Deaths in mainland China pass 2,000 and Foreign Office tells Britons to stay on the Diamond Princess cruise ship. This blog is closed
Inspectors in protective suits have been going door to door in Wuhan in an effort to find every infected person, the Associated Press reports.
Wednesday marked the final day of a campaign to root out anyone with symptoms whom authorities may have missed so far.
“This must be taken seriously,” said Wang Zhonglin, the city’s new Communist party secretary, adding that if a single new case was found after Wednesday, the district’s leaders would be held responsible.
His remarks were published on Hubei’s provincial website alongside a declaration that “if the masses cannot mobilise, it’s impossible to fight a people’s war.”
Britons returning home from the Diamond Princess cruise ship that has had more than 600 cases of coronavirus will be quarantined at the same NHS facility that housed people flown back to the UK from Wuhan.
The Department of Health said: “We can confirm that an accommodation block on the Arrowe Park NHS site will be used to isolate those returning from the Diamond Princess cruise ship in Japan. They will be kept in this location for the 14-day quarantine period, with around-the-clock support from medical staff at all times.”
Officials stressed there was no risk to the public and that the hospital in Wirral would continue to run as normal.
This comes after the Foreign Office told British passengers onboard the ship to stay put or risk not being allowed on an evacuation flight later this week.
An FCO statement read: “We are planning an evacuation flight from Tokyo to the UK as soon as possible for Britons who are on the Diamond Princess. We hope the flight will be later this week, subject to permissions from the Japanese authorities.
“However there is a chance that people who disembark will not be able to join the evacuation flight. We have the utmost concern for the affected Britons and strongly encourage them to register for the evacuation flight.”
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Two people who were diagnosed with coronavirus in Iran have died, a state-run news agency has reported.
The IRNA news agency said the two victims were elderly Iranian citizens. IRNA quoted Alireza Vahabzadeh, a health ministry official, who said both victims were located in Qom, about 86 miles (140km) south of the capital, Tehran. Officials had confirmed the cases earlier on Wednesday.
It’s been a fast-paced day with a number of major coronavirus developments, so if you’re looking to catch up, here’s a quick summary of the latest stories:
Over 15,000 people have recovered from coronavirus, the latest figures show.
In China, where the bulk of cases have been, there have been 2,009 deaths and 14,938 recoveries - out of a total of 74,185 cases.
In some Chinese provinces the recovery rate has increased to 40%, although the rate for Hubei is still below 15% - possibly due to the extra strain on medical resources there, experts have suggested.
In the UK, eight of the nine people diagnosed have made a full recovery.
In Thailand, nearly half of the 35 cases in the country have recovered.
Earlier this week the World Health Organization chief, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said it is estimated four out of five patients in mainland China have mild symptoms and are expected to recover.
Al Jazeera has reported the case of Yangyang, a 28-year-old from Wuhan who has recovered from the disease. She said:
I hope this trend offers people battling the disease across the country a beacon of hope and the courage to continue the fight.
Once she has finished her 14-day quarantine she hopes to donate her blood plasma, with initial trials showing the blood plasma of recovered patients is beneficial to those still fighting the disease.
The Swiss government has postponed an annual summit on patient safety due to the coronavirus outbreak.
The Ministerial Summit on Patient Safety, due to be held in Montreux near Lake Geneva on 27 and 28 February, “has been postponed because numerous participants must remain in their own countries to deal with the Covid-19 epidemic”, it said in a statement.
The summit will be rescheduled.
The coronavirus fatality rate may change over the coming weeks as those who were infected at the start of the epidemic come to the end of their illness.
Adam Kucharski, a mathematician and epidemiologist at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, said the potential under-reporting of cases in China, and the fact that fatalities will continue as the number of new cases slows down, meant the death rate could vary over time.
The mortality rate for the new coronavirus is estimated to be around 2.5%. For comparison, seasonal flu typically has a mortality rate below 1%.
In a explanatory thread on Twitter, Kucharski said:
It’s well established there are likely far more symptomatic cases in China than have been detected/confirmed. If we are calculating ‘deaths/cases’, and we underestimate number of cases, it will cause us to *overestimate* fatality risk.
However, he said another factor might mean the current mortality rate of 2% is an underestimate.
As the number of cases starts to slow down, fatalities will climb faster than cases (because they were infected when the epidemic was growing faster).
He concludes by saying the two factors could cancel each other out and mean that current estimates for the mortality rate are actually accurate.
The widely quoted 2% fatality for China is calculated incorrectly, because it’s based on data that is under-reported and doesn’t account for delays. But, confusingly, these errors may actually cancel out, leading to an estimate that is right for the wrong reasons.
This effect means that as the number of cases starts to slow down, fatalities will climb faster than cases (because they were infected when the epidemic was growing faster). As a result, the 'naive' fatality estimate seems to get worse, e.g. for Ebola: https://t.co/EQzHB3YYK8 6/ pic.twitter.com/37RCYcr8qj
— Adam Kucharski (@AdamJKucharski) February 18, 2020
Russia will continue to issue official, business, humanitarian and transit visas to Chinese nationals, the country’s foreign ministry has said, clarifying the conditions of a sweeping entry ban for Chinese citizens announced yesterday.
The ban comes into effect on Thursday at midnight Moscow time.
It was imposed due to the worsening epidemiological situation in China, the office of the deputy prime minister, Tatyana Golikova, said in a statement.
Russia’s foreign ministry clarified that the ban is temporary and only applies to visitors with tourist, private, student and work visas. It said in a statement:
We reiterate our willingness to continue close cooperation with China in order to efficiently eradicate this common threat.
Russia has had three confirmed cases of the Covid-19 disease. These were two Chinese citizens in Russia who were treated and released, and a Russian national infected on the Diamond Princess cruise ship in Japan.
Russian authorities have taken significant steps to try to keep the virus from spreading, including keeping hundreds of people in hospital as a precaution and monitoring more than 14,000 people after they returned from China.
Russia halted most air traffic to China, suspended all trains to China and North Korea, and temporarily stopped issuing work visas to Chinese citizens. Chinese students studying in Russia were told not to return until 1 March.
This month Russia’s prime minister, Mikhail Mishustin, said Russia might start deporting foreigners infected with the virus.
The Covid-19 virus has now infected more than 75,000 people globally.
Three more people in Singapore have tested positive for the virus, one of whom was first admitted to hospital as a Dengue patient. South Korea reported 20 new cases.
Here’s a summary of the latest figures reported by each government’s health authority, as of Wednesday in Beijing:
Mainland China: 2,004 deaths among 74,185 cases, mostly in Hubei province
Hong Kong: 63 cases, two deaths
Macau: 10 cases
Japan: 693 cases, including 621 from a cruise ship docked in Yokohama, one death
Singapore: 81
South Korea: 51
Thailand: 35
Malaysia: 22
Taiwan: 22 cases, one death
Vietnam: 16
Germany: 16
United States: 15 cases; separately, one US citizen died in China
Australia: 14
France: 12 cases, one death
United Kingdom: 9
United Arab Emirates: 9
Canada: 8
Philippines: three cases, one death
India: 3
Italy: 3
Russia: 2
Spain: 2
Iran: 2
Belgium: 1
Nepal: 1
Sri Lanka: 1
Sweden: 1
Cambodia: 1
Finland: 1
Egypt: 1
There is no need for people to panic about the coronavirus, said Scotland’s public health minister as he visited one of the country’s two testing laboratories.
Joe FitzPatrick said there was no current evidence to suggest it is necessary for people in Scotland to wear masks to protect against the Covid-19 virus.
Screening laboratories in Glasgow and Edinburgh have tested 202 possible cases since testing began in Scotland on 10 February, with all proving negative.
Combined with the previous tests at the Public Health England facility in Colindale, London, 290 tests from Scotland have been carried out since the outbreak began, with none coming back positive.
FitzPatrick said although it is likely there will be a case of coronavirus in Scotland, the country is well prepared to deal with the situation.
There is no need for people to be panicked.
We are clear that this is a serious threat that we are taking seriously and we’re preparing for worst case scenarios but right now the risk in Scotland, as in the rest of the UK, remains low so there’s no evidence to suggest that people should be walking around Scotland wearing face masks at this time.
He added: “Although all Scottish tests have so far been negative, we are prepared for the high likelihood that we will also see a positive case.
We have a proven track record of dealing with challenging health issues and have been preparing for this possibility since the beginning of the outbreak.
The coronavirus outbreak has temporarily reduced China’s CO2 emissions by a quarter, according to analysis by Carbon Brief.
Electricity demand and industrial output remain far below usual levels after authorities introduced stringent measures to stop the spread of the disease.
Daily data of coal use at power stations is at a four-year low, while oil refinery operating rates in Shandong province are at the lowest level since 2015, the report said.
Carried out by Lauri Myllyvirta, an analyst at Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air who covers air quality and energy trends in China, the analysis found levels of NO2 air pollution over China are down 36% on the same period last year.
Over the same two-week period in 2019, China released around 400m tonnes of CO2 (MtCO2), meaning the measures introduced to control the virus could have cut global emissions by 100MtCO2 to date.
However, the report notes that this is likely to only have a short-term impact and shutdowns of a week or more are not uncommon in China.
Cutting energy consumption and emissions by 25% for two weeks would only reduce annual figures by around 1%, it states.
However, reduced consumer demand – potentially caused by unpaid wages during the outbreak – could have a more significant long-term effect.
For instance, car sales are set to fall by 25-30% in the January-February period, according to preliminary forecasts.
In total, containment measures have resulted in reductions of 15% to 40% in output across key industrial sectors, according to the report.
The virus has had a severe impact on China’s economy, with Shanghai making a list of companies eligible for millions of dollars in subsidised loans to help keep them afloat.
In recent days, Chinese industrial hubs have taken measures to stimulate production again, after factories remained closed for around 10 days after the Lunar New year holiday to help with infection control.
China has ordered three reporters from American newspaper the Wall Street Journal to leave the country, over what Beijing deemed a racist headline.
The expulsion came as Beijing slammed Washington’s decision to tighten rules on Chinese state media organisations in the United States, calling the move “unreasonable and unacceptable”, AFP reports.
A Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said the Journal op-ed - titled “China is the Real Sick Man of Asia” - had a “racially discriminatory” and “sensational” headline, and slammed the newspaper for not issuing an official apology.
Geng told a press briefing:
As such, China has decided that from today, the press cards of three Wall Street Journal reporters in Beijing will be revoked.
The Journal reported that deputy bureau chief Josh Chin and reporter Chao Deng, both US nationals, as well as reporter Philip Wen, an Australian, had been ordered to leave the country in five days.
The three journalists are in the Wall Street Journal’s news section, which is not linked to the editorial and opinion section.
The op-ed, written by Bard College professor Walter Russell Mead, criticised the Chinese government’s initial response to the new coronavirus outbreak.
It called the Wuhan city government “secretive and self-serving”, while dismissing national efforts as ineffective.
The phrase “sick man of Asia” originally referred to China in the late 19th and early 20th century, when it was exploited by foreign powers during a period sometimes called the country’s “century of humiliation”.
The 3 February piece “slandered the efforts of the Chinese government and the Chinese people to fight the epidemic”, said Geng.
The new coronavirus epidemic has killed over 2,000 people in China and infected more than 74,000, and has spread to at least two dozen countries.
“The editors of the Wall Street Journal have nailed themselves to the pillar of shame,” wrote the nationalistic Global Times in an op-ed on Tuesday before the reporters were expelled.
The WSJ’s remarks “sound like gloating, and they disgust Chinese people”, it said.
The expulsions come a day after the United States angered China for classifying five state media outlets, including Xinhua news agency and the China Global Television Network, as foreign missions, with State Department officials saying they were part of Beijing’s growing “propaganda” apparatus.
Voicing China’s “strong dissatisfaction”, Geng added cryptically: “We reserve the right to respond further to this matter.”