Italian civil protection chief confirms 820 cases in the country while Boris Johnson says Covid-19 is UK government’s top priority. This blog is closed.
We will close out this live blog now, and continue our live coverage in our new blog.
This is where we stand so far this morning:
Ferrari will seek assurances from Australian authorities that its staff will be allowed to travel and not face quarantine restrictions before heading to Melbourne for the Australian Grand Prix, which opens the Formula One season on 15 March.
The Italian giant suspended non-critical business travel and external access to its factory in Maranello, about 200km from the centre of the Italian outbreak in Codongo, on Wednesday.
The Victorian sports minister Martin Pakula told The Guardian on Thursday that the event would go ahead, and the Australian Grand Prix corporation said it would comply with advice from the government and health authorities.
But without Ferrari, the F1 would lose its biggest drawcard.
Ferarri team principle Mattia Binotto raised the issue after his staff faced difficulties getting to the Bahrain F2 test this weekend.
He said he would need confirmation from F1 and FIA officials that there would be “no surprises” before allowing staff to travel to Australia.
What we will need is simply to have assurance before leaving.
If there are any medical screenings, we need to know about them. You need to know exactly what’s about. We need to understand what are the consequences in case of any problem?
Obviously we need to protect our employees. We have got collective and individual responsibility towards them. And it’s important, really, to make sure that before leaving, the picture, whatever is the scenario, is known and clear.
Binotto said with Ferrari providing assistance to Haas and Alfa Sauber as well as their own AlphaTauri team, more than one team could be affected.
What will be the situation that if eventually four teams cannot run and if the race will take place or not? That is not my decision.
Meanwhile, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has warned party officials there would be “serious consequences” of failing to prevent an outbreak of coronavirus in that country.
More from AFP:
The impoverished nation, with a weak and ill-equipped healthcare system, has closed its borders to prevent the spread of the disease into its territory.
Kim told a meeting of the ruling Workers’ Party of Korea that the fight against the virus was a “crucial state affair for the defence of the people” that required maximum discipline, according to the official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA).
“In case the infectious disease spreading beyond control finds its way into our country, it will entail serious consequences,” KCNA quoted Kim as saying.
Two senior officials - party vice-chairmen Ri Man Gon and Pak Thae Dok - were sacked, and a party unit disbanded for corruption, the report said, indicating that they may have been involved in graft linked with the anti-epidemic measures.
“No special cases must be allowed,” he added, and ordered officials to “seal off all the channels and space through which the infectious disease may find its way”.
Pyongyang has not reported a single case of COVID-19, which has killed more than 2,800 people and infected over 84,000 people in dozens of countries since it emerged in neighbouring China.
North Korea has banned tourists, suspended international trains and flights and placed hundreds of foreigners in quarantine to prevent an outbreak. It has also reportedly postponed the new school term.
With loudspeakers blaring hygiene messages, ambassadors locked in their compounds, and state media demanding “absolute obedience”, North Korea’s anti-coronavirus measures have been described as “unprecedented” by diplomats.
South Korea, meanwhile, is battling a major outbreak of the virus with more than 2,300 cases - the highest number outside mainland China.
Germany’s ambassador to the United Nations has said the Security Council would adopt humanitarian exemptions to the sanctions imposed on Pyongyang over its weapons programmes, and allow the export of equipment to help North Korea fight the coronavirus.
But “the problem is that right now the North Koreans closed the borders,” Christoph Heusgen said Thursday after a closed-door Security Council meeting about the reclusive state.
The members of the Security Council called on North Korea “to allow this equipment in. So the population can be protected,” he added, without elaborating on the type of equipment.
The number of new cases reported in Mainland China is the lowest since the national health authority started compiling nationwide data last month, Reuters has reported.
Excluding Hubei province, where the new coronavirus outbreak originated in the country, there were just four new cases of infection reported on Friday. In Hubei itself, 423 new cases were reported, of which 420 were in Wuhan. So a total of 427 in mainland China.
South Korea reported 571 new cases on Friday, taking its total — the highest in the world outside China — to 2,337, the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (KCDC) said.
The US will postpone an ASEAN regional summit in Las Vegas to concerns about the coronavirus outbreak, Reuters has reported.
US president Donald Trump invited members of the 10-member association to a meeting on 14 March after he did attend a summit in Bangkok in November.
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said on Friday that officials were “aware of a second possible instance of community spread of Covid-19 in California”.
The patient is an older woman with chronic health conditions in San Jose. She did not have a travel history or any known contact with an infected person.
Ten of the 60 cases of the respiratory disease in the US are in California.
Mainland China had 427 new confirmed cases of coronavirus infections on Friday, the country’s National Health Commission said on Saturday, up from 327 cases a day earlier.
There were also 248 new suspected cases.
That brings the total accumulated number of confirmed cases in mainland China so far to 79,251.
The death toll from the outbreak in mainland China had reached 2,835 as of the end of Friday, up by 47 from the previous day.
The central province of Hubei, the epicentre of the outbreak, reported 45 new deaths, while in the provincial capital of Wuhan, 37 people died.
We’re expecting an update on that new coronavirus case in Queensland at 12.30pm local time.
In the mean time, you can read Melissa Davey’s explainer on whether Australians should be worried about coronavirus here.
US president Donald Trump has accused the democrats of politicising the coronavirus, and said the US are “magnificently organised” and “totally ready” for the virus.
Addressing a rally in South Carolina, Trump also accused the media — specifically CNN — of “hysteria” over the virus.
This is from CNN reporter Daniel Dale.
Trump accuses Democrats of politicizing the coronavirus, prompting boos. A few sentences later, he says, "They have no clue. They can't even count their votes in Iowa."
— Daniel Dale (@ddale8) February 29, 2020
Trump then repeated his bit about South Korean film Parasite winning best picture at the Oscars (more on that here, if you’re interested) before returning to coronavirus:
Trump has returned to the coronavirus from how Parasite shouldn't have been Best Picture. He says "we are magnificently organized" for the virus, "totally ready."
— Daniel Dale (@ddale8) February 29, 2020
The AHPPC said that with the increased spread of the disease, extending travel bans was “not likely to be feasible or effective.”
In the past few days, the numbers of cases of COVID-19 in South Korea, Italy, and Iran have been rapidly increasing. The AHPPC said the situation in Japan, Hong Kong and Singapore also remains a concern.
Whilst case numbers in some of these countries are rising quickly, the prevalence of illness is currently orders of magnitude lower than in Hubei Province.
An assessment of the risk of COVID-19 in those countries is based on many factors, including the identification of transmission chains, the number of reported deaths, recent trends in incidence, the incidence of exported cases and modelled estimates of expected numbers of cases based on travel patterns. The ability of countries to respond effectively to infectious disease outbreaks is also an important consideration, along with the feasibility of stringent mobility restrictions given the current phase of the epidemic globally.
With this change in epidemiology, extending travel bans to restrict travel from multiple countries is not likely to be feasible or effective in the medium term. However, it may be appropriate to consider self-isolation or practise social distancing upon return from higher risk regions.
On Friday the Australian Health Protection Principal Committee (AHPPC) issued a statement about the effectiveness of quarantine measures.
It said over the past two weeks, direct connections between cases in other countries and China had decreased. It said the effectiveness of these quarantine measures and whether they remain adequate would be reviewed again in one week.
The travel restrictions and self-quarantine procedures for people coming from mainland China had been effective so far, with a more than 60% reduction in travellers, and no cases detected in more than 30,000 Australians returning from mainland China since 1 February.
The AHPPC statement said:
The only new COVID-19 detections in Australia in the last two weeks are eight cases in Australian passengers repatriated from the Diamond Princess cruise ship.
There remains no evidence of community transmission in Australia, with thousands of negative tests for COVID-19 in the last week alone. The risk to the Australian community from travellers from mainland China appears to have reduced significantly since the inception of travel restrictions. This could justify some further easing of travel restrictions.