CORONAVIRUS | President Xi Jinping said China was facing a “grave situation” as the death toll from the coronavirus outbreak jumped to 42, overshadowing celebrations of the Lunar New Year that began yesterday.

China also announced further transport restrictions.

With more than 1,400 people infected worldwide, most of them in China, Hong Kong declared a virus emergency, scrapped celebrations and restricted links to mainland China.

Malaysia confirmed its first four cases yesterday, Australia confirmed four and France reported Europe’s first cases on Friday, as health authorities around the world scrambled to prevent a pandemic.

The United States is arranging a charter flight today to bring its citizens and diplomats back from Wuhan, the central Chinese city at the epicentre of the outbreak, the Wall Street Journal reported.

In Hong Kong, with five confirmed cases, the city’s leader Carrie Lam said flights and high-speed rail trips between the city and Wuhan will be halted. Schools in Hong Kong that are currently on Lunar New Year holidays will remain closed until Feb 17.

Xi held a politburo meeting yesterday on measures to fight the “accelerating” outbreak, state television reported.

As of 8pm local time (1200 GMT) on Saturday, the death toll in China had risen to 42, authorities reported. Some 1,372 people in China had been infected with the virus - traced to a seafood market in Wuhan that was illegally selling wildlife.

The virus has also been detected in Thailand, Vietnam, Singapore, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Nepal, and the United States.

In Hubei province, where Wuhan is located, officials appealed for masks and protective suits.

“We are steadily pushing forward the disease control and prevention ... But right now we are facing an extremely severe public health crisis,” Hu Yinghai, deputy director-general of the Civil Affairs Department, told a news briefing.

The newly identified coronavirus has created alarm because there are still many unknowns surrounding it, such as how dangerous it is and how easily it spreads between people. It can cause pneumonia, which has been deadly in some cases.

Ride-hailing giant Didi Chuxing said it was halting inter-city services to and from Beijing today, while the capital will also stop running inter-province shuttle buses.

State broadcaster CCTV, citing an announcement from China’s tourism industry association, said the country would halt all group tours, both at home and abroad, from tomorrow.

Wuhan said it would ban non-essential vehicles from its downtown starting today, further paralysing a city of 11 million that has been on virtual lockdown since Thursday, with nearly all flights cancelled and checkpoints blocking the main roads leading out of town.

Authorities have since imposed transport restrictions on nearly all of Hubei province, which has a population of 59 million.

Protective suits

Australia confirmed its first four cases in two different cities yesterday, and the country’s chief health official said he expected more cases as Australia is a popular destination for Chinese tourists.

State-run China Global Television Network reported yesterday that a doctor who had been treating patients in Wuhan, 62-year-old Liang Wudong, had died from the virus.

US coffee chain Starbucks said it was closing all its outlets in Hubei province for the week-long Lunar New Year holiday, following a similar move by McDonald’s in five Hubei cities.

Workers in white protective suits checked temperatures of passengers entering the subway at Beijing’s central railway station yesterday, while some train services in the eastern Yangtze River Delta region were suspended, the local railway operator said.

‘Global health threat’

There are fears transmission could accelerate as hundreds of millions of Chinese travel during the holiday, although many have cancelled their plans.

Airports around the world have stepped up screening of passengers from China, although some health officials and experts have questioned the effectiveness of such screenings.

In an illustration of how such efforts could miss cases, doctors at a Paris hospital said that two of the three Chinese nationals in France diagnosed with the virus had arrived in the country without showing symptoms.

The World Health Organisation this week stopped short of calling the outbreak a global health emergency.

A report by infectious disease specialists at Imperial College, London yesterday said that despite this, the epidemic “represents a clear and ongoing global health threat” adding: “It is uncertain at the current time whether it is possible to contain the continuing epidemic within China.”

While China has called for transparency in managing the crisis, after cover-up of the 2002/2003 Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome spread, officials in Wuhan have been criticised for their handling of the current outbreak.

In rare public dissent, a senior journalist at a Hubei newspaper run by the ruling Communist Party called on Friday for an “immediate” change of leadership in Wuhan on the Twitter-like Weibo. The post was later removed.

Hubei province, where authorities are rushing to build a 1,000-bed hospital in six days, announced yesterday there were 658 patients affected by the virus in treatment, 57 of whom were critically ill.

Shanghai Disneyland was closed from yesterday. Beijing’s Lama Temple, where people make offerings for the new year, has also closed, as have some other temples.

-Reuters

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