Here’s what you need to know:
A man from Wuhan has died in the Philippines.
A 44-year-old man in the Philippines has died of the coronavirus, health officials said on Sunday, making him the first known death outside China. The man, a resident of Wuhan, China, the epicenter of the virus, died on Saturday after developing what officials called “severe pneumonia.”
“This is the first known death of someone with 2019-nCoV outside of China,” the World Health Organization’s office in the Philippines said in a statement, using the technical shorthand for the coronavirus.
Philippines health officials said the man had arrived in the country on Jan. 21 with a 38-year-old woman who remains under observation.
“In his last few days, the patient was stable and showed signs of improvement; however, the condition of the patient deteriorated within his last 24 hours, resulting in his demise,” the health secretary, Francisco Duque III, said.
Hours before the death was announced, the Philippines said it was temporarily banning non-Filipino travelers arriving from mainland China, Hong Kong and Macau.
Mr. Duque said the Philippines was currently observing 23 people who had been isolated in hospitals with possible coronavirus symptoms.
“The new developments warrant a more diligent approach in containing the threats of the 2019-nCoV,” he said.
The death toll passed 300, with more than 14,000 infections confirmed.
Chinese officials on Sunday reported a surge in new cases.
◆ The death toll in China rose to at least 304.
◆ More than 2,000 new cases were also recorded in the country in the past 24 hours, raising the worldwide total to nearly 14,380, according to Chinese and World Health Organization data. The vast majority of the cases are inside China; about 100 cases have been confirmed in at least 23 other countries.
◆ All of China’s provinces and territories have now been touched by the outbreak.
◆ Countries and territories that have confirmed cases: Thailand, Japan, Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan, Australia, Malaysia, Macau, Russia, France, the United States, South Korea, Germany, the United Arab Emirates, Canada, Britain, Vietnam, Italy, India, the Philippines, Nepal, Cambodia, Sri Lanka, Finland, Sweden and Spain.
◆ Cases recorded in Thailand, Taiwan, Germany, Vietnam, Japan, France and the United States involved patients who had not been to China.
◆ China has asked the European Union for help in purchasing urgently needed medical supplies from its member countries, the China’s official Xinhua news agency said on Saturday.
China reports an outbreak of a different sort: bird flu.
China has announced that it is dealing with another disease outbreak, this one mostly affecting animals, but also potentially deadly among people.
The Ministry of Agriculture said late Saturday that a fresh outbreak of a lethal form of influenza had been found in poultry in the southern province of Hunan, and that officials had ordered the slaughter of 17,828 chickens.
China has previously dealt with several bird flu outbreaks — the most recent was in April 2019. In the new case, the H5N1 bird flu virus was found at a farm in the city of Shaoyang. The farm had 7,850 chickens, and more than half have died from the bird flu, the ministry said. It called the strain “highly pathogenic.”
Although bird flu poses more of a danger to poultry than humans — it’s not easily transmissible among people — the World Health Organization has called on countries to be on guard because the virus can mutate into a transmissible form and has the potential to cause a pandemic.
The latest outbreak comes as China grapples with an African swine fever epidemic that has infected tens of thousands of pigs. It could stoke more worries among its people about the country’s food supply.
The list of countries restricting visitors from China grows.
New Zealand on Sunday became the latest country to impose restrictions on travelers from mainland China, saying it would deny entry to visitors departing from or transiting through the mainland for two weeks starting on Monday.
Citizens and residents will be allowed entry to New Zealand, but will be required to quarantine themselves for 14 days, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said.
“Ultimately, this is a public health decision,” she said, adding that the restrictions were precautionary measures to keep the country virus-free and to contain the worldwide outbreak.
The government will also send a charter flight with an Air New Zealand crew to repatriate up to 300 citizens in Wuhan.
The Philippines, the United States and Australia have also expanded travel restrictions, temporarily banning noncitizens who have recently traveled to China.
South Korea and Japan are barring noncitizens who had traveled recently to Hubei, the province at the center of the outbreak. Taiwan is denying entry to Chinese nationals from Guangdong, a southern coastal province that has also been battered by the virus, or travelers who have recently visited the area.
Vietnam recently barred almost all flights to and from mainland China, Hong Kong and Macau until May 1, according to the United States Federal Aviation Administration. But Vietnam then partly eased its ban, allowing flights from Hong Kong and Macau to continue, while keeping the prohibitions in place for mainland China, aviation authorities said.
Hong Kong medical workers threaten to strike Monday.
As many as 9,000 medical workers in Hong Kong have pledged to strike this week, a threat that alarms the territory’s officials as they are struggling to contain the coronavirus outbreak.
The workers are demanding that Hong Kong close all border checkpoints to visitors from mainland China, saying they represent a threat to health care workers in the city. They are planning to paralyze nonemergency and then emergency services at hospitals, a union formed during the city’s anti-government protest movement said.
“We believe such actions are our last resort,” the Hospital Authority Employees Alliance wrote in a statement Saturday night.
Under the plan, nonessential hospital staff members who belong to the union would not go to work on Monday. If the government failed to close the border and heed their other demands by 9 p.m., union members handling emergency services would also strike, the union said.
Matthew Cheung, Hong Kong’s No. 2 official, appealed to medical workers to reconsider, comparing them to guardians of the public.
“At this critical moment, I believe the general public would count on medical personnel to fight against the epidemic together, in the spirit of professionalism,” he wrote in a blog post Sunday.
Hong Kong confirmed its 14th coronavirus case late Saturday. The patient, an 80-year-old man, had traveled for a few hours to mainland China in early January, and later spent several days in Japan.
In arguing against the job action, government officials say that the number of visitors from the mainland and other countries has decreased significantly after they closed several border points and rail stations and cut flight arrivals by half.
But several border points remain open, and many medical workers fear being overwhelmed by a flood of visitors seeking treatment in Hong Kong’s well-regarded health care system. They have also voiced frustrations about patients from mainland China hiding their travel and medical history, potentially endangering other patients.
Reporting was contributed by Austin Ramzy, Jason Gutierrez, Tiffany May and Sui-Lee Wee.
2020-02-02 09:22:00Z
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