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Coronavirus claims lives of two passengers from Diamond Princess cruise ship, Japanese media says Director of Wuhan hospital dies of coronavirus as death toll passes 2,000 in China
(32 minutes later)
Coronavirus claimed the lives of two passengers from the Diamond Princess Thursday, Japan's public broadcaster NHK reported, marking the first confirmed cruse ship deaths. BEIJING — A respected neurologist who was director of Wuchang Hospital in Wuhan died Tuesday after contracting the novel coronavirus, despite a “full-effort rescue,” according to Wuhan’s municipal health commission.
The Japanese man and woman, both said to be in their 80s, had left the ship last week and were hospitalized. Both passengers reportedly had underlying conditions. Liu Zhiming, 51, became the most prominent victim of the outbreak since another doctor, whistleblower Li Wenliang, died Feb. 7, sparking an outpouring of public anger and grief. Liu’s death follows that last week of a nurse, Liu Fan, from the same hospital. A total of eight front-line health workers have died, while as many as 3,000 have been infected with the coronavirus.
Meanwhile, Chinese leader Xi Jinping is striking an increasingly confident note that the country can control the coronavirus outbreak and manage the economic and social fallout, as some Chinese health experts predict a peak in infections by the end of the month. The number of coronavirus infections across China continues to rise, although at a slower rate outside the epicenter of Hubei province.
Chinese leaders, eager to kick-start economic activity, have dismantled some highway checkpoints, while businesses have begun to reopen. As of Wednesday, however, restrictions on personal mobility remained tight, suggesting wariness about rising infections. Officials have been sounding a more upbeat note in recent days about the prospects for containing the virus. But a renowned Chinese pulmonologist who predicted a peak this month has since clarified his remarks to say that the peak may be followed by a plateau, rather than an outright fall in cases. Here is what we know:
China on Wednesday reported that the rate of new cases continues to decline, but international experts, including Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, say they are wary of declaring that the pace of worldwide infections is slowing. Here’s what we know: ● A neurologist and a retired nurse who returned to work have died after becoming infected while treating coronavirus patients in Wuhan, the outbreak’s epicenter. Their deaths bring the total number of medical workers who have succumbed to the virus to eight.
● Beijing’s central Xicheng district said it would seal off residential compounds for almost half a million residents in one of the strictest control policies to reach the Chinese capital. ● A Chinese pulmonologist predicted the number of infections will plateau, rather than fall, after hitting a peak later this month. World Health Organization experts are still struggling to understand how fatal and contagious the disease is outside China due to a lack of data, WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said at a news briefing Tuesday.
● China tallied a total of 394 new infections and 136 deaths through the end of Wednesday, making the cumulative total 74,546 infections and 2,118 deaths — the overwhelming majority still occurring in central Hubei province. ● The Diamond Princess quarantine will end as scheduled on Wednesday, said Japan’s health minister, as 88 more cases were discovered, bringing the total linked to the ship to 542.
● Hong Kong reported its second death, a 70-year-old man. ● Russia will temporarily suspend entry of Chinese citizens due to the coronavirus outbreak starting Thursday, banning them from traveling to Russia for employment, tourism and education.
● New stricter criteria for diagnosing coronavirus cases will likely result in further drops in the rate of new infections reported. ● Chinese officials reported 74,185 cases of coronavirus in the Chinese mainland, including 2,004 deaths. In the past 24 hours China reported 1,749 new cases, using its newer metric, which includes both lab-confirmed cases and those confirmed by clinics. Outside China there are now 804 cases in 25 countries, with three deaths, WHO officials said at its daily news conference in Geneva on Tuesday.
● In Japan, an infectious disease specialist slammed conditions on the Diamond Princess cruise ship, where 79 new cases were reported Wednesday, saying officials endangered lives by failing to observe proper quarantine practices. Chinese health officials reported early Wednesday that the coronavirus killed another 136 people, all but four in Hubei Province, bringing the outbreak’s cumulative death toll to 2,004.
● Iran reported its first two cases of the virus, raising the number infected with the coronavirus in the Middle East to 12, including in Egypt and the United Arab Emirates. There were also 1,749 new cases of the novel virus, which has sickened more than 74,000 people to date, according to China’s health commission.
● The number of coronavirus cases in South Korea increased substantially Thursday, rising by nearly two-thirds to 82. Sixty-two people have been infected in Hong Kong, ten in Macau and 22 in Taiwan.
A Japanese man and woman who were passengers on the Diamond Princess cruise ship died Thursday, according to Japanese public broadcaster NHK, marking the first time a cruise ship passenger has died. The World Health Organization division in charge of responding to the coronavirus outbreak is dangerously underfunded, the Australian Broadcasting Corp. reported, further fueling doubts about the U.N. agency’s ability to coordinate a global response to the deadly virus.
The 87-year-old man and 84-year-old woman died Thursday after being hospitalized on Feb. 11 and Feb. 12, respectively, according to NHK, citing government officials. Both passengers reportedly had underlying conditions and were confirmed to be infected with the new coronavirus. Leaked WHO audits showed that financing for the WHO Emergencies Program was so deficient that it posed a “severe” and “unacceptable” risk to the agency as a whole, according to ABC.
At least 621 people have contracted the virus aboard the ship, with 79 new cases being confirmed Wednesday. Despite the new cases, hundreds of passengers who have tested negative for the new coronavirus began disembarking from the ship Wednesday as a 14-day quarantine ended. A separate risk assessment from March 2019 found that chronic underfunding of the program could lead to “failure to adequately manage multiple, simultaneous or consecutive [high-level] emergencies, resulting in poor performance and results at a country level,” the Australian national broadcaster reported.
Also on Wednesday, the first Diamond Princess crew member to test positive for coronavirus earlier this month was discharged from a Japanese hospital. A WHO spokeswoman played down the funding shortfall’s impact on the agency’s operations. “We have made strides in improved raising of finance and the fact that we have managed multiple grade-three emergencies simultaneously suggests that while a risk, we have managed it,” she told ABC.
The disembarkation of passengers is expected to continue through Friday. The WHO has faced mounting criticism over its handling of the coronavirus crisis. The agency came under fire earlier this month from health experts who said the WHO director general’s praise for the Chinese government in the early weeks of the outbreak created a false sense of security as the virus swept across China.
Meanwhile, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Wednesday issued a “Level 1” travel warning for Japan, urging people to practice typical safety precautions when traveling to the country to prevent illness. “We were deceived,” Lawrence Gostin, a professor of global health law at Georgetown University who also provides technical assistance to the WHO, told The Washington Post. “Myself and other public health experts, based on what the World Health Organization and China were saying, reassured the public that this was not serious, that we could bring this under control.”
The CDC said it does not recommend canceling or postponing travel to Japan. “We were,” he added, “giving a false sense of assurance.”
China’s National Health Commission early Thursday confirmed 394 new coronavirus infections, 1,117 suspected cases and 114 deaths nationwide in the past 24 hours, raising the country’s cumulative totals to 74,546 infections, 4,922 suspected cases and 2,118 reported deaths. The WHO’s laudatory remarks about Chinese leadership — which came even as Beijing silenced whistleblowers and underreported infections — have strained the agency’s credibility, some experts said.
In its update, the health commission also said 1,779 people were discharged from the hospital Wednesday, bringing the total number of discharged patients to 16,155. “I’m concerned about whether they can actually assume leadership effectively in terms of the international response,” said Yanzhong Huang, a senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations.
South Korea reported 31 new cases of the coronavirus on Thursday, increasing its total by nearly two-thirds to 82. Others echoed those concerns in comments to the Australian national broadcaster this week, questioning whether the WHO Emergencies Program, which was established in 2016, could fulfill its mandate without proper funding.
All of the latest cases except one in Seoul were in the southern city of Daegu and surrounding North Gyeongsang province, Korea’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (KCDC) said. WHO’s program is “in a constant state of crisis,” Adam Kamradt-Scott, a global health security expert at Sydney University, told ABC. “They had a series of emergency health crises to deal with from day one … [and yet] they have consistently been forced to hold donor meetings to get more money into the fund.”
Of those, 23 cases were linked to church services that a 61-year-old known patient had attended, according to the KCDC. TORONTO — The number of Canadians aboard the Diamond Princess with coronavirus has jumped to 43, Canadian officials said Tuesday, an increase of 11 people from the day before.
Shincheonji Church of Jesus released a statement on Wednesday that 10 churchgoers contracted the virus from the 61-year-old woman. The church in Daegu she attended has been shut since Tuesday and is currently undergoing investigations, the statement said. The government is aiming to evacuate all asymptomatic Canadians and permanent residents from Japan on Feb. 20 or 21, Foreign Affairs Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne told reporters. The airplane that was chartered to bring them home experienced unforeseen technical issues during takeoff, he said, but is now en route.
A patient being treated for novel cornoavirus at a San Diego hospital was released Wednesday after fully recovering from the virus, UC San Diego Health said in a statement. It’s not clear how many Canadians want to board the flight.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention notified UC San Diego Health that a patient at the facility had fully recovered. The facility has worked closely with the CDC to receive individuals with symptoms to rule out the coronavirus infection. Ottawa has faced criticism for being too slow to evacuate its Canadians, first from the epicenter of the virus’s outbreak in Wuhan, and now from the Diamond Princess. Critics point out that some Americans evacuated from the cruise liner have already arrived in the United States.
“Patients who are cleared for hospital discharge have been confirmed through rigorous testing that includes consecutive negative test results provided by the CDC,” UC San Diego Health wrote in a statement. The facility said the patient discharged Wednesday is no longer under federal quarantine or isolation commands. The evacuated Canadians will land in Trenton, Ontario, where they will be assessed. From there, they will be transported to the NAV Canada Training Institute in Cornwall, Ontario, for a further 14 days of quarantine.
UC San Diego Health was scrutnized last week when a confirmed coronavirus patient was mistakenly discharged due to a laboratory error. The patient was among three evacuees from China placed in isolation at the facility in early February and underwent testing after showing signs of the novel coronavirus. Earlier in the day, Health Minister Patty Hajdu visited the hundreds of Canadian evacuees from Wuhan who are in quarantine at a Canadian military base. So far, none has tested positive for the virus.
A coronavirus, recently named COVID-19, has infected more than 70,000 people since it was first reported in late 2019. To predict how big the epidemic could get, researchers are working to determine how contagious the virus is. U.S. health officials said Tuesday that more than 100 U.S. citizens still onboard the Diamond Princess cruise ship or in hospitals in Japan have been placed under travel restrictions, preventing them from returning to the United States for at least 14 days after they had left the cruise ship docked in Yokohama, Japan.
As governments and public health agencies work to treat infected people and control the spread of COVID-19, researchers are using mathematical models to estimate how contagious it is and how far it could spread. One such model has indicated that the number of cases may peak this month. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in a statement said the quarantine on the ship “may not have been sufficient to prevent transmission among individuals on the ship.” As a result, “CDC believes the rate of new infections on board, especially among those without symptoms, represents an ongoing risk.”
More than 300 Americans were evacuated from the cruise ship earlier this week and flown to quarantine centers in the United States, but some U.S. passengers chose to remain on the Diamond Princess. About 40 Americans who tested positive for the virus are in hospitals in Japan, U.S. officials have said.
To protect the health of the American public, the remaining U.S. passengers and crew of the ship will not be allowed to return to the United States for at least 14 days after disembarking, the CDC said. The Japanese government intends to start the disembarking process on Wednesday. According to a State Department spokesman, that process will take place “over a number of days.”
U.S. citizens will be receiving more formal follow-up notification from the CDC, the State Department said.
The CDC said the U.S passengers and crew and those in hospitals in Japan will be required to wait 14 days without having symptoms or a positive coronavirus test result before they are permitted to board flights to the United States.
If someone from the cruise arrives in the United States before the 14-day period ends, they will still be subject to mandatory quarantine until they have completed the 14-day period with no symptoms or positive test results.
Because of their high-risk exposure, the CDC said there may be additional confirmed coronavirus cases among the remaining passengers on board the cruise ship.
Hundreds of millions of people across China are on lockdown. The government says the restrictions are needed to prevent the further spread of the coronavirus.
But under international health regulations that United Nations member states have agreed to uphold, China in some cases has not met the criteria for imposing quarantines, according to some public health experts.
International regulations allow for “the least restrictive measure needed to achieve the public health goal,” said Alexandra Phelan, a faculty research instructor in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at Georgetown University. “The quarantine imposed must not be discriminatory or arbitrary, must have scientific basis, and must be the least restrictive option available.”
She added, “Quarantines on a large scale tend to be very arbitrary by their very nature. ... They are unlikely to meet this criterion.”
In the United States, the commerce clause of the Constitution provides the federal government the power to isolate and quarantine people, and the Public Health Service Act gives the U.S. secretary of health and human services the authority to take actions to prevent communicable diseases from entering and spreading from other countries and between states. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has been delegated with the powers to carry out daily efforts to this effect.
Globally, while international regulations apply, it’s up to each country to determine how it implements a quarantine — and whether it follows the agreed-upon guidelines.
In practice, “there aren’t a lot of sticks to enforce international health law,” said Lauren Sauer, an assistant professor of emergency health at Johns Hopkins University.
In the current case of China, public health experts have warned that widespread quarantines and travel bans could backfire by denying people needed medical care and pushing cases underground.
“The IHR [International Health Regulations] allows for the use of quarantine and isolation,” Sauer said. “But this scope and this sort of size of quarantine, this mass movement restriction, is unprecedented.”
Sauer said that the quarantine Japan imposed on the Diamond Princess, a cruise liner kept in isolation as increasing numbers of patients reported infections, could even have been a “violation of human rights” by keeping people locked up in close quarters with the virus.
She disagreed with the decision by the World Health Organization and some governments to initially support this approach. But she said the WHO was “doing the best they can in a very political climate.”
Sauer said her criticism of the ongoing quarantines, and calls for revising and clarifying quarantine guidelines, should not detract from the overall importance of supporting and improving public health institutions.
“We need the WHO and we will continue to rely on them and continue to support their responsive efforts as much as we can as a public health community,” she said.
World Health Organization officials said countries need to be better prepared to deal with the virus, in the wake of the chaotic way passengers on the MS Westerdam cruise ship were dispersed.
Passengers of the Holland America liner began to disembark Friday in Cambodia to begin their travels home. One of them, an 83-year-old American woman, tested positive on her arrival at an airport in Malaysia, sending public health officials scrambling because they assumed the ship was virus-free.
WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said Tuesday that he had discussed the Westerdam case with Malaysia’s health minister the day before. “These signals show the importance of all countries being ready for the arrival of the virus to treat patients with dignity and compassion, to protect health workers and to prevent onward transmission,” Tedros said.
Experts note that the Westerdam situation demonstrates how travelers without obvious symptoms could slip through screening processes because authorities have been focused on monitoring only those who traveled to China or had close contact with an infected person.
To help countries better prepare, Tedros said the WHO has shipped supplies of personal protective equipment to 21 countries and will spend shipments to another 106 countries in coming weeks. By end of this week, he said 40 countries in Africa and 29 in the Americas will newly have the ability to detect covid-19. Many had previously been sending tests out of country and waiting days to get results.
The U.S.-China relationship was already tense amid ongoing battles over trade and cybersecurity. And then came the coronavirus outbreak. Through quarantines and targeted lockdowns, authorities have so far managed to keep the virus from spreading in the United States. But there are concerns over a new possible wave of infections, and U.S. officials have expressed frustrations with their Chinese counterparts over the levels of information they have shared about the virus.
These new stresses over managing a global public-health emergency sit on top of a deep well of mistrust. In Washington, antipathy toward China remains a rare source of bipartisan consensus on the Hill. Over the past month, U.S. lawmakers have questioned their country’s dependence on China for sourcing pharmaceutical products, publicly decried the World Health Organization’s exclusion of Taiwan from its meetings out of deference to Beijing, and aired concerns about China’s cooperation in reckoning with the spread of the virus.
Last month, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross argued that the outbreak could spell good news for the United States because it may help “accelerate the return of jobs to North America.”
Some China hawks took an even more strident line. In the early stages of the crisis, Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) called for a full shutdown of commercial travel between China and the United States. He later repeatedly floated the possibility that the outbreak could be the result of a deliberate Chinese bioweapon, much to the ire of Beijing’s envoy in Washington.
Experts soon poured cold water on Cotton’s speculative claims.
There’s the risk, though, that the ruptures caused by the virus could add to an already growing divide. “The coronavirus may end up being a tipping point in the decoupling process — companies that may have been on the fence about China could start moving their supply chains elsewhere,” wrote Rana Foroohar of the Financial Times.
Read more here.Read more here.
As the number of coronavirus cases in China skyrocketed in the past week, a small Texas manufacturer was inundated with orders from 8,000 miles away. Then, Stephen K. Bannon reached out. Just how fatal is the coronavirus? Experts are still struggling — months after the virus emerged — to answer that question. Epidemiologists trying to pin down a fatality rate for covid-19 say they simply lack enough reliable data.
Prestige Ameritech, the largest full-line domestic surgical mask manufacturer, was producing 600,000 masks each day but struggling to meet demand. Mike Bowen, the company’s executive vice president, received cold calls on his cellphone from people saying they represented foreign governments and wanted to make bulk purchases. The Hong Kong government and Hong Kong International Airport wanted more. Everyone was hunting for masks. On Monday, for example, China’s Center for Disease Control and Prevention published a study with the best and most conclusive statistics. Drawing on the patient records of 44,672 confirmed cases, Chinese researchers deemed the virus to have an overall fatality rate of 2.3 percent.
Instead of celebrating the business boom, Bowen was indignant. This is the precise scenario he began warning about almost 15 years ago, when he pleaded with federal agencies and lawmakers to boost U.S. production of medical masks. He had predicted an eventual health scare and not enough manufacturers. He was right. “The problem is they basically just took the total number of deaths and divided it by number of cases,” said Caitlin Rivers, an epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. “It’s not exactly the ideal way to understand fatality rate because it doesn’t take the element of time into consideration.”
So there Bowen was last week as a guest on Bannon’s “War Room: Pandemic” podcast, tormented that no one in power had listened. Bannon, a former top adviser to President Trump, has long cautioned about the decline of U.S. manufacturing. The study didn’t take into account, for example, that the virus has a long incubation period, meaning many patients who were recently diagnosed and may go on to die were not recorded as fatalities. That could lead to an underestimation of the virus’s fatality rate.
“What I’ve been saying since 2007 is, ‘Guys, I’m warning you, here’s what is going to happen, let’s prepare,’ ” Bowen said on the program. “Because if you call me after it starts, I can’t help everybody.” At the same time, many experts believe the virus’s symptoms are so mild in some people — especially those who are young — that it is going undetected and undiagnosed. That could lead to an overestimation of the fatality rate.
The coronavirus outbreak has led to a health crisis, a diplomatic fiasco and, increasingly, an economic mess. It has also exposed major vulnerabilities in the medical supply chain. Many U.S. companies, especially hospitals and pharmaceutical firms, rely on Chinese manufacturers for products ranging from the active ingredients of prescription drugs to protective gear like masks and gloves. Now, much appears upended. In a Tuesday news conference, WHO officials talked of other barriers to their round-the-clock efforts to understand the coronavirus’s lethality.
Read more here. Michael Ryan, WHO’s director for health emergencies, noted that while the Chinese CDC study showed a large drop in fatality rate compared with earlier estimates, there was likely “a huge bias at the beginning,” which overestimated its death rate.
Halfway around the world, the covid-19 outbreak is negatively affecting Chinese businesses in New York and San Francisco, and some Chinese community members are feeling targeted. Watch more here: “Remember at the beginning of the outbreak what people were finding were the severe cases. … And now, we are going out looking for less sick people,” Ryan said.
Researchers have produced the first 3-D map of the coronavirus, a development that may help the development of a vaccine or antiviral medicine. He recalled how something similar happened during the H1N1 pandemic when experts initially declared fatality rates of 10-20 percent before lowering them significantly as weeks passed.
The research, which maps the molecular structure of SARS-CoV-2, was published in the journal Science on Wednesday. A team at the University of Texas at Austin collaborated with researchers at the National Institutes of Health. Another wrinkle researchers must consider is how much more lethal the virus has proved to be in the epicenter in Hubei Province — 2.9 percent fatality rate — compared with in other Chinese provinces — 0.4 percent.
They were able to produce their 3-D atomic-level scale map of the part of the virus that attaches to and infects human cells. That part — called the spike protein — could prove essential as researchers race to produce a vaccine. The sheer number of cases in Wuhan and Hubei province has put enormous pressure on the local health-care system, and some patients may be dying from insufficient health care and resources. Lessons Chinese doctors have learned in Wuhan are also being applied in other Chinese cities as the virus spreads, enabling them to reduce fatalities.
The team at Austin had already been studying other viruses in the coronavirus family and developing ways of locking their spike proteins into a shape that made them easier to analyze. Those caveats aside, experts say, the Chinese CDC study contained critical information for researchers. It confirmed, for instance, a long-held suspicion by researchers that the virus is much more lethal for older people. The fatality rate for those over 80, for example was 14.8 percent. Meanwhile, the study found only eight deaths total since the outbreak began for the ages 0 to 29.
“As soon as we knew this was a coronavirus, we felt we had to jump at it,” said Jason McLellan, associate professor at the University of Texas at Austin, who led the research, in a statement. “We knew exactly what mutations to put into this, because we’ve already shown these mutations work for a bunch of other coronaviruses.” Those with existing medical conditions were also much more likely to die — with heightened fatality rates ranging from 10.5 percent with heart disease and 7.3 percent with diabetes to 5.6 percent for cancer.
The researchers worked quickly, designing and producing samples of their spike protein within two weeks of receiving the genome sequence of the virus from Chinese researchers. It took roughly another two weeks to reconstruct the 3-D atomic-scale map. One particularly perplexing study finding was a higher mortality rate among men (2.8 percent) than women (1.7 percent). Researchers, however, cautioned that that finding could be because of completely unrelated reasons — such as higher smoking rates among Chinese men, gender differences in immune response or women being more likely to seek medical help.
McLellan’s team said they plan to work next on using the molecule they mapped to see if they can isolate antibodies produced by previously infected patients who have recovered from the virus — in hopes of producing a treatment for people soon after they are exposed to the virus. “But the biggest looming question is still the fatality rate and risk this virus poses,” said Rivers. “Anytime there’s an outbreak like this, we hold our breath a little bit, because it takes a lot of time and data before we will know exactly what we’re dealing with.”
Sony Interactive Entertainment has decided to cancel its plans to attend a major video game showcase in Boston beginning Feb. 27 due to concerns about the coronavirus. The publishing company announced the decision Wednesday afternoon with a short update to an existing post on the event. Beginning Thursday, Russia will temporarily suspend entry of Chinese citizens due to the coronavirus outbreak, Tass news agency reports.
The showcase, Pax East, will run through March 1 and demo some of the major recent and upcoming game releases before a mass audience at the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center. With both prominent game publishers and members of the general public, the expected crowd for the event figures to number in the tens of thousands. Russia’s deputy prime minister, Tatyana Golikova, announced the move in a statement to reporters Tuesday. The restrictions will apply to Chinese nationals traveling to Russia for employment, tourism and education, Tass reports.
“Today, Sony Interactive Entertainment made the decision to cancel its participation at PAX East in Boston this year due to increasing concerns related to COVID-19 (also known as ‘novel coronavirus’),” the post reads. “We felt this was the safest option as the situation is changing daily. We are disappointed to cancel our participation in this event, but the health and safety of our global workforce is our highest concern.” Russia announced at the end of January that it would be closing its 2,615-mile border with China, one of the world’s longest international borders.
The news comes after Boston released a statement confirming its first case of coronavirus in the state of Massachusetts. Russia has reported two cases of coronavirus; both Chinese citizens. On Tuesday, the Russian Embassy in Japan announced that a Russian citizen who was onboard the Diamond Princess cruise ship had also been infected.
Sony was preparing to demo some of its most anticipated upcoming releases at the show and is preparing to release a new console, the PlayStation 5, this year. LONDON — A British couple under coronavirus lockdown on the Diamond Princess cruise ship docked in Japan said Tuesday that they had contracted the virus during their time in quarantine.
In a statement to The Washington Post on Wednesday, Pax event director Kyle Marsden-Kish said Pax East will go on as planned, with “enhanced cleaning and sanitization across the show” based on the Environment Protection Agency’s recommendations in its emerging pathogen policy. “We are working closely with the Boston Convention & Exhibition Center and following local, state and federal public health guidelines, including those issued by the CDC,” Marsden-Kish said in a statement. “There is going to be a time of quiet. We have been proved positive and leaving for hospital soon. Blessings all xxx,” wrote David Abel, who has racked up almost 30,000 followers in the last two weeks.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued a new travel notice Wednesday for people headed to Hong Kong. Despite limited connectivity on the ship, David and his wife, Sally, have used Facebook and YouTube to keep friends, family and people around the world updated on life under quarantine. In posts, the pair have won hearts for their honest, informative and at times entertaining dispatches from their time on the ship.
The Level 1 warning asks travelers to exercise basic hygiene that includes hand washing and to avoid contact with sick people. The relatively mild warning comes shortly after Hong Kong reported a second death caused by coronavirus. The couple’s videos have generated thousands of views and comments from people asking questions and sending well wishes. Recent photos shared by David show a panoramic view of the bay and gulls flying past their cabin window.
Canceling or postponing travel plans wasn’t discouraged by the agency. However, the CDC recommended that a person seek medical attention if a visit to Hong Kong happened in the past 14 days and if symptoms of the virus are occurring. Seventy-four British passengers are thought to be onboard the quarantined vessel, which has been tied up in Yokohama harbor. The British government and Foreign Office have come under fire for their response to the incident, with many critics saying not enough has been done to bring British passengers home.
Earlier this month, the agency issued a Level 3 travel notice to China that advised against nonessential travel to the country. Hong Kong, Macao and the self-governing island of Taiwan weren’t part of that warning. In a post shared last weekend, Abel told those watching, “It has become far tougher than I ever imagined it could be.”
A Filipino crew member from the Diamond Princess cruise ship, the first among the crew to test positive for the coronavirus earlier this month, was discharged from a Japanese hospital Wednesday, according to a statement from the Philippines Department of Foreign Affairs. The couple’s son, Stephen Abel, has openly criticized the British government’s handling of the situation, telling BBC Breakfast that his parents were beginning to get “down.”
He was admitted to a hospital on Feb. 5 and has been “successfully treated,” officials said. “They are not getting any communication from our country, so they are in the dark and feeling very unloved,” he said.
About 40 other Filipinos are still receiving medical care for covid-19 at facilities throughout the Tokyo metropolitan area, according to officials. That number includes six new cases that emerged Wednesday, among 79 new cases total on the Diamond Princess. On Tuesday, the Foreign Office reassured people that it was working to bring Britons back home, tweeting, “Given the conditions on board, we are working to organise a flight back to the UK for British nationals on the #DiamondPrincess as soon as possible.”
The Philippines Embassy in Tokyo is working with the Japanese government and Princess Cruises management to coordinate how and when Filipino crew and passengers aboard the cruise ship will be transported back to the Philippines, according to the statement. WHO experts are still struggling to understand how fatal and contagious the disease is outside China due to a lack of data, WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said at a news briefing Tuesday.
Wednesday was the last day of Japan’s government-enforced quarantine of the cruise ship. All other Filipino crew members and travelers will be allowed to enter the Philippines once they receive medical clearance, officials said. “We don’t have enough data on cases outside China to make meaningful conclusions,” Tedros said, noting that there have not been sustained human-to-human transmissions outside China except for the situation on the Diamond Princess cruise ship.
At least 621 people have contracted the virus aboard the ship. Crew members say they have not been afforded the same protections as passengers. Amid criticism of how Japanese authorities and others quarantined the cruise ship, on which there was eventually a total of 454 infections among passengers, WHO officials also voiced support for the country’s government.
Democratic senators sent a letter Wednesday to the Trump administration asking it to request emergency funding to supplement the government’s coronavirus response. “It’s very easy in retrospect to make judgments on public health decisions made at a certain point,” said Michael Ryan, a WHO leader on health emergencies. The decision to quarantine “was much more preferable at the time than having people dispersed around the world, but obviously the situation on ground changed, and clearly there’s been more transmission than expected on the ship.”
In the letter, 25 senators expressed concern that the administration had not asked for supplemental funding to deal with the epidemic. Trump administration officials, the letter said, “continue to assert that there are already sufficient resources available, while providing few details on current or projected spending.” Ryan, however, noted that WHO and others are eager to study the cruise ship transmission to understand what went wrong so they can apply those lessons to similar efforts in coming days.
In a briefing to senators on Feb. 12, administration officials “stated that we must be prepared for a very large and lengthy public health response to this virus given how easily it appears to be transmitted,” according to the letter. “They also stated that [the Department of Health and Human Services] would exhaust existing funding for the response soon.” WHO officials also expressed support and praise for China’s strict measures in recent days, which have been criticized by some as overly harsh and chaotic.
In recent weeks, officials at the state level have expressed concerns over reimbursement for the mounting costs of coronavirus screenings and quarantines, along with staffing and equipment, under federally directed efforts to limit the outbreak’s reach in United States. Chinese officials have described its effort as a “wartime” campaign against the virus. Such measures have included mass roundups of people suspected of being infected, isolation of patients without giving them adequate care and door-to-door surveillance and checks on residents.
The letter cites those worries. “We strongly urge the Administration to transmit an emergency supplemental request that ensures it can and will fully reimburse states for the costs,” the senators wrote. “You can argue whether those measures are excessive or whether they’re restrictive on people, but there’s a lot at stake here, an awful lot at stake, in terms of public health and in term of not just the public health of China but people all over the world,” Ryan said.
The letter also noted that President Trump’s recent budget proposal calls for a 9 percent cut in funding for the HHS, which includes the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — although officials said funding aimed at combating the coronavirus would be protected. Finding the balance between civil liberties or human rights and necessary restrictions is sometimes difficult, Ryan said. “Right now, the strategic and tactical approach in China is the right one.”
Facebook criticized Singapore for invoking a controversial fake-news law to block a Facebook page, which the government said had been spreading misleading news about the coronavirus outbreak, among other concerns. “We still have a chance of preventing a broader global crisis,” said WHO Director General Tedros. “WHO will continue working night and day with all countries to prepare them.”
Facebook told Reuters on Tuesday that it was legally obligated to comply with Singapore’s order this week to block the States Times Review’s page in Singapore, but that it was “deeply concerned” by the move. Some passengers from the MS Westerdam cruise ship docked in Cambodia are being shunned on land and in air, following two weeks of being shunned at sea over coronavirus fears.
Singapore last year passed the Protection from Online Falsehoods and Manipulation Act (POFMA), one of the world’s most far-reaching anti-misinformation laws. The cruise liner loitered in water for two weeks without any case of coronavirus after being repeatedly turned away at ports — only to then have one passenger be diagnosed with the virus after disembarking and traveling to Malaysia on Saturday.
The government had already used it to censor the page in question, which is run by an Australia-based Singaporean political activist. The most recent case concerned articles criticizing Singapore’s handling of the coronavirus, which the government said were inaccurate. News of the infection fed into fears of cruise ships and airports serving as unwitting incubators and transmitters of the virus causing covid-19. Malaysia, Thailand and Singapore announced Tuesday that they would not permit Westerdam passengers to fly via their airports, Bloomberg News reported.
“The reason why we need to act swiftly is because if we don’t, then these falsehoods can cause anxiety, fear and even panic,” Singapore’s minister for communications and information, S. Iswaran, told reporters Monday, the Straits Times reported. The cruise liner, owned by Holland America Line, canceled an upcoming trip scheduled for Feb. 29 “out of an abundance of caution,” the company announced Sunday. It said it’s coordinating all efforts with the World Health Organization, as well as other public health bodies.
Social media companies and governments around the world are grappling with their responses to an onslaught of disinformation around the coronavirus outbreak. Well before the epidemic, however, human rights groups and free speech activists warned that Singapore’s fake-news law would restrict freedom of expression. “We are in close coordination with some of the leading health experts from around the world,” Grant Tarling, chief medical officer for Holland America Line, said in a statement Monday. “These experts are working with the appropriate national health authorities to investigate and follow-up with any individuals who may have come in contact with the [infected] guest.”
“We believe orders like this are disproportionate and contradict the government’s claim that POFMA would not be used as a censorship tool,” Facebook said in a statement, according to Reuters. “We’ve repeatedly highlighted this law’s potential for overreach and we’re deeply concerned about the precedent this sets for the stifling of freedom of expression in Singapore.” For two weeks, MS Westerdam traveled the seas looking for a place to dock, after five countries refused it entry because of coronavirus fears. The ordeal ended Friday when Cambodia allowed the boat to land and for guests at last to leave the ship. Cambodia’s prime minister personally welcomed passengers at the port. The ship’s passengers came from 41 countries and territories, with U.S. citizens being the largest group represented, Bloomberg News reported.
Iran’s first two coronavirus patients died Wednesday, hours after their infections were initially reported, a spokesman for the country’s health ministry wrote on Twitter. Holland America Line has repeatedly said that there were no cases or suspected cases of coronavirus on board.
The Iranians died in the holy Shiite city of Qom where they had been hospitalized after testing positive for the virus, Iran’s Mehr news agency reported. “On Feb. 10, 2020, all 2,257 passengers and crew were screened for illness including the taking of individual temperatures. No individual at that time was identified with an elevated temperature,” the company said in a statement Monday, adding “During the voyage there was no indication of COVID-19 on the ship.”
Kianush Jahanpur, the health ministry spokesman, wrote that both patients died while in intensive care. The patients were under isolation, Reuters reported. Guests who left the ship in Cambodia on Friday were subject to further health screenings by Cambodian authorities, which all passengers passed, and then cleared to start returning home. Holland America reported that none of the ship’s guests had traveled to China in the 14 days before the start of the trip.
Iran’s deputy minister of health traveled to Qom on Wednesday, according to Mehr, and a team from the ministry’s contagious diseases department arrived there Tuesday to assist staff at the Qom University of Medical Sciences, where the patients were hospitalized. Jahanpur told Iranian media earlier Wednesday that a number of people in Qom had been isolated and tested after reporting flu-like symptoms. Nonetheless, when an 83-year-old American woman who had been on the ship flew to Malaysia on Friday, authorities there tested her and found her positive for the virus, they announced Saturday.
This sounds like great news: Drugmakers are starting to develop a coronavirus vaccine. MS Westerdam said that neither she nor her husband, who tested negative for the virus, reported any symptoms while on board.
The downside: That’s because they believe the virus is so deadly that developing a vaccine is worth risking a lot of money. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Tuesday that it took the United States “too long to get the medical experts into” China, and he urged Beijing to increase its openness as the epidemic continues to unfold.
Drugmaker Johnson & Johnson has announced its Janssen unit will partner with the Department of Health and Human Services to work on a vaccine for the rapidly spreading coronavirus. “We hope that every country that has information, this includes China, will be completely open and transparent,” Pompeo said during a briefing in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. “It took us too long to get the medical experts into the country. We wish that could have happened more quickly. But we are hopeful that the Chinese government will increase its transparency [and] will continue to share this information.”
On Monday, a second drug company — Sanofi Pasteur — said it’s also partnering with HHS to work on creating a vaccine using the company’s recombinant DNA platform. Both drugmakers will work with HHS’s Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, otherwise known as BARDA. The Chinese government is under deep scrutiny of how it has handled the crisis.
“I think companies are looking at it in a way they hadn’t looked at it before because I think the disease itself is convincing people this has a potential to be around for a while,” said Michael Osterholm, the director of the University of Minnesota’s Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy. While the director general of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, and President Trump have both repeatedly praised China’s efforts at containing the virus, critics both inside and outside of China have accused the government of initially covering up the extent of the virus as it began to emerge.
Janssen’s and Sanofi’s announcements are welcome news to government health officials, who have worried publicly that the pharmaceutical industry wouldn’t wade into vaccine development because they might never recoup enormous upfront costs — potentially $750 million to $1 billion — for a vaccine that won’t be ready until the epidemic has significantly slowed or even ended. Pompeo also said Tuesday that the United States planned to provide $100 million in support to countries, including China, battling the covid-19 disease.
Read more: Drugmakers are developing a coronavirus vaccine. That’s a sign the disease will be around a long time. “We need to make sure that we got that right, and we’re doing everything we can to make sure that every place there’s risk, in countries where there isn’t a deep strong health care or public health infrastructure, the United States is providing important assistance,” he said.
Taiwan confirmed its 24th coronavirus diagnosis Wednesday, the Taiwanese Centers for Disease Control said in an announcement. One area where this money may go is Africa, where only six labs exist that can test for coronavirus. Africa has, so far, had only one confirmed coronavirus case: in Egypt. The Egyptian Health Ministry has not identified the victim, but has said the person is a “foreigner” and is being treated in isolation. An estimated one million Chinese nationals live on the continent of 1.2 billion people.
Health officials said the latest patient is a woman in her 60s from the northern part of the island. She went to see doctors four times between Jan. 22 and Jan. 29 for symptoms that included coughing and a fever, authorities said. The coronavirus outbreak is China is hindering some aspects of Beijing’s ambitious Belt and Road initiative (BRI), a trillion-dollar-plus global infrastructure investment.
The woman’s condition worsened to the point that she had to be rushed to the emergency treatment unit of a hospital, where she was diagnosed with pneumonia. She was admitted for care on Jan. 30, but her health declined further. The woman was sent to the intensive care unit, then transferred to an isolation ward where she was diagnosed with coronavirus Wednesday, officials said. Peng Qinghua, secretary general of China’s state-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission, said in a Tuesday briefing that the outbreak had caused “difficulties” in some overseas projects and that China was working toward gaining “support and understanding” from foreign partners, Reuters reported.
Authorities confirmed that the woman hadn’t been abroad for about two years. Health officials said they planned to investigate her contacts and activities over the past two weeks, in an effort to identify where she contracted the infection. Jonathan Hillman, director of the Reconnecting Asia Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said that many BRI projects had already been slowing before the outbreak. “In some cases, the virus opens the door for Chinese officials to blame poor-performing projects on factors outside their control,” Hillman said.
The mounting death toll from the coronavirus raises a basic question: How does the virus make people sick, and why is it fatal for some? However, given the large number of Chinese workers employed in these overseas projects, a level of disruption is unavoidable, Hillman added. CSIS has estimated that almost 90 percent of BRI projects use Chinese contractors. Even if workers were likely to be allowed to travel soon, they could face additional quarantines.
Scientists’ understanding of the new coronavirus is in flux, but it’s important to keep a few facts in mind: Most people who contract covid-19 — 80 percent, according to a study from Chinese public health officials — will experience only mild illness and recover. Based on early numbers, about 2 percent of people who are infected die — but that estimate comes with a huge caveat, given how hard it is to estimate fatality rates early in an outbreak. “By now, the Chinese government is trying to isolate the spreading of the virus to Hubei Province and the province is on lockdown,” Yun Sun, director of the China program at the Stimson Center, said in an email. “That means all BRI projects that Hubei leads or participated in are affected for the time being.”
The difference between a lethal infection and one that feels like a bad cold probably hinges on the interaction between the virus and a person’s immune system, say researchers, who are relying on their knowledge of other similar illnesses, including severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS). Wuhan — the capital of Hubei province, a major economic center and the epicenter of the epidemic — is linked to several BRI projects. On Tuesday, Malaysia barred the entry of 13 managerial staff on the $11-billion East Coast Rail Link after they returned to Hubei for the Lunar New Year holiday.
“What you get is the initial damage and rush of inflammatory cells, but the damage is so extensive that the body’s immune response is completely overwhelmed — which causes even more immune response, more immune cells and more damage,” said Matthew Frieman, a University of Maryland virologist. The coronavirus outbreak may expose some of the downsides of similar BRI projects — especially the widespread use of Chinese contractors that undercuts the initiatives, Hillman said.
Coronaviruses that cause common colds are excellent at infecting the upper airway, while the virus causing SARS tended to go deeper in the lungs. As the coronavirus gains strength, Frieman said, dead cells are sloughed off and collect in the airway, making breathing difficult. “What China might worry beyond the temporary disruption is the psychological impact and the social stigma associated with China due to the coronavirus,” Sun said. “Projects can be resumed. Supply chains can be restored. But if countries become concerned about what byproducts those economic ties bring, the impact will be more long lasting.”
In the patients who recover, the immune system’s response has worked: It has cleared the virus, with inflammation receding. Yet experts don’t know the long-term outcome for these individuals. It’s possible they will gain immunity and be protected from reinfection. Or they might get a less severe case in the future — or not be protected at all. They also might just gain temporary immunity. It’s yet another unanswered question about the coronavirus. The secretary general of the United Nations said Tuesday that one of his biggest concerns is the possible spread of the coronavirus to countries with “less capacity in their health service.”
Read more here: How exactly does coronavirus kill? If that were to happen, those countries would require much international help and solidarity, said António Guterres in an interview with the Associated Press in Pakistan.
SEOUL — North Korea maintained Wednesday that it does not have any coronavirus cases. In recent days, Egypt reported its first case of the virus, sparking fears that it could spread across Africa — a continent particularly ill-equipped to handle such epidemics.
“Fortunately, no coronavirus case has been reported in our country to date,” Pyongyang’s Health Minister Oh Chun Bok told the official Korea Central Television. The risk of outbreak on the continent is high, world health leaders have cautioned. Africa is home to more than 1.2 billion people, including an estimated 1 million Chinese nationals, who tend to work in business, construction, oil and mining — a testament to Beijing’s increasingly tight relationship with Senegal, Nigeria, Ethiopia and other African countries.
“However, if we lower our guard just a little bit and let even one case of coronavirus infection occur, this can escalate into a disastrous fallout,” Oh told the state broadcaster. Before the arrival of recent World Health Organization supplies, there were only two labs in Africa that had testing capabilities for the virus, Washington Post reporters wrote earlier this month.
The World Health Organization said Tuesday that there are “no indications” of coronavirus cases in North Korea. African governments have been rushing to ramp up their preparedness, including construction of isolation wards, but more specialized training is needed to address a new and fast-spreading problem.
“At the moment there are no signals. There are no indications we are dealing with any covid-19 there,” Mike Ryan, head of the WHO’s emergencies program, said during a news conference in Geneva. In his Tuesday interview, Guterres said, “The risks are enormous and we need to be prepared worldwide for that.”
South Korean media outlets had previously reported on a coronavirus outbreak in North Korea, citing unnamed sources there. MOSCOW — A Russian citizen who was onboard the Diamond Princess cruise ship has been diagnosed with coronavirus, the Russian Embassy in Japan said on Tuesday.
South Korea’s Unification Ministry spokesman Yoh Sang-key said Wednesday that the country could consider sending virus aid to North Korea, if asked. The country has yet to receive an official request from an international organization, however, he added. “At present, he is at a specialized medical facility in the Aichi Prefecture,” the embassy wrote in a statement posted on its Facebook page.
After a health scare last weekend that sent health officials in several countries scrambling, test results now show that almost 800 passengers on a cruise ship docked in Cambodia do not have the coronavirus, Cambodian health officials said. His wife was also hospitalized. She was previously suspected of having the virus, but did not test positive, the statement continued.
The cruise ship Westerdam was turned away by several ports in Asia before finally being welcomed by Cambodia. Some of the passengers were allowed to disembark and travel on to other countries because the ship was assumed to be virus-free. But on Feb. 15, one passenger — an 83-year-old American woman from the ship who went on to Malaysia — tested positive, prompting fears that other passengers may be carrying the virus. Russia has two other reported cases, but both are Chinese citizens. To prevent the virus from spreading to the country further, Russia has taken major precautionary measures, including the temporary closure of its entire 2,600-mile border with China.
On Wednesday, Holland America Line, which operates the Westerdam, said 781 passengers tested negative for the virus that causes the disease now known as covid-19. “This completes the guests’ testing,” the company said in a statement. The popularity of video games centered on the spread of pathogens has surged in recent weeks.
When the ship first left Hong Kong on Feb. 1, it carried 1,455 passengers and 802 crew members. Once it docked in Cambodia, roughly 674 passengers and 55 crew members disembarked and flew onward to other countries, including the United States. The rest were stopped by sudden restrictions on travel imposed as news of the 83-year-old woman’s positive test spread, Holland America spokesman Erik Elvejord said in an phone interview. As officials and experts worked to stem the global spread of the coronavirus, gamers have turned their attention to parallel, imaginary struggles.
Since then, the remaining 781 passengers and 747 crew members have been stuck in Cambodia. While some passengers will be allowed to disembark Wednesday, the crew members will remain aboard while they wait for their tests to be completed, Elvejord said. Foremost among them: Plague Inc., a strategy game that rose to the top of Apple Store charts in China, the United States and elsewhere as coronavirus fears mounted. First released by British-based studio Ndemic Creations in 2012, the game, of which there are a handful of variants, asks players to take the part of a pathogen, helping it evolve to wipe out humanity.
The 55 crew members who were able to leave previously were not tested, he added, and it is unclear what countries they returned to. Those crew members left because they had finished their contracts, he said. The popularity of such games makes sense amid efforts to cope with the coronavirus and the fears it has sown, researchers and game developers said.
Experts have cautioned that the Westerdam incident demonstrates how travelers without obvious symptoms could slip through screening processes because authorities have been focused on monitoring only those who traveled to China or had close contact with an infected person. “I can certainly understand the hesitation around this — no one wants to trivialize the very real human suffering that this coronavirus has brought with it,” said Matthew Leacock, the creator of the board game Pandemic. “But the reality is that playing helps us process the world around us, and people may be turning to these games now for that reason.”
Singapore confirmed three new coronavirus cases, raising the country’s total to 84 infections. Read more.
Singapore’s Health Ministry linked one of the patients to the Grace Assembly of God Church, which is the country’s biggest cluster, and another patient to the Life Church and Missions, Singapore’s Straits Times newspaper reported. The third person infected, however, had not recently traveled to China and was originally hospitalized in a shared room, following a dengue fever diagnosis. As more airlines suspend flights to China and the country’s domestic airlines cut back, there has been a major contraction in what was previously the world’s third-largest international aviation market. According to a new study by the OAG global travel data provider, it’s now smaller than Portugal’s — a country of around 10 million.
The 57-year-old Singaporean woman was admitted to the hospital on Feb. 15 and moved to an isolation room after testing positive for the virus on Feb. 18. The Health Ministry said in a statement Wednesday that authorities are tracing and monitoring anyone that this third patient could have come in contact with. This week alone, the capacity on international flights to and from the country dropped by 270,000 seats, with a total reduction in capacity since Jan. 20 of 1.7 million — an almost 80 percent drop. Even more dramatic, though, is a drop in around 10 million seats on internal flights since Jan. 20.
“They [other patients] have been tested for covid-19 infection, and the results are pending,” the ministry said. “So far, none of the contacts have any respiratory symptoms.” Data from China’s neighbors — which rely heavily on tourism and visitors from China — show similar drops in seats over the past month, with Hong Kong, Taiwan and Vietnam registering decreases of more than 80 percent.
Singapore’s Ministry of Health also announced Wednesday that 34 coronavirus patients have been discharged. Of the 50 people who remain hospitalized, most are in stable or improving condition, although four are in a critical state in the intensive care unit, according to the ministry. Regional airlines have been hemorrhaging badly over the course of the coronavirus outbreak. On Tuesday Singapore Airlines, a bellwether for the region, said it was cutting back flights to Los Angeles, Sydney and London due to weak demand.
Dozens of scientists joined the World Health Organization (WHO) on Wednesday in rebuking conspiracy theories on the origins of the coronavirus. Hong Kong’s Cathay Pacific Airways has been particularly hard hit, with most of its flights to mainland China — its main customer — canceled.
“The rapid, open, and transparent sharing of data on this outbreak is now being threatened by rumours and misinformation around its origins,” read an open letter published in the Lancet medical journal and signed by more than 20 scientists. “We stand together to strongly condemn conspiracy theories suggesting that covid-19 does not have a natural origin,” they wrote. The report did not expect much change in international flights to China until at least March, if not later.
“Conspiracy theories do nothing but create fear, rumours, and prejudice that jeopardise our global collaboration in the fight against this virus,” the authors added. “No event that we remember has had such a devastating effect on capacity as coronavirus. In many ways it highlights the importance of the Chinese market to aviation,” the report concluded.
The letter was published as WHO representatives similarly rebuked conspiracy theories that the virus may not have natural origins. At a news conference on Wednesday, Richard Brennan, a regional emergency director with the WHO, said there is “no evidence that this virus was produced in a laboratory, and certainly no evidence that it was produced as a biological weapon.” SEOUL — North Korea’s major mass gymnastics show that usually draws foreign visitors is expected to take place as planned this summer, multiple tour operators said Tuesday.
“This is one of the rumors that we need to snuff out very, very early,” he said, adding that the WHO is working proactively to debunk conspiracy theories via its digital channels. North Korea has so far not confirmed a single case of the virus. To prevent an outbreak, it has cut cross-border transport routes and ordered month-long quarantines for recently arrived foreigners.
A significant number of Chinese living with HIV are at risk of running out of medicines within days, warned the Joint U.N. Program on HIV/AIDS. But tour operators working in North Korea said Tuesday that the “Mass Games” are still scheduled to take place this summer, citing sources in Pyongyang.
The problem, said the organization, known as UNAIDS, is largely due to “lockdowns and restrictions on movement in some places in China” in response to the coronavirus outbreak. A representative for Young Pioneer Tours, Rowan Beard, said he and his partners in Pyongyang are “confident the border will reopen well in time for summer.”
In a survey conducted by UNAIDS and its regional partners earlier this month, almost one-third of more than 1,000 Chinese respondents with HIV said they feared being left without treatment in the next days. “Currently all foreigners are prevented from entering North Korea due to the Covid-19 virus in China. However, we are expecting the borders to reopen for tourism in spring,” said Beard, the company’s tours manager.
“People living with HIV must continue to get the HIV medicines they need to keep them alive,” Winnie Byanyima, executive director of UNAIDS, was quoted as saying in a release Wednesday. Koryo Tours, another travel company that sends Western tourists to the isolated country, similarly said Tuesday that it has been told by sources in North Korea that “the Mass Games [are] scheduled to take place this year … in August and October.”
The program vowed to address the distribution difficulties through “a close partnership between the [Chinese] government and community partners.” The program’s China branch also said it would proactively seek to reach individuals at risk of running out of medicines. The expected continuation of the “Mass Games” — a rare opportunity for foreign tourists to enter the country — hints that Pyongyang is unwilling to restrict international tourism further, as it is an important economic revenue stream for the U.N.-sanctioned regime. Heavily criticized by human rights activists, the games usually feature thousands of children and teenagers performing synchronized moves for Pyongyang elites and tourists.
Separately, the “Chinese National Center for AIDS/STD Control and Prevention has directed local authorities to ensure that nonresident people living with HIV can collect their medication wherever they are and has published and disseminated lists of antiretroviral therapy clinics,” UNAIDS added. Amid a surge of coronavirus cases in Japan over the weekend, a government official said Tuesday that the country would test HIV medication as a potential treatment for coronavirus patients.
ISTANBUL — Iranian authorities have confirmed two cases of the coronavirus, the country’s first known infections, local media reported Wednesday. The Japanese government has begun making “preparations so that clinical trials using HIV medication on the novel coronavirus can start as soon as possible,” Reuters quoted top spokesman Yoshihide Suga as saying.
Kianush Jahanpur, a Health Ministry official, said the cases were detected in the holy city of Qom and that a number of other people with flu-like symptoms have been isolated and are undergoing testing, according to the Iranian Students’ News Agency (ISNA). The Japanese effort is one of many parallel attempts to develop a treatment or vaccine. HIV medications have been the focus of a number of research projects launched in recent weeks. More than two weeks ago, U.S. pharmaceutical and medical company Johnson & Johnson announced that it has donated hundreds of boxes of an HIV medication to doctors in China for potential trials.
Jahanpur did not divulge the nationalities of those infected or elaborate on the number of people suspected of having the virus. He said that specialized medical teams were deployed to Qom to detect potential cases of the virus, which first emerged in China in December. One of the medication’s compounds, the company said in a release at the time, “has previously shown a potential favorable clinical response against severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) associated coronavirus,” according to anecdotal observations.
“In the past two days, suspicious cases of influenza were detected in the city of Qom,” Jahanpur said, ISNA reported. Tuesday’s Japanese announcement came amid a broader shift in strategy in the country. Whereas Japan had previously focused on quarantining potentially infected individuals and on imposing travel bans, officials in the country now appear to be preparing for a more widespread regional outbreak. As a result, the Japanese government has significantly stepped up its capacity to administer tests and has established call centers to prevent patients from spreading the virus in hospital reception areas.
“Initial testing showed two positive cases for coronavirus, while some other [patients] were reported to have Type B influenza,” he said, adding that further testing was being conducted. With the search for protective face masks reaching critical stages in many virus-hit parts of Asia, a hospital in Japan on Tuesday reported the theft of 6,000 surgical masks.
Earlier this month, Iran evacuated more than 50 Iranian nationals — as well as Iraqi, Lebanese and Syrian nationals — from the Chinese city of Wuhan where the outbreak of the virus originated. The evacuees were flown to Tehran and quarantined for two weeks, according to local media reports. Four boxes of the masks disappeared from a storage facility at Kobe’s Japanese Red Cross hospital, according to Agence France-Presse.
The report came just hours after WHO officials in Cairo noted that no new countries have been added to the list of those affected in a few days. As the number of virus cases in Japan has nearly doubled in the past few days to 69 cases, masks and other protective gear have sold out across the country. The assumption is that the thieves will seek to resell the masks at far above their current sale price.
The World Health Organization (WHO) said Wednesday that it was working to increase preparedness in North Africa and the Middle East for a possible outbreak of the coronavirus, promising the delivery of more essential medical supplies. The situation mirrors that of Hong Kong and other cities around the region where shortages have extended to toilet paper and hand sanitizer.
Egypt recently reported its first case of the virus, amid mounting concerns that it could spread in other parts of Africa, which analysts have cautioned are ill-equipped to handle an outbreak. More than 1 million Chinese citizens are estimated to work in Africa. The Japanese government has urged factories to boost their face mask output.
Speaking in Cairo on Wednesday, Richard Brennan, a regional emergency director with the WHO, said laboratories in 20 out of 22 countries in the Eastern Mediterranean region are now capable of diagnosing the virus. Speeding up tests has been considered crucial in quickly confirming cases and identifying other individuals who were potentially exposed to the virus. HONG KONG — A domestic helper from the Philippines has been infected with the coronavirus, health officials said Tuesday, bringing the territory’s tally of cases to 61. The patient probably contracted the virus from her employer, officials said.
Brennan also said the WHO was distributing essential supplies, including gloves, masks, medical gowns and respirators. Hong Kong relies heavily on domestic workers, who comprise about 5 percent of the territory’s population and come from countries including the Philippines and Indonesia. The case marks the first confirmed coronavirus infection of a domestic worker based in the territory.
“There has been a tendency for some countries to start hoarding some of these materials, these essential supplies,” he said. “But we’ve got to make sure that the supplies get to people who need them. So, WHO is working with the manufacturers [and] with governments to make sure that supplies are freed up and appropriately and fairly distributed across the globe in the spirit of solidarity.” The Philippines has imposed a ban on its citizens traveling into Hong Kong, which has left thousands of workers and domestic helpers stranded. On Tuesday, it reversed the ban, allowing some 25,000 stranded Filipino workers to return home.
Brennan added that while there have been encouraging trends of decreasing numbers of new cases around the world, “we have to be vigilant, we cannot be complacent.” He said the WHO would continue working on preparedness around the region. Health officials say that the helper had spent over an hour out with 10 friends, raising the risk of more possible infections. Authorities are contacting those individuals.
“We are not at a turning point yet,” he added. As the number of coronavirus cases outside China continues to climb, French Health Minister Olivier Véran warned Tuesday of a possible coronavirus pandemic. While an epidemic is usually restricted to a particular region, a pandemic can affect countries around the world.
BEIJING — Chinese national health authorities have released stricter guidelines for how coronavirus cases are diagnosed, which could decrease the rate of new cases in the outbreak’s epicenter. “This is both a working assumption and a credible risk,” Véran said in an interview with France Inter, a public broadcaster. Véran added that authorities were also monitoring developments in Japan, where the number of coronavirus cases jumped from 33 on Thursday to 69 on Tuesday. The significant rise in infections prompted a top Japanese official to acknowledge that the virus has entered a “new phase” of local transmission.
In the sixth edition of its diagnostic criteria released Wednesday for covid-19, as the disease is called, the National Health Commission eliminated the distinction between how cases would be classified in Hubei province and other regions. Cases will now be reported under two categories: “suspected cases” and “confirmed cases,” the document said. Véran sought Tuesday to calm fears that France would not be sufficiently prepared for a similar scenario, even as some analysts warned that many of Europe’s already stretched health-care systems could be overwhelmed with large clusters of the virus.
Moving forward, cases can only be described as “confirmed” if they stem from a positive result in a nucleic acid test. BEIJING — The London-based bank HSBC warned that pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong and the coronavirus outbreak that began in China pose a threat to its business, as it announced plans to cut 35,000 jobs and annual costs by $4.5 billion in the next three years.
Hubei officials surprised the world last week when they loosened their diagnosis criteria and began classifying as “confirmed” cases that were only clinically diagnosed by physicians. The move, which was not followed by other provinces, led to a dramatic surge in newly reported cases in Hubei to 10 times the previous rate. Chinese officials said the change was necessary due to the prevalence of undercounting inside the virus-ridden province. The cuts would mostly take place in Europe and the United States, HSBC said when releasing its annual results Tuesday. But the bank, which was founded in Hong Kong in 1865 and continues to generate much of its income in Asia, is worried about the challenges in the region.
It’s unclear if the new guidelines will now lead to an equally dramatic drop in new cases. “We continue to monitor the recent coronavirus outbreak, which is causing economic disruption in Hong Kong and mainland China and may impact performance in 2020,” it warned investors in a statement.
The prevalence of coronavirus patients showing mild or no symptoms has been a challenge for public health authorities worldwide, who say it is difficult to screen for carriers. HSBC said the coronavirus has caused significant disruption for staff, suppliers and customers, particularly in mainland China and Hong Kong, since the outbreak took off in January. Authorities responded by shuttering transportation and placing millions of residents under lockdown, while businesses remained closed or devoid of customers over the extended Lunar New Year holiday.
Experts, including top Chinese scientists, have called into question the accuracy of the nucleic acid tests, which examine genetic material from swabs of the mouth and throat. State media have also reported that case counting inside Hubei has been bottlenecked by the limited number of labs that can process samples. “Depending on how the situation develops, there is the potential for any associated economic slowdown to impact our expected credit losses in Hong Kong and mainland China,” the bank said in the statement.
A team led by top Chinese pulmonologist Zhong Nanshan said this week that he has been developing an antibody test that should give conclusive results more quickly and accurately. “Longer term, it is also possible that we may see revenue reductions from lower lending and transaction volumes, and further credit losses stemming from disruption to customer supply chains,” it said.
TOKYO — Hundreds of passengers who have tested negative for the new coronavirus began disembarking from the Diamond Princess cruise ship Wednesday as the 14-day quarantine ended, even as another 79 people from the ship have been found to have the virus. TOKYO — Japan’s Health Ministry said it has found another 88 cases of the new coronavirus on the Diamond Princess, bringing to 542 the total number of cases linked to the quarantined cruise ship, public broadcaster NHK reported.
The latest figures from the Japanese Health Ministry bring to 621 the number of people on board the ship who have the virus, according to Japanese media. Those testing positive will be taken to isolation facilities or hospitals depending on their level of symptoms, while those who have tested negative are finally being freed. Japan completed tests on everyone aboard the ship on Monday, but the final batch of test results are not expected until Wednesday. So far, results are back for 2,404 passengers and crew, out of the 3,711 on board the ship when it was placed in quarantine on Feb. 5.
People whose travel companion contracted the virus have been asked to serve out an additional 14-days quarantine, starting from the date at which their cabin mate was removed from the ship. Health Minister Katsunobu Kato said earlier Tuesday that people who have tested negative for the virus would begin to leave the ship on Wednesday, at the end of the planned 14-day quarantine period, and that the process would be completed by Friday.
At around noon, people wearing masks and carrying their suitcases began descending from the boat one after another, some walking alone and some in pairs between cones toward a fleet of buses waiting to take them to a nearby station in the Japanese city of Yokohama, just outside Tokyo. Separately, Japan announced three more cases of coronavirus in the eastern prefecture of Wakayama on Tuesday, bringing to 69 the total number of cases in the country outside the cruise ship.
“When I learned that they decided to disembark us, I really could not help but cry with joy,” an elderly man told reporters as he was descending from the bus, according to a video posted on the NHK website. “I just wanted to get out as soon as possible.” SEOUL — South Korean President Moon Jae-in called for “emergency steps” to brace for economic fallout from the coronavirus outbreak, urging his cabinet Tuesday to “show imagination in policymaking” and “exceed expectations to address the economic emergency.”
Many people described how their worries had grown as more and more people on board the ship tested positive for the virus and were taken away to hospitals. Moon said the coronavirus could have a “bigger and longer-lasting impact” on South Korea’s economy than 2015 outbreak of Middle East respiratory syndrome, which led Seoul to roll out a rate cut and a supplementary budget.
“It was tiring, but I am so relieved now,” said a 77-year-old man who was traveling with his 70-year-old wife, according to Yomiuri Shimbun. Moon’s remark at Tuesday’s cabinet meeting comes days after Finance Minister Hong Nam-ki met with central bank chief Lee Ju-yeol to seek solutions for the virus-hit economy.
The disembarking of the passengers is expected to continue through Friday. Following Moon’s urgent call for a solution, investors are speculating that the Bank of Korea could announce a rate cut at next week’s meeting.
BEIJING — A new paper by researchers at China’s Center for Disease Control and Prevention said that more than 100 people in China had been infected with the novel coronavirus by the end of 2019, suggesting the possibility of underreporting by health authorities or mishandled responses by local governments in the early days of the outbreak. On Thursday, Moon said the coronavirus epidemic was “nearing the end,” and he urged people to return to regular activities even as he acknowledged the impact of the virus on the economy.
The paper, published by Chinese Journal of Epidemiology, revealed for the first time that 104 people had already showed coronavirus pneumonia symptoms as of Dec. 31, 2019, and that 15 of them later died. The epidemiologists from the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention analyzed 72,314 patient records nationwide as of Feb. 11 — both confirmed and suspected cases — and found that more than 5,000 of them had been put under medical observation as early as last December. Moon again told the public Tuesday to “trust the government and follow the health guidelines while resuming normal economic activities.”
The new finding contrasts with official accounts from the Wuhan Municipal Health Commission, which confirmed on Jan. 3 only 44 infections and reported no deaths, saying that 121 people who had come into contact with those confirmed patients were under medical observation. It went on to say that only half of the people with those early infections had visited the Huanan Seafood Market, a popular market associated with sales of exotic game meat and widely believed to be the origin of the ongoing outbreak. South Korea’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warned late Tuesday that the coronavirus outbreak is entering “a new phase,” after three new patients who had not recently traveled overseas were found to have the virus since Sunday.
After Jan. 1, the rate of new infections associated with the seafood market had dropped to 8.6 percent, as the epidemic started to explode through community transmission, the paper said. Through retrospective analysis, the authors pointed out that by Jan. 10, the virus had spread to 20 out of 31 provinces, regions and municipalities. However, China’s National Health Commission did not announce the first infection outside Hubei — a case in Guangdong province — until Jan. 19. HONG KONG ­— Singapore on Tuesday earmarked $2.8 billion in relief measures to help stabilize the economy and assist workers as it prepares for an economic downturn over the coronavirus outbreak.
BEIJING — Chinese cities are slowly coming back to life as the government gains confidence in its ability to control the epidemic. The measures were announced as part of the budget for 2020, among the biggest annual budgets in years. It follows moves taken by governments in other hard-hit territories, including Hong Kong, to soften the blow of the virus, which will have potentially devastating impacts on tourism and retail sectors.
Shanghai and a dozen other Chinese cities have allowed office buildings, shopping malls, and restaurants to reopen this week, but with extra measures taken to reduce the risks of virus spread, local media reported Wednesday. The tourism, aviation and retail industries will receive additional support, Singapore’s Finance Minister Heng Swee Keat said in his budget speech Tuesday, including programs to allow workers to retrain and obtain new skills in different sectors. Heng, who is also deputy prime minister, said that the government is aiming primarily to help workers stay employed.
While a number of businesses have encouraged employees to work from home, more and more white-collar workers are tiptoeing back to downtown Shanghai’s dense skyscrapers — albeit with some safety measures. The 88-story Jinmao Tower, which houses branch offices of big state banks, IT companies and an upscale Hyatt hotel, have required tenants on different floors to clock in at different hours of the day to reduce mass gathering. Several countries have warned their citizens to stay away from Singapore, which has among the highest number of coronavirus cases outside mainland China. As of Monday, 77 cases were confirmed.
Other buildings have limited the number of passengers for elevators; for instance, the Hongqiao R&F Center allows no more than four people in one ride at the same time, while the HKRI Taikoo Hui commercial complex put the upper limit at six. Separately, Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam said Tuesday she would increase the territory’s relief fund to $3.6 billion, from $3.2 billion. This represents a new increase, after she doubled funds set aside to tackle the economic impact of the outbreak last week and announced one-off payments to businesses.
The city government said Tuesday that a third of storefronts have also reopened. Smaller restaurants in Shanghai remain closed, and the few that are open have either opted for takeaway only or kept eating-in customers as far apart as possible. The food court in Shanghai Center has kept only a third of its tables and allowed only one customer per table; in addition, tables are placed at least three feet away from each other. These measures, however, appear to have done little to stem widespread disaffection with the Hong Kong government. A recent poll showed only 7 percent of respondents in Hong Kong were satisfied with the government’s response to the public health crisis.
Fast-food chains and coffee shops including KFC and Starbucks are introducing a “no-touch” service, which asks customers to place orders on smartphone apps or a self-service machine and then get their food or drinks at a pickup table away from the cashier. MANILA — About 25,000 stranded Filipino workers can now get back to work, as Philippine officials eased a ban on travel to China’s special administrative regions.
Some 200 miles away in Nanjing, the provincial capital of Jiangsu, major shopping malls and department stores — the Central, Golden Eagle, Cenbest and the House of Fraser — reopened Wednesday morning with temperature checks at entrances, while most offices, cinemas and other indoor venues remain closed. Clinics and outpatient departments at public hospitals also resumed service, but dental clinics and the departments of oral medicine, ophthalmology, otolaryngology and plastic surgery are closed until further notice. Foreign Affairs Undersecretary Brigido Dulay announced on Twitter that overseas workers employed in Hong Kong and Macao could now return there “subject to certain procedural formalities.”
Intercity bus services and subway systems in Suzhou and several other cities in Jiangsu province have returned to normal operation this week. On Tuesday alone, more than 110,000 passengers took the subway in Suzhou, and all of them had to register their personal information before a security check. Parks, gardens and outdoor sports facilities are now open to public, but with security in place to control human flow. Today, DFA Sec Locsin’s advocacy has come true. OFWs returning for work in Hongkong and Macau have been exempted from the outbound travel ban by the IATF-EID, subject to certain procedural formalities. Woohoo!! @teddyboylocsin
Hangzhou, the home city of e-commerce giant Alibaba, announced Tuesday that roadblocks and temporary checkpoints inside the city would be dismantled. On Wednesday morning, social media was abuzz with excitement because traffic jams were reported in some parts of the city, signaling an increasing number of cars back on the road. The city’s West Lake scenic area reopened Wednesday, cutting the daily quota of visitors by half and requiring all to wear masks inside. The announcement comes a day after 131 Hong Kong-based Filipino organizations appealed to Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte to exempt the city from the ban.
Three malls owned by Yintai Group have reopened, requiring temperature checks, real-name registration and closing two hours earlier than normal. By Thursday, all businesses in the services sector will be allowed to reopen. Feliza Guy Benitez, former chairwoman of the Filipino Migrant Workers’ Union in Hong Kong, warned Monday that many workers could lose their jobs if they were absent for longer than two weeks. “[We go back] to zero just to process all the application papers, and the government won’t even pay for it,” she said.
Malls and wholesale markets in other cities — from Kunming in the west to Yiwu in the east, from Changchun in the north to Sanya in the south — have also reportedly reopened this week. The government promised overseas workers around $200 in financial assistance, but some hardly find it enough after two weeks of being unable to sustain themselves.
Wuhan, the epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak, and the wider Hubei province remain under strict quarantine. The Philippines sends more than 2 million workers around the world, raking in $33.5 billion in remittances last year. At least 6 percent of this workforce is based in Hong Kong. The most vulnerable in this sector are those in household services. The city has about 390,000 foreign domestic helpers, a large fraction of them Filipinos.
MANILA — Select commercial flights from China to the Philippines will be available despite the travel ban, the Department of Foreign Affairs announced Wednesday. The overseas workers organization Migrante International said that about 1,000 other Filipino residents, students, and small business proprietors based in Hong Kong were also affected by the ban.
In a public advisory, the department said Filipinos who wish to return to the Philippines can board flights out of Beijing, Chengdu, Chongqing, Guangzhou, Guiyang, Kunming, Shanghai and Xiamen. Canada confirmed Tuesday that 32 Canadians on the Diamond Princess cruise ship have tested positive for the coronavirus, according to the Toronto Star.
All returning Filipinos must undergo a mandatory 14-day quarantine. A total of 256 Canadians are on the ship, which has become the second-biggest source of infections after China itself, with 454 cases onboard out of 2,666 passengers and 1,045 crew. The ship has been quarantined for the past two weeks at Japan’s Yokohama port. Those testing positive for the virus have been removed to hospitals.
The Philippines eased its travel ban on China and its special administrative regions on Tuesday, when it allowed overseas Filipino workers, permanent residents and students to return to Hong Kong and Macao. Canada announced earlier it would evacuate its citizens from the cruise ship, following similar efforts by the United States, which repatriated more than 328 passengers, including 14 who tested positive for the virus.
At least 200,000 Filipinos reside or work in China. Earlier this month, 45 Filipinos were repatriated from Wuhan, the epicenter of the outbreak. The Canadian government told the Star that those testing positive would not be evacuated.
BEIJING — Xicheng district, one of Beijing’s most central locales and the site of the Chinese government’s central headquarters, is tightening restrictions and increasing tests for more than 489,000 households in one of the most significant changes in epidemic-control policies in the capital. BEIJING — Liu Zhiming, a respected neurologist who was director of Wuchang Hospital in Wuhan, died at age 51 of coronavirus infection on Tuesday, becoming the eighth fatality among health workers in China in the ongoing outbreak.
Sun Shuo, deputy secretary of the district’s Communist Party committee, said Tuesday that all residential compounds that have conditions for closed-off management will be locked down, and the government has formulated specific measures for bungalows and compounds without property companies to ensure that “no blind spots are left.” According to Wuhan’s municipal health commission, Liu was infected at work and died at 10:54 a.m. at Tongji Hospital despite a “full-effort rescue.”
News had been circulating online that a government employee in Xicheng was diagnosed with the coronavirus, leading to the shutdown of government work in the district. Sun confirmed that the unnamed government employee was infected while carrying out epidemic-control work in central China and then drove back to Beijing. R.I.P. Liu Zhiming, director of Wuchang Hospital in coronavirus epicenter #Wuhan passed away Tuesday due to #COVID19, becoming the first hospital director to die amid the outbreak that caused over 70,000 infections in #China: reports pic.twitter.com/J2qmDddARN
Sixty-nine close contacts and people with high risks have been placed under centralized medical observation, but Sun said government agencies in the district are operating normally. “Since the epidemic broke out, Comrade Liu Zhiming has thrown aside his personal safety and led the staff at Wuchang Hospital to fight the outbreak from the front line,” the commission said. It added that Liu had made “significant contribution” to the prevention and control of the novel coronavirus pneumonia.
A total of 393 confirmed cases have been reported in 15 districts in Beijing so far, with 52 from Xicheng. After graduating from Wuhan University Medical School in 1991, Liu emerged as a leading expert on neurosurgery, especially brain tumor, craniocerebral trauma, intraspinal canal diseases and cerebrovascular diseases.
BEIJING — Chinese Minister of Public Security Zhao Kezhi on Tuesday warned police officials and local administrators against excessive and “crude” use of force after a spate of videos surfaced showing officers tackling and roughing up citizens who refuse to wear masks. Under Liu, Wuchang Hospital grew into a comprehensive institution of nearly 1,000 people and was recognized as a Triple-A hospital, the highest standard in China, in 2014. It was also one of the designated hospitals for the quarantine and treatment of coronavirus patients
Chinese citizens are generally not known to hold urban beat cops, known as chengguan, or an array of semiformal security enforcers, in particularly high esteem. Now, one month into the full-blown epidemic, tempers are running particularly hot as countless Chinese cities and villages live under severe restrictions on movement. The National Health Commission said that more than 1,700 doctors and nurses had been infected as of Feb. 14, although the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention put the number much higher, at more than 3,000 medical workers.
The Chinese Internet has been suffused with online videos showing residents facing off with police. Women have been pinned on the ground for refusing to wear masks. One officer fired his gun after he was swarmed by locals angry about quarantine policies. Local inspectors slapped three people playing mah-jongg, leading to a furious confrontation with pajama-clad players. Brawls sometimes break out. Another case that has tugged at Chinese heartstrings this week involves Liu Fan, who was a nurse at Wuchang Hospital’s Liyuan Street Community Health Center.
The latest video to cause a sensation showed a man in Henan province being bound by rope against a pillar outside a building while a man in hazmat suit berated him for not wearing a mask or registering his movement. Liu, who was 59, stopped working four years ago at the designated retirement age of 55 in 2016 but came back to work to help fight the virus.
After the video surfaced, local Henan officials this week sent a terse reminder to villages that epidemic prevention and control work must be done “in accordance with laws and regulations,” according to the Southern Metropolis newspaper. She died on Friday after being infected. A WeChat user nicknamed “Tiantian” posted on the messaging app that Liu Fan was still working on Jan. 26 and without proper equipment.
TOKYO — A Japanese infectious disease specialist has condemned the “chaotic” and “scary” conditions on board the Diamond Princess cruise liner, saying a lack of infection control risked the lives not only of the passengers and crew but also of the officials and medical staff working on the ship. “At the time [she] did not have a protective suit; it’s basically like she was ‘streaking.’ As a result, her whole family was infected,” read the post, which was soon deleted by China's censors.
Kentaro Iwata of Kobe University said he had gained access to the ship Tuesday and was appalled by a “completely inadequate system of infection control on board.” Liu Fan’s parents and younger brother have been infected with the novel coronavirus pneumonia, the Beijing News reported this week, and her husband is being quarantined at home as a precaution.
After several hours trying offer constructive advice on how to improve procedure, he was thrown off the ship, but was so worried he recorded YouTube videos in Japanese and English exposing his findings. The Japanese version has already been viewed more than 710,000 times. Hospital staff said Liu Fan was an easygoing and extroverted person who was a conscientious and hard-working nurse.
Iwata said he had worked in Africa during the Ebola outbreak, in China during the severe acute respiratory syndrome epidemic, as well as during cholera outbreaks. “We are also deeply saddened by the loss of such a good nurse,” Wuchang Hospital said in a statement posted on the Weibo microblogging site. “In this battle, the virus was brutal, and we express our deep condolences over comrade Liu Fan’s tragic death.”
“I never had fear of getting infection myself, for Ebola, SARS, cholera, because I know how to protect myself, how to protect others and how infection control should be,” he said. “But inside the Diamond Princess, I was so scared.” BEIJING — Social media users in China have slammed a hospital as being “insensitive” and “degrading” to women for encouraging or even forcing female doctors and nurses to shave their heads in a gesture of sacrifice.
Already 542 people on the cruise ship have been found to have the virus, out of 2,404 people tested, with results still awaited on the final 1,300 tests. On Saturday, the government-run Gansu Daily posted a minute-long video clip on the Weibo microblogging site, showing 15 women doctors and nurses having their heads shaved bald by their male colleagues at Gansu Provincial Maternity and Childcare Hospital. These medical workers were to be sent to Wuhan, the epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak, that afternoon after a farewell ceremony where they were meant to show off their new looks.
Four people working on or around the ship during the quarantine period have also contracted the virus, including a quarantine officer, a Health Ministry official, an ambulance driver and a medical staffer. As the camera panned, some of the women were shown weeping during the ordeal, wiping their tears when putting on their surgical cap and seemingly pained to look at their long ponytails that had just been cut off.
Normal infection control involves establishing a red zone, where the virus is present and protective gear must be worn, and a green zone, which is safe, Iwata said. There was no such demarcation on board the ship, with people wearing protective suits mingling with and eating alongside unprotected people, and people even eating food and handling smartphones without removing gloves and clothing that could carry the virus. “With hair cut short, they are ready to go on the expedition! They are pretty for traveling against the flow [to somewhere dangerous],” the post read, trying to demonstrate that the women were willing to make sacrifices to ensure higher efficiency at work.
“It was completely chaotic,” he said. “I was so scared of getting covid-19 because there was no way to tell where the virus is, no green zone, no red zone — everywhere could have the virus.” A number of comments questioned the necessity of the head-shaving and asked if the women were forced.
Iwata said “bureaucrats were in charge of everything” without a single professional infection control specialist on board. When a crew member went to a nurse with a fever, the nurse didn’t even bother protecting herself, because she had concluded she must have already caught the virus, he said. “Okay, suppose they wanted to save the trouble and get rid of long hair out of their free will, they could have cut it really short, not opted for clean-shaven,” one comment read.
He has since returned to his home in Kobe, but has isolated himself in a room for fear of infecting his family, and will not return to work for around two weeks for fear of infecting colleagues and patients. But he said he feared doctors and nurses working on board will return to medical centers around the country with the virus, and could infect patients. “What’s the rush to cut people’s hair when you haven’t even got other supplies ready for them? Please at least show some respect if you are sending them to the front line,” another posted.
Responding to Iwata’s complaints, Japan’s chief government spokesman Yoshihide Suga said the government had been “implementing measures to prevent the spread of the infection thoroughly.” It is not the first time that hospitals have required front-line volunteers to cut their hair or shave their heads for the sake of “efficiency.”
SEOUL — South Korea confirmed 15 new cases of the new coronavirus infection on Wednesday, raising the national tally to 46. Earlier on the same day, the Yellow River Sanmenxia Hospital in Henan province also shaved the long hair of nurses before sending them to Wuhan.
Of the new cases, 13 were in Daegu city and the surrounding southwestern province of North Gyeongsang, with 11 of them linked to a previously confirmed patient, according to Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (KCDC). “I don’t want to emphasize the stereotype that all women care about their appearance, but the love for beauty is a common pursuit for a lot of people,” read a blog post Tuesday titled, “Stop using women’s bodies as your propaganda tool,” which has been shared tens of thousands of times on WeChat.
The 61-year-old woman is believed to have infected 10 people who attended the same church, and one person who came in contact at her hospital. “We cherish our hair, whether leaving it long or cutting it short, dyeing into a different color or having a perm. We love it when we look good, and more importantly, it is completely up to our own choice,” the post said.
She started displaying symptoms of fever around Feb. 10 and tested positive for the virus on Tuesday, according to the KCDC. “Don’t try to use the body of women to make cheap tear-jerkers: It’s neither what they need nor what we want to see. . . . What we need to see is that people are being given the dignity they deserve.”
The agency has identified 166 people who came in contact with the woman, who are now in quarantine at home or in hospitals. It said it would conduct a close inspection of the church and test more churchgoers for the virus. HONG KONG — Fifty Hong Kong retailers closed their outlets Tuesday in an effort to pressure landlords into offering rental cuts, with the compounded impact of anti-government protests and the coronavirus outbreak taking a massive toll on the retail, food and beverage industries.
MANILA — There are now 41 Filipino crew members on board the Diamond Princess cruise ship infected with the novel coronavirus, health officials said Wednesday, an increase of six from a day earlier. The retailers, according to the South China Morning Post, include French sportswear brand Lacoste and American outdoor brand Timberland. All in all, about 200 shops operated by those 50 retailers have declared a “no business” day across 14 shopping centers in Hong Kong, the paper reported. Some will be closed for 24 hours, while others have announced closures without specifying a time limit.
The patients have been brought to hospitals in Japan, where the ship is moored, and will be unable to return to the Philippines even as the government aims to repatriate other Filipinos this week. Ashley Micklewright, president and chief executive at Bluebell Group, which distributes brands such as Celine, Marc Jacobs and Victoria’s Secret, said the last seven months of losses have become “unbearable,” according to the paper. An employee from the group told The Washington Post that there are outlets with no recorded sales on some days.
Only those who are asymptomatic and who tested negative for the virus will be allowed to board a flight. They will still be subject to a 14-day quarantine. “The impact on the business and traffic is far worse than anything we have ever experienced,” Micklewright was quoted as saying.
The repatriation team will also be kept in isolation for the same period. Officials said the quarantine facility and other details are still being finalized. Hong Kong, which has no duty on luxury goods, has long relied on travelers from mainland China to boost sales. Arrivals dipped during protests last year, which at times turned violent, but have fallen even more steeply amid the coronavirus outbreak. Retailers want landlords to offer rental relief. Hong Kong is one of the most expensive real estate markets in the world.
There are a total of 538 Filipino crew members on the cruise liner. BEIJING — Zhong Nanshan, the Chinese pulmonologist who is heading a team of experts on managing the novel coronavirus outbreak, has predicted that the number of infections will plateau after hitting a peak in mid- to late-February as migrant workers return to the cities.
The global outbreak has affected the Philippines’ 2 million-strong overseas workforce, resulting in panic and job uncertainty. At least two Filipinos in Hong Kong and the United Arab Emirates have tested positive for the virus. Considering factors including human migration as well as China’s compulsory quarantine measures, Zhong’s research team had previously estimated that the total number of infections would reach a peak later this month.
HONG KONG — A 70-year-old man has died after testing positive for coronavirus, according to a Hong Kong hospital, bringing city’s death toll from the outbreak to two. However, he warned that a decrease might not ensue immediately after that.
A spokeswoman for Princess Margaret Hospital said the patient died on Wednesday morning after his condition deteriorated. When health officials initially provided details on his case on Friday, they said he had underlying illnesses. He was sent to the hospital on Feb. 12 after developing malaise, shortness of breath and cough, the Center for Health Protection said, where he was in critical condition at the time. The man, who lives alone, had visited mainland China for a day trip on Jan. 22. “We are not clear if we have seen that peak yet, and we need to wait and observe a few more days,” Zhong said in Guangzhou on Monday afternoon during a remote conference with a team of intensive care doctors in Wuhan.
As of Wednesday morning, Hong Kong reported 62 cases of coronavirus infection, including the two deaths. The first death, a 39-year-old man who contracted the virus outside of the city, also had underlying medical issues, health officials said. “A peak number doesn’t equal the ‘turning point’ … and new peaks could probably appear with the returning of migrant workers.”
Zhong, who has been widely seen as a heroic figure for his contribution to controlling the outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS, in 2002-2003, remains concerned about the high death rate and new coronavirus infections in Wuhan.
“The biggest problem right now is that human-to-human transmission in Wuhan has not been fully stopped and is still on the rise despite all the efforts we have made,” he said, adding that his team has been developing an immunoglobulin M (IgM) antibody testing kit for diagnosis, which would have a higher accuracy rate than the nucleic acid tests in use now.
Zhong said that the high fatality rate in Wuhan is due to cross infections and a failure to treat mild cases in the early stage.
However, he said that the situation is going to “look up” with stricter quarantine measures in Wuhan and the implementation of early prevention, early detection and early quarantine in other areas.
SEOUL — South Korea is sending a presidential jet on Tuesday to evacuate its citizens onboard the Diamond Princess cruise liner docked in Japan, a Seoul government official said.
Vice Health Minister Kim Gang-lip said Seoul will fly out passengers on the quarantined ship “because health and lives of our people is the primary concern amid the rising number of coronavirus infections on the Diamond Princess.”
Kim said at a briefing on Tuesday that four South Korean citizens and the Japanese spouse of one of them will fly back to Seoul early Wednesday.
The four out of 14 South Koreans in the quarantined cruise ship expressed intentions to return to South Korea, Kim said. He added none of the 14 has symptoms related to the coronavirus.
The five evacuees will undergo a 14-day quarantine in South Korea.
South Korea has previously sent three charter planes to Wuhan to evacuate its citizens and their Chinese family members.
The country's health authorities confirmed a new case of coronavirus infection on Tuesday, bringing the national tally to 31.
TOKYO — The 14-day quarantine period for all passengers remaining on the Diamond Princess will end as scheduled on Wednesday, Japanese Health Minister Katsunobu Kato said Tuesday.
The remaining passengers will be notified on Wednesday of their latest coronavirus test results, and those who test negative will be free to disembark from the cruise ship, which is moored off the Japanese port of Yokohama. They will come off the ship in the order that they are tested, so it might take until Friday for everyone to leave.
“Everyone feels they want to go home soon. We would like to prepare for that and ensure that they will return home smoothly,” Kato told reporters in Tokyo.
Asked if the decision to keep the passengers on board was appropriate, Kato did not give a direct answer. “To be accurate, we are not making them stay on board, but are conducting a quarantine. They were asking to enter into Japan, and we have been taking necessary measures. That is all,” Kato said, according to NHK, the public broadcaster.
Separately, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said he thought it was appropriate for Japan to quarantine the passengers on board the ship, even as infections skyrocketed in the confined space.
He cited the words of gratitude expressed by the U.S. government and a number of U.S. passengers who decided to stay despite an opportunity for an early departure.
As of Monday, a total of 454 passengers and crew members have tested positive for the virus, and most of them have disembarked.
Singapore Airlines, the city-state’s flagship carrier, said Tuesday it would temporarily cut back on flights, including to Los Angeles, Sydney and London, citing weak demand for travel due to the coronavirus outbreak.
The airline’s performance is a bellwether for Asia’s aviation industry, which is already taking a severe hit as the deadly outbreak and the travel and quarantine restrictions imposed by countries in response deter would-be travelers. In China, a major source of tourism arrivals, millions of people remain under lockdown as the death toll continues to climb.
Flights affected were scheduled between March and May, and span a range of cities and continents: Paris, Frankfurt, Germany, Copenhagen, Seoul, Tokyo, Sydney and Mumbai, to name a few. Singapore Airlines had already cut back on flights to mainland China and semiautonomous Hong Kong, Singapore’s rival for the title of Asia’s financial capital.
Hong Kong’s Cathay Pacific has eliminated most of its flights to mainland China, and reduced overall capacity by about 40 percent. These flight cuts, Cathay said, are likely to drag on into April. The airline’s chief customer and commercial officer, Ronald Lam, described this year’s Lunar New Year holiday period as the “most challenging” period the airline has experienced, and says the carrier is seeing “continued cancellations of bookings.”
MANILA — A total of 35 Filipino crew members on the Diamond Princess cruise ship docked in Japan have tested positive for the novel coronavirus, the Philippines’ Department of Foreign Affairs said Tuesday.
Foreign Affairs Undersecretary Brigido Dulay told CNN Philippines that crew members will have to undergo a separate period of isolation after passengers disembark on Wednesday.
“The Filipino crew are the most exposed because they have to move around the ship. They have to service the passengers,” said Dulay. “What was told to us was [the crew] will now undergo a separate quarantine, so that’s another 14 days.”
It is unclear how this development will affect Philippine government plans to repatriate more than 500 Filipino crew on board.
Other crew members told The Washington Post about dire conditions on the ship, as they were not segregated and forced to continue working.
Victoria Lavado, whose father is on board, said on Monday she worried for him as she was concerned that infected crew members could “still mix” with others on board.
“It took a long time before they received safety masks and they are still forced to work as if it is business as usual,” Lavado said, according to a statement by Migrante International, an organization that advocates for the welfare of overseas Filipino workers. “We really want the Duterte government to work on medical repatriation for my father and for the other Filipino seafarers.”