BANGKOK, March 1 (Reuters) - Thailand has recorded its first coronavirus death as a 35-year-old man, who also had dengue fever, dies from the virus, Suwanchai Wattanayingcharoen, director-general of the Department of Disease Control, said in the news conference on Sunday.
Thailand has recorded 42 coronavirus cases since January, 30 of those have recovered and gone home and 11 are still being treated in hospitals, according to the department. (Reporting by Panu Wongcha-um; Editing by Tom Houe)
The coronavirus disease has reached the European states of Austria and Croatia, as authorities report their first cases of the infection.
Austria confirmed its first two cases of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), a spokeswoman for the health authority in the province of Tyrol said on Tuesday.
They are two Italians who live in the province and were probably infected in Italy's Lombardy region, Tyrol governor Guenther Platter was quoted as saying by local media.
The new virus has already killed more than 2,600 people, most of them in China, the origin of the virus, and spread to about 29 other countries, according to a Reuters tally. The number of confirmed cases has risen above 80,000.
Europe's biggest outbreak is in Italy with some 220 infections - from just three before Friday - and seven dead.
Meanwhile, Croatia has confirmed its first case of the coronavirus infection in a patient who is hospitalized in the capital Zagreb, Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic said on Tuesday.
"The patient is in the Zagreb clinic for infectious diseases. It is a younger person and has milder symptoms. He is in isolation and his condition is good at the moment," Plenkovic told a news conference.
Health Minister Vili Beros said that the patient had stayed in Milan from Feb. 19 to Feb. 21.
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BANGKOK - Thailand confirmed two new cases of the coronavirus on Tuesday, taking its total number of infections to 37, health officials said.
The two new cases, both Thai nationals, were people who were being monitored because they had been in contact with someone who had traveled to a risky country, said Suwanchai Wattanayingcharoenchai, director-general of the Department of Disease Control.
"We are gradually investigating related individuals and quarantining anyone found with a fever," he said.
One of the newly confirmed cases was a 31-year-old woman with a family member who had traveled from China, another senior health official said, adding that health workers were monitoring the rest of the family.
The second new case was a 29-year-old man who worked as a driver for Chinese tourists.
The coronavirus is believed to have emerged in a wildlife market in the Chinese city of Wuhan late last year. It has infected more than 80,000 people in China, killing 2,663 of them.
Outside mainland China, the outbreak has spread to about 29 countries and territories, with a death toll of about three dozen, according to a Reuters tally.
Thailand was the first country outside China to confirm a case of the new coronavirus, doing so on Jan. 13.
In late January, Thailand had the second-highest number of infections after China, but new cases have gradually declined.
No one in Thailand has died from the coronavirus.
Thailand had "an extensive network of surveillance and rapid response teams", which made it effective in tracing and monitoring contacts of infected people, World Health Organization representative in Thailand, Richard Brown, told Reuters.
Thiravat Hemachudha, head of the Thai Red Cross Emerging Infectious Diseases Center, praised the government's work to slow the spread of infections but warned that swifter decision-making was necessary.
"What we don't want is the bureaucracy weighing all of our efforts down," he said.
Thai authorities on Monday classified the coronavirus as a "dangerous communicable disease", giving health personnel and police more authority to quarantine people with symptoms, or those who have traveled from risky areas.
A total of 22 patients have been discharged from hospital in Thailand and 15 are being treated.
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SEOUL - South Korea reported 123 more coronavirus cases Sunday, taking the nationwide total to 556, as well as two additional deaths which brings the toll to four.
The fourth death was a man at a hospital in Cheongdo, a southern city connected to a religious sect, where around 100 cases were reported.
Among the latest cases, 75 were connected to the Shincheonji Church of Jesus in the southern city of Daegu, the Korean Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in a statement.
Hundreds of members of the Shincheonji Church of Jesus have now been infected, starting with a 61-year-old woman who developed a fever on February 10 but attended at least four church services in Daegu before being diagnosed.
Daegu -- which is South Korea's fourth-largest city with a population of 2.5 million and Cheongdo -- the birthplace of Shincheonji's founder Lee Man-hee -- were designated as "special care zones" on Friday.
Agence France-Presse
SAN FRANCISCO - US tech giant Apple said Monday that disruption due to the novel coronavirus had hit both production and demand in China, and the company was "experiencing a slower return to normal conditions" than planned.
"We do not expect to meet the revenue guidance we provided for the March quarter," it said in a statement, adding that worldwide iPhone supply would be "temporarily constrained" and demand in China had been affected.
Apple had forecast revenue of $63 billion to $67 billion for the second quarter to March.
The COVID-19 virus death toll exceeds 1,700 in China, where it has infected more than 70,500 after emerging in the central province of Hubei.
Elsewhere, hundreds more have been infected and the virus has sparked panic buying, economic jitters as well as the cancellation of high-profile sporting and cultural events.
IMF chief Kristalina Georgieva said there could be a cut of around 0.1-0.2 percentage points to global growth but stressed there was much uncertainty about the virus's economic impact.
Apple said that "while our iPhone manufacturing partner sites are located outside the Hubei province -- and while all of these facilities have reopened -- they are ramping up more slowly than we had anticipated.
"All of our stores in China and many of our partner stores have been closed," it added.
"Additionally, stores that are open have been operating at reduced hours and with very low customer traffic. We are gradually reopening our retail stores and will continue to do so as steadily and safely as we can."
New cases outside the epicenter region have been declining for the last 13 days. There were 115 fresh cases outside Hubei announced on Monday -- sharply down from nearly 450 a week ago.
Chinese authorities have pointed to the slowing rise in cases as proof their measures are working, although the World Health Organization's chief said the apparent drop in new cases "must be interpreted very cautiously".
Agence France-Presse
BEIJING - The death toll from China's new coronavirus epidemic jumped past 1,700 on Monday after 100 more people died in hard-hit Hubei province, the epicenter of the outbreak.
In its daily update, the province's health commission also reported 1,933 new cases.
At least 70,400 people have now been infected nationwide.
Most are in Hubei, where the virus first emerged in December before spiraling into a nationwide epidemic.
The number of new cases in the province had been declining since a large spike last week when officials changed their criteria for counting cases to include people diagnosed through lung imaging.
Monday's figures were around 100 higher than those on Sunday but still sharply down on those from Friday and Saturday.
Outside of hardest-hit Hubei, the number of new cases has been declining and a spokesman for China's national health authority said Sunday that the slowing figures were a sign the outbreak was being controlled.
However, World Health Organisation chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has warned it is "impossible to predict which direction this epidemic will take".
International experts have arrived in Beijing and begun meeting with their Chinese counterparts over the epidemic, Tedros said on Twitter.
Agence France-Presse
KUALA LUMPUR/SIHANOUKVILLE, Cambodia - An 83-year-old American passenger from a cruise ship that docked in Cambodia after being shunned by other countries has tested positive for the new coronavirus after being tested in Malaysia, health authorities said on Saturday.
The woman was the first passenger from the MS Westerdam, operated by Carnival Corp unit Holland America Inc, to test positive for the virus.
The ship docked in the Cambodian port of Sihanoukville on Thursday carrying 1,455 passengers and 802 crew. It had spent two weeks at sea after being turned away by Japan, Taiwan, Guam, the Philippines and Thailand.
The passengers were tested regularly on board and Cambodia also tested 20 once it docked. None was found to have the new coronavirus that has killed more than 1,500 people, the vast majority in China.
The American woman flew to Malaysia on Friday from Cambodia along with 144 others from the ship, the Malaysian health ministry said in a statement, adding that she was in stable condition.
The woman's husband had shown symptoms but tested negative, it said. The couple were the only ones of the 145 to show symptoms, the ministry said.
A spokesman for Holland America declined to comment.
Fewer than 300 people were still on board the Westerdam, according to a company official, who declined to be identified as he was not authorized to speak to the media.
Company officials have said passengers had been routed through Phnom Penh and Kuala Lumpur to fly back to their home countries, but they have not said that all passengers had taken that route.
Or Vandine, Secretary of State at Cambodia's Health Ministry, declined to comment.
U.S. President Donald Trump has thanked Cambodia for taking in the ship in a rare message to a country that is one of China's closest allies and has often been at odds with Washington.
Cruise ships around Asia face widespread fears they may be spreading the virus. The biggest cluster outside China has been on the Diamond Princess, quarantined off Japan's Yokohama. Out of about 3,700 passengers and crew on board, 285 people have tested positive and have been sent to hospital.
Vietnam turned back two ships on Friday.
The American woman's case brings the total number of confirmed coronavirus cases in Malaysia to 22.
An 80-year-old Chinese tourist infected with the coronavirus has died in France, the first fatality in Europe and the fourth outside mainland China.
Most of the deaths so far have been in the central Chinese province of Hubei, where the virus is believed to have originated at a wildlife market.
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CAIRO - Egypt's health ministry on Friday announced the first confirmed case of the new coronavirus in Africa.
The sufferer was not Egyptian, the ministry said in a statement, without specifying the nationality.
"The ministry has taken preventative measures and is monitoring the patient... who is stable," said health ministry spokesman Khaled Megahed.
Egyptian authorities had notified the World Health Organization and the patient been placed in quarantined isolation in hospital.
The death toll from the epidemic virus has neared 1,400 cases, almost exclusively in China where it was first identified.
Deep trade links with China and often overstretched healthcare systems have raised concerns about the capacity of African countries to respond to an outbreak.
Earlier this month, Egypt suspended all flights on its national carrier to China. They will remain grounded until the end of the month.
Three hundred and one Egyptians were evacuated from Wuhan, the epicentre of the virus in China, and have remained in quarantine for 14 days.
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NUSA DUA, Indonesia — A family from Shanghai was vacationing in Singapore last month when they learned that the new coronavirus had arrived there from China.
So they packed up and flew to the world’s largest country yet to report a single case of the deadly virus: Indonesia. They landed in Bali, a major destination for Chinese tourists, on Jan. 30 and have no plans to leave.
“People in Bali treat us nicely and are friendly,” said Eva Qin, 36, who is traveling with her mother, husband and son. “We weren’t given any health test.”
Health experts have questioned why Indonesia has not yet reported a single case of novel coronavirus, even though officials were slow to halt nonstop flights from China. Indonesia receives about 2 million Chinese tourists a year, most of them in Bali.
China’s consul general in Bali said last week that about 5,000 Chinese tourists remained in Bali, including 200 from Wuhan, where the outbreak started.
Indonesia’s closest neighbors have all reported cases, including the Philippines, Singapore, Malaysia and Australia.
“So far, Indonesia is the only major country in Asia that does not have a corona case,” Indonesia’s security minister, Mohammad Mahfud MD, told reporters Friday. “The coronavirus does not exist in Indonesia.”
None of the 285 people who were evacuated from Wuhan and are now in quarantine on the Indonesian island of Natuna have shown signs of the virus, he added.
Five researchers at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health concluded in a study last week that Indonesia and Cambodia, which has reported only one case, should quickly intensify its monitoring of potential cases. Based on a statistical analysis, the disease could have arrived in Indonesia already, the authors concluded.
“Many of the imported cases have been linked to a recent travel history from Wuhan, suggesting that air travel volume may play an important role for the risk of cases being exported outside of China,” the study said.
The chairman of the Indonesian Red Cross, Jusuf Kalla, a former vice president of Indonesia, also said it was possible that the disease had already entered the country and that Indonesians might not recognize the symptoms as being coronavirus.
“Singapore has a tight system, but even there the virus got in,” he said. “It’s possible that there are infected people but here in Indonesia people think that it is only a regular fever or they think it is dengue fever.”
Kalla expressed concern about how prepared Indonesia was to handle the virus if it were to strike in remote parts of the archipelago nation where underfunded community health centers are the main health care provider. (Indonesia is the world’s fourth most populous country, with nearly 270 million people scattered across 6,000 inhabited islands.)
“Indonesia has many islands,” he said. “We have many port cities. They all have different capabilities. I think good hospitals in Jakarta can detect it. But what about the community health center in Flores? Or in Sulawesi? Surely the capability is limited.”
Indonesia’s health care system is considered underfunded by international standards, with insufficient facilities and too few doctors, nurses and midwives, according to a 2018 report by the World Health Organization.
But the WHO country representative, Dr. Navaratnasamy Paranietharan, said Indonesia is doing its best to face the new coronavirus, including screening passengers at points of entry and equipping hospitals for the arrival of suspected or diagnosed cases.
“Indonesia is doing what is possible to be prepared for and defend against the novel coronavirus,” he said.
Health officials say they have tested nearly 50 suspected cases, which were all negative.
Thirty Chinese workers from a cement company in North Sulawesi were placed in 14-day quarantine last week after returning from a holiday visit to China, an immigration official said. None of them have come down with the virus, he said.
If patients with symptoms were arriving, they would have been detected, insisted Achmad Yurianto, secretary of prevention and control at the health ministry.
“We are not prepared to face a major outbreak, but we are prepared to prevent an outbreak,” he said. “We are not waiting for it to happen. We in fact have tightened prevention.”
Indonesia is experienced at monitoring travelers for illness, he said, because the country has long been on the lookout for another dangerous coronavirus, Middle East Respiratory Syndrome or MERS. About 1.4 million Indonesians go each year on pilgrimages to Saudi Arabia, where they can be exposed to MERS, he said, and they are screened on their return.
“We have experienced this many times,” he said. “Maybe other countries are not as diligent as Indonesia in dealing with this situation.”
Indonesia has three laboratories capable of testing for the new coronavirus, two in Jakarta, the capital, and one in Surabaya, Indonesia’s second-largest city, in East Java. The labs can test 1,200 samples a day, he said. Across the country, 100 hospitals have been designated as centers to handle suspected cases of the novel coronavirus.
Before airline travel between Indonesia and China was suspended on Feb. 5, there were 134 flights a week from China to Bali, bringing about 5,000 passengers a day.
The loss of new Chinese tourists could be devastating for the economy of Bali, which is highly dependent on foreign visitors. Still, some of the tourists already in Bali are doing what they can to stay.
China’s consul general in Bali, Gou Haodong, said many of the remaining Chinese tourists wanted to extend their visas rather than return home to possible quarantine or exposure to the virus.
More than 30 applied Friday for tourist visas extensions, said immigration officials, who put the number of remaining Chinese tourists at 1,500, not 5,000.
Among those still in Bali over the weekend were Johnson Guo and his family.
Guo, 42, a manager in an internet business in Guangzhou, said the family had been on holiday in Australia. But after the outbreak of the virus, they decided to extend their vacation and spend a week in Bali.
He said that they did not receive any health check on arrival, but that all of them were healthy.
“I worry about the virus,” he said, as he purchased 720 face masks to take back and donate to his hometown hospital when they were to return Saturday. “But I have to return because I have to go back to work. And Guangzhou is not as bad as other areas in China.”
Two travelers from Shanghai, Song Yi and her friend, Yang Yujia, both 27, arrived in Bali in mid-January with eight friends.
“We didn’t have any health check because we have been healthy during the 20 days of our stay,” said Song, a banker, as they shopped for clothes at a mall near Kuta Beach.
Song said that the Balinese people had been very kind to them, but that their Chinese friends began avoiding each other because of fears about the virus and they soon went their separate ways.
After extending their stay in Bali, she said, they plan to return home next week.
“We decided to stay longer because we were afraid of the virus,” she said.
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TOKYO - Another 39 people have tested positive for the coronavirus on the quarantined Diamond Princess cruise ship in Japan as well as one quarantine officer, bringing the total to 175, the health ministry said on Wednesday.
The Diamond Princess was placed in quarantine for 2 weeks upon arriving in Yokohama, south of Tokyo, on Feb. 3, after a man who disembarked in Hong Kong was diagnosed with the virus. The epidemic originated in mainland China, where more than 1,100 people have now died from the virus.
About 3,700 people are aboard the ship, which usually has a crew of 1,100 and a passenger capacity of 2,670.
The ministry said tests are being conducted for others who are deemed to need them and it will announce the results later.
The UK-flagged Diamond Princess is managed by Princess Cruise Lines, one of the world's largest cruise lines and a unit of Carnival Corp.
Kyodo news agency, citing the health ministry, said that of the 39 cases, 10 were crew and 29 were passengers.
Ten were Japanese nationals and the others were from 11 countries including the United States and China. Four were in serious condition, Health Minister Katsunobu Kato said.
The quarantine officer had been handing out questionnaires checking the health of passengers and crew since Feb. 3, and had been following rules that require wearing a mask and gloves but not a full protective suit, according to the Nikkei business daily, quoting the health ministry.
"It's terrible about the quarantine officer. I wonder if they (the officer) are from the first batch that came aboard," one 43-year-old passenger on the ship told Reuters, declining to be identified.
"The ones who came to our room to do the initial screening had gloves and surgical masks, while the ones who came to do the actual virus test also had full gowns and full face masks."
A health ministry official had no immediate comment, but Nikkei said the ministry was checking into the officer's contacts with colleagues and family members.
"There are lots of ways to get infected even if you're wearing a mask. Hand hygiene, touching the mask and then not washing hands, wearing a mask but touching your eyes with contaminated hands ... It happens," said David Fisman, an epidemiologist at the University of Toronto.
"Personal protective items reduce risk, they don't eliminate it," he said.
The government was considering allowing elderly and those with chronic illnesses to disembark before the Feb. 19 target date for ending the quarantine, some media reported, but added it would take time to figure out where they could be sent.
As of last week, about 80 percent of the passengers were aged 60 or over, with 215 in their 80s and 11 in the 90s, the English-language Japan Times newspaper reported.
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TAIPEI - Taiwan's Foxconn hopes to resume half of its production in China by month-end, a source told Reuters on Wednesday, as the supplier to tech giant Apple and others reopens plants shut over a coronavirus outbreak.
The world's largest contract electronics maker also aims to resume 80 percent of production in China in March, added the source, who has direct knowledge of the matter, citing internal targets set by Chairman Liu Young-Way.
Foxconn's reopenings after the Lunar New Year holiday were delayed by the rapid spread of the virus in China, which has killed more than 1,100 people, as the World Health Organization warned against a global threat potentially worse than terrorism.
"Chairman Liu hopes by end of February the production could reach 50 percent," said the person, who declined to be identified in the absence of authorization to speak publicly.
"Shipments will be affected, but it's too early to give an exact number. We might still have a chance to make it with overtime, but we also need to monitor consumer sentiment to come for the end products," the source added.
The reference was to electronics, including smartphones.
Foxconn did not immediately respond to email and telephone calls to seek comment.
Foxconn got the green light this week to reopen major plants in China, and its plant in the eastern city of Kunshan was also approved on Tuesday to resume production, an internal document reviewed by Reuters showed.
But just about a tenth of the workforce had returned to two key plants in southern Shenzhen and central Zhengzhou as of Monday, a source told Reuters.
The two plants make up the bulk of Foxconn's assembly lines for Apple's iPhones and further delays to production after the enforced closures could hit global shipments.
Apple estimated first-quarter revenue in a wider range than usual to factor in the virus uncertainty.
On Monday, Foxconn reported a drop of 12 percent in revenue in January from a year ago, to T$364.6 billion ($12 billion). It did not give details.
Shares of Foxconn, formally Hon Hai Precision Industry Co Ltd, gained 1.6 percent in Wednesday trade, outperforming a gain of 0.8 percent in the benchmark.
They have lost more than 8 percent since the market reopened after the holiday break.
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TOKYO — Around 60 more people on board the quarantined Diamond Princess cruise ship moored off Japan have been diagnosed with novel coronavirus, national broadcaster NHK said on Monday.
Other local media also reported approximately 60 more cases had been confirmed, raising the number of infected passengers and crew to around 130. Health ministry officials declined immediate comment.
The Diamond Princess has been in quarantine since arriving off the Japanese coast early last week after the new virus was detected in a former passenger who got off the ship last month in Hong Kong.
When the boat arrived off Japan, authorities initially tested nearly 300 people of the 3,711 on board for the virus, gradually evacuating dozens who tested positive to local medical facilities.
In recent days, testing has expanded to those who had close contact with other infected passengers or crew, and several more cases were reported over the weekend.
Those who remain on the ship have been asked to stay inside their cabins and allowed out only briefly onto open decks.
They have been asked to wear masks and keep a distance from each other when outside, and given thermometers to regularly monitor their temperatures.
The ship is expected to stay in quarantine until Feb. 19 -- 14 days after the isolation period began.
The quarantine has made life on board the ship difficult, particularly for those in windowless interior cabins and a significant number of passengers who require medication for various chronic conditions.
The health ministry said Monday that around 600 people on board were in urgent need of medications and around half received supplies over the weekend.
Agence France-Presse
BEIJING - An advance team of international experts led by the World Health Organization (WHO) left for Beijing to help investigate China's coronavirus epidemic, which authorities said on Monday had now claimed 908 lives on the mainland.
The outbreak has caused huge disruptions in China with usually teeming cities becoming virtual ghost towns during the past two weeks as Communist Party rulers ordered virtual lockdowns, cancelled flights, closed factories and shut schools.
WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, who made a trip to Beijing for talks with President Xi Jinping and Chinese ministers in late January, returned with an agreement on sending an international mission.
But it has taken nearly two weeks to get the government's green light on its composition, which was not announced, other than to say that WHO veteran Dr. Bruce Aylward, a Canadian epidemiologist and emergencies expert, was heading it.
"I've just been at the airport seeing off members of an advance team for the @WHO-led #2019nCoV international expert mission to #China, led by Dr Bruce Aylward, veteran of past public health emergencies," Tedros said in a tweet from Geneva on Sunday.
The WHO declared the outbreak a global emergency on Jan. 30, days after the Chinese central government imposed a lockdown on 60 million people in Hubei province and its capital Wuhan, epicentre of the virus that emerged in December in a seafood market.
The death toll from the outbreak in mainland China rose by 97 to 908 as of the end of Sunday, the National Health Commission (NHC) said on Monday.
Across mainland China, there were 3,062 new confirmed infections on Sunday, bringing the total number so far to 40,171.
The virus has also spread to at least 27 countries and territories, according to a Reuters count based on official reports, infecting more than 330 people. Two deaths have been reported outside mainland China - both of Chinese nationals.
The latest patients outside China include a group of British nationals staying in a mountain village in Haute-Savoie in the Alps, French health officials said, raising fears of further infections across Europe.
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PARIS - Amelia Pan is at home in Canada while her 2-year-old daughter Cerena is stranded far away in China's Hubei province, the epicentre of the coronavirus outbreak, being cared for by a distant relative after the girl's father and grand-parents fell ill.
"I am just hanging in there," Pan, a Canadian citizen originally from China, said in a Skype interview. "I need to stay strong so I can fight for my family."
For days now, Pan has been scrambling to get her daughter onto an evacuation flight back to Canada, but it has been complicated.
Cerena's father has contracted the virus so he cannot accompany her home on the flight, and Cerena herself ran a fever so she needed to undergo checks to make sure she was not infected herself, according to Pan.
In the meantime, Cerena is in a Chinese hospital, separated from her father and being looked after by a cousin of his who agreed to be in the hospital with the child.
"My daughter is less than 3, and still is wearing diapers, she cannot take care of herself, she needs a lot of help from adults," said Pan.
Cerena's paternal grandfather caught the virus and died, and her grandmother is also infected.
The family drama began on Jan. 17 when Pan's husband, Wei Ye, received a call from his sister back home in the Chinese city of Yingshan, near Wuhan. The sister said Ye's father was close to death because of complications from cancer.
At the time, the family had heard of the coronavirus, but did not understand the danger it posed. The next day, Ye flew to China to be with his father, taking his daughter with him. Pan stayed behind in Canada.
By Jan. 26, Pan received word that her father-in-law was infected with the coronavirus. The next morning, she was told that Ye, and his mother, had a fever. Soon after, it was confirmed Pan's husband and mother-in-law had coronavirus and they were hospitalized.
Cerena was left in the care of a neighbor. But because she was deemed an infection risk, she was put in the hospital. Fortunately, test results came back negative on Saturday. If her temperature stays normal, she should be discharged from the hospital over the weekend, her mother said.
Pan said she is in touch with the Canadian authorities to get Cerena, a Canadian citizen, onto an evacuation flight, and is seeking someone willing to accompany her on a plane that is supposed to leave on Monday.
If this plan works out, Pan will be flying to Trenton, Ontario, to stay in quarantine with her little girl.
Before the outbreak hit, Pan said she had even enjoyed being alone in Canada and briefly free of the burden of parenting.
"But look at the price I paid for the freedom that I enjoyed the first week."
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BEIJING - Millions of people in China were returning to work Monday after an extended holiday designed to slow the spread of a virus that has already killed more than 900 people.
At least 40,000 others have been infected by 2019-nCoV, which is believed to have emerged late last year in a market in Wuhan.
And although the World Health Organization (WHO) has said there are tentative signs the epidemic is stabilizing, the agency's chief warned there may more infections abroad in people who have never traveled to China.
The comments from Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus came as a team of WHO experts departed for China, led by Bruce Aylward, a veteran of previous health emergencies.
In an attempt to contain the virus, cities in Hubei have been locked down and transport links countrywide were cut to stop the movement of hundreds of millions of people who usually visit family during the annual Lunar New Year holiday.
Officially the Lunar New Year holiday was extended by only 3 days, but many cities and provinces pushed the deadline until February 10.
The unprecedented measures have turned cities into ghost towns, with people staying inside.
But there were some signs Monday of the country beginning to make a return to normality.
Roads in Beijing and Shanghai had significantly more traffic than in recent days and the southern city of Guangzhou said it would start to resume normal public transport from Monday.
But for those at work, it was not an easy balance to strike.
"Of course we're worried," said a 25-year-old man surnamed Li in a beauty salon in Beijing, which reopened Monday.
"When customers come in, we first take their temperature, then use disinfectant and ask them to wash their hands."
WORK, INTERRUPTED
However, tens of millions of people in Hubei province were not returning to work, as the province -- the epicenter of the outbreak -- remained under lockdown.
Even outside the quarantined province, many companies were limiting staff.
The Shanghai government suggested reducing large gatherings of people through staggered work schedules, suspending central air systems, avoiding group meals and keeping at least one meter away from work colleagues.
Online office communication tool DingTalk said in a Weibo post last week that nearly 200 million people were using the platform to work from home.
The American Chamber of Commerce in Shanghai said 60 percent of its member companies were planning mandatory work-from-home policies.
State media reported that passenger numbers on the Beijing subway was down by about 50 percent Monday compared to a normal work day.
Large shopping malls in the capital were deserted.
A bank employee in Shanghai told AFP he was heading to work for a half-day, with other employees taking over in the afternoon.
The rest of the day, staff are instructed to work from home.
"It makes our work more difficult because we need to access the systems in our office," he said.
Other employers, including auto manufacturer Toyota, simply delayed work for another week.
Schools and universities across the country remained shut.
DIFFICULT JOURNEYS
Those returning to work faced fresh travel difficulties.
The eastern city of Wuxi said anyone trying to enter the city from provinces with high numbers of cases would be "persuaded to go back" while Suzhou city, near the financial hub of Shanghai, suspended all passenger transport to the surrounding counties.
"I just checked and it would takes 18 hours for me to go to work by bicycle," wrote one frustrated commuter on Weibo.
"It's time to work now. Should I walk???" wrote another.
On Saturday, travel authorities said there were 11 million journeys by train, road or plane -- 84 percent down on the same day last year.
The tourism industry remains in the doldrums, with several countries banning arrivals from China, major airlines suspending flights and international and domestic tour groups being halted.
'TIP OF THE ICEBERG'
The death toll from the novel coronavirus has overtaken global fatalities in the 2002-03 SARS epidemic, when China drew international condemnation for covering up cases.
The WHO has praised the measures Beijing has taken this time, while warning figures could still "shoot up".
WHO chief Tedros said there had been some "concerning instances" of cases overseas in people with no travel history to China.
"We may only be seeing the tip of the iceberg" of these cases, he tweeted.
Meanwhile in Hong Kong, thousands of people stranded aboard the World Dream cruise ship for five days were allowed to disembark Sunday after its 1,800 crew tested negative for the new coronavirus.
The ship carried three Chinese passengers to Vietnam between January 19 and 24 who were later found to be infected with the SARS-like coronavirus.
Agence France-Presse
BERLIN/MADRID - Amazon.com Inc has pulled out of this month's Mobile World Congress because of the coronavirus outbreak, in another blow to one of the telecom industry's biggest gatherings which attracts over 100,000 visitors to Barcelona.
"Due to the outbreak and continued concerns about the new coronavirus, Amazon will withdraw from exhibiting and participating in Mobile World Congress 2020," the company said in a statement on Sunday.
Amazon had planned a significant presence through its cloud computing arm AWS, which was due to host a full-day conference track on the first day of the event.
The online retailer is the fourth company to pull out of the annual gathering this week, following South Korea's LG Electronics, Swedish equipment maker Ericsson and US chipmaker Nvidia.
The Feb. 24-27 event will go ahead as planned, the GSMA telecoms industry association, which runs the Congress, confirmed in a statement on Sunday before Amazon said it was pulling out, adding that they would tighten health precautions to guard against the coronavirus outbreak.
No visitors will be allowed to attend from China's Hubei province, where the coronavirus outbreak started, while visitors from China must prove they have been outside the country for two weeks prior to the event, GSMA said.
Some 5,000-6,000 visitors typically come from China to the world's premier telecoms industry gathering, where companies spend millions on stands and hospitality to fill their order books for the year ahead.
Chinese companies Huawei and ZTE have said they will attend, ordering China-based staff to self-isolate ahead of the event to ensure they are free of the illness, and drafting in European staff to cover for those stranded.
China raised the death toll from the outbreak to 811 on Sunday, passing the number killed globally by the SARS epidemic, while total confirmed cases of the illness reached 37,198.
The virus has spread to at least 27 countries and territories, according to a Reuters count based on official reports, infecting more than 330 people outside China. Two deaths have been reported outside mainland China - both of Chinese nationals.
More then two dozen large trade fairs and industry conferences in China and overseas have been postponed or hit by travel curbs and concerns about the spread of the virus, potentially disrupting billions of dollars worth of deals.
source: news.abs-cbn.com
SINGAPORE - Scientists from the United States to Australia are using new technology in an ambitious, multi-million-dollar drive to develop a vaccine in record time to tackle China's coronavirus outbreak.
The new virus has spread rapidly since emerging late last year in China, killing more than 800 people in the mainland and infecting over 37,000. Cases have been reported in two dozen other countries.
Coming up with any vaccine typically takes years, and involves a lengthy process of testing on animals, clinical trials on humans and regulatory approvals.
But several teams of experts are racing to develop one quicker, backed by an international coalition that aims to combat emerging diseases, and Australian scientists hope theirs could be ready in six months.
"It is a high-pressure situation and there is a lot of weight on us," said senior researcher Keith Chappell, part of the group from Australia's University of Queensland.
But the scientist added he took "some solace" knowing several teams around the world were engaged in the same mission.
"The hope is that one of these will be successful and can contain this outbreak," he said.
But even a timeframe of six months looks agonizingly slow with the virus, believed to have emerged from a market selling wild animals, killing close to 100 people every day in mainland China.
Efforts are being led by the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI), a body established in 2017 to finance costly biotechnology research in the wake of an Ebola outbreak in West Africa that killed more than 11,000 people.
With a mission to speed up the development of vaccines, CEPI is pouring millions of dollars into four projects around the world and has put out a call for more proposals.
ATTACK THE VIRUS
The projects hope to use new technology to develop vaccines that can be tested in the near future.
The body's CEO, Richard Hatchett, said the aim was to start clinical testing in just 16 weeks.
German biopharmaceutical company CureVac and US-based Moderna Therapeutics are developing vaccines based on "messenger RNA" -- instructions that tell the body to produce proteins -- while Inovio, another American firm, is using DNA-based technology.
DNA- and RNA-based vaccines use the genetic coding of the virus to trick the body's cells into producing proteins identical to those on the surface of the pathogen, explained Ooi Eng Eong, deputy director of the emerging infectious diseases program at the Duke-NUS Medical School in Singapore.
The immune system learns to recognize the proteins so that it is ready to find and attack the virus when it enters the body.
The Australian researchers are using "molecular clamp" technology invented by the university's scientists that allows them to rapidly develop new vaccines based solely on a virus DNA sequence.
French scientists at the Pasteur Institute are modifying the measles vaccine to work against the coronavirus, but do not expect it to be ready for about 20 months.
Meanwhile, the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention has also started developing vaccines, according to the state-run Xinhua news agency.
RISKS VERSUS BENEFITS
Health authorities weigh the risks and benefits in vaccine approvals and if there is a public health emergency, the process could be shortened, said Ooi of the Duke-NUS Medical School.
But he added that "paradoxically, if the situation improves, then actually the pathway for vaccines would be longer".
"If there's a lot of these new coronavirus cases around, then you accept some risk, because of the tremendous amount of benefit you can derive, whereas if there are not many cases, the tolerance for risk would be very low."
While there is no vaccine for the coronavirus, some doctors are trying out a potent brew of anti-retroviral and flu drugs to treat those infected, but the science is inconclusive as to whether they are effective.
Ultimately, scientists may end up in the same situation they were during the 2002-2003 outbreak of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) -- it died out before a vaccine could be fully developed.
A close cousin of the new coronavirus, SARS spread around the world and killed nearly 800.
But Ong Siew Hwa, the director of Acumen Research Laboratories, a biotech company in Singapore, said efforts to develop a vaccine for the new virus should continue even if the outbreak ends.
"I think a vaccine will definitely be important," she said. "If it's not in time for this round, it is important for the next time."
Agence France-Presse
BANGKOK- Millions of poor farmers and workers will lose access to a cheap and easy way to buy and sell fresh food if Asian cities clamp down on traditional wet markets in the wake of the deadly coronavirus outbreak, analysts warned on Friday.
Wet markets, which are a series of stalls that sell fresh vegetables and fruits, live fish, chickens and other meats, are named after the melting of ice used to preserve goods and the washing of floors to clean blood and entrails.
They have come under closer scrutiny in recent weeks after the coronavirus outbreak was linked to a seafood market in Wuhan, China.
That market was shut down, and authorities said they would ban illegal wildlife trade and tighten supervision of wet markets, as a debate raged on social media on whether all wet markets should be closed.
"Wet markets are part of the local culture in Asia, as people believe that meat and produce sold there is fresher and cheaper than in modern retail outlets," said Pavida Pananond, an associate professor of international business at Thammasat University in Bangkok.
Across Asia, governments are keen to modernize their cities increasingly view street vendors and informal markets as a hindrance, and as usurpers of public spaces meant for formal businesses and wealthy residents.
From Bangkok to Manila, authorities are pushing vendors into designated zones and imposing restrictions on informal markets.
The 2002-03 outbreak of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), which started in China and killed about 800 people, was believed to have emerged from wet markets.
Now the coronavirus, which has led to more than 600 deaths and 30,000 cases, may be used as another reason to tighten controls, although no Southeast Asian nation has declared a shutdown of wet markets.
These traditional markets are a lifeline for millions of small farmers, vendors and small businesses said Pavida, adding that shuttering them would have a significant economic and cultural impact on poorer consumers.
"It will be difficult to completely replace them as they serve consumers at the lower end of purchasing power, not to mention their cultural preference," she said.
SOCIAL SPACES
Singapore has long banned the trade of wild animals and slaughter of poultry in markets, and has now issued advisories for "high standards of hygiene and cleanliness", said a spokesman for the National Environment Agency (NEA), which manages 83 markets across the city-state.
The NEA aims to improve markets "so that they remain social spaces where residents of diverse backgrounds can meet and interact while purchasing affordable household groceries and fresh produce in a clean and hygienic environment," he said.
Wet markets have survived because of culinary traditions that call for freshly slaughtered meat and fish as opposed to frozen meats, said Seshan Ramaswami, an associate professor of marketing education at Singapore Management University.
"I don't think the tradition will collapse because of this outbreak. At best, it might lead to more stringent inspection at the source, or much tighter controls when live animals are being traded," he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
Any shutdown of wet markets would have a big socio-economic impact and must be done gradually as it may lead to increased food insecurity, said Masami Takeuchi, a food safety officer at the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization.
"Wet markets have been a part of life for many, many centuries. In 2020, they are still an essential part of the culture," she said.
"Obviously there are many challenges in the area of food safety, but with good practices, effective regulation and good inspection schemes, modernization is possible," she said.
source: news.abs-cbn.com
The deadly coronavirus will not cause victims to act like zombies, Malaysia's government said on social media, as officials act to correct the spread of misinformation surrounding the outbreak.
As medical authorities seek to contain the virus, some social media users in Malaysia made a connection between the disease and the walking dead.
Malaysia's health ministry dismissed the rumor in a tweet, however, saying: "The claim that individuals infected with this virus will behave like zombies is not true... Patients can recover."
A number of posts in Malaysia on social media have wrongly claimed the number of deaths or infected people in the country.
Police have arrested six people for spreading misinformation about the virus, a Malaysian Communications and Multimedia statement said.
In the latest arrest, last Thursday, a 28-year-old woman was investigated for "improper use of network facilities".
If convicted, she can be fined up to 50,000 ringgit or be jailed for a year, or both.
The virus has killed more than 300 people in China and infected thousands. Eight people in Malaysia have been found with the virus -- all Chinese nationals.
source: news.bs-cbn.com
WASHINGTON - US health officials on Saturday confirmed an eighth case of the fast-spreading new coronavirus in the United States and the Pentagon said it would provide housing for people arriving from overseas who might need to be quarantined.
The latest US patient, who is in Massachusetts, recently returned from Hubei province in central China, the epicenter of the outbreak, a spokeswoman for the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said in an emailed statement. The person was not identified and no other details were provided.
The flu-like coronavirus, which is believed to have originated in a market that traded illegally in wildlife in Hubei's provincial capital Wuhan, has so far resulted in 304 deaths in China, state broadcaster CCTV said early on Sunday in China. Confirmed cases of the virus have been reported in 27 other nations, according to the CDC.
All but one of the patients in the United States was believed to have contracted the disease while they were traveling in the Wuhan area. US officials this week reported the first human-to-human transmission of the disease in the United States in Illinois.
Concerns about the virus spurred the Trump administration to declare a public health emergency and bar entry to the United States for foreign nationals who have recently visited China.
In addition, US citizens who have traveled within the past two weeks to Hubei will be subject to a mandatory quarantine of 14 days, believed to be the incubation period of the virus, officials said.
Americans who visited other parts of mainland China will undergo special health screening upon their return, followed by up to 14 days of "monitored self-quarantine," under the temporary restrictions.
In a statement on Saturday, the Pentagon said Defense Secretary Mark Esper approved a request for assistance from the Department of Health and Human Services for housing support for 1,000 people who may be subject to quarantine on arrival from overseas.
Health officials had asked the Defense Department to provide several facilities capable of housing at least 250 people in individual rooms through Feb. 29.
The Pentagon said four military installations have been selected: two in California, one in Colorado, and one in Texas. It said Defense Department personnel would only provide housing support and HHS would be responsible for all care and transportation.
"DOD personnel will not be directly in contact with the evacuees and evacuees will not have access to any base location other than their assigned housing," the Pentagon said.
QUARANTINE PROCEDURES
The first quarantines of US citizens potentially exposed to coronavirus in China began hours before the White House announcement on Friday.
Nearly 200 Americans evacuated earlier this week from Wuhan and voluntarily confined to a California military air base for 72 hours of health screenings were placed under a mandatory 14-day quarantine on Friday.
By Saturday afternoon, none of those quarantined showed any symptoms of having the virus, said Jose Arballo, a spokesman for the public health department in Riverside County, where the air base is located. He said test results were still pending.
The order to keep the Americans on the base marked the CDC's first mandatory quarantine for decades.
"Since this hasn't been done in 51 years there's quite the scramble to work through all the procedures," a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) official said, adding that the last mandatory quarantine was ordered to fight smallpox.
The official, who requested anonymity because they are not authorized to speak publicly about the matter, said DHS personnel would take over running medical screenings at airports this weekend to free up their CDC counterparts for other tasks.
State and local authorities will likely play a role with mandatory quarantines, the official said, which could mean "a lot of variance across the country for how it gets implemented."
A DHS spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Nearly 12,000 people have been infected globally by the virus, according to the WHO, with all but just over 130 of those cases occurring in China.
US health officials have said risks to the United States remain low.
source: news.abs-cbn.com
