More than 24,000 coronavirus cases have been confirmed worldwide as of Wednesday, with the death toll rising to nearly 500.
Health officials in Japan have quarantined 3,700 people aboard a cruise ship docked in Yokohama after 10 passengers aboard the vessel tested positive for the deadly virus, which originated in Wuhan, China, according to Reuters. A passenger from Hong Kong who has been diagnosed with the coronavirus sailed on the ship, the Diamond Princess, last month.
In recent days, patients in the Philippines and Hong Kong have succumbed to the virus, making them the first cases of deaths outside mainland China. On Saturday, a 44-year-old man died in the Philippines, and on Tuesday, a 39-year-old man who was diagnosed passed away in Hong Kong. Authorities in Hong Kong, where 17 cases have been confirmed, warned of a risk of an outbreak in the city.
Chinese state broadcaster said Tuesday that the second hospital in Wuhan, the epicenter of the outbreak, is nearing completion and will be ready to admit patients Thursday. A rush-built hospital with 1,000 beds was completed earlier in the week. Both hospitals were constructed in a matter of days to treat coronavirus patients, an attempt by authorities to contain the deadly outbreak.
The city is also planning to convert 11 venues, including exhibition centers and gymnasiums, into makeshift hospitals, which state media says could house 10,000 beds to accommodate the growing number of patients.
More and more Chinese cities are being placed under varying degrees of lockdown—two more cities in Zhejiang, the province with the second highest number of coronavirus cases after Hubei, have implemented policies to restrict the movement of its residents. The cities of Hangzhou and Taizhou, which together have a population of more than 15 million, announced the closure of highways and other transportation shutdowns, according to the social media accounts of local governments.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirmed the second case of the disease transmitting from person-to-person within the U.S. on Monday. The first American patient diagnosed with the new coronavirus was also discharged from hospital.
A patient in California, who had not recently traveled to China, tested positive for the virus. The patient is married to a person who had previously traveled to China and tested positive for the respiratory illness, according to the California Department of Public Health.
On Monday, hospital officials at the Providence Regional Medical Center in Everett, Washington, said the 35-year-old man who was the first to test positive for the new coronavirus in the U.S. has left the facility, the Associated Press reported. The unidentified man is recovering and looking forward to life returning to normal, he told the AP.
There are 17 confirmed cases of the coronavirus in Hong Kong, which was hard-hit by the 2002-2003 outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS). More than one-third of the nearly 800 deaths from SARS worldwide were in Hong Kong and the semi-autonomous Chinese territory had more than 1,700 of the 8,000 confirmed cases of the virus.
Large swaths of the public in Hong Kong are calling for a complete closure of the border with China. On Monday, the Hong Kong government announced the closure of a majority of entry points, but mainland Chinese visitors can still come into the city via a cross-border bridge and a port in a northwestern part of the territory. The airport also remains open, though the number of flights from China have been halved. Thousands of medical workers began a strike Monday to pressure the government to shut the land border between the city and Guangdong province, where almost 800 have been diagnosed with the coronavirus.
On Tuesday, the South China Morning Post reported that the disease control authority of Guangdong province is now trying to track down passengers who were aboard a cruise ship that carried several confirmed cases of coronavirus. The ship carried about 4,000 passengers between Guangzhou and Vietnam from Jan. 19 – 24.
China completes hospital in 10 days
China has completed a hospital in 10 days that it rushed to build to handle the surge of coronavirus patients, according to state media.
Huoshenshan Hospital is located in the central Chinese city of Wuhan, which is the epicenter of the outbreak of the novel coronavirus. It has a capacity of 1,000 beds and is staffed by medical workers from the country’s military. A video of the brand new facilities shows one of the rooms, which is equipped with two single beds, a bathroom, an electric water heater and a ventilation system.
A project on this scale “usually takes at least two years,” a project manager told Xinhua, but the exponential increase in the number of coronavirus cases in the country forced construction crews to work day and night to build the hospital at lightning speed. Chinese state media live-streamed the around-the-clock construction progress online, drawing words of encouragement from netizens.
Another medical facility, Leishenshan Hospital, is also being built in Wuhan. It will be ready to take patients on Thursday, according to state media CGTN.
Chinese officials acknowledged previously “shortcomings and difficulties” in their response to the outbreak, explaining that the government “urgently” needed medical supplies. By Sunday evening, more than 8,000 medical staff from medical teams across China were responding to the virus in Hubei province, according to Chinese state media.
By Thursday morning, more than 900 tons of medical and living supplies, including masks, protective suits and disinfectants, had been transported by road and air to Hubei Province, according to state media. As residents struggle to obtain masks, the Chinese city of Xiamen has decided to sell masks through a lottery, Chinese state media reports. (Health experts say that wearing face masks is probably effective in Wuhan — the epicenter of the crisis — but not in countries with a low risk of community spread, like the U.S.)
American response
Those entering the U.S. within 12 days of having been in Hubei or the rest of mainland China will be directed to one of 11 U.S. airports for an additional health assessment, according to the CDC. They include Los Angeles International Airport, San Francisco International Airport John F. Kennedy International Airport, Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, Honolulu International Airport, Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport, Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, Washington Dulles International Airport, Newark Liberty International Airport, Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport and Detroit Metropolitan Airport.
Americans traveling back to the U.S. from Hubei province 14 days before returning to the country will be subject to up to 14 days of a mandatory quarantine, Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar told reporters at a White House press briefing. Any American citizens who were in mainland China 14 days before returning to the U.S. will have to undergo a “self-imposed” quarantine for 14 days.
CDC is still working with state and local health departments to confirm where those quarantined will be housed; accommodations in hotels and military bases are under consideration, according to Dr. Nancy Messonnier, director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases.
Messonnier says it is likely that some returning travelers will be infected with the virus. “This strategy is not meant to catch every single traveler returning from china with novel coronavirus,” she said. “Given the nature of this virus and how it’s spreading that would be impossible but working together we can catch the majority of them and the goal here is to slow the entry of this virus into the U.S.”
Following travel alerts from the U.S. Department of State and news of human-to-human coronavirus spread in the U.S., the CDC had announced that it will quarantine 195 passengers who were repatriated back into the U.S. from the disease’s epicenter in Wuhan, China.
The passengers were evacuated from Wuhan and taken by plane to March Air Reserve Base in California. But around 1,000 Americans still remained in the city, and many said they felt abandoned by the U.S. government.
The U.S. State Department plans to bring more American citizens back from Wuhan and additional planes are expected to arrive this week, Messonnier said. “Over the weekend, the CDC sent four additional teams to specific department of defense locations where those planes will arrive,” Messonnier said. “These passengers will be under federal quarantine that will last 14 days from when the planes left Wuhan.”
The CDC announced Friday that all of those individuals who were brought to March Air reserve Base must stay there for 14 days, in an effort to contain the spread of the novel coronavirus within the U.S. Messonnier called the rare step a necessary response to “an unprecedented public-health threat.”
The State Department has encouraged Americans in China to consider leaving; it is not clear how the CDC will handle future flights returning from China. “The Department of State has requested that all non-essential U.S. government personnel defer travel to China in light of the novel coronavirus,” the Level 4 Travel Advisory said.
The State Department alert on Thursday, which puts China in the same travel category as Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and North Korea, acknowledged the WHO’s declaration earlier in the day that the Wuhan coronavirus outbreak was a global public health emergency.
WHO declares global health emergency
The WHO reconvened an emergency committee and declared a global health emergency Thursday about a week after saying it was “too early to do so.”
The WHO’s Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said at a press conference that the decision was “not a vote of no confidence in China,” which he praised for a swift, transparent and effective response to the “unprecedented outbreak.”
“The main reason for this declaration is not because of what is happening in China but because of what is happening in other countries,” Tedros said. “Our greatest concern is the potential for the virus to spread to countries with weaker health systems, which are ill prepared to deal with it.”
Tedros said the WHO opposes “any restrictions on travel and trade and other measures against China.”
The organization highlighted concerns about eight cases of human-to-human transmission in four countries — Germany, Vietnam Japan and the U.S., as well as the “rapid acceleration” of confirmed cases of the disease.
The WHO said it has asked member states to share standardized data with the organization on a daily basis so the organization can work towards building a “comprehensive global database” to track the disease’s evolution.
International cases and response
At least 153 patients have tested positive for the illness across 23 countries, according to the WHO. The majority of cases outside China are associated with travel to the mainland, and of those, the most involve visiting Wuhan, the agency says.
A 44-year-old man died in the Philippines on Saturday, the country’s Department of Health confirmed, marking the first person to succumb to the virus outside of China. The man, a resident of Wuhan, China, had arrived in the Philippines on Jan. 21 with a 38-year-old woman, who was also infected.
A 39-year-old man in Hong Kong died on Tuesday, making him the second death outside of mainland China. The patient reportedly had an underlying illness.
Hong Kong’s neighbor, the gambling hub of Macau, confirmed its 10th case of the virus Tuesday. Macau announced the same day that it would be shutting its casinos for two weeks. (The city’s casinos are overwhelmingly reliant on mainland Chinese tourists.)
Russia and the UK confirmed cases of coronavirus on Friday. In the UK, two people who are members of the same family have been infected, according to the National Health Service.
“We have been preparing for UK cases of novel coronavirus and we have robust infection control measures in place to respond immediately,” said Chief Medical Officer Chris Whitty in a public statement. “We are continuing to work closely with the World Health Organization and the international community as the outbreak in China develops to ensure we are ready for all eventualities.”
Russia also has confirmed two cases, according to Russia Today, citing Deputy Prime Minister Tatiana Golikivoa.
Sweden confirmed its first case of new coronavirus on Friday — a woman who recently visited Wuhan, according to Reuters. Spain also confirmed its first case of the virus on Friday, a German who had contact with patients who tested positive for the disease in Germany, Reuters reported.
The Philippines, Italy and India confirmed their first cases of the deadly virus on Thursday. In India, a student from the southern state of Kerala who attends a university in Wuhan tested positive for the virus, while in the Philippines, a 38-year-old woman from Wuhan was diagnosed despite being reportedly asymptomatic.
There are also at least 20 confirmed cases in Japan, 19 in Thailand, 18 in Singapore, 17 in Hong Kong, 16 in South Korea and 12 in Australia, according to Johns Hopkins University’s virus tracker. Governments and health officials in Nepal, Canada,Cambodia, Vietnam, Malaysia,Sri Lanka, UAE, France, the UK, Italy, Russia, Sweden, Spain and Germany have also reported patients testing positive for the virus.
Several countries have tightened their borders to restrict the flow of mainland Chinese visitors. Hong Kong announced that it would deny entry to individual travelers and close a high-speed rail that connects the city to Southern China. The move dramatically expanded a ban that had previously applied only to visitors from Hubei province. The semi-autonomous city will also sharply reduce cross-border transit, shutting down rail and ferry service to China, halving flights and decreasing tour buses. Several border checkpoints will also close in what Hong Kong’s leader Carrie Lame termed a “partial shutdown” during a livestreamed press conference. The measures went into effect on Jan. 30.
Singapore said Friday it is banning visitors with recent travel history to mainland China.
Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin said Thursday that Russia would be closing its land border with China from Friday at least until March 1, the Associated Press reported.
Mongolia’s official news agency has said the country closed border crossings with China on Monday, according to the Associated Press.
7,000 people were stuck on a cruise ship in Italy in a port near Rome as a couple was being tested for the virus, according to CNN.
Singapore has banned the entry and transfer of travelers holding passports issued by China’s Hubei Province from Wednesday onwards.
Chinese authorities have said they will suspend tour groups and travel packages.
Multiple countries are also warning against unnecessary travel to China, and some have already started evacuating their citizens from Wuhan.
A group of 21 Spanish citizens were evacuated and flown from Wuhan and landed in Madrid on Friday, according to Spanish media.
Two government-chartered planes carrying more than 300 Japanese citizens from Wuhan arrived on Wednesday and Thursday. At least three Japanese citizens on the flight tested positive for the new coronavirus, according to local media.
More than 80 British evacuees from Wuhan arrived on Friday, according to the BBC.
Pakistan has chosen not to evacuate Pakistanis in China after learning that four Pakistani students in China tested positive for the virus. State health officials have said they are “monitoring the situation around the clock.”
The European Commission says it has supported the repatriation of 447 E.U. citizens from Wuhan.
China travel restricted
Chinese officials have shut down travel in and out of Wuhan — home to 11 million people — and enacted similar, strict transportation restrictions in a number of other cities. Wuhan has suspended immigration administration services, local authorities said Monday, according to Chinese state media.
People in China have started going back to work after an extended Lunar New Year holiday ended, according to the South China Morning Post.
China’s Hubei Province has also suspended services to apply for passports and exit-entry permits.
The head of the health commission of the Chinese city of Huanggang was sacked Thursday night, the South China Morning Post reported.
Videos appearing to originate from Wuhan show residents chanting from their homes, “Wuhan, stay strong” as cases across the country continued to increase.
Apple said Saturday it would close stores, corporate offices and contact centers in China “out of an abundance of caution,” the New York Times reported.
Royal Caribbean also announced restrictions, including the cancelation of 8 cruises out of China due to the outbreak according to the Associated Press. The cruise-line announced Monday that it would also prohibit any guest or crew member, regardless of nationality, to board a ship if they traveled through mainland China or Hong Kong less than 15 days prior. Royal Caribbean CEO Richard Fain said more cancelations are likely to take place in the future, according to the AP.
High school students have turned to online classes to prepare for exams.
Wuhan’s mayor acknowledged that information was not disclosed quickly enough at the virus’ outset, and said he is willing to resign if it would help contain the outbreak.
Authorities have also banned all forms of wildlife trade and implemented strict regulations on activities related to wild animals. The virus was first detected as a form of viral pneumonia centered on a seafood market in Wuhan on Dec. 12. Many of the first reported cases were people who worked at the market, which also sold wild animal meat. Officials closed down the market.
The city of Beijing confirmed that a 9-month-old tested positive for the disease.
Japanese officials reported the country’s 20th case of the virus and said that Japan would ban foreign nationals who have been to Hubei province within two weeks before their arrival. Those carrying Chinese passports issued in Hubei are also banned from entering the country, although special exceptions may be made, government officials said, according to Japan Times.
Australia will ban travelers who have visited or transited through mainland China from Saturday onwards for the next two weeks. The restrictions will not apply to Australian citizens, permanent residents and members of their immediate family, although these groups will be asked to isolate themselves for two weeks from when they departed China, Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison said on Saturday, according to the Sydney Morning Herald.
Additionally, Singapore has banned all travelers arriving from mainland China who had been there in the past 14 days from entry and transit by Sunday morning. The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration says that Vietnam has suspended almost all flights from and to mainland China, Hong Kong and Macau until May 1, according to the New York Times.
As the deadly virus spreads, a growing number of airlines including British Airways, Air France, Delta and Lufthansa are suspending all flights to China. Many have cut down the number of flights, and some have stopped flying to major cities.
American Airlines announced last Friday it would also suspend all flights to China, just a day after a union representing 15,000 American Airlines pilots sued the company to pressure the carrier to halt flights. The Allied Pilots Association cited “serious, and in many ways still unknown, health threats posed by the coronavirus,” adding that the risk posed to staff and passengers is “unacceptable.”
As several countries are evacuating their citizens from Wuhan, China organized three flights to bring home more than 300 Hubei residents from abroad, according to Chinese state media.
Although the vast majority of cases have occurred in Hubei province, the disease has also spread all over the world, including the U.S., where 11 cases have been confirmed by the CDC.
Experts are skeptical that official numbers capture the full extent of the outbreak. Researchers in Hong Kong have warned that the actual number of people infected in Wuhan could be more than 30 times higher than the official tally. It’s unclear how long the outbreak will last and how bad it may get.
Experts say symptoms can be very difficult to detect and that many of those who died from the disease had underlying health conditions that involved weakened immune systems, like hypertension, diabetes or cardiovascular disease. They note that there is still a lot to be learned about the virus’ origins, clinical features and severity. Chinese health officials have said that the virus can be transmitted by touch, that young children can be infected and that the disease’s incubation period is usually between three to seven days.
CDC confirms second human-to-human transmission in the U.S.
The CDC confirmed an eleventh case of the new coronavirus and the second case of human-to-human transmission in the U.S. on Monday.
Dr. Nancy Messonnier, director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, maintained that the risk to the American public continued to be low but that the CDC expects to find additional cases in the U.S.
The CDC has now confirmed 11 cases of the coronavirus infection across Arizona, Massachusetts, California, Washington state and Illinois.
The newest confirmations include one patient in Massachusetts and another four in California. One patient in California, who had not recently traveled to China, is married to a person who tested positive for the virus and had previously traveled to China, according to the California Department of Public Health.
On Thursday, the CDC announced the first case of the novel coronavirus transferring from person-to-person within the U.S. — a Chicago resident in his 60s who had not traveled to China recently. The patient is married to an Illinois woman whom the CDC previously confirmed as testing positive for the virus.
The man has an underlying medical condition but public health officials would not elaborate on what he suffered from.
The spectrum of illness in the U.S. ranges from some “pretty mild” cases and others that are “more severely ill” at least at some point. “Some patients have had oxygen requirements,” Messonnier said.
The agency said as of Monday morning that 260 individuals across 36 states were considered to be “persons under investigation” of which more than 150 had so far tested negative for the disease. The status of another 82 cases is currently pending.