February 23 coronavirus news

Venice Carnival is being suspended in the face of the outbreak of novel coronavirus in northern Italy, the regional governor announced Sunday.

Public and private meetings are being banned through March 1, Luca Zaia declared, meaning the famous event will not take place.

Schools, universities and museums are also being closed in the Veneto region, Zaia announced.

“We ask for the cooperation of all citizens. It’s not an easy moment. But, with the data we have today, we can still hope to limit the contagion,” Zaia said. 

There have been 25 cases in the region, including two in Venice, he said.

A container crane stands idle at Shuwaikh port in Kuwait City, Kuwait, in 2009.

Kuwait is banning ships from Iran coming into the country’s Shuaiba, Doha and Shuwaikh ports amid fears of the novel coronavirus, Kuwait News Agency (KUNA) reported Sunday. 

“This is a precautionary measure taken to prevent the virus from entering Kuwait, and is part of the country’s plan to fight the virus,” Kuwait Port Authority Director General Sheikh Youssef Abdullah Sabah Al-Nasser Al-Sabah said in a statement, according to KUNA. 

On Sunday, Iran reported that 43 people have tested positive for coronavirus and eight have died. 

A person walks a dog on an empty street in Codogno, Italy, on February 22.

Schools and a wide range of public events across the northern Italian region of Lombardy will be closed starting Monday in response to the coronavirus outbreak there, regional authorities announced Sunday.

The closures also affect sports and religious events, museums and university classes, the authorities said in a press release.

Milan, the fashion capital of Italy and one of the country’s biggest cities, had already announced it would close its schools starting Monday for a week. The decision came from the office of Mayor Beppe Sala.

Italy’s top soccer league, Serie A, is cancelling at least three games scheduled to be played in Lombardy and the nearby Veneto region: Atalanta vs. Sassuolo, Hellas Verona vs. Cagliari, and Inter Milan vs. Sampdoria. 

And the Giorgio Armani fashion house is holding Sunday’s Women’s Fashion Show behind closed doors, with no spectators, it announced. The show is scheduled for the Armani theater in Milan.

The Laura Biagiotti fashion house is also closing its doors to spectators for its show Sunday at the Piccolo Teatro Studio in Milan.

The Lombardy region has at least 89 cases, according to the head of the country’s Civil Protection agency, Angelo Borrelli. 

The number of people in Israel instructed to self-quarantine over fears of coronavirus has swelled to more than 200, after a visiting South Korean tour group tested positive for the disease after leaving the country.

As of Sunday morning, 180 students and 19 teachers from three different schools were under instruction to remain at home, the Education Ministry said. The students and teachers had come into close contact with the South Korean tour group at different sites and national parks throughout Israel.

In addition, 12 Israeli border policemen from the Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron will remain under self-quarantine, a spokesman for the border police said in a statement. The South Korean tour group visited the holy site on February 13.

On Saturday, the Ministry of Health said 20 workers of Israel’s Natural Parks Authority who came into contact with the tour group have also been ordered to self-quarantine until Wednesday at the earliest.

That totals at least 231 people in Israel under self-quarantine. 

In addition, there are also Israeli citizens under self-quarantine who have returned from places such as China, Hong Kong, and Singapore, where a mandatory self-quarantine period of 14 days is required. There is no official tally of how many of these citizens there are.

Anyone instructed to self-quarantine by Israel’s Health Ministry is forbidden from visiting any public areas, including schools, hospitals, entertainment centers, shopping centers, and public transport.

Because of concern over the coronavirus and the number of people under self-quarantine in the country, Israel is planning to set up special isolated polling stations for the March 2 election. The Central Elections Committee is preparing for the possibility of approximately 20 such isolated polling stations for affected voters.

Some 132 people in Italy have been infected with coronavirus, the head of the country’s Civil Protection agency, Angelo Borrelli, announced at a Sunday press conference. 

Of those cases, 26 people are in intensive care, two have died and one has recovered, he said.

Italian authorities still have not tracked down the first carrier of coronavirus in the country, he added.

“We still cannot identify patient zero, so it’s difficult to forecast possible new cases,” Borrelli said.

Three Italian football matches have been suspended following measures “adopted by the government to contain the spread of the coronavirus,” Serie A announced in a press release.

The three suspended games – Inter Milan and Sampdoria, Atalanta and Sassuolo, and Hellas Verona and Cagliari – were scheduled to be played in the regions of Veneto and Lombardy.

A policeman and pedestrians wear masks to help guard against the Coronavirus in downtown Tehran on February 23.

Eight people in Iran have died after catching the novel coronavirus, and 43 have so far been infected, the country’s health ministry confirmed on Sunday.

Health ministry spokesman Kianush Jahanport told state media that 15 new cases were identified in the last 24 hours. 

The outbreak in Iran began in the holy city of Qom, according to state media. 

Iran’s government announced on Sunday that universities and schools in 14 provinces, including in the capital Tehran, will be closed for a week. 

Soccer matches in different leagues will continue but in empty stadiums, according to Iranian state news agency IRNA.  

Picture of the shuttered building in the Dongdaemun neighborhood of Seoul.

The South Korean religious group at the center of a dramatic spike in coronavirus cases in the country has rejected a storm of criticism over the outbreak.

Roughly half of the more than 600 cases in South Korea are associated with the controversial religious group, leading to 9,300 Shincheonji members being put into self-isolation.

Outside a shuttered building in Seoul that houses offices and places of worship for Shincheonji, a shopkeeper called the group “heretics” in an interview with CNN.

But Kim So-il, a project director at Shincheonji, defended the group, saying it was in “great difficulty” right now.

That was the view reflected by a Shincheonji spokesperson in a televised press conference Sunday, who said the religious group’s members are the “biggest victims’” of the coronavirus outbreak in South Korea.

“COVID-19 is a disease that originated in China and spread to South Korea,” the spokesperson said.

The Shincheonji is centered around the personality of its founder and chairman, Lee Man-hee. On a website believed to be the group’s official homepage, the group heavily suggests that Lee is the “Promised Pastor” mentioned in the Bible. The passage it highlights suggests that the Promised Pastor is the second coming of Jesus Christ.

Members of the group congregate in a way that puts them in close contact with one another for long periods of time.

Jung Eun-Kyeong, director of the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said at a press briefing on Friday: “(We are) seeing that there is a possibility that the characteristics of many people sitting close together in a very confined space and holding service for more than an hour … (could have led to) a few who were exposed infecting many (other) infectees.”

The group has said that it “deeply regrets” the outbreak which occurred in their branch in the southern city of Daegu.

Read more about the group here

Hong Kong health officials confirmed five additional cases of the novel coronavirus on Sunday, bringing the city-wide total to 74.

One of the newly discovered cases is a 68-year-old male who was evacuated from the Diamond Princess cruise ship earlier this week, Dr Chuang Shuk-Kwan from the Center for Health Protection said at a press conference.

As of February 23, 12 patients have successfully been treated and discharged from hospital. 

Hospital personnel in Codogno, Italy, carry new beds inside the hospital on Friday, February 21. The hospital is hosting some people who have been diagnosed with the novel coronavirus.

The number of coronavirus cases in Italy has surpassed 100, after 44 new cases were confirmed on Sunday, according to authorities.

Most of the cases are focused in the northern regions of Lombardy (which has 89 cases), Veneto, Emilia Romagna and Piedmont.

Health officials are expected to hold a press conference on Sunday to update the public with the total numbers for the country.

The winter vacation for South Korean kindergarten, elementary, middle and high schools has been extended for a week, the country’s education ministry said Sunday, after coronavirus cases there surged past 600.

Instead of March 2, schools will now open on March 9.

Travis Air Force Base

A federal judge has temporarily blocked the transfer of people infected with the coronavirus to a city in Southern California until a hearing set for this week.

Costa Mesa city filed legal action late Friday against the state of California and various federal agencies after it discovered they were planning to use Fairview Development Center to quarantine patients who’ve tested positive for the coronavirus.

It said the center is close to residential areas and not suitable to house the patients, citing a risk to public health.

“We learned late Thursday that patients could begin arriving as early as Sunday,” Costa Mesa Mayor Katrina Foley said in a statement. “Filing this injunction was the only way to halt the process to allow everyone in Costa Mesa and Orange County to understand the plans in place to protect the patients as well as our community and the region.”

Read the rest of the article here

South Korea’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced Sunday that 46 additional coronavirus cases have been confirmed, bringing the country’s total to 602.

Of the total cases, 309 or about 55% have links to the Shincheonji religious group in the city of Daegu, according to authorities.

Five people in the country who had coronavirus have died, with the most recent death being confirmed Sunday afternoon.

About 5,000 to 6,000 people are being tested for coronavirus every day, authorities said.

Another doctor in the Chinese city of Wuhan has died after being infected with coronavirus, according to the official WeChat account of Wuhan Xiehe Jiangbei Hospital, where the doctor worked in the gastroenterology department.

Xia Sisi, 29, was admitted to the hospital on January 19, and was then transferred to Zhongnan Hospital of Wuhan University as her conditioned worsened.

On Thursday, another doctor in Wuhan, 29-year-old Peng Yinhua, also died from the virus. There was national outrage earlier this month when doctor Li Wenliang, who had attempted to raise the alarm about the virus in the early weeks of the outbreak only to be reprimanded by police, died of the disease.

Chinese officials have said that more than 3,000 hospital staff have been infected with the virus.

Workers spray disinfectant at a market in Busan, South Korea on Sunday.

South Korea’s President Moon Jae-in said in a televised speech Sunday that he is raising the national alert to the highest possible level following the spike of coronavirus infections across the country.

South Korea has reported 556 coronavirus cases, 309 of them associated with the Shincheonji religious group in Daegu, and five deaths.

“We’re now at a watershed moment with the novel coronavirus and the next few days will be very critical,” Moon said in a televised address. “We need to identify the infected people as soon as possible and prevent the virus from spreading further.”

Medical workers at a coronavirus detection lab in Wuhan, China on February 22.

The novel coronavirus has continued to spread around the world, with concerns of growing infection clusters in South Korea, Singapore and Japan, even as the worst of the outbreak remains focused in mainland China.

Can outbreak be contained? “We are clearly at the brink” of a pandemic, Anthony Fauci, director of the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told CNN.

“Our fate is going to be determined by the ability of countries outside of China that have travel-related cases,” he said Saturday. “And now they’re starting to develop sustained transmission from person to person to person.”

“So when you get countries like Japan and South Korea that have these cases that are person to person to person without any real ability to point to where it came from, that’s the makings of a pandemic,” Fauci added.

A fifth person has died from coronavirus in South Korea, authorities confirmed Sunday.

The woman was already in a serious condition when she arrived at Kyungpook National University Hospital in Daegu, where she was diagnosed, according to authorities. She died on Sunday.

South Korea has reported 556 coronavirus cases, 309 of them associated with the Shincheonji religious group in Daegu.

Police in Daegu said Sunday that they had deployed about 600 officers to locate the 670 members of the Shincheonji religious group whose whereabouts are unknown. Officers were visiting their registered addresses and using telecommunications service providers’ location tracking information, police said.

According to the South Korean law on the prevention of infectious diseases, health authorities are able to seek help from police and telecommunication service providers are obliged to provide information when requested by the police.

South Korea is experiencing one of the worst outbreaks outside of mainland China, where the majority of cases and deaths have been confirmed. The latest death puts South Korea on par with Iran for the most number of coronavirus deaths outside mainland China.

A municipal information sign reads "Coronavirus, the ordinance with the requirements of the Ministry of Health is available on the municipal website" is pictured in the village of Casalpusterlengo, on February 22.

The Italian government has introduced strict emergency measures to contain the spread of coronavirus in the country as 79 people have tested positive, including two who have died.

Of those who tested positive, 54 are in the Lombardy region, 17 in Veneto, two in Emilia Romagna and one in Piemonte, according to authorities. In addition, two Chinese tourists have been hospitalized in Rome.

The emergency measures include a ban on all public events in ten municipalities, closure of public buildings, including museums, surveillance and quarantine of individuals who may have been exposed to the virus, as well as limited transport.

Five Chinese nationals returned to Hong Kong Sunday on a chartered plane, after weeks of being quarantined on the Diamond Princess cruise ship in Yokohama, Japan.

It was the third chartered government flight evacuating passengers to Hong Kong. The first two returned 188 passengers to Hong Kong, according to the city’s Security Bureau. Twenty additional people returned on their own.

Upon arrival, all passengers will be quarantined for two weeks at a housing estate in northeast Hong Kong, authorities said.

Chinese President Xi Jinping personally wrote to Bill Gates after the billionaire’s foundation committed $100 million in emergency funding to help China bolster epidemiological research, emergency intervention, and the research and development of drugs, vaccines, and diagnostics, according to state media.

Xi has faced criticism over his handling of the coronavirus crisis, after it was revealed last week that he knew about the virus spreading in the central Chinese city of Wuhan earlier than first thought. Officials in Wuhan had previously apologized for their poor handling of the early stages of the outbreak, which allowed infections to spread nationwide.

While Hong Kong hasn’t had anywhere near as many cases of the novel coronavirus as mainland China or South Korea, it has seen a minor outbreak and two deaths. This has led to panic buying and numerous precautions being put in place, as people remember the horror of the 2003 SARS pandemic.

Click here to watch how Hong Kong is coping with life in the time of the coronavirus

Members of Spring Airlines ground staff stand in front of the check-in counter at Haneda airport on January 31 in Tokyo, Japan.

The United States Centers for Disease Control (CDC) has upgraded its travel advisory for Japan to level 2 due to the ongoing coronavirus outbreak.

It advised travelers in Japan to “exercise enhanced cautions” in line with a level 2 alert, upgraded from a level 1 “watch” status.

The CDC has also issued a level 2 alert for South Korea, and a level 3 guidance for mainland China, which advises against “all non-essential travel.” That latter alert does not cover Hong Kong, Macao or Taiwan.

With more than 550 confirmed cases of novel coronavirus in South Korea, and four deaths, the county has one of the worst outbreaks of the disease outside of mainland China.

Here’s what we know about the virus in the East Asian country:

Daegu cases: According to South Korean health authorities, about 50% of confirmed cases in the country are linked to the Shincheonji Church of Jesus religious group. Infections are believed to have spread during mass services held by the group in the southern city of Daegu. Cases linked to the cluster have been reported in four cities.

South Korean health officials spray disinfectant in front of the Shincheonji Church of Jesus in the southeastern city of Daegu on February 21, 2020.

Cheongdo Daenam Hospital: The other major cluster of cases is linked to a hospital south of Daegu, in North Gyeongsang province. The KCDC said that all patients and staff at the hospital are being investigated.

At least two deaths have been confirmed at the hospital.

Military cases: Both the South Korean and United States militaries have a major presence in Daegu, and concerns are growing of a potential outbreak among forces stationed there. At least four South Korean soldiers have tested positive for the virus so far, and US forces have prohibited all but essential travel to the area.

Travel warnings: On Saturday, the US State Department issued a level 2 advisory, warning travelers to South Korea should “exercise increased caution.”

Princess Cruises, which operates the Diamond Princess cruise liner, has announced a search for a “best-in-class” cleaning and disinfection service, to get the ship operational again after a weeks-long quarantine in the Japanese port of Yokohama. 

Hundreds of people on board the ship were found to have contracted the coronavirus, the worst outbreak outside of mainland China. Disembarkation began this week after a 14-day quarantine, but some passengers who left have since tested positive for the virus causing concern that the quarantine may have failed. 

Cleaning of the 115,875-ton passenger vessel will not be an easy task. Princess Cruises said jobs that need doing include “the removal and proper disposal of all towels (bath, face, hand), bed linens, mattress pads, pillows, duvets, shower curtains, and mattresses,” as well as the disinfection of curtains and other soft furnishings, while the extensive ventilation system will need cleaning, along with public areas such the spa, gym and restaurants. 

While Princess Cruises is being public about the disinfection work, it may struggle to attract passengers back to the ship, which was headline news for weeks. The cruise industry as a whole is fearing a major slowdown over the outbreak. 

Medical workers in protective suits work at a coronavirus detection lab in Wuhan in central China's Hubei Province on Saturday, February 22.

lmost 100 people died of the novel coronavirus in mainland China Saturday, as the global death toll hit 2,461.

According to China’s National Health Commission (NHC), there were 97 new deaths reported in mainland China on Saturday, all but one of which were in Hubei, the province at the center of the outbreak. Of the total deaths, 2,442 have been in mainland China.

Deaths outside China: 19 people have died outside of mainland China. Iran has reported five deaths from the coronavirus, while South Korea has reported four and Japan has reported three deaths, while Hong Kong and Italy each reported two. Taiwan, the Philippines, and France have each reported one death.

Confirmed cases. There have been 1,782 confirmed cases of the virus outside of mainland China. On Saturday, confirmed cases in mainland China increased by 648 to reach a total of 76,936. Of those 648 new confirmed cases, 630 were in Hubei province.

The NHC added that a total of 22,888 patients have recovered and been discharged from hospital.

An outbreak of the novel coronavirus in South Korea has worsen with two more deaths and 123 more cases confirmed Sunday.

Four people have died of the virus in South Korea. The newest cases increase the total number of confirmed infections to 556, according to South Korea’s Center for Disease Control and Prevention (KCDC).

One of the deaths occurred on Saturday and the other on Sunday – there is an investigation ongoing into the relationship between the deaths and the disease. One of the deaths was a man in his 50s, who was being treated in hospital in North Gyeongsang province, where 92 other cases have been confirmed.

A medic is seen in a coronavirus treatment center in the South Korean capital of Seoul.

Of the 123 new cases, 93 are from the southern city of Daegu, where a major outbreak has been ongoing, centered around churches related to the Shincheonji religious group. At least 75 of the new cases were linked to the group.

A 57-year-old woman, who was recently evacuated from the Diamond Princess cruise ship, has tested positive for novel coronavirus in Australia, officials confirmed.

The Queensland woman had been a passenger on the ship, which was docked in the Japanese port of Yokohama for over two-weeks under quarantine.

There are now 22 confirmed cases of the virus in Australia.

Paul Kelly, deputy chief medical officer, said in a statement that the woman is being moved from the Manigurr-ma Village quarantine facility in Darwin to Queensland for treatment.

There has been concern that efforts to contain the outbreak to the Diamond Princess have failed, with multiple cases of the virus confirmed among passengers who have since disembarked and returned home.

Infected evacuees: As of February 22, seven passengers who were evacuated from the Diamond Princess have tested positive for the novel coronavirus in Australia.

Before the novel coronavirus outbreak hit Wuhan in December, the exact whereabouts – and even existence – of the central Chinese city had slipped from the general public’s awareness in the West.

But it wasn’t always that way.

Two generations ago, this city of 11 million people, on the junction of the Yangtze and Han Rivers, 600 miles upstream, in central China, was known through the West as a major industrial city.

It was somewhere many European powers had a consulate, a place where major Western and Japanese trading firms, and international textile and engineering companies, had factories and sales offices.

It was a regular overseas posting for customs officers, steamboat captains, traders and consuls. Wuhan was also a cradle of China’s revolution in 1911. A quarter of a century later, it stood defiantly as the beleaguered wartime capital of nationalist China.

Read more here

People wearing face mask walk at a downtown street in Hong Kong Friday, February 21.

Health officials in Hong Kong have confirmed an additional case of the novel coronavirus bringing the territory-wide total to 69 cases.

In a press release issued Sunday, the city’s Center for Health Protection said the latest case involved a 96-year-old woman with underlying illness.

The women developed a fever and cough on February 13 and tested positive for the novel coronavirus on February 22, the same day she was admitted to hospital. According to health authorities, the patient had no travel history during the incubation period.

As of February 22, out of the 69 confirmed cases, 11 patients have recovered from the novel coronavirus and been discharged from hospital.

Two people have died of the coronavirus in Hong Kong since the outbreak began.

Three more novel coronavirus have been confirmed in Singapore, bringing the city-wide total to 89 cases, according to health officials.

The Ministry of Health said in a press release that one of the new cases was a 32-year-old male Singapore citizen who had been evacuated from Wuhan on February 9, with a group of Singaporeans.

The other two new cases were a 30-year-old female Singapore citizen and a 41-year-old Singapore male permanent resident, according to the Ministry of Health. Both had no recent travel history to China.

As of February 22, out of the 89 confirmed cases in Singapore, 49 had fully recovered from the novel coronavirus and been discharged from hospital. Of the remaining 40 cases still in hospital, five were in critical condition.

Three weeks ago, Lisa Wang was fighting a high fever when she was turned away from an overflowing hospital in Wuhan, the central Chinese city mired in a deadly coronavirus crisis.

A chest scan showed her lungs were infected, but she couldn’t get treated for the novel coronavirus she likely had because there weren’t enough beds at the Wuhan Third Hospital, a doctor told her. Instead, she was given medication and instructed to self-quarantine at home.

But on Tuesday, despite having recovered from the illness and been given the all-clear, the 30-year-old lawyer said she was forced into a makeshift quarantine center at a technology park – putting her at risk of cross-infection with hundreds of other patients warehoused in the bare-bones facility.

Wang’s involuntary relocation to the center was part of escalating government efforts to contain the spread of the virus, which has claimed more than 2,200 lives and infected more than 76,000 people worldwide.

Under the measures, individuals deemed to be high risk – either those with signs of the virus, or those who have come into close contact with confirmed cases – are removed from the population and placed into hundreds of temporary isolation centers set up across the city.

Wang is among thousands caught in the web of restrictive measures now in place in Wuhan, the epicenter of the outbreak since the virus emerged in mid-December.

Read more here

The Hubei health authority reported that 96 more people died of the coronavirus in China’s Hubei province on Saturday, February 22, raising the death toll in the outbreak’s epicenter to 2,346.

Hubei authorities confirmed an additional 630 cases of the virus in Hubei on Saturday, including 32 cases in prison. The total number of cases in the epicenter of the outbreak is now 64,084.

There are 40,127 patients hospitalized in Hubei, including 1,845 who are in critical condition, according to the health authority, and 15,299 patients have been discharged.

The Hubei report brings the total number of deaths in mainland China to at least 2,441. The global death toll is at least 2,458, with 17 deaths outside of mainland China. Iran has reported five deaths from the coronavirus, while Japan has reported three deaths, and Hong Kong, Italy and South Korea reach reported two deaths. Taiwan, the Philippines, and France have each reported one death.

The global number of confirmed coronavirus cases now exceeds 78,572, with the vast majority of cases in mainland China.

China’s National Health Commission is expected to release numbers for all of China’s provinces later today.