China virus deaths rise to 80 as Hong Kong bans visitors from worst-hit province

 

Worshippers wear masks to prevent an outbreak of a new coronavirus as they make offerings of incense sticks during a Lunar New Year celebration at Che Kung Temple, in Hong Kong, China January 26, 2020. REUTERS/Tyrone Siu

 

SHANGHAI (Reuters) - The death toll from China's new coronavirus grew to 80 on Monday as residents of Hubei province, where the disease originated, were banned from entering Hong Kong amid global efforts to halt the rapid spread of the outbreak.

 

The number of deaths from the flu-like virus in Hubei province climbed from 56 to 76 overnight, health commission officials said, with four deaths elsewhere. The total number of confirmed cases in China had risen about 30% to 2,744.

 

U.S. S&P500 e-mini futures <ESc1> fell more than 1% in Asian trade on Monday on mounting worries the outbreak of the virus could severely disrupt the Chinese economy, an engine of global growth.

 

Kicking off the Asian trading day, New Zealand shares fell with travel and tourism-related stocks among the worst performers as the speed of the outbreak's spread raised alarm over its future impact on movement.

 

China's cabinet said it would extend the week-long Lunar New Year holiday by three days to Feb. 2 in a bid to slow the spread of the virus. The Hubei city of Wuhan, the epicentre of the outbreak, is already under virtual lockdown, with severe restrictions on movement in place in several other Chinese cities.

 

Beijing has called for transparency in managing the crisis, after public trust was eroded by a cover-up of the spread of SARS, a coronavirus that originated in China and killed nearly 800 people globally in 2002 and 2003.

 

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

 

The virus, believed to have originated in a seafood market in Wuhan that was illegally selling wildlife, has already spread to cities including Beijing and Shanghai.

 

HONG KONG BAN, GLOBAL SCREENING

The World Health Organisation (WHO) last week stopped short of calling the outbreak a global health emergency, but some health experts question whether China can contain the epidemic.

 

WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on Saturday he was on his way to Beijing to meet officials and health experts dealing with the coronavirus.

 

"My @WHO colleagues & I would like to understand the latest developments & strengthen our partnership with China in providing further protection against the outbreak," he said on Twitter.

 

Chinese-ruled Hong Kong has six confirmed cases and said it would ban entry from Monday to people who have visited Hubei province in the past 14 days. The ban does not apply to Hong Kong residents.

 

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

 

France, Italy, Japan and the United States all said they were working to evacuate citizens from Wuhan.

 

France said it expected to repatriate up to a few hundred of its 800 citizens living in the Wuhan area. Evacuees would have to spend 14 days in quarantine to avoid spreading the virus in France.

 

Hubei's governor, Wang Xiaodong, said at a news conference on Sunday he felt "agonised" and responsible for the outbreak. He described the situation as severe and said medical supplies were still tight.

 

News of the press conference sparked anger on Weibo <WB.O>, China's equivalent to Twitter <TWTR.N>, although social media platforms in China usually delete such sensitive content.

 

"He thinks one sentence of apology will be enough to solve the problem? Let's await the judgment of the people of the country," one user posted.

GRAPHIC: Spread of the new coronavirus -

 

(Reporting by Winni Zhou, Wu Huizhong and Josh Horwitz; Additional reporting by Hideyuki Sano in Tokyo; Editing by Stephen Coates and Kenneth Maxwell)

 

-- © Copyright Reuters 2020-01-27

Follow Thaivisa on LINE for breaking Thailand news and visa info

We'll know where this is going, so far as Thailand is concerned, in a couple of weeks (the incubation period). Hopefully, it's all a lot of fuss about nothing (he says putting on his rosy coloured "mai pen rai" spectacles), but we'll see.

 

On a more pessimistic note, I must say I don't like the direction this might be heading - first it's animal only transmission, then it's symptiomatic human transmission, then, and most importantly in terms of spread, it's asymptiomatic human transmission (SARS, for example, was symptiomatic only, so it was relatively easy to diagnose and isolate the contagious).

 

We only need that trajectory to be followed on virulence and we have a potentially catastrophic problem. Certainly, the Chinese reaction, and they're the ones with the most experience of this problem, would indicate something a little more serious than a really bad case of the flu, life threatening only to the frail and vulnerable.

 

Look at it this way, China is now closing cities, building new hospitals, banning travel, etc., etc.. Potentially, Thailand, with it's open arms policy for Chinese tourists, isn't that far behind in terms of the virus's development and spread.

 

Then, of course, we have to factor in medical services being overwhelmed. Many of the more serious cases survive with proper treatment, and I read somewhere that 25% of cases get serious. For example, as a Brit I could just about see the poor old NHS dealing effectively with hundreds of cases, but thousands, or even (worst case scenario) tens of thousands? And my experience of the Thai public health system is that it's very similar to the UK in many ways, long waiting times, etc. From what I've seen it's already working at full capacity, with little slack to take on a national health emergency.

 

Won't worry the Hi-Sos I suppose, or wealthy ex-pats, treatment is always available at a price.

 

As an afterthought, if you're one of the not so wealthy ex-pats relying on health insurance, better check your policy, I wouldn't automatically assume it covers pandemics. The same goes for tourists.