● Infections have been confirmed in France, South Korea, Japan, Nepal, Thailand, Singapore, Vietnam, Taiwan, Australia and the United States. We’re mapping the spread here .
● Travel bans were extended in central China to put tens of millions of people effectively on local lockdowns. In Wuhan, where the virus was first detected, workers are racing to build a 1, 11 – bed hospital to treat victims of the disease.
● Authorities around China, including in the capital, Beijing, have canceled the temple fairs and festivals that accompany the Spring Festival to avoid having large public gatherings where the airborne virus could spread.
TOKYO – A Chinese doctor who had been on the front line of efforts to treat the outbreak of coronavirus died on Saturday, state media reported, as the death toll rose to and the disease continued to spread its wings around China and around Asia.
As China kicked off its traditional New Year celebrations on Saturday, a time when people traditionally travel home to spend time with their families, China has put 42 million people on lockdown, with a travel ban covering cities in the central Hubei province .
In Wuhan, the source and center of the outbreak, the streets were decorated with red lanterns but largely deserted on New Year’s Eve – usually a night for banquets, dragon dances and fireworks, state broadcaster CCTV reported. The few people who ventured out wore face masks and consciously stayed away from each other,
Across the country, Chinese authorities have canceled the temple fairs and festivals that normally accompany the nation’s biggest holiday, while the Forbidden City in Beijing, the most popular sections of the Great Wall and Shanghai Disneyland are all closed to visitors.
Starbucks announced the temporarily closure of its cafes around Wuhan, “in order to protect the health and safety of our customers, partners and their families,” while McDonalds closed five restaurants around Hubei.
But the shutdowns and lockdowns are unlikely to prevent the disease continuing to spread around China and the world.
China has reported 1, 404 confirmed cases of the virus, with the youngest a two-year-old girl in Guangxi province, and another 8, People under observati on. But experts say the actual number of infections is likely to be much higher.
Three cases have now been confirmed in France, two in the United States and one in Australia, all in patients who had recently traveled to China. There have also been cases in Japan, Nepal, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand and Vietnam.
But the death of – year-old doctor Liang Wudong on Saturday morning marked another deadly milestone for the disease.
Liang had retired last March as director of the otolaryngology department at Hubei Integrated Traditional and Western Medicine Hospital, staff and state media said, but was called back to work and was among the first wave of medical personnel to help combat the disease.
He fell ill with suspected coronavirus on Jan. 21 before being transferred to another hospital in the city as a patient and then dying at 7 am on Saturday, state media reported. The official Beijing Daily said he had a history of atrial fibrillation, a type of abnormal heart rhythm or arrhythmia.
“Health worker infections are an ominous finding in any emerging infection, ”David Heymann of the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine wrote in a comment i n the Lancet medical journal, noting that front line health workers became infected early in the SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) outbreak in 2003 – , which “amplified transmission to patients in Hospitals where outbreaks were occurring. ”
Wuhan is racing against time to build a pop-up hospital to house up to 1, infected patients in the city’s western outskirts. The new Huoshenshan (literally “Fire God Hill”) facility, covering an area of , square meters and roughly the size of seven soccer fields combined, is scheduled to be finished on Feb. 1 and come into use on Feb. 3, the city’s Urban Construction Bureau told local newspapers.
Chinese news magazine Caixin . html? from=timeline “target=” _ self “type=” [object Object] “> showed images of medical staff in Wuhan Union Hospital working in full protective suits, and said they were working around the clock on New Year’s Eve on Friday.
“Everyone else in China is having dinner and watching the Spring Festival TV gala, not knowing that my co-workers have been working another eight hours, without eating, drinking, or going to the bathroom, ”a Wuhan Union Hospital doctor who only identified himself as“ Mr. Do ”posted on the weibo social media service on Friday evening.
“ Some have been working in adult diapers, because we know that the protective suit we are wearing could be the last one we have, and we can’t afford to waste anything. ”
Mr. Do was not able to watch, but the estimated 1.1 billion people who viewed CCTV’s annual Spring Festival Gala on Friday evening saw a seven-minute tribute to the medical workers fighting the outbreak. CCTV said it was the first time they had included an “unrehearsed” segment in the live show, which lasts for more than four hours until after midnight.
“Please believe in China, that everything is going to get better,” one of the six news anchors said. “With the most transparent public information, the most dedicated protection and preparations, the most scientific prevention and treatment, and the most powerful and reasonable guarantee, we have confidence to advance on the battlefield against the epidemic, and we will definitely win.”
But whether China has learned the lesson of previous epidemics and reacted quickly and transparently enough to the latest outbreak remains open to question.
China’s State Council announced on Friday that it will be collecting information on local government departments that have failed or shirked responsibility in their response to the outbreak, including through “delays, concealment and underreporting of the epidemic.”
Research conducted by Chinese doctors published in the Lancet found the disease was a new form of coronavirus, which is closest to the SARS-related coronaviruses found in Chinese horseshoe b ats. The research also confirmed person-to-person transmission of the disease and established the likely source as a wet market in Wuhan.
In an accompanying comment , experts called the virus“ of global health concern, ”adding“ we need to be wary of the current outbreak turning into a sustained epidemic or even a pandemic. ”
On Wednesday, the head of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, Gao Fu, said children and young people are “not susceptible” to the new coronavirus, with most confirmed cases in the elderly or people with chronic health issues or damaged immune systems.
But the infections of a 2-year-old girl in Guangxi, an – year-old in Beijing, and Thursday’s death of a 50 – year-old man in Wuhan have contradicted Gao’s claim and raised concerns about the potential impact of the virus. The man in Wuhan had no chronic diseases or other existing health conditions, and had been treated with anti-viral medication and antibiotics since he was admitted to a hospital on Jan. 9.
Research jointly undertaken by Lancaster University, the University of Florida and the University of Glasgow found the number of cases appear to be growing much more rapidly than in the SARS or MERS (Middle East respiratory syndrome) outbreaks, “suggesting that containment or control of this pathogen may be substantially more difficult.”
The research, which has not yet been peer-reviewed, estimated that only one-in – 22 of infections in Wuhan have so far been identified and argued that travel restrictions from and to the city are unlikely to be effective in halting transmission across China. The report predicted that the actual number of infected people could rise from around , people on Jan. to , by. 4.
Twenty-two provinces and municipalities around China, including Beijing, Shanghai, Guangdong and Xinjiang, with a combined population of 1.2 billion people, have announced the highest level of emergency response to try to control the spread of the virus.
The Level One protocol allows local governments to mobilize personnel, materials and means of transportation for the emergency response, temporarily requisition housing, enforce regional blockades, suspend mass activities, close businesses, factories and schools, quarantine patients, fix prices and punish rumormongers, speculators and manufacturers of fake products.
In the United States, at least 60 people are under observation for the illness in states, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, after two patients, a man in his s from Snohomish County, Wash., and a woman who lives in Chicago, were both confirmed as infected, on Tuesday and Friday respectively. Authorities are monitoring 60 of the man’s contacts for signs of infection.
Although the outbreak is a “very serious public-health threat, the immediate risk to the US public is low at this time, ”Nancy Messonnier, director of the CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, told reporters Friday.
Lyric Li and Wang Yuan in Beijing contributed to this report.
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