Tag Archives: COVID-19

Chinese capital battles jump in virus cases as infections ease elsewhere

BEIJING (Reuters) – The number of people who have contracted the coronavirus in the Chinese capital has jumped sharply, including more than 30 in an outbreak at a major hospital, while many other parts of the country are reporting fewer or no new infections.

Officials on Friday reported one new case in Beijing as of Feb. 20, bringing the total in the city to 396, with four dead.

Twenty-three cases were recorded the previous day.

The new cases largely stemmed from a major hospital about 6 k, (3.7 miles) west of Tiananmen Square, and come as China’s leaders decide whether to postpone their annual gathering of parliament, the year’s most important political event, originally set for early March.

Eight health workers, nine care workers and cleaners, and 19 patients and their family members were among the 36 cases confirmed at Fuxing Hospital thus far, Pang Xinghuo, vice head of Beijing’s disease control centre, told reporters on Thursday.

The hospital only had nine cases as of Feb. 3.

“I feel deeply guilty and distressed by the cluster case incident at Fuxing Hospital,” Li Dongxia, the hospital’s director, told the same briefing.

The infections also caught the attention of the Global Times, a tabloid published by the ruling Communist Party’s official People’s Daily, which ran a story under the headline: “Whopping rise in infection at Beijing hospital puts capital on alert.”

The city’s total cases now rank 13th among provincial-level jurisdictions.

To control the spread of the virus, Beijing and other cities have ordered measures including reduced opening hours at shopping malls, temperature checks in public spaces, and disinfection at residential compounds.

Beijing also requires that people arriving from elsewhere in China quarantine at home for 14 days. Migrant workers are steadily returning to the city of more than 20 million after a long Lunar New Year break, which was extended to give authorities more time to try to contain the virus.

“So disappointed! I was brought up in the district and thought it’s the safest bastion because it’s the heart of the country,” one person wrote on the Twitter-like Weibo.

Nationwide, more than 75,400 people have been confirmed infected with the coronavirus and 2,236 have died, mostly in central Hubei province and its capital of Wuhan where the virus emerged in a wildlife market in December.

(Reporting by Ryan Woo and Lusha Zhang; Additional reporting by Yan Zhang, Yawen Chen and Cheng Leng in Beijing; Editing by Tony Munroe and Kim Coghill)

Lebanon confirms first case of coronavirus, two more suspected

BEIRUT (Reuters) – Lebanon confirmed its first coronavirus case on Friday and said it was monitoring two other potential cases after a 45-year-old woman arriving from Iran on Thursday tested positive, Health Minister Hamad Hassan said.

Addressing a news conference, Hassan said the patient was taken directly to isolation from a plane arriving from the Iranian city of Qom on Thursday after exhibiting symptoms of the virus.

The patient is being quarantined at Rafik Hariri University Hospital in Beirut and two other individuals from the Qom flight and suspected of carrying the virus would be transferred to the hospital for quarantine as well, Hassan said.

The plane, a Mahan Air flight that arrived around 7.30pm (1730 GMT) on Thursday, was carrying 125 passengers, a source at Rafic International Airport said.

A coronavirus outbreak in Iran, which has so far seen four people die, began in the Shi’ite Muslim holy city of Qom, authorities in Iran said.

An Iranian health ministry official said the likely source was Chinese workers in Qom who had recently travelled to China, where the epidemic originated.

More than 2,100 people have died in China and new research suggesting the virus is more contagious than previously thought has added to the international alarm over the outbreak.

Hassan said all necessary precautions in line with World Health Organisation advice were being followed and offered Lebanese a hotline to call if they experienced any associated symptoms.

“There is no need for excessive panic at this time… The patient is in a good state,” said Hassan.

He said people who arrived in Lebanon on the Qom flight were asked to remain isolated in their homes for 14 days and that authorities would follow up on arrivals to Lebanon from the past ten days for potential cases.

(Reporting by Ellen Francis, Laila Bassam; Writing by Eric Knecht; Editing by Toby Chopra)

Iran says coronavirus has spread to several cities, reports two new deaths

DUBAI (Reuters) – The coronavirus has spread to several Iranian cities, a health ministry official said on Friday, as an outbreak that the authorities say began in the holy city of Qom caused two more deaths.

Iran confirmed 13 new coronavirus cases, bringing the total in the country to 18, with four of the total having died.

“Based on existing reports, the spread of coronavirus started in Qom and with attention to people’s travels has now reached several cities in the country including Tehran, Babol, Arak, Isfahan, Rasht and other cities,” health ministry official Minou Mohrez said, according to the official IRNA news agency.

“It’s possible that it exists in all cities in Iran,” she said.

The majority of coronavirus cases in Iran have been in Qom, a Shi’ite Muslim holy city 120 km (75 miles) south of the capital Tehran.

The new cases comprised seven people diagnosed in Qom, four in the capital Tehran and two in Gilan province, Health Ministry spokesman Kianush Jahanpur said in a tweet.

Health officials had called on Thursday for the suspension of all religious gatherings in Qom.

“It’s clear that new coronavirus has circulated in the country and probably the source of this illness was Chinese workers who work in the city of Qom and had traveled to China,” health ministry official Mohrez said, according to IRNA.

The widening outbreak came as Iranians were voting in a parliamentary election seen as a referendum on authorities after a series of crises, including a near full-blown conflict with the United States last month.

State TV showed voters at polling centers in Qom wearing surgical masks on Friday.

Iraqi Airways has suspended flights to neighboring Iran as a protective measure against the coronavirus outbreak, the Iraqi state news agency said on Thursday.

The epidemic originated in China and has killed more than 2,100 people there. New research suggesting the virus is more contagious than previously thought has added to the international alarm over the outbreak.

(Reporting by Babak Dehghanpisheh; Editing by Toby Chopra)

After clashes, Ukraine blames disinformation campaign for spreading coronavirus panic

By Pavel Polityuk and Natalia Zinets

KIEV (Reuters) – Ukraine’s Prime Minister Oleksiy Honcharuk on Friday blamed an “information war” being waged on the country for spreading panic and mistrust over the coronavirus, a day after the arrival of evacuees from China sparked clashes outside a sanatorium.

Speaking to parliament, Honcharuk said misinformation was being spread from within and outside Ukraine but did not elaborate.

The authorities are trying to find the source of bogus emails sent this week on behalf of the health ministry erroneously declaring there had been confirmed coronavirus cases in Ukraine, when so far there have been none.

In another example, Honcharuk cited an incident of Russian officials asking a wagon-load of passengers traveling on a train from Kiev to Moscow to disembark after a Chinese woman with fever was found to be traveling on board.

The Ukrainian railway service said it has asked Russia for more information on the case.

Police detained 24 people in clashes with residents of a town in central Ukraine on Thursday, who feared they would be infected by Ukrainians who had been evacuated from China’s Hubei province to a sanatorium for a mandatory two week quarantine.

“The events that took place yesterday, in my opinion, are a consequence of, in particular, the information war that continues against our country, both from inside and out,” Honcharuk said.

Protesters in the town of Novi Sanzhary had clashed with police, burned tires and hurled projectiles at a convoy of buses carrying the evacuees to the medical facility.

The authorities had appealed for calm, saying the evacuees were screened to make sure they were not infected before being allowed to fly. Health Minister Zoriana Skaletska announced she would join those in quarantine.

“Our health minister has agreed to stay with the citizens in this medical institution,” Honcharuk said. “This way her example will prove that there is no danger to Ukrainian citizens.”

President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said the protests had been stoked by “political support” but did not say from where. He appealed to Ukrainians not to vilify those returning from China.

“We constantly say that Ukraine is (a part of) Europe,” he said. “Yesterday, frankly, in some episodes it seemed that we are the Europe of the Middle Ages, unfortunately. Let’s not forget that we are all people.”

(Writing by Matthias Williams; Editing by Ros Russell)

Coronavirus infects hundreds in China’s prisons as global markets take hit

By Pei Li and Se Young Lee

BEIJING/SEOUL (Reuters) – The coronavirus has infected hundreds of people in Chinese prisons, authorities said on Friday, contributing to a jump in reported cases beyond the epicentre in Hubei province, including 100 more in South Korea.

The 234 infections among prisoners outside Hubei ended 16 straight days of declines in new mainland cases excluding that province, where the virus first emerged in December in its now locked-down capital, Wuhan.

State television quoted Communist Party rulers as saying the outbreak had not yet peaked, and more than 30 cases in a hospital in Beijing highlighted a sharp jump in the tally there.

FILE PHOTO: Doctors look at a screen that shows the ward where patients who are infected with the coronavirus are treated at the First People’s Hospital in Yueyang, Hunan Province, near the border to Hubei Province, which is under partial lockdown after an outbreak of a new coronavirus, in China January 28, 2020. REUTERS/Thomas Peter

Total cases in the capital of the coronavirus – known as COVID-19 – were at 396 with four deaths, out of an official mainland toll of 75,400 cases and 2,236 deaths

U.S. stock index futures lurched downwards as the rise in infections sent investors looking for safer assets such as gold and government bonds.

Adding to the gloomy mood, data showed Japan’s factory activity suffered its steepest contraction in seven years in February, underlining the risk of a recession there as the impact of the outbreak spreads. Asian and European stocks also fell.

With finance leaders from the Group of 20 major economies set to discuss risks to the world economy in Saudi Arabia at the weekend, the International Monetary Fund said it was too early to tell what impact the virus would have on global growth.

“COVID-19 anxiety has risen to a new level amid concerns of virus outbreaks in Beijing and outside of China,” said Rodrigo Catril, a senior FX strategist at NAB.

Chinese Vice Science and Technology Minister Xu Nanping said China’s earliest vaccine would be submitted for clinical trials around late April. That timetable is in line with research in other countries, and a World Health Organization estimate of a vaccine reaching the market in about 18 months.

As international authorities seek to stop the virus from becoming a global pandemic, public health officials are hoping for signs that the arrival of warmer weather in the northern hemisphere might slow its spread.

A couple wear masks at a main shopping area as the country is hit by an outbreak of the new coronavirus in downtown Shanghai, China February 21, 2020. REUTERS/Aly Song

PUBLIC GATHERINGS

The spike in cases in two jails outside Hubei – in the northern province of Shandong and Zhejiang in the east – made up most of the 258 newly confirmed Chinese infections outside the epicentre province on Friday.

Authorities said officials deemed responsible for the outbreaks had been fired and the government had sent a team to investigate the Shandong episode, media reported.

Hubei also reported 271 cases in its prisons. Provincial officials did not say when they had been diagnosed.

Data showed mainland China had 889 new confirmed cases and 118 deaths, with the most in Wuhan, which remains under virtual lockdown.

The virus has emerged in 26 countries and territories outside mainland China, killing 11 people, according to a Reuters tally.

South Korea is the latest hot spot with 100 new cases taking its total to 204, most in Daegu, a city of 2.5 million, where scores were infected in what authorities called a “super-spreading event” at a church, traced to an infected 61-year-old woman who attended services.

South Korean officials designated Daegu and neighbouring Cheongdo county as special care zones where additional medical staff and isolation facilities will be deployed. Malls, restaurants and streets in the city were largely empty with the mayor calling the outbreak an “unprecedented crisis”.

Another centre of infection has been the Diamond Princess cruise ship held under quarantine in Japan since Feb. 3.

Japan reported the deaths of two elderly passengers on Thursday, the first fatalities from aboard the ship where more than 630 cases account for the biggest cluster of infection outside China.

A plane carrying 129 Canadians evacuated from the ship has landed in Ontario, Canadian Foreign Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne said on Friday. All repatriated passengers on the chartered flight had tested negative, CBC News said.

In the Iranian city of Qom, state TV showed voters in the parliamentary election wearing surgical masks.

The country confirmed 13 new cases, two of whom had died. Most have been in Qom, a Shi’ite Muslim holy city where health officials on Thursday called for all religious gatherings to be suspended.

Fears of contagion triggered violence in Ukraine, where residents of a town clashed with police, burned tires and hurled projectiles at a convoy of buses carrying evacuees from Hubei to a quarantine centre.

(Additional reporting by Ryan Woo, Lusha Zhang and Huizhong Wu in Beijing, Cynthia Kim and Joori Roh in Seoul, Tetsushi Kajimoto, Elaine Lies, Chang-Ran Kim and Tim Kelly in Tokyo, Colin Packham in Sydney, Donny Kwok in Hong Kong, Ahmed Eljechtimi in Rabat; Writing by Stephen Coates & Robert Birsel; Editing by John Stonestreet and Nick Macfie)

Six coronavirus cases discovered in north Italy, hundreds to be tested

By Elisa Anzolin and Angelo Amante

MILAN (Reuters) – Six people have tested positive in Italy for coronavirus, the northern Lombardy region said on Friday, in the first known cases of local transmission of the potentially deadly illness in the country.

Officials told residents from three small towns some 60 km (40 miles) southeast of Italy’s financial capital Milan, to stay at home as doctors tested hundreds of people who might have come into contact with the six coronavirus sufferers.

None of the six were believed to have visited China, which is the epicentre of the virus, but the first infected patient, a 38-year-old man now in intensive care, fell ill after meeting a friend who had recently been to China.

That man has since tested negative to the contagious disease, but doctors were investigating whether he carried the virus and subsequently recovered without showing any symptoms, said regional councillor Giulio Gallera.

The pregnant wife of the initial patient and one of his friends were also infected, along with three other people who were admitted to hospital overnight suffering from pneumonia-like symptoms.

“We have called on the residents of Codogno, Castiglione d’Adda and Casalpusterlengo to stay at home as a precaution,” Gallera told a news conference.

Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte said there was compulsory quarantine in place for all who have been in contact with the infected patients, as local authorities continued to track down everyone they had come into contact with.

“Most of the contacts of those who tested positive for coronavirus have been identified and subjected to the necessary tests and measures,” the region said in a statement.

Prior to Friday, just three people had been confirmed in Italy to have the virus which emerged in the Chinese city of Wuhan late last year.

Two Chinese tourists who came from Wuhan tested positive in Rome in late January, while an Italian who returned from the Chinese city with a special flight repatriating some 56 nationals was hospitalized a week later.

China has had more than 75,400 cases of the coronavirus and 2,236 people have died, most in Hubei province and its capital Wuhan.

(Angelo Amante reported from Rome; Additional reporting by Francesco Guarascio in Brussels and Elvira Pollina in Milan; Editing by Crispian Balmer and Christina Fincher)

Clashes, jeers and burning tires greet coronavirus evacuees in Ukraine

By Matthias Williams

NOVI SANZHARY, Ukraine (Reuters) – Residents of a central Ukrainian town clashed with police, burned tires and hurled projectiles at a convoy of buses carrying evacuees from China’s Hubei province, quarantined in case of the coronavirus, to a sanatorium on Thursday.

Some protesters and police were lying wounded on the ground after the clashes. At least two buses had their windows smashed while the evacuees sat behind curtains inside.

Locals in Novi Sanzhary feared they could become infected despite the authorities repeatedly insisting there was no danger and a special appeal from President Volodymyr Zelenskiy for calm.

Ukraine has no confirmed cases of the virus.

Tempers flared after a tense day-long standoff in which protesters blocked a bridge leading to the sanatorium where the evacuees will be held in quarantine for at least two weeks to make sure they are not carrying the virus.

Hundreds of helmeted police, police vans and an armored personnel carrier had been dispatched to keep order. Police were periodically shouted at with cries of “shame on you” as the town waited for the evacuees to arrive.

In addition to 45 Ukrainians, there were 27 citizens of Argentina on the plane that landed in Ukraine on Thursday, as well as citizens from the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Costa Rica and other countries.

One Ukrainian woman refused to be evacuated at the last minute because she was not allowed by the Chinese authorities to take her dog, a Ukrainian embassy statement said.

The Ukrainian authorities say all passengers on board had been screened twice for the virus before being allowed to fly, but that was not enough to quell the protesters.

“Isn’t there any other place in Ukraine that can host 50 people, that is located in more or less remote villages or in far off areas where there is no threat to population?” said resident Yuriy Dzyubenko.

One protester was heard suggesting they should be kept at Chernobyl, the site of the world’s worst nuclear disaster in 1986. Another suggested taking them to parliament, while another said Zelenskiy should house them himself if he really believed there was no danger.

“This is what I am telling him, telling the president: “Take 10 people, then I will take two,” a man called Yuriy, who did not give his last name, said.

A weak healthcare system, corruption and mistrust of authority are widespread in Ukraine, which has recently also grappled with a measles epidemic amid a reluctance by some to vaccinate themselves and their children.

The protest had prompted Zelenskiy to issue a statement reassuring Ukrainians that there was no danger, that the authorities had done everything possible to make sure the virus would not spread to Ukraine.

“But there is another danger that I would like to mention. The danger of forgetting that we are all human and we are all Ukrainian,” he said.

In western Ukraine there were smaller protests by residents fearing the evacuees could be housed there instead.

China reported a drop in new cases in the province at the heart of the coronavirus outbreak on Thursday, though the death toll so far at over 2,000 has made it one of the biggest global health emergencies in recent decades.

(Reporting by Matthias Williams, Sergiy Karazy and Valentyn Ogirenko in Novi Sanzhary, Pavel Polityuk and Natalia Zinets in Kiev; editing by Nick Macfie)

Two passengers from coronavirus-hit cruise ship in Japan die, authorities defend quarantine

By Linda Sieg and Chang-Ran Kim

TOKYO (Reuters) – Two elderly passengers became the first people from aboard a cruise ship moored near Tokyo to die of the coronavirus, the Japanese government said on Thursday, as hundreds more passengers disembarked after two weeks’ quarantine.

The 621 coronavirus cases aboard the Diamond Princess cruise liner are by far the largest cluster of infection outside China. The ship has been held since Feb. 3 with initially 3,700 people on board.

The two patients who died, an 87-year-old man and an 84-year-old woman, had both tested positive for the virus although the woman’s cause of death was listed as pneumonia, the health ministry said. Two government officials who had worked on the ship were infected, it added, bringing the number of infected officials to five.

Public broadcaster NHK reported that 27 people from the ship were in serious condition.

The quarantine operation has sparked criticism of Japan’s authorities just months before Tokyo is due to host the Summer Olympics.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga defended Japan’s efforts. He told a news conference that after measures were put in place to isolate passengers on Feb. 5, the number of new infections fell.

Japan’s National Institute of Infectious Diseases (NIID) said in a report issued Wednesday that no new cases of the onset of the COVID-19 disease from the cruise ship were reported on Feb. 16-17 and only one crew member case on Feb. 15.

In a move to reassure the public, the health ministry also issued a statement in both English and Japanese that said all passengers had been required to stay in their cabins since Feb. 5. Critics have noted that the day before that order, as passengers were being screened, shipboard events continued, including dances and quiz games.

SAFE TO GO HOME?

About 1,000 Japanese released from the ship after testing negative for the virus were permitted to go straight home this week. Other countries are flying their citizens home but subjecting them to two more weeks of quarantine on arrival.

“We believe the isolation was effective,” Suga, the chief cabinet minister, said.

Those who have shared a room with infected people are being kept on board under further quarantine.

Around 600 people are expected to disembark on Thursday, 500 of whom will return to their homes in Japan, according to the health ministry. On Wednesday, 800 people left the ship including foreigners who left on evacuation flights.

“We are asking people to keep an eye on their temperature at home,” a health ministry official told Reuters. The government handed out pamphlets with advice on the disease, which has killed more than 2,100 people, mostly in China.

Some experts, however, worry returnees could infect others. Findings published in the New England Journal of Medicine on Wednesday suggest the virus may be spread more easily than previously thought, including by carriers who have no symptoms.

The health ministry official said the United States had taken the decision to risk bringing home infected passengers, and it was up to each country to quarantine people entering their ports as appropriate.

“Our stance is that Japan as the local authority has already quarantined these people for two weeks,” the official said, adding that if people sent home from the Diamond Princess later test positive, they would have caught the virus off the ship.

(Additional reporting by Akiko Okamoto, Ju-min Park, Hideto Sakai, Daewong Kim, Elaine Lies, Makiko Yamazaki and Tim Kelly; writing by Linda Sieg and David Dolan; Editing by Sam Holmes, Michael Perry and Peter Graff)

More coronavirus cases in Iran’s Qom; religious gatherings under threat

DUBAI (Reuters) – Iranian health officials urged all religious gatherings to be suspended in Qom, news agency ISNA said on Thursday, after two more people tested positive for the coronavirus in the holy city, where two died of it this week.

In all, three more people had tested positive for the virus, an Iranian health ministry spokesman said.

“Two people have tested positive for COVID-19 in Qom and one person in Arak, bringing the total of confirmed cases to five in Iran,” spokesman Kianush Jahanpur said in a tweet.

Jahanpur said all patients were Iranian and the person in the central city of Arak was a doctor from Qom, the semi-official news agency ISNA reported.

Jahanpur said health officials had called for the suspension of all religious gatherings in Qom, a Shi’ite Muslim holy city about 120 km (75 miles) south of the capital Tehran, according to ISNA.

Two Iranians died in hospital after testing positive in Qom, the head of the city’s University of Medical Sciences said on Wednesday.

(Reporting by Dubai Newsroom; editing by John Stonestreet)

Coronavirus poses risks to fragile recovery in global economy: IMF

By Andrea Shalal

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The coronavirus epidemic has already disrupted economic growth in China and a further spread to other countries could derail a “highly fragile” projected recovery in the global economy in 2020, the International Monetary Fund warned on Wednesday.

In a note prepared for G20 finance ministers and central bankers, the global lender mapped out a plethora of risks facing the global economy, including the fast-spreading coronavirus and a renewed spike in U.S.-China trade tensions, as well as climate-related natural disasters.

Finance ministers and central bankers from the top 20 advanced industrialized economies will gather in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, later this week amid continued uncertainty about the impact of the coronavirus, known as COVID-19.

The IMF said it was sticking to its January forecast for 3.3% growth in the global economy this year, up from 2.9% in 2019, already a downward revision of 0.1 percentage points from its forecast in October.

But it said the recovery would be shallow and risks remained skewed to the downside. “The recovery could be derailed by a sharp rise in risk premia, triggered for example by a re-escalation of trade tensions, or a further spread of the coronavirus,” the Fund said.

Chinese state television quoted President Xi Jinping as saying China could still meet its economic growth target for 2020 despite the epidemic. But the IMF note cast doubt on that.

“The coronavirus, a human tragedy, is disrupting economic activity in China as production has been halted and mobility around affected regions limited,” the Fund wrote in the note. “Spillovers to other countries are likely — for example through tourism, supply chain linkages, and commodity price effects.

It said the impact of the virus was still unfolding, and while the current scenario assumed a quick containment of the virus and a bounce-back later in the year, the impact of the epidemic could be larger and longer-lasting.

“A wider and more protracted outbreak or lingering uncertainty about contagion could intensify supply chain disruptions and depress confidence more persistently, making the global impact more severe,” the Fund said in the note.

Cyber attacks, an escalation of geopolitical tensions in the Middle East or a breakdown in trade negotiations between China and the United States could also impede the short-term global recovery, it said. And climate-related disasters, rising protectionism and social and political unrest triggered by persistent inequality posed further economic risks.

The Fund urged policymakers to maintain fiscal and monetary policy support. Low inflation required monetary policy to stay accommodative in most economies, it said.

(Reporting by Andrea Shalal; Editing by Tom Brown)