/03/2020
Coronavirus: Why is India testing so little?
Image copyright EPA“We have a simple message to all countries – test, test, test,” World Health Organisation (WHO) head Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told reporters in Geneva earlier this week.
He was alluding to the coronavirus outbreak, which has killed more than 10,000 people and infected nearly 250,000 in at least 159 countries.
“All countries should be able to test all suspected cases, they cannot fight this pandemic blindfolded,” he said.
With 182 reported infections and four deaths so far, is India taking this advice seriously? Is the world’s second-most populous country testing enough?
The jury is out on this one. India had tested some 14,175 people in 72 state-run labs as of Thursday evening – one of the lowest testing rates in the world. The reason: the country has limited testing. So, only people who have been in touch with an infected person or those who have travelled to high-risk countries, or health workers managing patients with severe respiratory disease and developing Covid-19 symptoms are eligible for testing.
Why is a densely populated country with more than a billion people testing so little? The official assumption is the disease has still not spread in the community. As early “evidence” health authorities say 826 samples collected from patients suffering from acute respiratory disease from 50 government hospitals across India between 1 and 15 March tested negative for coronavirus. Also, hospitals have not yet reported a spike in admissions of respiratory distress cases.
“It is reassuring that at the moment there is no evidence of community outbreak,” says Balram Bhargava, director of the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR). He believes Mr Ghebreyesus’s advice is “premature” for India, and it would only “create more fear, more paranoia and more hype”.
But experts are not so sure.
Many of them believe India is also testing below scale because it fears that its under-resourced and uneven public health system could be swamped by patients. India could be buying time to stock up on testing kits and add isolation and hospital beds. “I know mass testing is not a solution, but our testing appears to be too limited. We need to quickly expand to restrict community transmission,” K Sujatha Rao, former federal health secretary and author of But Do We Care: India’s Health System, told me.
On the other hand, say virologists, random, on-demand testing will create panic and completely strain the feeble public health infrastructure. Increased and targeted “sentinel screening” of patients suffering from influenza and diagnoses in hospitals across the country can provide a better idea of whether there is community transmission, they say. “We need focused testing. We cannot do a China or Korea because we simply don’t have the capacity,” a senior virologist told me.
In many ways, it is all about India trying to battle a pandemic with limited resources. Experts talk about the country’s success in defeating polio, combating small pox, successfully controlling the spread of HIV/Aids, and more recently H1N1 with rigorous surveillance, sharp identification of vulnerable people, targeted intervention, and an early engagement with the private sector to prevent disease spread.
Yet, coronavirus is one of the deadliest transmissible viruses in recent history. Every day lost in effective response means the looming danger of a surge in infections. India spends a paltry 1.28% of its GDP on health care, and that may begin to bite if there’s a full-blown outbreak. Partial lockdowns in many cities – shutting schools, colleges, businesses and suspending some rail transport – proves that the government fears that community transmission of the virus might have begun.
Image copyright GETTY IMAGESBracing for the inevitable, India is scaling up testing. Officials say existing labs are able to provide results in six hours and each lab has the capacity to test 90 samples a day which can be doubled. Fifty more state labs are expected to begin testing samples by the end of the week, bringing the total number of testing facilities to 122. Authorities claim that together, the labs will be able to test 8,000 samples a day – a significant scaling up. In addition, the government is planning to allow around 50 private labs to start testing, but they will take up to 10 days to procure kits. (Testing at state-run labs is free, and it is unclear whether the private labs will charge.)
Two rapid testing labs, capable of doing 400 tests a day, are expected to be operational by the end of the week. India has also placed orders for a million test kits, and will be possibly asking the WHO for a million more.
“On testing, the government response has been proportionate, taking into account scope, need and capacity,” Henk Bekedam, WHO Representative to India told me. “We recognise that laboratory networks are expanding the scope and testing and they now include patients with severe acute respiratory infection and influenza-like illness detected through the surveillance system. It would also be important to look at ‘atypical pneumonia’ cases. If they are without any distinctive cause, then they need to be considered for testing.”
Image copyright GETTY IMAGESThe weeks and months ahead will show whether these steps have been enough. “We cannot say India has escaped community transmission,” Mr Bhargava says candidly. And if and when there is an explosion of infections and more sick people require hospitalisation, India will face formidable challenges.
India has eight doctors per 10,000 people compared to 41 in Italy and 71 in Korea. It has one state-run hospital for more than 55,000 people. (Private hospitals are out of reach for most people). The country has a poor culture of testing, and most people with flu symptoms do not go to doctors and instead try home remedies or go to pharmacies. There’s a scarcity of isolation beds, trained nursing staff and medics, and ventilators and intensive care beds.
India’s influenza cases peak during the monsoon season, and there is no reason why the coronavirus will not make a second coming, virologists say. “Given the way it is progressing in India, it seems it is about two weeks behind Spain and three weeks behind Italy. But that’s the number of known cases. And without sufficient testing and shutting down large gatherings, the numbers could be a lot worse,” Shruti Rajagopalan, economist and a Senior Research Fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, told me.
India’s traditional neglect of public healthcare will begin to bite if the disease spreads to its teeming small towns and villages. “This is a very unique and real public health challenge,” says Ms Rao. And it’s early days yet.
Source: The BBC
19/03/2020
Commentary: China’s zero increase in coronavirus infection a positive sign for world
BEIJING, March 19 (Xinhua) — China’s report of no new local infections of the novel coronavirus in the mainland for the first time is a positive sign amid the news of sharply increasing infections worldwide.
No new infections of the novel coronavirus were reported Wednesday in Wuhan, the epicenter of the outbreak, and Hubei Province. The Chinese mainland reported 34 new confirmed COVID-19 cases, however, all were imported from overseas.
The progress highlights China’s continually improving trend in its prevention and control of COVID-19 despite a growing challenge of imported cases from abroad. It shows China’s tactics and methods in controlling the virus have continued to deliver positive results.
With a unified and highly efficient command system, the country has launched a people’s war against the epidemic featuring full mobilization, transparency, timely activation and adjustment of response levels by provinces, a model of early detection, reporting, isolation and treatment and orderly resumption of production with targeted preventive moves.
In less than two months, China has efficiently contained the spread of the deadly virus with unprecedented measures including the lockdown of Wuhan and mobilization of medical resources nationwide. The 1.4 billion people have pulled together as one to tackle the tough task.
The measures that China has adopted are law-based, scientific and well-targeted. The country has given play to its technological strength to rapidly identify the virus, advance vaccine development and raise testing capacities in a very short time.
The epidemic situation both in and outside China remains complex and severe. The Chinese mainland still had 7,263 COVID-19 patients in hospitals as of Wednesday. The world faces a vital fight against the pandemic as the number of infections in other countries has exceeded 110,000, outnumbering that of China.
As a community with a shared future, the globe needs more solidarity, communication, responsibility and action than ever. What China has done can serve as a reference for those who are confronting the urgent and grave global pandemic.
China has bought the world time by containing the virus. As the country vows to prevent a reversal of the positive trend and clinch a complete victory over the epidemic, it will continue working closely with others and contribute more to the global fight via sharing experience and information and providing help to those in need.
Source: Xinhua
19/03/2020
China Focus: More scenic attractions reopen as tourism picks up in China
BEIJING, March 19 (Xinhua) — As the novel coronavirus outbreak in China becomes more subdued, the country is trying to get tourism back on its feet, with more scenic attractions and museums reopening and travel restrictions being loosened.
The National Health Commission received reports of 34 new confirmed COVID-19 cases on the Chinese mainland Wednesday, all of which were imported cases. No new domestically transmitted cases were reported.
A total of eight museums including Shenyang Palace Museum, the imperial palace of several Qing Dynasty (1644-1911) emperors, reopened to the public on Tuesday in Shenyang, capital of northeast China’s Liaoning Province, after months of being shutdown.
However, with the threat of cross-infection still a danger, visitors must have their temperature checked on arrival, maintain a distance of no less than 1.5 meters among each other in queues and wear masks during their stay.
The museum authorities also took measures including requiring real-time reservations, controlling visitor numbers and limiting opening hours to avoid overcrowding. Daily visitor numbers have been capped at 4,000 for the Shenyang Palace Museum.
“I’m quite assured of the preventive measures taken by the museum. My family canceled our travel plans during the Spring Festival holiday. When the outbreak is over, we want to travel and relax,” said Zhao Yan, a Shenyang resident.
In northwest China’s Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, more than 100 tourist spots have resumed normal operation. Many ski resorts exempted or halved the entrance fees to attract visitors.
“The tourists coded green can make reservations online and enjoy free skiing if they live in certain hotels,” said Liang Jing, manager of Jiangjunshan ski resort. Many provincial-level regions have introduced a health code monitoring system to control people’s movements.
Liang said the resort is temporarily not open to tourists who came from the virus-hit areas or returned from abroad over the previous two weeks.
The majority of Shanghai’s top-graded tourist attractions and all of its libraries have resumed business as of Wednesday. In early March, Shanghai Disney Resort partially resumed operations, with each of the reopened resort locations running under limited capacity and reduced hours of operation.
On Wednesday, Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region issued a guideline allowing package tour businesses between low-risk cities and counties within the region to return to normal and outdoor cultural venues including tourist attractions and stadiums to reopen, while indoor theaters, ballrooms and internet bars must remain shuttered.
As the epidemic control situation is improving in China, a total of 3,714 tourist sites in 28 provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities on the Chinese mainland had reopened as of Monday, accounting for over 30 percent of the total. In addition, over 180 museums had reopened as of Sunday, according to the Ministry of Culture and Tourism.
Tourism is among the industries hit hardest by the unexpected epidemic. The China Tourism Academy estimated that domestic visits will see a reduction of 932 million in 2020 while the number will plummet in the first quarter — a negative growth of 56 percent compared with that in 2019. Tourism-driven revenues will drop by 1.18 trillion yuan (about 166 billion U.S. dollars) this year.
Known for its picturesque karst mountains and beautiful rivers, Yangshuo County in southern China Wednesday launched six measures to help local tourism pick up, such as exempting or reducing rent for tourism enterprises, providing subsidies for reopened tourist sites and cutting tax and fees for small and medium-sized firms.
Shanghai has provided financial aid for culture and tourism industries hit by the outbreak, including refunding deposits for travel agencies, allocating special funds for cultural and tourism development and providing aid for loans.
Companies and individuals in the tourism sector also took measures to save themselves. Livestreaming platforms and travel agencies have teamed up with tourist sites to make online sightseeing more accessible.
China’s largest online travel agency Trip.com in March launched presell products including more than 1,000 travel routes and tickets to over 300 tourist attractions. It also started a revival plan involving 1 billion yuan for the tourism industry with its partners from home and abroad.
Xu Zihui, owner of a homestay near Huangshan Mountain, a UNESCO world heritage site in eastern China’s Anhui Province, allowed customers to book rooms for a period before June next year with discounted price. She has received over 100 orders so far.
Industry experts said domestic tourism will take the lead in recovering despite the fact that the epidemic has not ended and the global tourism market is reeling from the coronavirus shock.
Dai Bin, president of China Tourism Academy, said the general management and emergency capacity of China’s tourism sector have been better enhanced during the epidemic prevention and control.
“The cultural and tourism industry is trying to take the chance of the upcoming holidays with preferential policies. Travelers will be gradually coming back, and the tourism market in China will usher in a new phase of development when the epidemic is over,” said Jin Jianping, deputy general manager of Liaoning Tourism Investment Group.
19/03/2020
China’s Wuhan marks no new coronavirus case, success of strict measures
People enjoy sunset on a plank road at the Donghu Lake in Wuhan, capital of central China’s Hubei Province, March 18, 2020. No new infections of the novel coronavirus were reported on Wednesday in Wuhan, the epicenter of the epidemic, marking a notable first in the city’s months-long battle with the microscopic foe. (Xinhua/Shen Bohan)
WUHAN, March 19 (Xinhua) — No new infections of the novel coronavirus were reported on Wednesday in Wuhan, the epicenter of the epidemic, marking a notable first in the city’s months-long battle with the deadly virus and sending a message of hope to the world gripped by the pandemic.
The Health Commission of Hubei Province, where Wuhan is the capital, said the virus’ death toll climbed by eight in the province, but the total confirmed cases of the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in Wuhan and Hubei remained at 50,005 and 67,800 on Wednesday.
No increase was observed in the province’s number of suspected cases, which fell to zero on Tuesday, in another indication that large-scale transmissions have been suppressed at the epidemic ground zero after a slew of strict measures.
Previously, the central Chinese province had reported single-digit increases of new infections, all of which were from Wuhan, for a week in a row since last Wednesday. A month ago, the figure was several thousand a day.
The province also saw 795 patients discharged from hospital after recovery on Wednesday, reducing its caseload of hospitalized patients to 6,636, including 1,809 in severe condition and 465 in critical condition.
With no new cases in Wuhan, the Chinese mainland on Wednesday reduced the increase in domestic transmissions to zero, according to the National Health Commission. The country now faces a greater threat of infections imported from overseas, which jumped by 34 on Wednesday.
“The clearing of new infections in Wuhan came earlier than predicted, but it is still too early to let down our guard,” said Zhang Boli, one of the leading experts advising on the epidemic fight in Hubei.
Arduous work still lies ahead as China strengthens its defence against imported cases from abroad, treats thousands of patients still in serious or critical condition and rehabilitates those discharged from hospitals, said Zhang, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering.
“CUNNING VIRUS”
The novel coronavirus was first identified in Wuhan in December as a new pathogen facing mankind. Before its traits were fully understood, the virus had cut a swath of infections among Wuhan’s unsuspecting public, before jumping from the transportation hub to other parts of China via the largest seasonal human migration ahead of the Spring Festival.
The Chinese leadership has described the COVID-19 outbreak as the most difficult to contain since the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949 and “a big test” for the country.
Medical experts said the virus is more contagious, though less deadly, than the SARS virus that belongs to the same coronavirus family. Globally, the SARS virus infected 8,422 people and killed 919 between 2002 and 2003.
“We still have insufficient knowledge of the novel coronavirus. What we already know is it’s a very cunning virus with a long incubation period,” said Wang Daowen, a cardiologist at Tongji Hospital in Wuhan.
“We still found the virus from the anus, if not from the lungs, of one patient after he was hospitalized for 50 days,” said Wang, who was among the first medical experts joining the treatment of COVID-19. “Usually, a virus should vanish from one’s body in two weeks.”
TURNING TIDE
China began to see a drop in the number of COVID-19 patients on Feb. 18, after the number of recovered patients surged and new cases declined. By late February, the virus had withdrawn from most territories on the Chinese mainland, with only single-digit daily increases of infections in areas outside Wuhan.
On March 6, the epidemic epicenter Wuhan slashed the daily increase of confirmed cases to below 100, down from a peak of more than 14,000 in early February. Bruce Aylward, who led the China-WHO joint mission on COVID-19, said the outbreak in China had come down “faster than would have been expected.”
On March 11, the daily increase of locally transmitted infections dropped to single digits for the first time on the Chinese mainland. The virus has so far caused a total of 80,928 infections and 3,245 fatalities, defying earlier predictions by foreign researchers of a more extensive national outbreak.
Behind the downward trends were a raft of strong measures taken by the Chinese government, including canceling mass events, closing scenic attractions, suspending long-distance buses and asking hundreds of millions of Chinese to stay indoors to break transmission chain.
On Jan. 23, Wuhan declared unprecedented traffic restrictions, including suspending the city’s public transport and all outbound flights and trains, in an attempt to contain the epidemic within its territory.
The situation in Wuhan and its nearby cities was grim. Officials said more than 3,000 medics in Hubei contracted the virus at the early stage of the outbreak due to limited knowledge of the virus. Many families lost multiple loved ones.
Following reports of overloaded local hospitals, more than 42,000 medical staff, including those from the military, were dispatched to Hubei from across the country. At the peak of the fight, one in 10 intensive care medics in China were working in Wuhan.
Fleets of trucks carrying aid goods and displaying banners of “Wuhan be strong!” rushed to the city from all corners of the country. Under a “pairing-up support” system, each city in Hubei is taken care of by at least one provincial-level region.
To ensure the timely admission of patients, two hospitals with a total of 2,600 beds were built from scratch in Wuhan within a few days, and 16 temporary hospitals were converted from gyms and exhibition centers to add 13,000 beds. Nucleic acid testing (NAT) capacity in Wuhan reached 24,000 people a day. Testing is made free and treatment fees are covered by China’s basic medical insurance.
Huang Juan, 38, witnessed the first few days of chaos and despair at local hospitals before calm and order gradually set in amid the influx of support.
Huang recalled the hospitals were packed with patients — over 100 patients were waiting for the injection but only one nurse was around. Every day, her mother who had a fever on the eve of the Spring Festival in late January waited 10 hours to be injected.
After a week of imploration, Huang finally found a hospital willing to admit her mother. Ten days later, her mother was discharged upon negative NAT results. “She still had symptoms, but there was no choice, as many patients were waiting for beds,” Huang said.
The situation improved when her father, also diagnosed with the disease, was hospitalized on Feb. 19.
“He was discharged after the doctor confirmed his recovery on March 11. It was apparent that the standards for discharge were raised as Wuhan got sufficient beds,” Huang said.
Cui Cui (pseudonym), 57, also testified to the improving situation. The Wuhan resident was transferred to the newly built Huoshenshan (Fire God Mountain) Hospital as her sickness worsened on Feb. 10.
The military-run hospital that treats severe cases impressed her with a calm ambiance. “Doctors and nurses there called me ‘auntie’ instead of ‘patient’ and spent time chatting with me to ease my anxiety,” said Cui, who was discharged after recovering on Feb. 26.
COMMUNITY CONTROL
Outside Hubei, the battle against the epidemic has tested the mobilization capacity of China’s big cities and remote villages alike as they scrambled to prevent sporadic imported cases from evolving into community outbreaks.
Earlier this month, Beijing said about 827,000 people who returned to the capital city after the Spring Festival holiday were placed in two-week home observation. Around 161,000 property management staff and security guards were on duty to enforce the quarantine rules.
Shanghai, a metropolis in eastern China, has demanded its over 13,000 residential communities to guard their gates and take temperatures of residents upon entrance, according to Zeng Qun, deputy head of the Shanghai Civil Affairs Bureau.
Quyi Community was among the first Shanghai neighborhoods to adopt closed-off management. Since late January, it has been disinfecting public areas, introducing contactless deliveries and ensuring residents returning from severely affected regions are placed in quarantine.
“For those who are under self-quarantine at home, health workers will provide door-to-door visits every day, and services from grocery shopping to psychological counseling are offered,” said Huang Ying, an official with Hongkou District where the community is located.
Shanghai, with a population of 24 million, is among China’s most populous cities and a commercial hub. It was once predicted as the most susceptible to a coronavirus outbreak.
Mathematical models estimated that without prevention and control measures, Shanghai’s infection numbers would exceed 100,000. Even with some interventions, the figure could still reach tens of thousands, according to Zhang Wenhong, who heads Shanghai’s medical team to fight the epidemic.
“But now, the infection number is just over 300. This means the measures taken by Shanghai over the past month are effective,” Zhang said, describing the city as an epitome of China’s battle against the epidemic.
NEW BATTLEGROUNDS
China’s economy became a new battleground as the war against the virus wore on, delaying the reopening of plants after the Spring Festival holiday and causing a shortage of workers with the nationwide traffic restrictions in place.
China has about 170 million rural migrant workers employed away from their hometowns, many of whom could not return to work as enterprises across the country began to resume production on Feb. 10.
In response, local governments have arranged chartered flights and trains to take workers directly to the factories while issuing subsidies to tide companies over difficulties. By early March, the southern manufacturing heartland Guangdong Province had seen 91.2 percent of firms resume operation.
Almost every sector of Chinese society has chipped in on the anti-virus fight, from barbers offering medics free haircuts to factories revamping their assembly lines to produce medical masks.
According to the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, China’s output of protective clothing has surged to 500,000 pieces per day from fewer than 20,000 pieces at the beginning of the outbreak. The daily output of N95-rated medical masks rose from 200,000 to 1.6 million, while that of regular masks reached 100 million.
“China’s economic and social development over the past decade has laid a sound foundation for the fight against the epidemic and enabled the society to mobilize more quickly,” said Tang Bei, an international public health researcher at Shanghai International Studies University.
China’s tech boom also made contributions — tech companies rolled out disinfecting robots, thermal camera-equipped drones and AI-powered temperature measurement equipment, which have been rapidly deployed to reduce the risks of cross-infection.
The outbreak has led to what is being called “the world’s largest work-from-home experiment.” The number of online meetings supported by Tencent Meeting on Feb. 10, when most enterprises started resuming work, was 100 times that of its previous average daily use.
Lu Chuanying, a researcher with Shanghai Institutes for International Studies, said digital technologies have risen to the fore, not only in the country’s anti-virus efforts but also in the recovery of the virus-hit economy.
“Remote consultations, artificial intelligence and big data were used to contain the epidemic, while telecommuting, online education and online vegetable markets have kept our lives in quarantine going,” Lu said.
Source: Xinhua
19/03/2020
China Focus: China hands out vouchers to spur virus-hit consumption
NANJING, March 19 (Xinhua) — Chinese cities are encouraging residents to dine out and shop with measures such as handing out e-vouchers to boost consumption sectors hit hard by the novel coronavirus outbreak.
Like many living in the eastern city of Nanjing, Wang Linlin was waked up by her alarm clock at midnight and with a few clicks on her cellphone, she was ready to meet her luck of the draw: getting a meal voucher worth 100 yuan (about 14.2 U.S. dollars).
“I’ve always been thinking about hanging out and having hotpot with my friends after the epidemic, so getting a voucher would be great,” Wang said.
Nanjing has been giving out vouchers worth 318 million yuan to its residents since Sunday. People are invited to participate in lotteries for e-vouchers which can be used in restaurants, gymnasiums, bookshops as well as tourist spots, helping the service sector bounce back.
The voucher bonus has been well received as more than 1.6 million local citizens have registered for the lotteries as of Monday, according to the Nanjing Big Data Administration Bureau.
Besides Nanjing, many other regions have also been taking similar actions.
Macao gives out vouchers totaling 2.2 billion patacas (about 275 million U.S. dollars) to its residents. The city of Ningbo in east China’s Zhejiang Province is issuing consumption vouchers worth 100 million yuan while the city of Jinan, east China’s Shandong Province, is handing out vouchers worth 20 million yuan to stimulate spending on tourism and culture.
Due to the coronavirus outbreak, Chinese customers have shied away from restaurants and shopping malls. China’s retail sales of consumer goods, a major indicator of consumption growth, declined 20.5 percent year on year in the first two months of this year, according to the National Bureau of Statistics.
“People are more willing to dine out with the vouchers, which can boost confidence in the catering sector and finally get the economy back on track,” said Shen Jiahua, chairman of a chain restaurant company in Nanjing.
After the coronavirus outbreak ends, people are eager to spend generously. According to a survey conducted by the Jiangsu consumers council, nearly 90 percent of the respondents expressed suppressed consumption desire.
Restaurants, shopping malls, movie theaters, gymnasiums and tourist spots are the top five destinations for consumers to unleash their spending spree after normal life resumes, the survey showed.
Local officials across China have been taking the lead in recent days in patronizing restaurants and shopping malls, hoping to use their appearances in public to persuade more residents to go outside.
In provinces such as Jiangsu, Anhui, and Jiangxi, government notices have urged officials to dine out and go shopping to help related businesses through the epidemic period.
“Government officials are using their actions to convey confidence and support work resumption and consumer spending,” commented a Chinese netizen.
Source: Xinhua
19/03/2020
Coronavirus: Grim toll in Italy as number of deaths near China’s total
- In Madrid, local health authorities describe ‘one case every 16 minutes’
- New cases in Europe include new Prince Albert of Monaco and Michel Barnier, the European Union’s chief Brexit negotiator
Italian military trucks and soldiers are seen by Bergamo’s cemetery after the army was deployed to move coffins from the cemetery to neighbouring provinces. Photo: Sergio Agazzi/Fotogramma via Reuters
Italians on Thursday mourned a record number of deaths from the Covid-19 pandemic and expected the toll to surpass that of China, where the crisis began. On the mainland, there was a sense of relief as there were no new domestic cases reported for the first time since the outbreak began.
As opposite turning points were marked in China and Europe, the worldwide total of infections exceeded 220,000. The new cases include Monaco’s reigning monarch, Prince Albert, and Michel Barnier, the European Union’s chief Brexit negotiator.
More than 9,000 people have died around the world, at least 2,978 of them in Italy, including five doctors. The death rate in Madrid is described by local health authorities as “one case every 16 minutes”.
Concerns are also growing that the surge in cases in Europe and North America could result in a second wave in Asia, amid reports of mass movements of travellers fleeing the current epicentres.
Australia and New Zealand became the latest countries to ban non-citizens from entry.
In China, the National Health Commission said on Thursday that all 34 new infections reported the previous day had been imported cases.
It is also the first time Hubei province, where the crisis began, recorded no new cases either domestically or from abroad.
The number of new deaths in mainland China was down to single digits, with eight reported, bringing the total fatalities to 3,245.
Coronavirus: Italy’s hospitals overflow with the dead as toll tops 1,000
13 Mar 2020
Italy experienced its worst death toll on Wednesday with 475 reported, the highest one-day official toll of any nation.
Italy has the world’s second-highest number of diagnosed cases, after China.
Dramatic footage has been circulating on social media, showing military vehicles taking corpses out of the Italian city of Bergamo because cremation facilities were overloaded.
Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte extended a nationwide lockdown that is weighing on the economy, saying: “We managed to avoid the collapse of the system and the measures are working.”
Prince Albert of Monaco (pictured in 2019) has tested positive for the coronavirus, it was announced on Thursday. Photo: Xinhua
The government is considering tightening restrictions amid concern that many Italians are not respecting rules that confine them to their homes except for work, health or emergency reasons.
In Spain, the second hardest hit country in Europe, the virus’ spread continues with a rate of 25 per cent new cases per day.
Spanish King Felipe VI, in a rare televised address, told his citizens: “This virus will not defeat us. On the contrary. It will make us stronger as a society.”
Source: SCMP
19/03/2020
Coronavirus: China and the virus that threatens everything By John Sudworth
On a cold Beijing morning, on an uninspiring, urban stretch of the Tonghui river, a lone figure could be seen writing giant Chinese characters in the snow.
The message taking shape on the sloping concrete embankment was to a dead doctor.
“Goodbye Li Wenliang!” it read, with the author using their own body to make the imprint of that final exclamation mark.
Five weeks earlier, Dr Li had been punished by the police for trying to warn colleagues about the dangers of a strange new virus infecting patients in his hospital in the Chinese city of Wuhan.
Now he’d succumbed to the illness himself and pictures of that frozen tribute spread fast on the Chinese internet, capturing in physical form a deep moment of national shock and anger.
Image copyright GETTY IMAGESThere’s still a great deal we don’t know about Covid-19, to give the disease caused by the virus its official name. Before it took its final fatal leap across the species barrier to infect its first human, it is likely to have been lurking inside the biochemistry of an – as yet unidentified – animal. That animal, probably infected after the virus made an earlier zoological jump from a bat, is thought to have been kept in a Wuhan market, where wildlife was traded illegally.
Beyond that, the scientists trying to map its deadly trajectory from origin to epidemic can say little more with any certainty.
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But while they continue their urgent, vital work to determine the speed at which it spreads and the risks it poses, one thing is beyond doubt. A month or so on from its discovery, Covid-19 has shaken Chinese society and politics to the core.
That tiny piece of genetic material, measured in ten-thousandths of a millimetre, has set in train a humanitarian and economic catastrophe counted in more than 1,000 Chinese lives and tens of billions of Chinese yuan. It has closed off whole cities, placing an estimated 70 million residents in effective quarantine, shutting down transport links and restricting their ability to leave their homes. And it has exposed the limits of a political system for which social control is the highest value, breaching the rigid layers of censorship with a tsunami of grief and rage.
The risk for the ruling elite is obvious.
It can be seen in their response, ordering into action the military, the media and every level of government from the very top to the lowliest village committee.
The consequences are now entirely dependent on questions no one knows the answers to; can they pull off the complex task of bringing a runaway epidemic under control, and if so, how long might it take?
Across the world, people seem unsure how to respond to the small number of cases being detected in their own countries. The public mood can swing between panic – driven by the pictures of medical workers in hazmat suits – to complacency, brought on by headlines that suggest the risk is no worse than flu. The evidence from China suggests that both responses are misguided. Seasonal flu may well have a low fatality rate, measured in fractions of 1%, but it’s a problem because it affects so many people around the world.
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The tiny proportion killed out of the many, many millions who catch it each year still numbers in the hundreds of thousands – individually tragic, collectively a major healthcare burden.
Very early estimates suggested the new virus may be at least as deadly as flu – precisely why so much effort is now going into stopping it becoming another global pandemic. But one new estimate suggests it could prove even deadlier yet, killing as many as 1% of those who contract it. For any individual, that risk is still relatively small, although it’s worth noting such estimates are averages – just like flu, the risks fall more heavily on the elderly and already infirm.
Image copyright REUTERSBut China’s experience of this epidemic demonstrates two things. Firstly, it offers a terrifying glimpse of the potential effect on a healthcare system when you scale up infections of this kind of virus across massive populations. Two new hospitals have had to be built in Wuhan in a matter of days, with beds for 2,600 patients, and giant stadiums and hotels are being used as quarantine centres, for almost 10,000 more.
Despite these efforts, many have still struggled to find treatment, with reports of people dying at home, unregistered in the official figures. Secondly, it highlights the importance of taking the task of containing outbreaks of new viruses extremely seriously. The best approach, most experts agree, is one based on transparency and trust, with good public information and proportionate, timely government action.
But in an authoritarian system, with strict censorship and an emphasis on political stability above all else, transparency and trust are in short supply.
China’s response may have sometimes looked like panic – with what’s been called the “biggest quarantine in history” and harsh enforcement against those who disobey.
But those measures have become necessary only because its initial response looked like the very definition of complacency.
There’s ample evidence that the warning signs were missed by the authorities, and worse, ignored. By late December, medical staff in Wuhan were beginning to notice unusual symptoms of viral pneumonia, with a cluster linked to the market trading in illegal wildlife. On 30 December, Dr Li Wenliang, an ophthalmologist working in Wuhan’s Central Hospital, posted his concerns in a private medical chat group, advising colleagues to take measures to protect themselves. He’d seen seven patients who appeared to be suffering with an illness similar to Sars – another coronavirus that began in an illegal Chinese wildlife market in 2002 and went on to kill 774 people worldwide.
A few days later, he was summoned by the police.
Dr Li was made to sign a confession, denouncing the messages he’d posted as “illegal behaviour”.
The case received national media attention, with a high-profile state-run TV report announcing that in total, eight people in Wuhan were being investigated for “spreading rumours”. The authorities, though, were well aware of the outbreak of illness. The day after Dr Li posted his message, China notified the World Health Organization, and the day after that, the suspected source – the market – was closed down.
But despite the multiplying cases and the concerns among medics that human-to-human transmission was taking place, the authorities did little to protect the public. Doctors were already setting up quarantine rooms and anticipating extra admissions when Wuhan held its important annual political gathering, the city’s People’s Congress.
In their speeches, the Communist Party leaders made no mention of the virus. China’s National Health Commission continued to report that the number of infections was limited and that there was no clear evidence that the disease could spread between humans.
And on 18 January the Wuhan authorities allowed a massive community banquet to take place, involving more than 40,000 families. The aim was to set a record for the most dishes served at an event. Two days later, China finally confirmed that human-to-human transmission was indeed taking place.
Most remarkable of all perhaps, the following day, Wuhan held a Lunar New Year dance performance, attended by senior officials from across the surrounding province of Hubei. A state media report of the event, since hurriedly deleted but captured here, says the performers, some with runny noses and feeling unwell, “overcame the fear of pneumonia… winning praise from the leaders”.
By the time the national authorities had woken up to the impending disaster, and closed the city down on 23 January, it was too late – the epidemic was out of control. Before Wuhan’s transport links were cut, an estimated five million people had left the city for the Lunar New Year break, travelling across China and the world.
Some have begun calling the disaster “China’s Chernobyl”.
The parallels in failures to pass bad news up the chain of command and the incentives to put the short-term interests of political stability ahead of public safety, seem all too apparent. Li Wenliang, who’d gone back to work after being warned to keep quiet, soon discovered he’d also been infected.
He died earlier this month, leaving a five-year-old son and a pregnant wife.
Anger was already simmering over the authorities’ failure to issue timely warnings, with the crisis now being aired in full view. Wuhan’s politicians were blaming senior officials for failing to authorise the release of the information; senior officials appeared to be preparing to hang Wuhan’s politicians out to dry.
But the death of a man, silenced for simply trying to protect his colleagues, burst open the dam with a wave of online fury directed not just at individuals, but at the system itself. So great was the public outrage, China’s censors appeared unsure what to censor and what to let through. The hashtag #Iwantfreedomofspeech was viewed almost two million times before it was blocked. Aware of the tide of emotion, the Party began paying its own tributes to Dr Li.
It quickly hailed him a national hero.
Image copyright COURTESY BADIUCAOChina’s rulers, untroubled by the inconveniences of the ballot box, have far deeper and older fears of what might sweep them from office. The wars, famines and diseases that shook the dynasties of old have given them their inheritance; an acute historical sense of the danger of the unforeseen crisis. They will also know well what Chernobyl did for the legitimacy of the ruling Communist Party in the former USSR.
“It’s impossible to know if Li Wenliang’s death will serve as the catalyst for something bigger,” Jude Blanchette, an expert on Chinese politics at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, tells me. “But the raw emotion that surged when news of his condition broke indicates deep levels of frustration and anger exist within the country.”
Precisely because it feels the weight of history, however, the Communist Party has made holding onto power a living obsession, and it has an ever more formidable domestic security apparatus to help it to do so. Over the past few decades it has proven nothing if not resilient, enduring through political chaos, devastating earthquakes and man-made disasters.
But one sign that might hint at an awareness of just how great the current risks are comes in the role being played by China’s President Xi Jinping. This week – for the first time since the crisis began – he ventured out to meet health workers involved in the fight, visiting a hospital and a virus control centre in Beijing.
In contrast, his premier, Li Keqiang, has been sent to the front lines in Wuhan and appointed head of a special working group to tackle the epidemic.
While it is common for the premier to be the face of reassurance during national disasters, some observers see another reason why Mr Xi might be wise to be seen to delegate.
Image copyright EPA“Xi’s absence from this crisis is yet another demonstration that he doesn’t so much lead as he does command,” Mr Blanchette says. “He’s clearly worried that this crisis will blow up in his face, and so he’s pushed out underlings to be the public face of the CCP’s response.”
Already there are signs that the censorship is being ratcheted up once again, with Mr Xi ordering senior officials to “strengthen the control over online media”.
A few days ago, I spoke by phone to the lawyer and blogger, Chen Qiushi, who’d travelled to Wuhan in an attempt to provide independent reporting about the situation. Videos from Mr Chen, and a fellow activist, Fang Bin, have been widely watched, showing not the ranks of patriotic soldier-medics and the building of hospitals that fill state media coverage, but overcrowded waiting rooms and body bags.
He told me he was unsure how long he’d be able to carry on. “The censorship is very strict and people’s accounts are being closed down if they share my content,” he said.
Mr Chen has since gone missing.
Friends and family believe he’s been forced into Wuhan’s quarantine system, in an attempt to silence him.
China’s leaders now find their fate linked to the daily charts of infection rates, published city by city, province by province. There are some signs that the extraordinary quarantine measures may be having an effect – outside of Hubei Province, the worst affected area, the number of new daily infections is falling.
But with the need to try to restart the economy – all but frozen now for over a week – the country has begun a slow return to work.
Strict quarantine measures will remain in force in the worst affected areas, but workers from other parts of the country are trickling back to the cities, with the task of monitoring and managing their movements being handed to local neighbourhood committees.
It will be a difficult balancing act.
Too tough an approach risks further choking off business activity, commerce and travel in a consumer environment already suffocating under the deep psychological fear of contagion. Too lax, and any one of the many potential reservoirs of infection, now scattered across the country, could explode into another, separate epidemic.
That would require further harsh action, knocking domestic confidence and prolonging the international border closures and flight restrictions put in place at such enormous economic cost.
China is insisting that it is a fight well on the way to being won with “unconquerable will” and that lessons have been learned and “shortcomings in preparedness” identified.
Questions about the systemic failings behind the disaster are dismissed as foreign “prejudice”, as the propaganda machine cranks into overdrive, channelling the narrative and muting the criticisms.
But the devastating scale and scope of China’s world-threatening catastrophe have already revealed something important. The thousands who have lost family members, the millions living under the quarantine measures and the workers and businesses bearing the financial costs have been asking those difficult questions too.
On the snowy banks of the Tonghui river, the giant tribute to Li Wenliang remains intact. When we visited, a few locals were taking photos and talking quietly to each other.
A police car crawled slowly by.
Soon, with the warming weather, the characters will be gone.
Source: The BBC
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