New Coronavirus News from 29 Jan 2020 a

Coronavirus: Mystery of the Wuhan Institute near virus outbreak [NEWS.com.au, 29 Jan 2020]

by Jamie Seidel

Just 30 kilometres from where the coronavirus originated, there is a mystery lab one expert claims is part of a secret biological weapons program.

It may just be a coincidence.

But the deadly coronavirus outbreak now sweeping the world began 30km from China’s most advanced viral research laboratories – the Wuhan Institute.

The Washington Times quoted former Israeli intelligence officer Dany Shoham as claiming The Wuhan Institute of Virology is part of a secret biological weapons program.

“Certain laboratories in the institute have probably been engaged, in terms of research and development, in Chinese (biological weapons), at least collaterally, yet not as a principal facility,” he asserted without corroborating evidence.

Mr Shoham says he was a Mossad lieutenant colonel specialist in biological and chemical warfare. But so far he’s the only apparent expert to make such a link.

Similar stories have begun circulating in China.

Only there, the claims — which are not censored under China’s strict information management regime — assert the virus is the result of a US germ warfare conspiracy.

“There is no evidence that it was a bioweapon, and any claims that it is wilfully spreads misinformation and is incredibly irresponsible,” warns MIT security studies professor Vipin Narang.

BIOWARFARE WARNINGS

China already stands accused of breaching international treaties and engaging in biological weapons research.

“Information indicates that the People’s Republic of China engaged during the reporting period in biological activities with potential dual-use applications, which raises concerns regarding its compliance with the BWC,” the 2019 annual US State Department report on China’s arms treaty compliance warns.

“The United States has compliance concerns with respect to Chinese military medical institutions’ toxin research and development because of the potential dual-use applications and their potential as a biological threat.”

But Prof Narang doubts the 2019-nCoV virus is an escaped bioweapon: “It would be a terrible bioweapon because of blowback. A good bioweapon, in theory, has high lethality but low, not high, communicability.”

Australian defence analyst Dr Malcolm Davis tweeted: “I’m not convinced that there is evidence yet to support the theory that this BL-4 R & D facility in #Wuhan is responsible for the #coronavirus outbreak. Its proximity is interesting though.

“If evidence came to the fore to support such a theory, then yes – but so far, none has. Its more likely the virus jumped from an animal into humans in the Wuhan markets.”

Biowarfare has surged back onto the radar of military analysts since the advent of CRISPR gene-splicing technology. It’s now more possible to manipulate and manufacture biological processes than ever before.

And given the technology has quickly become relatively cheap and common, the US Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper declared in 2016 that genome editing had become a global danger.

RAND international think tank adviser and former deputy undersecretary for science and technology in the US Daniel Gerstein painted a stark picture: “They could, for example, change a less dangerous, non-pathogenic strain of anthrax into a highly virulent form by altering the genome or recreate pathogens such as the deadly smallpox virus, which was eradicated in the wild in 1980. Or they could develop specific weapons that target either individuals or even entire races: With the right manipulations, a pathogen could be made to have greater invasiveness or virulence in a target population.”

SCANDAL AND SUSPICION

It’s easy to pin suspicion on the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

It’s just a few suburbs away from “Ground Zero”, the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market.

The Chinese Academy of Sciences site is also one of only a handful of facilities around the world publicly declared as holding Pathogen Level 4 (P4). That means it has the strict quarantine standards needed for studying the world’s most deadly diseases.

A second facility in Wuhan, the Wuhan Institute of Biological Products, was declared as one of eight research facilities under the Biological Weapons Convention that China signed in 1985.

But Beijing’s willingness to turn a blind eye to unethical CRISPR research was highlighted when

He Jiankui announced he had gene-edited babies. Likewise, a US-based researcher last year announced he had produced a human-monkey hybrid embryo in China to avoid “legal issues” elsewhere.

Russia is also engaged in similar research. And Japan has lifted its ban on human-animal hybridisation.

Beijing, however, has specifically highlighted biological research as a national strategic priority.

Academy of Military Medical Sciences president He Fuchu said in 2015 that biomaterials were the new “strategic commanding heights” of warfare. He is now the Academy’s vice-president.

And, in 2017, retired Chinese general Zhang Shibo wrote in his book War’s New High Land that “modern biotechnology development is gradually showing strong signs characteristic of an offensive capability”. This includes the potential for “specific ethnic genetic attacks”.

INFORMATION MANIPULATION

Initial indications are strong that the China biowarfare link is fearmongering.

Two of the story’s first promoters, the Washington Times’ Bill Gertz and twitter news aggregator @IndoPac_Info, have an established track record.

In November, both repeated claims of an underwater nuclear explosion in the South China Sea.

No such signature had registered on seismic sensors. No radiation spike was recorded.

That story was eventually traced back to claims made by the Hal Turner Radio Show – a far-right American political site regularly accused of creating fake news and conspiracy theories.

Likewise, the conspiracy-theory heavy and pseudoscience-promoting Zero Hedge blog has recently attempted to link the arrest of Chinese nationals on espionage charges in Canada with the outbreak.

It’s just one of several stories circulating on social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter claiming the virus was made in a lab.

“This coronavirus that is sweeping China, and which has now spread to other countries – including the United States of America – is actually a biological attack being perpetrated on the United States and other countries,” serial conspiracy theorist David Zublick breathlessly proclaims in one video. He presents no evidence to support his case, however.

Other panic-stricken stories, including that the 2019-nCoV has been patented since 2015, have easily been debunked.

But the scramble by credible and accredited researchers to understand the 2019-nCoV virus indicates – at this stage – that it is 96 per cent compatible with a wild bat coronavirus.

Its similarity to the SARS virus that startled the world in 2003 has been placed at 79 per cent.

So the chances of it having made the transition into humans through means such as bat soup appear to be very much the most likely scenario.

What makes this particular virus so threatening is its ability to infect others from hosts not yet displaying symptoms of the disease.

The Wuhan Virus Is Not a Lab-Made Bioweapon [Foreign Policy, 29 Jan 2020]

BY JUSTIN LING

Conspiracy theories are spreading faster than the coronavirus itself.

People wearing protective face masks pass in front of a thermal scanner as they enter a shopping mall in Bangkok on Jan. 29. MLADEN ANTONOV/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES

The recent outbreak of a new and potentially deadly coronavirus in China has, unsurprisingly, kicked off a deluge of misinformation and conspiracy theories.

As of Tuesday, there were more than 6,000 confirmed cases of the virus, with 132 people dead. The center of the epidemic, and still the location of around a third of the cases, is Wuhan, in the central province of Hubei. Other cases have rapidly sprung up worldwide—but the transmission of paranoia and inaccurate information has managed to keep pace.

There is still plenty unknown about the virus, but researchers say it shares similarities to Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) and severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS)—two infectious diseases that have emerged in recent decades but that have been managed.
While concerns inside China are serious and travel restrictions have been imposed across much of the country, public health officials stress there is no need for panic, especially not in the West where the risk of transmission remains low.

That hasn’t stopped an outbreak of nonsense and conspiracy theories. On Sunday, the Washington Times — a paper with a distinct ideological bent — published an article claiming that the virus’ outbreak could be linked to a military lab in Wuhan.

The article suggests a government-run lab, the Wuhan Institute of Virology, could have been researching military applications for the coronavirus and may have been the source of the outbreak.

The only basis for the claim is a quote from former Israeli intelligence officer Dany Shoham, who has expertise in biological warfare.

“Certain laboratories in the institute have probably been engaged, in terms of research and development, in Chinese [biological weapons], at least collaterally, yet not as a principal facility of the Chinese BW alignment,” Shoham told the Times.

While Shoham never backed up the claim made in the story that the outbreak stemmed from a biological weapon, other outlets nevertheless picked up the idea and ran with it.

The Texas radio station KPRC posted the story to its site, concluding “some intelligence experts believe the Chinese military’s biowarfare department may be responsible.” A speculation by a single former officer had become “intelligence experts.” The Toronto Sun columnist Candice Malcolm pumped the theory on her YouTube show, asking: “Why isn’t the mainstream media talking about the origins of this deadly virus? Could it be linked to China’s biological warfare program?”

All this on the guesswork of one man—and it’s not the first time Shoham has pumped the tires on a theory without much merit. In 2017, he went on Radio Sputnik, a propaganda arm of the Russian government, to suggest the Islamic State had likely passed on chemical weapon capabilities to its sleeper cells in the West.

GreatGameIndia, a small conspiracy website—which, among other things, has reported that British intelligence was responsible for the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 over Ukraine in 2014—began publishing reports last week claiming that Canadian researchers had sold this strain of coronavirus to China.

GreatGameIndia, a small conspiracy website—which, among other things, has reported that British intelligence was responsible for the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 over Ukraine in 2014—began publishing reports last week claiming that Canadian researchers had sold this strain of coronavirus to China.

The co-founder and editor of the website has also written extensively for the Centre for Research on Globalization, a Montreal-based site that has been identified by NATO as a peddler of Russian and Syrian propaganda.

The website pointed blame at Xiangguo Qiu, a former researcher with the National Microbiology Laboratory in Winnipeg, Manitoba, a government-run lab that has pioneered vaccines and treatments for various infectious diseases, including Ebola. While it’s true she was escorted from the lab last year by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, there does not appear to be a national security element to the incident. Charges have not been laid, and those familiar with the case say it is likely a matter of paperwork and protocol. Qiu, in fact, worked extensively with labs in China to create treatments for deadly and infectious diseases.

While the claims made on GreatGameIndia are demonstrably untrue—the supposed shipment of the coronavirus in 2018 was for, in fact, for the MERS strain, not the novel coronavirus currently seen in Wuhan—it nevertheless got picked up by fellow conspiracy site ZeroHedge, which has a massive following (about 670,000 Twitter followers and millions of visitors to its blog). Its post on the baseless theory has been shared more than 6,000 times on Facebook and tweeted by hundreds of accounts, including by Toronto Sun columnist Tarek Fatah. The claims have since spread to a network of other less-than-reputable sites.

Don’t Blame Bat Soup for the Wuhan Virus

Racist memes target Chinese eating habits, but the real causes of the coronavirus are more mundane.

ARGUMENT |

JAMES PALMER

David Fisman, a professor of epidemiology at the University of Toronto’s Dalla Lana School of Public Health, said this coronavirus is definitely novel. And new viruses, especially those that move fast, can cause panic. Panic leads to people “casting about for conspiracy theories,” he said. But diseases that quickly mutate and infect humans are simply part of nature. “Welcome to emerging infectious diseases,” he told Foreign Policy.

And this bioweapon speculation isn’t exactly new. In 2003, during the SARS outbreak, the Jamestown Foundation think tank published an analysis suggesting “there are compelling reasons, however unsettling, to at least ask whether there might be any linkage between SARS and China’s biological warfare efforts.” That claim ultimately proved baseless.

The bioweapon fears aren’t the only ones out there. BuzzFeed News has already put together a list of 19 myths, fake images, and total falsehoods relating to the coronavirus outbreak.

Prepper websites, targeting those who obsessively prepare for the apocalypse and other widespread emergencies, have exploded with news of the outbreak, warning that the outbreak could rival that of the Spanish flu. Infowars, the conspiracy site run by Alex Jones that has previously received the endorsement of U.S. President Donald Trump, has also been quick to spread lies and invented numbers about the outbreak.

On Reddit, multiple channels devoted to the coronavirus outbreak have popped up, and they have quickly become hubs for panic and half-baked concern. On Reddit, multiple channels devoted to the coronavirus outbreak have popped up, and they have quickly become hubs for panic and half-baked concern.

Users on the coronavirus subreddit have been posting details of flights originating from China and have been encouraging others to stockpile goods. One user began creating graphs modeling the outbreak in exponential terms and concluding that the “real” death toll (based on social media) is in fact over 8,000. The user’s graphs, which have begun spreading on social media, assert there will be 11.5 million cases of the coronavirus by next month, with over 800,000 dead.

“This is terrifying,” Fisman acknowledged. “But exponential growth is what happens if you leave these processes alone and don’t do anything about them.”
It’s called Farr’s Law, named for a famed British epidemiologist. It holds that, as human behavior changes in the midst of a disease outbreak and health agencies take action, transmissions level off and then decline. While it’s been misapplied in the past, it is a good predictor of how outbreaks can be stopped.

Looking at the graph in question, Fisman said it’s irresponsible to be spreading that sort of misinformation. “Curves don’t look like this. Because we do things about them.”

While the coronavirus is undoubtedly spreading fast, it is worth putting the numbers in context.

There have been nearly 100,000 cases of influenza A and B, which cause the flu, in the United States since the flu season began in late September 2019—including 54 deaths of children.

It’s still not clear how this outbreak of the coronavirus compares to SARS and MERS, but both outbreaks provide some frame of reference. The SARS outbreak of November 2002, which continued until the following July, resulted in more than 8,000 cases and about 775 deaths in more than two dozen countries—the response to that outbreak was marred by a late response and Beijing’s effort to control information to hide the extent of the virus’ reach. MERS, meanwhile, was first discovered in the Persian Gulf in 2012 and since then has seen sporadic clusters of cases. Over the past eight years, there have been nearly 2,500 confirmed cases and more than 850 deaths spread out over more than two dozen countries.

For SARS, the R0 value—a number that estimates how many others each infected person could pass the virus onto—sat somewhere between 2 and 5. For the new coronavirus, the R0 value appears to be similar, but lower, Nancy Messonnier, the director of U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Disease, said in a media briefing Monday. “Most articles have had interpretation that the R0 is somewhere 1.5 and 3,” Messonnier said.

To just look at the R0 value can be troubling, but that number doesn’t tell the whole story.

To just look at the R0 value can be troubling, but that number doesn’t tell the whole story.

“R_0 estimates for #SARS are 2 to 5, whereas they’re only about 1.3 on average for seasonal #flu. The latter causes millions of cases a year whereas the former didn’t even cause [10,000],” Maia Majumder, of Boston Children’s Hospital’s Computational Health Informatics Program, tweeted Saturday.

Speaking to Foreign Policy, Majumder said that just because the coronavirus has had an R0 value of, say, 2 in China before the public was alerted to its existence doesn’t mean it will continue to have that value. “It shouldn’t be treated as a constant of nature; it varies considerably from place to place because of social practices, environmental differences, and so on,” she said.

It does appear that the virus has spread faster than originally thought. Researchers in Hong Kong estimate that the real number of infections could be over 40,000 in Wuhan alone. Fisman says that’s “the right order of magnitude” (he personally thinks the actual number of cases is closer to 15,000) but notes there’s another side to that.
“
If we’re missing a whole bunch of cases … well that means your cumulative case fatality is too high,” Fisman said. In other words: If the undiagnosed cases are so mild that infected people don’t know they’re infected, it does mean the scope of the outbreak is wider, but that it is less lethal than the confirmed case count would suggest. (There are real concerns that the dead are being undercounted, but not on the scale that some conspiracy theorists, who have made claims of thousands dead, have suggested without proof.)

Part of the basis for suggesting that the infected number may be multiples higher than originally thought stems from speculation that the virus can transmit even when those infected are asymptomatic, or that those infected are contagious for longer than normal. That comes from statements from the Chinese health authority, which indicated the virus has gotten more powerful. Chinese Health Minister Ma Xiaowei said the incubation period could be as long as 14 days. Fisman said the research to date doesn’t support that claim, and he said the incubation period looks more like that of SARS, at around six days. He suggested that, as the virus can be mild in some infected people, they may not even know they’re symptomatic—children, for example, may run around and play, oblivious to their runny nose.

The CDC, similarly, says there is no evidence to support the idea that asymptomatic people are contagious.

There are fears that the paranoia and panic could push some to profile all Asians as being vectors of disease.

“What’s very concerning to me … is how easily those rumors can lead to inappropriate discrimination against people, and we need to take all those rumors with a grain of salt and recognize that they are just that: rumors,” British Columbia Health Officer Bonnie Henry told reporters on Tuesday, in announcing her province’s first case.

Discrimination is already occurring in China, where citizens with registration cards from Hubei are being forcibly quarantined or refused entry into public spaces or transportation—even if they haven’t been home in months or years. As the Trump administration mulls possible travel bans and neighboring countries begin to close their borders, that paranoia may spread.

New coronavirus spreads as readily as 1918 Spanish flu [Los Angeles Times, 29 Jan 2020]

By MELISSA HEALY

Chinese scientists racing to keep up with the spread of a novel coronavirus have declared the widespread outbreak an epidemic, revealing that in its early days at least, the disease’s reach doubled every week.

By plotting the curve of that exponential growth and running it in reverse, researchers reckoned that the microbe sickening people across the globe has probably been passing from person to person since mid-December 2019.

Scientists in China are also closing in on the source of the aggressive new germ — bats.

The furry flying mammals may have been the original host of the coronavirus now crisscrossing the world, says one of three scientific studies released on Wednesday. But it may be another wild animal sold in Wuhan City’s Huanan Seafood Market that served up the virus to humans, who quickly began passing it to others through close contact.

The new studies, coming just five days after Chinese research teams offered their first detailed analyses of the virus known as 2019-nCoV, offer genetic and other evidence to suggest that Chinese health authorities probably caught the virus soon after it made its jump to humans.
And it supports the theory that something in the Huanan market served as a bridge for the virus to cross between bats and humans.

Such evidence is consistent with the Chinese government’s public assertions about the sudden appearance and spread of a virus that has sickened as many as 9,000 and claimed at least 106 lives in China and six other countries. Chinese authorities have said they believe that Wuhan’s principal “wet market” is the cradle of the outbreak, and they have no evidence that the new virus spread earlier anywhere else.

All three of the new studies — two published by the British journal Lancet and a third in the New England Journal of Medicine — were conducted by scientists working in China. And all focused on some of the first patients seen with a pneumonia caused by 2019-nCoV.

One of the studies published in Lancet probed the genetic connections among viral samples drawn from nine infected patients, eight of whom had visited the Huanan Seafood Market in Wuhan.

The second study in Lancet culled data on the disease progression and outcomes of 99 infected patients who were admitted to Jinyintan Hospital in Wuhan with symptoms of pneumonia.

The New England Journal of Medicine study, performed by researchers at China’s leading public health agency, mapped the early spread of pneumonia cases caused by the virus and used the results to create a transmission timeline. That accounting offered the most authoritative gauge to date of the emerging epidemic’s rate of growth.

The new findings underscore the fact that it may take stern domestic measures to bring the fast-moving virus under control in China.

One of the research teams calculated that in its early stages, the epidemic doubled in size every 7.4 days. That measure, called the epidemic’s “serial interval,” reflects the average span of time that elapses from the appearance of symptoms in one infected person to the appearance of symptoms in the people he will go on to infect. In the early stages of the outbreak, each infected person who became ill is estimated to have infected 2.2 others, according to the study in the New England Journal of Medicine.

That makes the new coronavirus roughly as communicable as was the 1918 Spanish flu, which killed 50 million and became the deadliest pandemic in recorded history.

The new epidemic, however, is moving more slowly than the Spanish flu. That’s because 2019-nCoV takes longer to induce coughing, fever and breathing difficulties in a newly infected victim.

“It’s concerning that case reports are increasing, and increasing in a way that’s consistent with pretty efficient human-to-human transmission,” said Derek Cummings, a University of Florida expert in the spread of infectious diseases.

While much more needs to be known about the coronavirus’ spread, the early numbers offer a glimpse of the challenge ahead, Cummings said.

To halt the growth of the virus’ spread and allow the epidemic to burn itself out, health officials in China are going to have to cut the rate at which the germ is passing from person to person by more than half. That could be done by quarantining anyone who’s ill, by closing down schools or workplaces or social gatherings, or eventually by administering a vaccine that does not currently exist.

Even under the most optimistic scenarios, Cumming said, “a lot of control needs to take place.”
China’s public health authorities acknowledged as much on Wednesday.

“Considerable efforts to reduce transmission will be required to control outbreaks if similar dynamics apply elsewhere,” a team led by the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention in Beijing wrote in the New England Journal of Medicine.

They noted that reducing the spread of the new virus is made harder by the apparent presence of many mild infections. If not all who are infected get very sick — as appears to be the case — many will go out in the world and spread the virus inadvertently.

The team also cited “limited resources for isolation of cases and quarantine of their close contacts” as an impediment.

Despite suspicions prompted by its secretive management of the SARS outbreak in 2003, the Chinese government has insisted it responded quickly to the appearance of a new virus, and has held nothing back from the Chinese public or international community.

The World Health Organization has said that China notified it on Dec. 31 that the agency it was seeing cases of pneumonia of unknown cause in Wuhan. Chinese authorities closed down the Huanan Seafood Market on Jan. 1. That would be only about two weeks after the virus first jumped to humans in Wuhan, if the new calculations are correct.

Health officials in China identified a novel coronavirus as the cause of the outbreak less than a week later, and on Jan. 23, the government blocked transportation in and out of Wuhan.
In an effort to stem further spread of 2019-nCoV, officials imposed a quarantine of unprecedented size and scope, shutting down transportation in and out of other cities in Hubei province, where Wuhan is located. The controversial blockade has affected about 50 million people, and has been criticized for being both too broad and too late to bottle up the virus.

On Tuesday, American officials exhorted Chinese officials to share their trove of biological samples and genetic findings with U.S. and international researchers. Within hours, the Chinese government shifted gears and asked the World Health Organization to send international experts to assist with research and help contain the epidemic.

Despite Coronavirus Alert, Flu's Risk To US Is Much More Immediate : Shots - Health News [NPR, 29 Jan 2020]

by ALLISON AUBREY

If you live in the U.S, your risk of contracting the new strain of coronavirus identified in China is exceedingly low.

So far, the only people infected in the U.S. have traveled to the region in China where the virus first turned up in people. And, though that could change, one thing is for certain: Another severe respiratory virus that threatens lives — the influenza or "flu" virus — is very active in the U.S. right now.

Already this flu season (which generally begins in the U.S. in October and peaks during winter months), the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that more than 15 million people in the U.S. have gotten sick with flu. More than 150,000 Americans have been hospitalized, and more than 8,000 people have died from their infection. And, this isn't even a particularly bad flu year.

"Last year we had 34,000 deaths from flu," says epidemiologist Brandon Brown of the University of California, Riverside. On average, the flu is responsible for somewhere between 12,000 and 61,000 deaths each year. "And this is just in the United States," Brown says.

A flu shot is your best way to protect against getting the flu, and it's still not too late to be vaccinated this season.

There's another very effective strategy for fending off the flu virus — one that could also help protect against the novel coronavirus if it were to spread within the U.S, Brown says.

His top tip is remarkably simple, effective — and familiar. Ready for this? Wash your hands.
You need to lather up and wash for at least 20 seconds to make this work, according to the CDC's tips for proper hand-washing. The time it takes to hum the song "Happy Birthday' twice is about right duration.

"Our hands are one of the main ways we can transmit a virus," Brown says. As a reality check, begin to notice everything you touch in a day. "We shake other people's hands, we touch surfaces, open doors," he notes.

In addition to inhaling airborne particles from a neighbor's cough or sneeze, touching your hand to a contaminated surface and then to your eyes, nose or mouth is how the virus most often gets inside you.

There's still a lot to learn about the new coronavirus, but respiratory illnesses in general — whether the flu, a cold, or a virus that humans haven't encountered before — can spread via little respiratory droplets when an infected person sneezes or coughs.

That's why we teach our kids to cover their coughs, and to sneeze into an elbow. Each of us can help prevent the spread of viruses, and good hygiene habits are key.

Another important reminder: The CDC recommends a pneumococcal vaccine for children under 2, for adults who are 65 or older, and for people who smoke, as well as for those who have certain medical conditions.

It's not that this vaccine will directly fight the pneumonia caused by influenza or the new coronavirus; the pneumococcal vaccine actually revs the body's defenses against a different microbe — the common bacterium Streptococcus pneumonia – that also causes pneumonia.

However, one of the main reasons some people get very sick from flu is that, once infected and weakened by the influenza virus, they are extra vulnerable to getting a secondary infection from bacteria — and often, it's the pneumococcal bacteria.

For an historical perspective: It was actually bacterial pneumonia that caused the most deaths during the 1918 influenza pandemic, according to the National Institutes of Health.

By fending off those bacteria, the pneumococcal vaccine can be an important part of a flu defense — and might also help in the defense against the new coronavirus strain.

"We don't know whether this new coronavirus tends to predispose people toward pneumococcal infection, but many respiratory viruses do," explains Marc Lipsitch, an infectious disease epidemiologist at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

"It [would be] better to be infected with only coronavirus, rather than the coronavirus and a bacterium at the same time," Lipsitch says.

The science of why that's true is complicated, Lipsitch says, but in general, when we get a virus, "the immune system is distracted." It focuses on fighting the virus, and that makes it harder to fend off a bacterial infection. "It's hard [for the immune system] to do both at once," Lipstich explains.

Coronavirus Latest: Live Updates and What to Know [TIME, 29 Jan 2020]

BY SANYA MANSOOR AND AMY GUNIA

Chinese officials confirmed Wednesday that the number of people infected by a new form of coronavirus in the country has reached more than 6,000, a total that surpasses the official cases tallied on the mainland during an outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) in 2002 and 2003. SARS infected 5,237 people in mainland China, and killed almost 800 people across the world.

The new SARS-like form of coronavirus has killed 133 people in China and more than 3,500 cases have been confirmed in Hubei, the province where Wuhan is located, according to a virus tracker maintained by researchers at Johns Hopkins University, which uses numbers from China’s National Health Commission and DXY.cn, an online medical professional network.
The disease, which is believed to have originated in a seafood market in the Chinese central city of Wuhan, has also spread to other countries, including the U.S., where five cases have been confirmed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

The World Health Organization (WHO) stated Wednesday that it is reconsidering whether to declare a global public health emergency as part of their response to the novel coronavirus outbreak. The agency highlighted concerns about human-to-human transmission, especially in Germany, Vietnam and Japan, as well as the “rapid acceleration” of confirmed cases of the disease.

An emergency committee will reconvene Wednesday to make a decision, the WHO said. Last week, the committee decided not to make such a declaration, noting that it was still “too early” to do so.

“The whole world needs to be on alert now. The whole world needs to take action and be ready for any cases that come — either from the original epicenter or from other epicenters that become established,” said Michael Ryan, executive director of WHO’s Health Emergencies Programme.

Several countries have issued advisories against travel to China and Hubei province and started evacuating citizens from Wuhan. On Wednesday morning, a flight carrying 195 American citizens from Wuhan landed at March Air Reserve Base in California. But around 1,000 Americans still remain in the city and many are feeling abandoned by their government.

Some international airlines have started suspending flights to the country. British Airways cancelled all flights to and from Beijing and Shanghai until at least Friday following local authorities’ advice against “all but essential travel to mainland China.” Flights to and from Hong Kong will remain unaffected, the airlines said.

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 already be more than 30 times higher than the official tally.

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.

A taskforce in China is coordinating the efforts to contain the disease and as of Tuesday morning, 4,130 medical staff from around China had arrived in Hubei province; it is expected that a total of 6,000 will arrive. At least two makeshift hospitals created to respond to the virus are being constructed in Wuhan and national health officials have said more than 10,000 beds will be ready in Wuhan soon. On Wednesday, state media reported that nine tons of emergency medical supplies provided by Japan arrived in Wuhan. A government committee to respond to the virus held a meeting on Wednesday and said the situation is still severe. The
Chinese New Year public holiday has been extended in an effort to keep people at home.

Videos appearing to originate from Wuhan show residents chanting from their homes, “Wuhan, stay strong” as cases across the country continued to increase.

At a joint conference Tuesday involving the CDC, U.S. Health and Human Services (HHS) and other national health organizations, American health officials spoke about a desire to send experts to China, an expansion of airport screenings, public funding to respond to the outbreak and the possibility of asymptomatic transmissions of the disease.

HHS Secretary Alex Azar reiterated an offer made in early January to China to send an American CDC team to China to respond to the outbreak. Azar said he hopes the Chinese government will “take us up on” the “offer.” “CDC experts are standing by, ready, willing, able to go immediately to China either on a bilateral basis or under the auspices of the WHO,” Azar said.

WHO reconsiders declaring emergency

WHO officials stressed the importance of ensuring international coordination on efforts to prevent the spread of the virus. During a press conference, Ryan explained how formally declaring a public health emergency could work to contain the outbreak, while also minimizing the impact on international trade and travel. “194 countries implementing unilateral measures based on their own individual risk assessment is a potential recipe for disaster,” he explained.

Ryan said the virus is “being remarkably stable” and that “there is no scientist nor sage on the planet that will tell you when the peak of this epidemic will occur.”

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.

The WHO’s Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus met Chinese President Xi Jinping on Tuesday in Beijing to discuss continued collaboration on containment measures and in Wuhan, public health measures in other cities, further research on the virus’ severity and transmissibility and the sharing of data and biological material. Chinese officials have indicated that they will cooperate.

They reached an agreement for the WHO to send international experts to visit China as soon as possible as part of their response.

“We need to focus on the epicenter of the outbreak. Managing the outbreak at the epicenter helps us from the outbreak spreading to the rest of the world.” Tedros said at Wednesday’s press conference. “If you have several epicenters, it’s chaos,” he adds.

The fatality rate of known cases and deaths is around 2%, according to Ryan. But Dr. Maria Van Kerkhove, head of emerging diseases and zoonosis at WHO, notes that “it’s very early to make any conclusive statements about what the mortality rate may be.”

Wuhan travel restricted

Gabriel Leung, the chair of public health medicine at the University of Hong Kong, said at a press conference Monday that the number of people infected is likely to be much higher than official figures — with as many as 44,000 people possibly infected in Wuhan alone, according to his team’s research models. Leung recommended that officials take “substantial draconian measures” to contain the virus, including canceling large gatherings, closing schools and asking people to work from home.

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. Immigration authorities said on Monday that no passengers have left the Chinese mainland over the past four days through the Wuhan Tianhe International Airport or the Hankou Port. China’s Hubei Province has also suspended services to apply for passports and exit-entry permits.

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.

So far, no deaths from the virus have been reported outside the Chinese mainland. The city of Beijing reported its first death on Monday and last week confirmed that a 9-month-old tested positive for the disease.

International cases

Dozens of patients have tested positive for the illness across at least 9 international locations.

They include 14 confirmed cases in Thailand, 10 confirmed cases in Singapore, eight confirmed cases in Hong Kong, six confirmed cases in Macau and five confirmed cases in Singapore, Australia and Taiwan. Governments and health officials in Germany, Nepal, Canada, Cambodia, Vietnam, France, South Korea, Malaysia, Sri Lanka, UAE, and Japan have also reported patients testing positive for the virus. Mongolia’s official news agency has said the country closed border crossings with China on Monday, according to the Associated Press.
China are associated with travel to China and of those, the vast majority involve travel to Wuhan, according to the WHO.

In a bid to curb the spread of the deadly virus, Hong Kong announced Tuesday that it will deny entry to individual travelers from the mainland, dramatically expanding 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 will go into effect on Jan. 30.

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 are putting in place plans to evacuate their citizens from Wuhan.

Two planes will be mobilized to repatriate EU citizens from the Wuhan area to Europe, according to the European Commission. The E.U. will co-finance the transport costs; the first aircraft is scheduled to leave from France on Wednesday and a second plane will leave later in the week. Authorities estimate that about 250 French citizens will be transported in the first flight and more than 100 E.U. citizens from other countries will be on board the second aircraft. More planes to evacuate citizens could be sent in the coming days.

The U.S. State Department escalated a travel advisory warning for Hubei province to level four on Friday, advising visitors not to travel to the province because of the coronavirus. On Monday, a level three advisory to “reconsider travel” was issued for any travel to China in general.

On Wednesday morning, a flight carrying 195 American citizens from Wuhan landed at March Air Reserve Base in California, according to the CDC. The passengers were “screened, monitored and evaluated by medical personnel every step of the way, including before takeoff, during the flight, during a refueling in Anchorage, Alaska, and now post-arrival,” the statement said. The CDC said it assessed the health of every traveler, checking their temperature and observing whether they displayed any respiratory symptoms. The agency noted that it would work with state and local authorities to transport any passenger exhibiting symptoms to a hospital for further evaluations.

None of the 195 passengers are displaying symptoms associated with novel coronavirus and all have been given assigned living quarters at the air force base, said Nancy Messonnier, director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases at the CDC. These 195 travelers “have agreed to remain on base voluntarily” and are “willingly undergoing isolation for the purpose of medical evaluation and investigation of their risk,” Messonnier said, adding that the CDC is continuing to assess their condition.

On Sunday, the U.S. state department indicated plans to evacuate staff and some private citizens. The U.S. State Department said that it would be making arrangements to relocate personnel at the U.S. Consulate General in Wuhan to the United States and noted that there would be “limited capacity to transport private U.S. citizens on a reimbursable basis” on the flight which arrived in California on Wednesday.

But some of the roughly 1,000 Americans who remain in Wuhan say priority on the flight was given to staff at the local U.S. consulate and their families. They say the few remaining seats cost $1,000 each and that Chinese spouses and some other family members of Americans were not eligible for the flight.

Multiple airlines, including British Airways and the Lufthansa Group, have suspended flights to China.

The stock market has also taken a hit, as major US indexes fell more than 1% on Monday; the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped as many as 500 points, the Associated Press reported. On Wednesday, U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell referred to the coronavirus outbreak as a “very serious issue” but said it was too early to know the extent of economic damage in China and globally, according to the AP.

CDC confirms 5 cases in U.S.

The CDC has confirmed five cases of the coronavirus infection in the U.S. — one in Arizona, two in California, one in Washington state and one in Illinois. The agency said all of these patients, the first of whom was diagnosed in Snohomish county, Wash., traveled from China. “It is likely there will be more cases reported in the U.S. in the coming days and weeks, likely including person-to-person spread,” the CDC said in a statement.

The agency said Wednesday that 165 individuals across 36 states were considered to be “persons under investigation.” “That is a cumulative number and will only increase,” said Dr. Nancy Messonnier, director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases at the CDC. Of these 165, five had tested positive, 68 tested negative and 92 determinations are still pending. The people being investigated could include those who have a fever and respiratory illness after traveling to Wuhan and individuals who have had contact with a patient who tested positive for the disease and have a fever and respiratory illness.

“At this time in the U.S., the virus is not spreading in the community. For that reason we continue to believe that the immediate health risk to the general American public is low at this time,” Messonnier said during a telebriefing on Monday.

The CDC’s travel precaution is currently at a level three, recommending that travelers avoid all nonessential travel to China because of the disease.

The CDC is continuing to screen passengers from Wuhan at five major airports in the U.S. and has screened about 2,400 people so far, Messonnier said on Monday, adding that the number of people coming from Wuhan is declining with the recent travel restrictions. (Since direct flights out of Wuhan have stopped, the agency said it is screening those with “broken itineraries” who may be transiting from Wuhan through another country back to the U.S.) The CDC announced at Tuesday’s press conference that it would expand airport screenings from five to 20 airports as part of a “multi-layered” response.

These screenings provide opportunities to detect and rapidly respond to the illness, as well as educate returning travelers on the signs and symptoms of the disease, she explained. The airports where the CDC is conducting entry screenings of passengers on direct and connecting flights from Wuhan include New York City’s John F. Kennedy International Airport, Los Angeles International Airport, San Francisco International Airport, Chicago O’Hare International Airport and Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport .

There is still more research and analysis needed before the CDC can be confident about how exactly the outbreak started but experts will likely look to MERS and SARS to guide them, Messonnier said.

Companies tell employees to work from home, avoid travel

Companies across China are taking precautions, as well. Chinese gaming giant Tencent and the tech company ByteDance, which owns the app TikTok, have told staff to work from home, according to the BBC.

The co-working company WeWork is temporarily shutting more than 50 offices across China, it said in a statement on Tuesday.

Facebook has stopped non-essential travel to China, and Starbucks is temporarily closing some of its China stores, according to Bloomberg. Several major cruise lines have also suspended some voyages leaving from China.

Flight attendants working for Cathay Pacific, Hong Kong’s flagship airline, will be allowed to wear facemasks while working.

In Hong Kong, the government notified its workers on Monday that all workers except essential public servants and emergency services personnel can work from home until Feb. 2.
American response

HHS Secretary Azar laid out the U.S.’s “relatively simple and multi-tiered” internal response to the outbreak at a press conference on Tuesday. “You identify cases, isolate people, diagnose them and treat them,” Azar said. “Then you track down all the contacts of the infected person and you do the same with those people and the same with contacts of contacts if necessary.”

Azar indicated that China had been much more transparent in its handling of the novel coronavirus compared with the SARS response; the Chinese government had been accused of covering up SARS. “The posture of the Chinese government and levels of cooperation and interaction with us is completely different from what we experienced in 2003 and I want to commend them for that,” Azar said.

Azar added that he was able to work with the White House’s Office of Management and Budget to allow for $105 million to immediately be directed towards the response to the virus.
“Americans should know this is a potentially very serious public health threat but at this point Americans should not worry for their own safety,” Azar said, noting that the nationwide risk was “extremely low.” He said he would not be declaring a public health emergency but would not hesitate to do so if appropriate.

Foreigners Airlifted From Chinese City at Heart of Coronavirus Outbreak [The New York Times, 29 Jan 2020]

By Miriam Jordan and Austin Ramzy

More than a dozen nations pulled their citizens from Wuhan. But how evacuees were handled once they got home varied country by country.

LOS ANGELES — About 200 Americans evacuated from Wuhan, China, landed at a military base in Southern California on Wednesday, as countries around the world began pulling their citizens from the epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak.

“The whole plane erupted in cheers when the crew said, ‘Welcome home to the United States,’” said Dr. Anne Zink, the chief medical officer for Alaska, where the plane stopped en route to California.

But “home” was not immediately in the cards for the evacuees.

Upon landing at the March Air Reserve Base in Riverside, the passengers were met on the tarmac by personnel in biohazard suits, loaded onto waiting buses and instructed to remain on the base for three days of medical screening. Only when they are cleared will they be allowed to continue on home.

The authorities, however, were at pains to to say it was not a quarantine.

“We are respecting the rights of them as individuals,” said Dr. Nancy Knight, a senior official with the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “We are doing that in a way that protects their health, the health of uniformed service members and the health of the community.”

The passengers, mostly American consular officials and their families, returned to the United States as the coronavirus continued to spread around the globe, with the number of cases spiking dramatically and two major airlines canceling all flights to and from China.

By early Thursday, there were confirmed reports of infection in at least 16 countries, with more than 7,700 cases in China alone — topping the SARS outbreak there in 2002 and 2003.
The official death toll there stood at 170, but the real number is believed to be much higher.
On Thursday, the World Health Organization will again take up the question of whether to declare a global health emergency.

The virus has sickened more than 4,500 people in China and a handful in other countries.

As governments around the world struggle to detect and prevent infection, it was clear on Wednesday that there was no international consensus on the best way to proceed.

However carefully the health authorities chose their words, the evacuees in the United States, for example, appeared to be, for all practical purposes, quarantined. They will also be monitored for 14 days by medical teams in their own communities when they go home.

In Australia, Prime Minister Scott Morrison said citizens evacuated from Wuhan would be held for a two-week quarantine on Christmas Island, also the site of an Australian immigration detention center.

And South Korea’s National Police Agency said that it had instructed its officers that they have the power to detain people who are suspected of carrying the coronavirus and refuse to be quarantined.

But other countries were taking a less strict approach.

Japan, for example, also evacuated citizens from China, but acquiesced when two evacuees who did not have symptoms declined to see a doctor. A third evacuee who did show symptoms was allowed to wait for test results at home.

As it spreads globally, the new coronavirus, which was first discovered in China last month, has begun to infect people who never visited China. Some have fallen ill in Germany, Japan, Taiwan and Vietnam.

“We’ve seen it spread between people in Wuhan, in other parts of China, and now these countries,” said Benjamin Cowling, a professor of epidemiology at the University of Hong Kong.

“What we don’t know is how quickly it spreads,” Dr. Cowling said. “We’ve seen small clusters, but we don’t know if those turn into chains of transmission that grow from two to four to eight to 16 — or if it can be controlled and won’t be further transmitted.”

As countries evacuated their citizens from Wuhan — among them France, South Korea, Morocco, Germany, Kazakhstan, Britain, Canada, Russia, the Netherlands and Myanmar — commercial airlines curtailed service to China. British Airways and Air Canada suspended flights altogether.

The Americans who were repatriated on Wednesday landed at the air base shortly after 8 a.m. after the State Department-chartered flight stopped in Anchorage to refuel and for the passengers to be screened — twice — for the virus.

At a news conference later in Riverside, Christopher R. Braden, a deputy director of the disease control centers, said the Americans would be “fully evaluated,” said Christopher R. Braden, a deputy director of the Centers for Disease Control.

“We think we can do the full evaluation in three days,” Dr. Braden said. “Some of that evaluation is taking tests and flying samples to the C.D.C. in Atlanta.” The agency has the country’s only laboratory that can test for the coronavirus.

At a raucous, packed news conference, Dr. Braden and Dr. Knight were peppered with questions about the wisdom of releasing the former Wuhan residents into communities across the country.

Dr. Braden said that if an evacuee deemed a danger to the community insisted on leaving before the 72-hour period expired, “we can institute an individual quarantine for that person — and we will.”

But he also said there was no indication that anyone wanted to leave right away.

Some Americans remained stranded in Wuhan, unable to secure a seat on the plane. Family members were incensed to learn that the Boeing 747 had taken off with empty seats. Some passengers lacked the proper documentation, and others did not show up, Dr. Braden said. In the end, around 200 passengers were evacuated, not the expected 240, he said.

“I don’t even know what to say to those numbers,” said Jiacheng Yu of Dallas, whose mother, Ying Cheng, a 61-year-old American citizen, was visiting her own mother in Wuhan for the Lunar New Year and could not get a seat.

When asked whether other flights were planned, a State Department official said its embassy in Beijing “continues to work with the Chinese authorities on other options for U.S. citizens in Wuhan to depart Wuhan and/or China.”

At least one American chose not to try to board Wednesday’s flight. Winifred Conrad, a 27-year-old English teacher, had a lingering cough and was afraid she would instead be handed over to Chinese officials, said her mother, Anastasia Coles of Lubbock, Texas.

But there was another reason: Ms. Conrad’s cat, Lulu.

In text message to her mother, she said: “Don’t freak out. I was offered a seat and I surrendered it to a 10-year-old girl.” She added, “I was told I can’t bring an animal.”

The number of confirmed cases in China increased by nearly 30 percent from Wednesday to Thursday, according to the country’s National Health Commission.

The Chinese health authorities said Wednesday that 132 people had died from the virus in the country. The previous count, on Tuesday, was 106.

Wang Xiaodong, the governor of Hubei, the home of province of Wuhan, said Wednesday evening that the fight against the virus was at a crucial point, and that medical supplies were severely insufficient.

As cases emerged outside China, some appeared to involve infections between family members, who are at greater risk while caring for sick relatives. Others, however, appear to have spread between people with less intimate connections.

A Japanese tour bus driver in his 60s who had driven two tour groups visiting Japan from Wuhan was confirmed to have the virus, officials said on Tuesday. He had no history of traveling to Wuhan.

“I think what that says is, if we can get transmission in such a setting, then we can certainly get it in the waiting room of a clinic or a hospital,” said Dr. Arthur Reingold, a professor of epidemiology at the University of California, Berkeley. “That’s very concerning.”

On Tuesday, German officials said a 33-year-old man from Starnberg, a town near Munich, was apparently infected with the virus after attending a training event with a Chinese colleague on Jan. 21. The colleague flew home two days later. The German man was being treated in isolation and officials were tracing people who had been in contact with him.

Late Tuesday, health officials in Germany said three more people from the same company had also been infected. They were admitted to a clinic in Munich, where they, too, were to be isolated. Forty other people who came into close contact with the company employees were to be tested on Wednesday, officials said.

The outbreak and the travel restrictions it has led to have already had a big impact on businesses, some of which are temporarily halting operations in parts of China.

Starbucks, for example, said it was temporarily closing half of its stores in the country. Closing were also announced by McDonald’s and Yum China, which operates the KFC, Pizza Hut and Taco Bell brands in China.

And Apple said the outbreak could disrupt suppliers and its revenues.

Miriam Jordan reported from Los Angeles, and Austin Ramzy from Hong Kong. Reporting was contributed by Russell Goldman from Hong Kong; Motoko Rich, Makiko Inoue and Eimi Yamamitsu from Tokyo; and Choe Sang-Hun from Seoul, South Korea.

Malaysia confirms 7 coronavirus cases, one man arrested for spreading fake news on disease [Coconuts, 29 Jan 2020]

As as the world continues to grapple with the little-understood Wuhan coronavirus, Malaysia’s Health Ministry this morning confirmed another three cases in the country, bringing the total number of cases to seven.

Of the three new cases, two were among the group of Patients-Under-Investigation (PUI) suspected of carrying the virus, while another was an individual who had close contact with infected patients.

All seven of the affected individuals in Malaysia are Chinese nationals.

One of the two new PUI cases was a 4-year-old girl in Langkawi, and the other was a 52-year-old male receiving treatment in Johor Baru. The third new case is the daughter-in-law of Singapore’s first coronavirus case. She had previously tested negative, and had decided to stay in Malaysia to care for her two infected children, who are being treated for the disease here.

In the month of January, 78 patients have been hospitalized under observation over fears they may have contracted the virus. Thirty-nine of them were Malaysian, 36 Chinese, and one each from Jordan, Brazil, and Thailand. Three have tested positive, and results are still pending on a fourth case.

Previously, Malaysia’s Health Ministry Director-General Dr. Noor Hisham had reported that 25 individuals who had close contact with coronavirus cases in Singapore and Johor had been identified, and were quarantined and tested.

Meanwhile, four Malaysians have found themselves on the wrong side of the law after being investigated for allegedly spreading fake news via social media by the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC).

One suspect, a Bangi man, found himself under arrest yesterday afternoon over an unspecified erroneous Facebook statement he made on Sunday. Officers are still looking for the other three individuals.

Government agencies have been busy updating social media accounts with constant posts warning of the circulation of fake news on the virus.

Health Ministry officials have released a list of 26 hospitals across the country that will provide services to patients suspected or confirmed to be suffering from the virus.

Fifteen of those hospitals are on the Malaysian peninsula, while four are in Sabah, six are in Sarawak, and one is in Labuan.

Funds to provide more heat scanners to be placed at entry points into the country were also approved yesterday.

Confirmed infections have soared to more than 6,000 across China, mainly in Wuhan, which authorities have effectively sealed off, along with around 10 other Chinese cities, in a bid to contain the virus. As of this morning, the death toll has reached 132.

Prior to government orders to quarantine the city, some five million people managed to leave Wuhan, mayor Zhou Xianwang told reporters on Sunday. Zhou also confessed to withholding information about the outbreak.

The novel coronavirus has spread to at least 16 other countries outside of China: Thailand has reported 14 cases; Hong Kong has eight; the United States, Taiwan, Australia, and Macau have five each; Singapore, South Korea, and Malaysia each have reported four; Japan has seven; France has four; Canada has three; Vietnam has two; and Nepal, Cambodia, and Germany each have one. There have so far been no deaths outside China.

Several nations including France, Thailand, and Australia said they would evacuate their citizens from Wuhan. Japan has already evacuated some of their citizens.

China has been rushing to build a hospital in Wuhan to treat coronavirus patients, and it is expected to be complete by this week.

The SARS-like virus, also known as 2019-nCoV, is a never-before-seen member of the coronavirus family. Like other coronaviruses, it comes from animals, and is believed to have emerged at a now-shuttered market that sold exotic wildlife such as bats. China has temporarily suspended all wildlife trade.

The head of the World Health Organization was in Beijing today to discuss the outbreak, days after he said the Wuhan pneumonia virus did not yet constitute a global health emergency due to the limited number of cases abroad.

Wuhan coronavirus: Did Chinese officials downplay the extent of deadly outbreak in its early stages? [MEAWW, 29 Jan 2020]

By Rohini Krishnamurthy

If reports are to be believed, the officials allegedly told doctors that they were not allowed to report about the new virus

Some reports now suggest that China may have underplayed the Wuhan coronavirus outbreak in its early stages even as the death toll in the country has hit 132 from Friday's estimate of 26.

The number of reported Wuhan coronavirus cases has also picked up pace— from over 800 on Friday to over 5,900 on January 29.

What is more, the initial data provided by the Chinese authorities may not have been accurate, as a Lancet study authored by Chinese scientists and doctors suggests that people developed the infection a few weeks earlier than claimed by the Chinese officials.

In the last one week, the Wuhan coronavirus cases have snowballed, with its severity coming to light only after January 19. This could be attributed to investigations carried out by a medical team dispatched by China's National Health Commission.

Was there a cover-up earlier?

The Wuhan heath commission reported no new cases between January 5 and 10 and again between January 12 and 16. If reports are to be believed, the Wuhan health commission officials allegedly told doctors that they were not allowed to report about the new virus, letting patients wander around freely instead of being isolated.

And when people spoke up about the mysterious pneumonia-causing infection, they were arrested: the Wuhan police said they had arrested eight people for spreading "rumors" about the virus. And Chinese authorities detained and threatened to arrest journalists reporting the outbreak.

“Wuhan authorities clearly downplayed or made efforts to hide the situation for an extended period of time,” Dali Yang, a professor of Chinese politics at the University of Chicago, told Associated Press. “It turned out to be one of the worst decisions that they'll regret all their lives,” said Yang.

According to the Lancet study, the first Wuhan coronavirus patient fell sick on December 1 (LANCET)

According to the Lancet study, the first Wuhan coronavirus patient fell sick on December 1.

But as per the Chinese officials, the infection did not arise until two weeks later.

China confirmed person-to-person transmission only on January 20. The Lancet report, on the other hand, found evidence of such transmission as early as January 2.

“The fact that the Lancet report is different from the official early Chinese account does raise enormous concerns around the truthfulness of information coming out of China,” Steven Hoffman, director of the Global Strategy Lab and a global health professor at York University, told Vox.

“If China did intentionally withhold information, that would not only be bad for public health but also illegal under international law. It would be a violation of the International Health Regulations, a legally binding treaty that covers how 195 countries respond to outbreaks like this one," he added.

The reasons behind the discrepancies?

These discrepancies could be due to several reasons. Vox reported that Wuhan authorities might not have had enough information to paint an accurate picture of the virus.

Also, China’s bureaucracy might be a factor: it may have slowed down the passing of information. This meant, the system prevented the lower-ranking officials from reporting information, especially politically sensitive information.

“There are a lot of internal processes that need to go through the bureaucracy in China to get official statements” from the central government, explained Alexandra Phelan, a member of the Center for Global Health Science and Security at Georgetown University who has lived and worked in China over the past two decades. “That rigidity means information may come out very, very slowly,” said Phelan.

Wuhan's Mayor Zhou Xianwang attested to this recently. “In local governance, after I receive information, I can only release it when I am authorized,” he said during a media briefing on Sunday.

He admitted that the outbreak was poorly managed initially, adding that the speed at which information was shared with the public was “not good enough”. Xianyang told China Central Television, during an interview, he said, "We locked down the city to cut the spread of the virus, but it is likely we will leave a bad reputation in history.”

CHINA Wuhan virus reveals fragility of Chinese giant [AsiaNews, 29 Jan 2020]

by Bernardo Cervellera

Although the government has decreed to send 150 military medics experienced with SARS and another 4,000 from other parts of the country, in Hubei (and China), there are no protective suits, goggles, hygiene masks rendering the employment of these new doctors impractical, if not putting them at risk of contagion. Deaths rise to 132, confirmed infections are now more than 6 thousand.

Rome (AsiaNews) - The news that comes in waves from China about the spread of the coronavirus shows how fragile the Chinese giant is. Exalted until a few days ago for its economic achievements and for its military and political power, it is now facing the epidemic with an inefficiency and fragility that have thus far, as of January 29, officially cost the lives of 132 people and infected over 13 thousand, of which 6000 confirmed.

The charges of inefficiency arrives first of all from Wuhan's doctors, at the forefront of the fight against the virus, who for days have complained about the lack of instruments and test kits to discover the disease in the tens of thousands of patients who crowd the corridors of hospitals. With great heroism they work tirelessly for hours and hours and are on the verge of exhaustion.

Although the government has decreed to send 150 military medics experienced with the SARS epidemic and another 4,000 from other parts of the country, in Hubei (and China), there are no protective suits, goggles or hygiene masks rendering the deployment of these new doctors impractical, if not putting them at risk of contagion.

It is estimated that with the ongoing epidemic, at least 100 thousand protective suits are needed per day, but even at full capacity, China is able to produce only 30 thousand per day. Calculating that the lunar New Year is underway, production has now dropped to 15,000 suits per day. There may be a possibility that overalls made elsewhere will be sent from other parts of the world, but China's protected economy does not allow these imports to take place easily.

This inefficiency also depends on a lack of information and the silence that was kept for too long before the alarm was raised. According to The Lancet, the first cases of coronavirus were registered on December 1 last. At least eight people reported the epidemic on January 1, but internet police arrested them as people who spread "fake news" and attacked social order. Only a week later, was there official dicussion of a possible Sars-like epidemic.

This case has made it abundantly clear that the lack of free information has become a boomerang that has against the country. Control of information has led to delays in addressing the emergency, as the mayor of Wuhan declared two days ago. On January 27, in an interview with the national CCTV channel, Zhou Xianwang admitted that "not only did we not disclose the information [on the development of the coronavirus in the city] in time, but we did not use the information effectively to improve the our work."

The ineffective use of information is due to the fact that the approval of the State Council is required before declaring an epidemic emergency. This centralized procedure and style do not allow immediate and effective decisions above all at the local provincial level.

The same process has to be followed to officially declare a person as a coronavirus patient: the positive test must be sent to the provincial health boardwhich in turn studies the papers and gives permission to hospitalize the patient. In this case, precious days are lost to treat a patient who in the meantime, not being hospitalized, becomes a "mobile diffuser" of the virus.

Then there was the absolute inconsistency of the Wuhan isolation measures - followed by other cities in Hubei - applied at the turn of the New Year, the period of greatest mobility of the Chinese. In fact, the mayor of Wuhan, Zhou Xianwang, said that at least 5 million people left the city after the blockade was imposed.

To correct this transfer of possible carriers of the virus, many cities and provinces of China are now being isolated, even very far from Wuhan. We receive news of closed cities in Hebei, Heilongjiang, Shaanxi, ... Then there is also the news that industries, schools, universities, shops, shopping centers are postponing the reopening after the New Year holidays. Even the Shanghai and Shenzhen stock exchanges remain closed; the whole population is advised not to go to public places such as restaurants, cinemas, meetings.

Even the Buddhist temples closed their doors, in the early days of the year precisely when people visit it to give thanks and ask for favors for the year that has begun. Catholic churches have stopped all celebrations and masses. The Beijing diocese and others have given special permits to remedy the precept of Sunday mass, advising families to gather at home, read the bible, say the rosary, recite prayers, devotions and florets to ask God to save China from epidemic.

So far the majority of coronavirus victims are people between the ages of 40 and 60, who were already weakened by some disease (diabetes or otherwise). There are exceptions, however: in Hubei there is a 35-year-old victim and in Guangxi there are two girls aged four and two, who had visited Wuhan.

An illustrious victim of the disease is Wang Xianliang, the head of the Wuhan Ethnic and Religions Committee, who is famous for persecuting many Christian Protestant communities in the city and Optical Valley.

However, I believe that the greatest illustrious victim of the epidemic is President Xi Jinping who, in a departure from his typical protagonism, has been very silent throughout and has limited himself to saying that the epidemic is spreading. Against all expectations, the person who travelled to visit Wuhan and Hubei was Prime Minister Li Keqiang.

The coronavirus epidemic is another blow to the much-publicized "Chinese dream". This foresees a "moderately wealthy society" by 2021, on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the Chinese Communist Party, and the modernization of the country into a fully developed nation by 2049, the 100th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic.

In 2019 Xi had to face many challenges to this dream and he has always emerged the loser.
The trade war has impoverished China and after the attempts - desired by Xi - to challenge the USA, Beijing had to accept the conditions imposed by Washington.
Due to the tariff war and the global economic crisis, the Chinese economy is no longer as prosperous and an increasing number of experts think that the figures and statistics pitted by the government are false.

For the 70th anniversary of the People's Republic of China, he promised "peaceful reunification" with Taiwan in October. But despite the lobbying carried out by Beijing, Tsai Ing-wen, from the progressive democratic party, won in the Taiwan elections: exactly what Xi did not want.

In Hong Kong, although Xi praises the police and the violence it exerts on the population at all times, many people in the area continue to demand full democracy to elect parliament and head of the executive.

Some reporters asked the mayor of Wuhan to resign. Immediately afterwards their newspaper apologized. But many in China think it is Xi Jinping who should go, even if he has managed to change the constitution to remain president for life.

‘No Chinese allowed’: Racism and fear are now spreading along with the coronavirus [MarketWatch, 29 Jan 2020]

By Quentin Fottrell

‘This week, my ethnicity has made me feel like I was part of a threatening and diseased mass,’ Sam Phan, a master’s student at the University of Manchester, said this week

As Chinese health officials and citizens struggle to contain the coronavirus, people in countries including South Korea, Malaysia, the U.K. and Canada are reporting the spread of anti-Chinese racism.

The highly contagious, pneumonia-causing illness that infects the respiratory tract is now responsible for 132 deaths in China as of Wednesday and more than 6,000 infections, up from 1,975 last Saturday, Chinese health officials and local media said.

Wuhan mayor Zhou Xianwang said 5 million people had left the city before travel restrictions were imposed ahead of the Chinese New Year. Ma Xiaowei, the director of China’s National Health Commission, said that the virus had an incubation period of 10 to 14 days.

The focus on Wuhan, the Central Chinese city where the virus is believed to have been first diagnosed in December, and rumors about whether it began in a food market there, have led to reports of racism against Chinese people and the sharing of xenophobic memes online.

Sam Phan, a master’s student at the University of Manchester, wrote in the Guardian: “This week, my ethnicity has made me feel like I was part of a threatening and diseased mass. To see me as someone who carries the virus just because of my race is, well, just racist.”

“As an east Asian I can’t help but feel more and more uncomfortable,” added Phan, a British citizen. “On the bus to work last week, as I sat down, the man next to me immediately scrambled to gather his stuff and stood up to avoid sitting next to me.”

As of 6 pm on Tuesday, the entrance to a seafood restaurant in downtown Seoul bore a sign that read, in red Chinese characters, “No Chinese allowed.” That same day, union of food delivery workers asked to be excused from making deliveries to ar

After five people were arrested in Malaysia for spreading fake news about the virus online, Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad said, “The government will take action on those spreading fake news to instill fear among Malaysians and incite hatred among the races.”

“Even though we believe in freedom of press, that does not mean the press should agitate people and cause people to be antagonistic towards each other,” he said, according to the South China Morning Post. “We will take action against those people.”

Photos of store and restaurant windows in South Korea and Japan shared on Twitter TWTR, -0.86% reportedly have signs that say “No Chinese allowed.” Social-media users report that similar fear and misinformation spread during the SARS epidemic in 2002 and 2003.

A video of Chinese vlogger Wang Mengyun eating bat soup went viral along with thousands of comments — and, according to Mengyun, hate mail. But the video was recorded three years earlier in Palau, Micronesia, a Pacific island nation, not in China.

On Twitter, Canadian-based journalist Andrew Kurjata wrote, “Perhaps revealing some naiveté, I’m surprised at the level of vitriol towards Chinese people I’m seeing in the comments sections of stories about the Wuhan coronavirus. And I mean towards the people, not the government.”

An online petition signed by parents in one school district in Ontario, Canada, asked the school board to request parents whose children or whose families have recently returned from China “to stay at home and keep isolated for a minimum of 17 days for the purpose of self-quarantine.”

China has taken major steps to help prevent the spread of the virus. Officials in Wuhan, a city of 11 million residents that is widely regarded as the epicenter of the illness, last week closed the area’s outgoing airport and railway stations and suspended all public transport.

Chinese officials have since expanded that travel ban to 16 surrounding cities with a combined population of more than 50 million people, including Huanggang, a neighboring city to Wuhan with 7.5 million people, effectively putting those cities on lockdown.

The city’s marathon, which was scheduled for Feb. 9 and typically attracts 70,000 participants, was also canceled. Most of the coronavirus fatalities were older patients, although a 36-year-old Hubei man died earlier this week, the Associated Press reported. Several major theme parks have also been shuttered.

Phan, writing in the Guardian, said “it’s important it is to see us in all our diversity, as individual human beings, and to challenge stereotypes. The coronavirus is a human tragedy, so let’s not allow fear to breed hatred, intolerance and racism,” he wrote.