February 1 coronavirus news

Macao Health Bureau is investigating the movements of two casino employees after it was notified by Chinese officials that they have contracted the novel coronavirus. 

Vitor Moutinho, the bureau’s spokesman, told CNN on Saturday that one of the two is a woman who lives in Zhuhai in mainland China and travels to Macao daily for work. 

Moutinho said the woman worked at Starworld Casino in a private area, and that the bureau is now tracing people whom she could have come into contact with. 

No further details are available about the other employee, a man.

Employees from the mainland who come to work in Macao have not been prevented from doing so since the outbreak of the virus, and all casinos remain open for business. 

Casinos in Macao are open as usual.

A group of students from Sri Lanka have been evacuated from Wuhan, the epicenter of the deadly coronavirus outbreak in China.

The World Health Organization has been stressing the importance of facts in the fight against the current coronavirus outbreak.

It warned that people of all ages can be infected by the virus and said older people and those with pre-existing medical conditions appear to be more vulnerable to becoming severely ill with the virus.

The WHO is also trying to bust some of the myths circulating online. It said, for example, that there was no evidence that pets such as dogs and cats can be infected with the virus.

It also told people it was safe to receive packages from China. “From previous analysis, we know coronaviruses do not survive long on objects, such as letters or packages,” the WHO tweeted.

Chinese Premier Li Keqiang has asked the European Union to help China procure medical supplies, according to a Chinese government statement.

China is struggling to control the novel coronavirus outbreak. Its health system is on its knees, running out of beds and supplies.

Li spoke to the President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen on the phone, the statement said, and is hoping to buy the supplies from EU member countries “through commercial channels.”

“And we are willing to strengthen information, policy and technical exchanges and to cooperate with international communities including EU,” Li said, according to the statement.

It added:

The statement added that von der Leyen said the EU will try its best and coordinate all necessary resources to provide assistance to China.

China needs more medical supplies.

The UK Department of Health and Social Care has issued a simple guidance on how ordinary people can help stop the new virus from spreading: carry a tissue, catch your sneeze, trash the tissue, wash your hands.

CNN Chief Medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta and The Economist China Editor James Miles discuss public health strategies with CNN’s Christiane Amanpour.

Watch here:

The first case of coronavirus in China was detected in early December. Now, nearly two months later, it’s a full-blown global emergency, with close to 12,000 confirmed cases across the world.

Here’s a look back at how we got here:

The number of confirmed cases of the new coronavirus in Australia reached 12 on Saturday after South Australia confirmed its first two cases and Victoria confirmed its fourth.

A woman and a man, both aged 60, have been diagnosed with the virus and are in isolation at the Royal Adelaide Hospital, according to a statement posted on the South Australia Health Facebook page.

The two patients arrived in Adelaide from Wuhan on January 20, the statement said.

“They have been isolated in a home since arriving and appropriate precautions will be taken upon presentation to the [hospital].”

The relative whom the two people were staying with is being tested and is in isolation, the statement added. 

Tourists wear protective masks in Sydney.

The latest person to be confirmed with novel coronavirus in Victoria is a woman in her 20s, Victoria’s department of Health and Human services said in a statement. She was confirmed positive on Friday following a series of tests.

The woman is a resident of Melbourne and is recovering at home, the health department said. The department added that she spent time in Wuhan and returned home to Victoria on January 25. She became sick two days later. She was seen by doctors in a Melbourne hospital on January 30 and was “assessed as well enough to stay at home.”

Hong Kong has confirmed its 13th case of the new coronavirus, the government said in a statement on Saturday. Meanwhile, Taiwan’s Centre for Disease Control said on Friday the number of cases in its territory reached 10.

The center said Taiwan’s new case, a man in his forties, is the husband of the ninth confirmed case. He returned to Taiwan from Wuhan on January 12 and developed symptoms of upper respiratory infection on January 21.

The new case in Hong Kong is a 39-year-old man who was reported to have developed muscle pain on January 29 and started having a fever on Friday.

He is currently in a stable condition and in isolation in hospital.

New cases were confirmed in Taiwan on Friday.

Two purpose-built hospitals in Wuhan, constructed in under a week, are due to start accepting patients on Monday and Thursday respectively, according to Chinese state media.

They have 2,500 beds between them, and will be focused purely on dealing with confirmed and suspected cases of the coronavirus, providing some much-needed relief to Wuhan’s stretched health system.

Public healthcare crisis: Patients, medical staff and experts have told CNN of an already overburdened health system creaking under the enormous weight of a rapidly expanding outbreak.

According to a nurse in Wuhan who asked not to be identified for fear of professional repercussions, staff are overwhelmed, resources are running low, and there are no beds.

Around 30 of the 500 medical staff at her hospital are now sick and admitted to hospital, and others – including her – have self-quarantined at home.

Take a look at the hospitals being built:

Hubei Province, home to Wuhan city where the outbreak began, is suspending all marriage license registrations until further notice.

The suspension will begin on February 3 to prevent the spread of the outbreak, “protect public health, and safeguard public interests,” said the province in a statement on its website.

It’s just the latest of a series of drastic measures in the province – in one other city near Wuhan, every household is only allowed one representative to leave the house and buy groceries every other day.

Nearly 60 million people, mostly in Hubei, are under partial or full lockdown – this means limited movement in or out of cities and towns, closed roads, and suspended public transit.

Could a traditional Chinese medicine help fight the Wuhan coronavirus, or is one of the country’s most influential state media outlets promoting pseudoscience and false hope?

Those were the questions dominating Chinese social media after the state-run Xinhua news agency reported Friday that the Shanghai Institute of Materia Medica and the Wuhan Institute of Virology had discovered that the Shuanghuanglian oral liquid – a popular combined herbal remedy commonly used to relieve some symptoms such as fever, cough, and sore throat – could be used to “inhibit” the deadly virus.

Posts on Weibo, China’s Twitter-like platform, purportedly showed people lining up all night outside pharmacies across China to buy Shuanghuanglian, ironically going against the authorities’ advice to avoid congregating in public. 

Such was the apparent demand sparked by the notice that the compound formula sold out on some stores on China’s e-commerce platform Taobao.

On Saturday, however, the ruling Communist Party’s mouthpiece, the People’s Daily, warned that “inhibiting does not equal preventing and treating,” reminding the public not to rush to purchase the herbal remedy. The findings still needed to be studied, and there are no proven treatments for the virus yet, it said.

Some background: Though many TCM remedies have been used for hundreds of years, critics argue that there is no verifiable scientific evidence to support their supposed benefits.

But in 2018, the World Health Organization (WHO) gave its long-awaited nod to include TCM in its influential book classifying thousands of diseases – its first-ever official endorsement of the ancient practice.

Read more about it here.

A medical staff member at the Princess Margaret Hospital in Hong Kong on January 26, 2020.

Thousands of Hong Kong public medical staff will be voting Saturday evening on whether to strike on Monday if the government does not agree to demands to completely close the Chinese border.

13,000 members will vote ahead of the possible walkout next week, said Winnie Yu, chairwoman of the the medical workers’ union Hospital Authority Employees Alliance.

Yu also said that 6,500 medical staff are backing the action, of which 70% are nurses, 8% doctors, 13% therapists, and the rest are administrative and support staff.

Separately, the Hong Kong West Cluster (one of 7 Hong Kong medical wards) released a statement announcing that over 1,100 of its medical staff have signed an open appeal to the government to ban all visitors from mainland China.

The statement adds that the staff are considering strike action Monday if their demands are not met.

What the government has done: The city government has already imposed travel restrictions on travelers from mainland China and closed some borders.

Chief Executive Carrie Lam has pushed back on demands to close all border, arguing that doing so would bar “a large number” of Hong Kong citizens coming back from China.

She added yesteday that with the new measures, the number of mainland Chinese arrivals across different border points had dropped 91% since two weeks ago, 

An a Air India flight carrying 324 Indian nationals took off from Wuhan early on Saturday, according a tweet from the Indian embassy in Beijing.

The tweet said that most of the passengers on Saturday were Indian students, and that the embassy is looking to operate another flight for remaining Indian citizens in Wuhan.

“We sincerely thank the Chinese government for facilitating this flight, “ the tweet also said.

Construction for new hospitals on January 28, 2020 in Wuhan, China.

China has allocated almost $4 billion to fighting the virus, and sent thousands of extra doctors, nurses and military medics to Hubei province – the epicenter of the outbreak.

Two hospitals were built in under a week in Wuhan, and are due to start accepting patients on Monday and Thursday, according to state media. They will focus specifically on coronavirus patients, providing some relief to Wuhan’s stretched health system.

The Lunar New Year holiday will be extended in Hubei to an “appropriate extent,” authorities said.

But it remains unclear how long parts of the country can continue to remain under lockdown, both from the perspective of making sure they have crucial supplies like food, and from an economic point – both the national finances and people’s personal pocketbooks will be taking a massive hit from next week.

Buses transporting British and foreign nationals who had been evacuated from Wuhan to Brize Norton, England.

The UK will withdraw some staff and dependants from the British Embassy and consulates in China, said an updated advisory from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO).

The staff are being brought back from China as of January 31.

“Essential staff needed to continue critical work will remain,” said the advisory. “In the event that the situation deteriorates further, the ability of the British Embassy and Consulates to provide assistance to British nationals from within China may be limited.”

The FCO is urging against all travel to Hubei province, the epicenter of the outbreak. The British Consulate in Wuhan, the city where it all started, is closed.

Vietnam has confirmed its sixth case of the coronavirus on Saturday, in a tweet on the government’s official account.

The patient is a 25-year-old hotel receptionist in the Khanh Hoa province. The government did not provide any more details. 

Separately, the government announced the offer of medical instruments worth half a million dollars to help China fight the outbreak. The country’s Red Cross Society will also provide goods worth US$100,000.

The city of Huanggang in China’s Hubei province is only allowing one representative from each household to leave their home every other day to go outside and buy groceries.

The Huanggang government said the measure was to minimize the flow of people in the city amid the coronavirus outbreak, which started in nearby Wuhan.

Apart from the designated representative, the only other people allowed out of their homes are people seeking medical attention, or working in virus control, pharmacies and supermarkets.

Much of Hubei province remains under partial or full lockdown – this is where the outbreak began, and where most of the deaths and cases have occurred.

A Medical Assessment Center at the Frankfurt Airport in Germany on January 31, 2020.

Germany has confirmed its seventh case of Wuhan coronavirus in the southern state of Bavaria, the Bavarian Health Ministry said in a statement released late Friday.

The male patient is employed at the same workplace as five other confirmed cases, who all contracted the virus from a co-worker visiting from China.

Earlier Friday, the Bavarian Health Ministry confirmed the sixth patient is a child of a male employee at the same company.

The health ministry statement said employees at the company were tested on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. Of 128 results available, 127 tested negative for the coronavirus.

Evacuation from Wuhan: The German Foreign Ministry confirmed that a German military flight has taken off from Wuhan, China, bringing back German citizens.

Around 100 citizens will be repatriated and put under quarantine for two weeks in order to prevent the spread of the disease, said the ministry. The plane will arrive on Saturday in Frankfurt.

Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison in Canberra, Australia, on January 26, 2020.

Starting today, Australia will deny entry to all travelers coming from or having transited through mainland China, said Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison.

Exceptions: “Australian citizens, permanent residents and their immediate family, and aircrews who have been using appropriate protective equipment” will be allowed to enter Australia.

Morrison said all of these exceptional cases are required to be quarantined for 14 days after arriving. Face masks will be provided to passengers getting off flights from China.

He added that the government raised the travel advice warning to level four, the highest level – meaning, do not travel to mainland China. The raised warning level aims to address “the issue of the human-to-human transmission of the coronavirus,” Morrison said.

The number of confirmed coronavirus cases is nearing 12,000 as the epidemic continues to spread worldwide, sparking travel bans and outbreaks of ugly anti-Chinese xenophobia.

The number of confirmed cases in China grew by 2,102 on Friday, bringing the total to 11,791 nationwide. An additional 46 people died, pushing the death toll to 259.

The pronounced increase in cases and deaths show the virus is not slowing, even after over a week of much of full or partial lockdowns in the worst-hit areas and an extended public holiday.

With most of China due to return to work on Monday, the concern will be how far the virus will now spread, and whether the country’s economy can bear the type of further quarantines and travel restrictions that may be necessary to rein it in.

Chinese cities home to millions of people feel like ghost towns, with people staying home for fear of catching the virus.

“There’s 24 million people in Shanghai, and there’s nobody on the street. It’s kind of spooky,” said Jenna Davidson, a US college student in Shanghai.

She said her campus cafeterias closed, shops and restaurants closed.

The US sent a plane to evacuate around 200 citizens from Wuhan, the epicenter of the outbreak, on Wednesday. Jarred Evans, one of those evacuated citizens, told CNN what it was like in the city before he was flown out.

There are now 11,791 confirmed cases in China, and 259 dead, the majority in Hubei province, where Wuhan is the capital.

Take a look at China under lockdown:

Chinese Premier Li Keqiang at a trilateral meeting in Chengdu, China, on December 24, 2019.

Chinese Premier Li Keqiang, the country’s second highest-ranking politician, laid out emergency response measures to the coronavirus outbreak in a press release on Saturday.

Here are the highlights:

Transparency after censorship: The statement also emphasized the need for transparency – a rarity in China, where the country’s colossal censorship apparatus keeps tight control of the narrative.

The call for openness comes after local Hubei authorities initially tried to downplay the severity of the outbreak when it emerged in December. Police arrested “rumormongers,” and censors deleted any commentary that questioned the official line.

There’s still a lot we don’t know about the coronavirus, and scientists internationally are racing to gather data and develop a treatment.

Here’s what we can tell you so far:

Organizers of Asia’s largest art fair, Art Basel Hong Kong, are facing mounting pressure to postpone or cancel the March event as the coronavirus continues to spread.

The five-day fair attracted almost 90,000 visitors from over 70 countries last year. But now, a number of attending galleries are calling for its cancellation, citing health fears and commercial concerns.

The fair had already been facing calls to cancel due to the city’s ongoing pro-democracy protests, which have rocked the city since June. The coronavirus is just “the final nail in the coffin,” said exhibitor Jasdeep Sandhu.

Some context: Just yesterday, Hong Kong confirmed its 12th coronavirus case.

The city has closed some borders and restricted travel from mainland China, where many collectors and visitors are expected to arrive from. Rail services from across the border have been canceled, while flights from the mainland have been reduced by more than 50%.

Read more here.

Flights to many Chinese cities have been suspended due to the coronavirus outbreak.

The Wuhan coronavirus has prompted the Chinese government to ban all group tours and hotel-and-flight packages – and we’re seeing dramatic effects in dozens of destinations worldwide.

China is the world’s largest market for outbound travel, having skyrocketed from 4.5 million travelers in 2000 to 150 million in 2018.

The country is also the world’s largest spender, accounting for $277 billion or 16% of the world’s total $1.7 trillion international tourism spending, according to the UNWTO.

With the ban in effect, the absence of Chinese travelers will be felt most dramatically across the Asia-Pacific region, which depends heavily on Chinese tourism. Parts of Europe and the Americas are also feeling the pressure.

Bill Egerton, a 77-year-old owner of an Australian tour company, told CNN he had lost 15 tours for February – a huge loss.

Read more about the impact on tourism here.

A Qantas plane at Sydney Airport on October 31, 2019.

Australian airline Qantas will suspend its two direct routes to Beijing and Shanghai from February 9 to March 29, it said in a statement on Saturday.

The company said the decision followed entry restrictions imposed by Singapore and the US that “impact the movement of crew” and “pose significant logistical challenges.”

Its flight to and from the semi-autonomous city of Hong Kong will remain unchanged.

Global travel restrictions: On Friday, both Singapore and the United States announced that visitors who have traveled to China within the last 14 days will not be allowed to enter their countries.

US Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said the United States is “temporarily suspending the entry into the United States of foreign nationals who pose a risk of transmitting the 2019 novel coronavirus.”

The nation’s top infectious disease doctor says a study published Thursday night shows people can spread the Wuhan coronavirus before symptoms set in.

The study, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, examined four Germany business associates who became infected through asymptomatic transmission.

The chain of transmission: It began with a woman in Shanghai whose parents came to visit from Wuhan. They were healthy during their visit, but were later diagnosed as having the coronavirus.

Then, the woman flew from Shanghai to Germany, where she went to workshops and ate meals with German employees. She was healthy with no signs of the disease at that point.

Within eight days, four employees of that company were diagnosed with the coronavirus. Some employees had not attended workshops with the woman – but they spent time with someone who did.

The toll of the coronavirus is clearly visible across China and its territories as the outbreak continues to spread.

In densely-populated major cities like Beijing, streets that are normally bustling are now almost empty. Public transit like buses and subway cars have noticeably fewer people – especially for this time of year, after the Lunar New Year, a typically busy period.

People wearing face masks inside a subway train in Beijing on January 28, 2020.

In Hong Kong, shops are mostly closed, schools are suspended, and employees have been told to work from home.

Afraid of catching the virus, many have decided to barricade themselves at home. Pharmacies and stores have found themselves sold out of supplies, with long lines forming outside as residents stock up.

Hong Kong residents line up to buy face mask at a pharmacy on January 31, 2020.

That’s not to say the city is entirely deserted now. Some people are going on with daily life, buying groceries, walking around, playing Chinese chess in the park – just all wearing the now-ubiquitous face mask.

Men wear masks as they play Chinese chess in a Beijing park on January 31, 2020.

Officials from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) at the White House on January 31, 2020.

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s mandatory 14-day quarantine for nearly 200 Americans who returned from Wuhan, China, is the first such order in more than 50 years. 

195 Americans, many of them diplomats and their families, flew from Wuhan to California on Wednesday. They’ve been staying at March Air Reserve Base since then.

The last time the US imposed this kind of quarantine order was in the 1960s for smallpox evaluation, said Martin Cetron, director of the CDC’s Division of Global Migration and Quarantine.

He said most of the passengers were “exuberant and elated to be out of harm’s way” during their journey from Wuhan, and they understand the need for a longer quarantine. 

US cases: There are now seven confirmed cases of the coronavirus in the US: three in California, one in Washington, one in Arizona, and two in Illinois.

Airline staff at Haneda Airport on January 31, 2020 in Tokyo, Japan.

The Association of Flight Attendants, an American union representing 50,000 flight attendants at 20 airlines, is urging the US government to halt all flights to China until the coronavirus outbreak has been contained.

“The government must work with our airlines to discontinue all service, with consideration for evacuation of flight crew, and with consideration to service that facilitates efforts by public health officials to contain spread of the virus,” said AFA president Sara Nelson in a statement.

Read the rest of the statement:

World Health Organization director general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing on January 28, 2020.

As the Wuhan coronavirus continues to spread around China and the world, many are questioning how much the country’s colossal censorship apparatus played a role in withholding vital information about the epidemic until it was too late.

Government censorship: After the first cases emerged in December, Chinese authorities downplayed the severity of the virus, police went after “rumormongers,” and censors deleted anything that questioned the official line.

But as the crisis has worsened, it has become clear that the failure to take quick action likely undermined any chance of containing the virus.

People are angry: Censorship has lessened somewhat in the face of intense public anger and scrutiny, allowing Chinese media to swarm Wuhan and blow holes in parts of the official line.

In a commentary published by the country’s Supreme Court this week, a senior judge condemned Wuhan police for arresting “rumormongers” who, it has since emerged, were merely medical workers trying to warn people of the potential dangers of the new virus.

Read more here about the public pushback – and why it won’t last.

On his fifth day in the hospital, doctors saw signs of pneumonia in the coronavirus patient's lungs.

Doctors have shared new details about the first case of Wuhan coronavirus in the United States.

The first patient was a 35-year-old resident of Snohomish County, Washington, with no history of major health problems, said the scientific paper published Friday in the New England Journal of Medicine.

Return from Wuhan: The patient visited family in Wuhan, and flew back on January 15. He had not visited the seafood market linked to the outbreak, or have any known contacts with sick people during his visit.

Symptoms: The man started with mild, nonspecific symptoms, and sought medical attention on January 19 after coughing for four days. The very next day, doctors confirmed he had the novel coronavirus.

Throughout his illness, he experienced a range of symptoms including fever, cough, fatigue, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea and runny nose. On day nine of his illness, his chest X-ray showed signs of pneumonia.

Road to recovery: As of January 30, he no longer had a fever, and his symptoms were gone except for his cough, which was “decreasing in severity,” the doctors wrote. Officials are monitoring close contacts in the US but have not found evidence he transmitted the virus to anyone else.

Police officers stand outside the Gomez Ulla Military Hospital in Madrid, on Friday, January 31, after the arrival of the Spanish nationals evacuated from the Chinese city of Wuhan.

A person in La Gomera, one of Spain’s Canary Islands chain, has been diagnosed with Wuhan coronavirus, the country’s national health ministry announced Friday.

The patient was part of a group of five people who were in contact with a person infected with the novel virus while in Germany, the ministry said in a statement.

Twenty-one Spanish citizens who were evacuated from Wuhan on Friday were under quarantine at a hospital in Madrid. Health officials said they were not reporting symptoms of the virus.

The number of novel coronavirus cases in mainland China jumped by 2,102 on Friday, said the country’s National Health Commission on Saturday.

That makes the nationwide total 11,791 cases, including 259 deaths.

We’ve been seeing dramatic day-by-day jumps in numbers in recent weeks. From last Sunday to Monday, the number of cases confirmed in China had jumped by 65% – and again by more than 30% from Monday to Tuesday.

What this means: It doesn’t necessarily mean that the virus is spreading faster – the timing of cases confirmed could be impacted by a delay between patients being infected, noticing symptoms, seeking medical care, and labs confirming results.

It’s also dependent on the technology being used to test for coronavirus. Wuhan’s Communist Party chief said this week that more efficient testing methods meant they could now confirm many more cases than before.

An estimated 75,815 people could be infected with the coronavirus in Wuhan, China – far higher than reported numbers, said Hong Kong researchers in a study published Friday.

Using mathematical models, the authors estimated that the number of people affected in Wuhan ranges from 37,304 to 130,330.

The estimates could be much higher than the number of confirmed cases because “not everyone who is infected would require or seek medical attention,” said Gabriel Leung, one of the authors of the study.

It could also be higher because of a delay between when someone gets infected, when they show symptoms, and when a lab is able to confirm results.

Correction: A previous version of this post contained a map that misattributed the source of provincial coronavirus case totals. The data comes from each province’s health authority, not China’s National Health Commission.

Tourists wearing face masks in Istanbul on January 31, 2020.

The novel coronavirus outbreak began in Wuhan, China, in December 2019. Now, it has killed at least 259 people, all in China, and infected close to 12,000 globally. Here’s what is happening: