New Coronavirus News from 30 Jan 2020

Genomic characterisation and epidemiology of 2019 novel coronavirus: implications for virus origins and receptor binding [The Lancet, 30 Jan 2020]

Authored by Prof Roujian Lu, Xiang Zhao, Juan Li, Peihua Niu, Bo Yang, Honglong Wu, Wenling Wang, Hao Song, Baoying Huang, Na Zhu, Yuhai Bi, Xuejun Ma, Faxian Zhan, Liang Wang, Tao Hu, Hong Zhou, Zhenhong Hu, Weimin Zhou, Li Zhao, Jing Chen, Yao Meng, Ji Wang, Yang Lin, Jianying Yuan, Zhihao Xie, Jinmin Ma, William J Liu, Dayan Wang, Wenbo Xu, Edward C Holmes, George F Gao, Guizhen Wu, Weijun Chen, Weifeng Shi & Wenjie Tan

Summary

Background

In late December, 2019, patients presenting with viral pneumonia due to an unidentified microbial agent were reported in Wuhan, China. A novel coronavirus was subsequently identified as the causative pathogen, provisionally named 2019 novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV). As of Jan 26, 2020, more than 2000 cases of 2019-nCoV infection have been confirmed, most of which involved people living in or visiting Wuhan, and human-to-human transmission has been confirmed.

Methods

We did next-generation sequencing of samples from bronchoalveolar lavage fluid and cultured isolates from nine inpatients, eight of whom had visited the Huanan seafood market in Wuhan.

Complete and partial 2019-nCoV genome sequences were obtained from these individuals. Viral contigs were connected using Sanger sequencing to obtain the full-length genomes, with the terminal regions determined by rapid amplification of cDNA ends. Phylogenetic analysis of these 2019-nCoV genomes and those of other coronaviruses was used to determine the evolutionary history of the virus and help infer its likely origin. Homology modelling was done to explore the likely receptor-binding properties of the virus.

Findings

The ten genome sequences of 2019-nCoV obtained from the nine patients were extremely similar, exhibiting more than 99·98% sequence identity. Notably, 2019-nCoV was closely related (with 88% identity) to two bat-derived severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS)-like coronaviruses, bat-SL-CoVZC45 and bat-SL-CoVZXC21, collected in 2018 in Zhoushan, eastern China, but were more distant from SARS-CoV (about 79%) and MERS-CoV (about 50%).
Phylogenetic analysis revealed that 2019-nCoV fell within the subgenus Sarbecovirus of the genus Betacoronavirus, with a relatively long branch length to its closest relatives bat-SL-CoVZC45 and bat-SL-CoVZXC21, and was genetically distinct from SARS-CoV. Notably, homology modelling revealed that 2019-nCoV had a similar receptor-binding domain structure to that of SARS-CoV, despite amino acid variation at some key residues.

Interpretation

2019-nCoV is sufficiently divergent from SARS-CoV to be considered a new human-infecting betacoronavirus. Although our phylogenetic analysis suggests that bats might be the original host of this virus, an animal sold at the seafood market in Wuhan might represent an intermediate host facilitating the emergence of the virus in humans. Importantly, structural analysis suggests that 2019-nCoV might be able to bind to the angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 receptor in humans. The future evolution, adaptation, and spread of this virus warrant urgent investigation.

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https://www.thelancet.com/action/showPdf?pii=S0140-6736%2820%2930251-8

Possible coronavirus case puts 6,000 cruise ship passengers on lockdown near Italy [Fox Business, 30 Jan 2020]

Italian authorities are keeping some 6,000 passengers on a cruise ship

LISBON, Portugal — European countries on Thursday stepped up efforts to contain the virus infecting central China, sending a plane to evacuate hundreds of Europeans from the country and halting even more flights to China. Italian authorities kept some 7,000 people on a cruise ship while they checked for a possible infection.

An A380 plane took off from a former military airport at Beja, 200 kilometers (120 miles) southeast of Lisbon carrying just its pilots and crew.

AIR FRANCE CABIN CREWS DEMAND TO CHINA FLIGHTS: SOURCES

Captain Antonios Efthymiou said the flight was going first to Paris, to pick up a team of doctors and extra crew, before heading to Hanoi and then China. He told Portuguese media it would bring back about 350 Europeans. He said the crew would take special medical precautions but did not elaborate on them.

Portuguese Foreign Minister Augusto Santos Silva said the flight was coordinated between European Union countries and Chinese authorities.

China has reported 170 deaths and at least 7,800 infections from the virus that emerged in the central city of Wuhan. More people have now been infected by this coronavirus in China than were sickened there during the 2002-2003 SARS epidemic. Sports, transport and cultural events have been cancelled across the country, and over 50 million people are under a government lockdown in central China.

In Europe, there have been 10 confirmed cases of the virus: five in France, four in Germany and one in Finland.

Italian health authorities, meanwhile, were screening 6,000 passengers and 1,000 crew aboard a cruise ship docked north of Rome after a passenger from Macao came down with flu-like symptoms, officials said Thursday.

The Costa Crociere cruise line said the 54-year-old woman and her partner, who has no symptoms, were immediately put into isolation Wednesday and the case reported to Italian maritime authorities. Passengers of the Costa Smeralda were being kept on board Thursday pending checks to determine the type of virus.

The ship had sailed from Mallorca, Spain, to Civitavecchia on a weeklong Mediterranean cruise but no passengers were allowed off for a planned walk in sunny Rome on Thursday.

“All the planned mechanisms were activated. Health authorities are on board, doing checks,” Italian Coast Guard Cmdr. Vincenzo Leone said at the port of Civitavecchia. “The situation is under control. There’s a security cordon on the doc

The Czech Republic, meanwhile, announced it was stopping issuing visas to Chinese citizens due to the outbreak. More than 600,000 Chinese tourists are estimated to have visited the Czech Republic last year, especially its old-world capital city of Prague.

On the retail front, Swedish furniture and home goods retailer IKEA announced all its stores in mainland China would remain closed to protect its customers and staff from the outbreak. The stores are a favorite haunt of Chinese city dwellers both for shopping and for hanging out.

Scandinavian Airlines announced it was halting all its flights to Beijing and Shanghai due to the virus beginning Friday until Feb. 9th. SAS, which has 12 regular weekly flights from Scandinavia to China, said Thursday that ”the safety of our passengers and employees is our highest priority.”

Spain’s Iberia national airline halted the three return flights a week it runs between Madrid and Shanghai because of the virus, a move it said would continue through the month of February.

Those announcements followed earlier moves to halt or reduce flights to China by other European airlines, including British Airways, Lufthansa, Austrian Airlines, Swiss, Air France and KLM.
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Nicole Winfield in Rome, Ciaran Giles in Madrid, Karel Janicek in Prague and Gianfranco Stara in Civitavecchia contributed to this report.

Cruise Passengers Are Held at Italian Port in False Alarm Over Coronavirus [The New York Times, 30 Jan 2020]

For an entire day, passengers on the cruise ship were blocked from disembarking after a woman onboard became sick. She did not have the disease, but Italy did identify its first two cases in Rome.

CIVITAVECCHIA, Italy — Thousands of passengers stuck on a towering cruise ship. Doctors racing to the scene. Confusion and fear spreading.

For more than 12 hours on Thursday, the travelers aboard a ship docked north of Rome were ensnared in what was an ultimately false alarm after a Chinese national came down with a fever.

The episode prompted by a single sick passenger illustrates the fear that is spreading around the world along with the outbreak of the coronavirus, which has sickened nearly 9,800 people globally, the vast majority of them in mainland China. All 213 deaths have been reported in China.

For much of the day, Italy was gripped by fears that the coronavirus had arrived in the country.

At least 68 cases have been reported outside mainland China, but there had not yet been any confirmed cases in Italy — though that changed later Thursday, when the government announced the first two cases, which were unrelated to the ship.

Giuseppe Ippolito, scientific director of the Spallanzani Hospital, which specializes in infectious diseases, said late Thursday that the two confirmed coronavirus cases, two Chinese tourists visiting Rome, were being held in isolation at the hospital.

“They were put in isolation as soon as the diagnosis was verified,” he said at a late night news conference with Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte and Health Minister Roberto Speranza.

The officials offered reassurances that they would investigate the movements of the two Chinese tourists and attempt to identify those they may have been in contact with, “to absolutely avoid any further risks,” the prime minister said.

Mr. Conte said that Italy had blocked all flights to and from China. “As far as I know we are the first country in Europe to adopt such a precautionary measure,” he said.

The scare on the cruise ship began Thursday morning after Italian health officials stopped passengers from leaving the ship, the Costa Smeralda, when it landed in the port town of Civitavecchia on the western Italian coast.

The ship, carrying 5,023 passengers and 1,628 crew, was part of the way through a seven-day cruise, with stops in Italy, France and Spain. It left the Spanish port of Palma de Majorca and arrived at 8 a.m. Thursday in Civitavecchia. More than 1,143 guests had planned to end their cruise on Thursday, but were prevented from disembarking.

Later Thursday, a health ministry task force that Italy instituted to counter the spreading virus announced that tests on the passengers for the coronavirus were negative. Italian maritime health authorities said that passengers were allowed to disembark.

Costa Cruises said in a statement Thursday night that passengers who wished to disembark from the ship could, while passengers who wished to remain onboard would be accommodated and could begin their return home Friday. The ship will remain docked in Civitavecchia until Friday evening, skipping the port of La Spezia.

The company apologized for the inconvenience but said they had acted to “ensure maximum safety for all our guests, crew and the community as a whole.”

Onboard the Costa Smeralda, reactions swung wildly.

Maria Cartagena, a passenger on the ship, said that the situation on board “was tranquil.”

“They are doing checks on 2 Chinese passengers and for now (logical) they don’t tell us anything else,” she wrote on Twitter. “Kind of stressful.”

Other passengers took to social media to vent concerns and frustrations and share photographs from onboard the ship.

The all-clear came after controls were carried out by experts from the Spallanzani hospital. It is part of a coronavirus task force, which includes health, transportation and civil protection agency officials, which the health ministry set up earlier this month for just such an event.

In Civitavecchia, some passengers waiting to board the Costa Smeralda were scared about what awaited them.

Graziana Iuso, 39, from the southern Italian town of Torremaggiore, said she was nervous.
“I don’t want to get on that boat,” she said as she waited to board. “A couple of hours is not enough to do checkups.”

Another woman who was set to board the ship for a vacation, Antonella Libardo, the owner of a pizzeria in Puglia, said she trusted the company and would board without hesitation if the authorities gave passengers the green light.

“This virus thing is becoming a psychosis,” she said.

Emma Bubola reported from Civitavecchia and Elisabetta Povoledo and Jason Horowitz from Rome. Megan Specia contributed reporting from London.

Global fears spread over coronavirus [CNN, 30 Jan 2020]

By James Griffiths, Angela Dewan, Gianluca Mezzofiore, Livia Borghese and Ivana Kottasová

Hong Kong (CNN)The World Health Organization has declared the novel coronavirus outbreak a public health emergency of international concern, after an emergency meeting on Thursday.

The decision came after cases of human-to-human transmissions were confirmed outside China, where the outbreak started. A first such case was confirmed in the United States on Thursday, following a case in Germany earlier this week.

The number of cases of the virus, which has killed at least 213 people, shot up to more than 8,100 in mainland China alone by Thursday evening. That is a higher number of infected people than the number who caught SARS worldwide during the 2002-2003 epidemic.
However, the current case fatality rate for Wuhan virus is around 2% -- significantly smaller than SARS' 9.6% mortality rate.

While the virus originated in the Chinese city of Wuhan in December, there are now more than 100 cases in 20 other countries and territories spanning Asia, North America, Europe and the Middle East. India and the Philippines were the latest to confirm the virus had reached their shores.

Thousands of people were held on a cruise ship in Italy on Thursday and Russia closed off its borders with China as global fears continued to grow over the rapidly spreading Wuhan coronavirus.

The Costa Smeralda docked in the Civitavecchia port near Rome on Thursday.

On Thursday, 7,000 people, including 1,000 crew, were confined to a cruise ship in a port near Rome as a couple was being tested for the virus. A spokesperson for Costa Cruises told CNN that a 54-year-old woman aboard the cruise ship was suffering from a fever and that she and her husband were both being tested. Italian news agency ANSA and public broadcaster RAI reported that the woman and her husband were from Hong Kong and were being kept separately in solitary confinement in the hospital section of the cruiseliner.

The Costa Smeralda cruise ship is now docked at Civitavecchia port, a coastal town northwest of Rome. It had arrived from Palma de Majorca, Spain, as part of its tour of the western Mediterranean.

The test came back negative, the Italian Ministry of Health said Thursday night, but it was unclear when the passengers will be allowed to disembark.

Border closures

Several countries are repatriating their citizens from China and multiple air carriers have suspended flights to the country.

Russian state media reported Thursday that Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin had signed an order to close Russia's border with China in the Far East in an effort to prevent the spread of the virus.

"An order has been signed today, it is in the works. Today we will inform everyone accordingly about the relevant measures to close the border in the Far Eastern region and other measures that have been taken by the government," Mishustin said, RIA reports.

Russia's Far Eastern Federal District shares a land border with China, Mongolia and North Korea. Thursday's announcement comes after several Russian tour operators and charter flight companies suspended flights to China.

Russia will also limit its railway service with China from Friday, TASS reported.

In the semi-autonomous city of Hong Kong, where only 10 cases have been confirmed, the government has closed a high-speed rail station that would usually connect the city to China's mainland. Hong Kong has introduced new limits it says will cut the amount of mainland Chinese travelers coming to the city by 80%.

A CNN correspondent described Hong Kong as a ghost town, with empty shops and streets at a time that Chinese New Year celebrations usually light up the city. Instead, people lined up for more than three hours to collect surgical face masks to help keep them safe from the virus.

Several countries, including the United States, Japan and some in the European Union, are evacuating their citizens from Wuhan. The United Kingdom was given the green light to fly nationals home in the early hours of Friday morning after a long delay.

Multiple major air carriers are also canceling flights to and from parts of China, including British Airways, American Airlines, Air Canada, KLM, Lufthansa and United. The moves follow travel guidance from multiple governments advising against "nonessential" travel to the country.

Across Asia and elsewhere, strict checks and screening have been put in place for all travelers arriving from China -- though this may be ineffective as scientists previously warned that the virus can be spread while patients are asymptomatic.

Quarantine city

As the number of confirmed cases of the Wuhan coronavirus continues to grow worldwide, the city at the heart of the outbreak marks a week since it was first placed under lockdown.

All 31 provinces and regions within China have now reported cases of the virus, including Tibet, which had instituted strict checks on travelers and shutdown tourist sites in an ultimately unsuccessful attempt to stop its spread to the region.

Some 60 million people across Hubei, the province of which Wuhan is the capital, are on some level of lockdown, and many travelers from the region have been ordered to self-quarantine, holed up in their apartments or hotel rooms for days on end.

In Wuhan itself, 11 million people are marking a week on lockdown with no sign of immediate relief. Nor is there firm evidence that their sacrifice has been worth it, with the virus spreading around the country and scientists warning that other major cities could soon become self-sustaining epidemics.

Online, people trapped in their houses have been uploading videos and photos showing various ways they are staying busy -- staging makeshift Lunar New Year lion dances in their apartments, exercising, and urging others to keep their spirits up. But as the lockdown stretches on, such positivity may be harder to come by, particularly as some begin to feel the lost wages or business.

Chinese President Xi Jinping on Wednesday ordered the People's Liberation Army to aid in "winning the battle against the novel coronavirus epidemic." Military medical teams have already been sent to Wuhan and soldiers are also aiding with transporting supplies to the stricken city.

Outside of Hubei, infections are predicted to continue growing for weeks, if not months. Researchers at Imperial College London have estimated that at least 4,000 people were infected in Wuhan by January 18, almost a week before the lockdown began. Their model suggests a low national figure of 20,000 infections by the end of the month, potentially as high as 100,000.

Speaking to state media Tuesday, Zhong Nanshan, one of China's leading respiratory experts and a hero of the 2003 fight against SARS, said he expected the peak to come in up to 10 days.

"It is very difficult to definitely estimate when the outbreak reaches its peak. But I think in one week or about 10 days, it will reach the climax and then there will be no large-scale increases," Zhong said.

Thousands of Australians have been exposed to coronavirus as 167 flights and 49,000 passengers continue to arrive WEEKLY from China - and outbreak is now declared to be a global emergency [Daily Mail, 30 Jan 2020]

By NIC WHITE and CHARLIE MOORE Nine people in Australia are confirmed to be infected with coronavirus • All arrived in Australia from China, where the outbreak began last month • Almost 2,000 were on their planes and hundreds of others exposed afterwards • Chinese health authorities confirmed patients contagious before symptoms • One patient had dinner in popular restaurant and another was in a tour group Thousands of people could have been exposed to the coronavirus in Australia by the country's nine confirmed patients alone - as up to 49,000 people land on flights from China per week and a global health emergency is declared. Four people in Sydney, three in Melbourne, and two on the Gold Coast have been struck down with the deadly virus in recent weeks. Each one flew in from Wuhan, the Chinese city where the outbreak began, on planes packed with hundreds of potential victims. At least a day passed after they arrived before they developed flu-like symptoms and eventually went to hospital. During this time when they didn't know they were sick, they interacted with hundreds of people each, some of whom could now be infected. One patient was even allowed out of isolation to celebrate Australia Day at a restaurant with his family while he was waiting for test results. People they infected will be going about their lives on crowded trains and buses, having business meetings, and sharing meals - potentially passing the virus on. This is just from the nine confirmed cases - more than a dozen other people are being tested after developing symptoms associated with the virus. It comes as China's coronavirus death toll hits 170 and the World Health Organisation declares a global health emergency. Speaking to reporters, WHO Director-General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said: 'The main reason for this declaration is not because of what is happening in China, but because of what is happening in other countries. 'Our greatest concern is the potential for the virus to spread to countries with weaker health systems, and which are ill-prepared to deal with it.' Russia, which has no cases of the virus, is closing its 2,600-mile border with China, joining Mongolia and North Korea in barring crossings to guard against the outbreak. Train traffic between the countries was halted except for one train connecting Moscow and Beijing, but air traffic between the two countries continued. On Thursday Israel banned all incoming flights from China and 6,000 people in Italy were prevented from leaving a cruise ship while tests were carried out on a passenger from Macau. Australia and New Zealand are planning a joint evacuation of citizens from Wuhan while Singapore is setting up a quarantine facility on an island to the city's north-east. Meanwhile, the United States and South Korea confirmed their first cases of person-to-person spread of the virus. The man in the US is married to a 60-year-old Chicago woman who got sick from the virus after she returned from a trip to Wuhan, the Chinese city that is the epicentre of the outbreak. In Australia, the first men were confirmed to be infected with coronavirus on January 25 - three in NSW and another in Victoria. Two arrived on direct flights from Wuhan to Sydney on separate China Eastern Airlines flight MU749, one on January 20 and another on an unknown date. Both these flights had up to 250 passengers plus several crew on board who are prime candidates for infection. Another man, diagnosed on the same day, flew in to Sydney via Shenzhen, near Hong Kong, on January 6 on a plane that carries up to 277 people. CORONAVIRUS CASES IN AUSTRALIA NEW SOUTH WALES: 4 Four people in NSW have been diagnosed with coronavirus, including three men and one woman. January 25 • Three men aged 43, 53, and 35 who had recently travelled to China are confirmed to have contracted the disease. • Two flew in from Wuhan while the other arrived in Sydney from Shenzhen, south China. • They are being treated in isolation at Westmead Hospital and are in stable condition. January 27 • A 21-year-old woman is identified as the fourth person to test positive for the illness in NSW. • The woman, a student at UNSW, flew into Sydney International Airport on flight MU749 on January 23 and presented to the emergency department 24 hours later after developing flu-like symptoms. • She is being treated in isolation at Westmead Hospital. VICTORIA: 3 January 25 • A Chinese national aged in his 50s becomes the first confirmed case of the coronavirus in Australia. • The man flew to Melbourne on China Southern flight CZ321 from Wuhan via Guangzhou on January 19. • He is now in quarantined isolation at Monash Hospital in Clayton in Melbourne's east. January 29 • A Victorian man in his 60s is diagnosed with the coronavirus. • He became unwell on January 23 - two days after returning from the Chinese city of Wuhan, the epicentre of the outbreak. • The man was confirmed as positive on January 29 and was subsequently seen by doctors at the Monash Medical Centre. He was assessed as being well enough to stay at home. January 30 • A woman in her 40s falls ill with the coronavirus. • She was visiting from China and mostly spent time with her family. • She is being treated at Royal Melbourne Hospital. QUEENSLAND: 2 January 29 • Queensland confirms its first case after a 44-year-old Chinese national wass diagnosed with the virus. • He is being treated at Gold Coast University Hospital. January 30 • A 42-year-old Chinese woman who was travelling in the same Wuhan tour group as the 44-year-old man tests positive. She is in Gold Coast University Hospital in stable condition. Australia has raised the travel alert level to 'do not travel' for the city of Wuhan - the epicentre of the outbreak - and for the entire Hubei province. Chief Medical Officer Brendan Murphy says unless people have contact with someone who is unwell and has come from that part of China, there is no need for current concern. The fourth arrived in Melbourne from Wuhan via Guangzhou on January 19 on a an A388 carrying up to 525 passengers. A total of 167 flights that can carry 48,999 people are landing in Australia from mainland China per week as coronavirus spreads around the world. Based on those figures, as many as 342,993 people may have entered Australia from China since the deadly virus was first detected in Wuhan seven weeks ago. On Thursday, major airlines suspended or reduced services to China including British Airways, Lufthansa, American Airlines, KLM, and United. But the airlines that fly from China to Australia - including eight Chinese airlines and Qantas - made no changes to their routes, except for China Eastern cancelling its flight from Wuhan to Sydney last week. The flights include 62 planes from Guangzhou, 42 from Shanghai and 18 from Beijing per week, with direct routes to Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide, Perth and Darwin. On Wednesday, Qantas chief executive Alan Joyce said the airline was considering scrapping its Sydney to Beijing route due to low demand. The airline had already announced plans to axe that service from March, but Mr Joyce suggested that could happen sooner. NSW Health advice states that people are at risk of catching the virus if they spent 15 minutes in close contact, such as a face-to-face conversation, or two hours in the same confined space. Chinese health authorities have confirmed that, contrary to earlier belief, patients are contagious even before they develop symptoms. On Monday, it was confirmed that a 21-year-old University of NSW student who arrived on a different MU749 flight was infected. The university told students in an email that she became unwell soon after her flight and isolated herself in her on-campus dorm room for 24 hours before going to hospital. UNSW is not in semester but there are still some students and staff on campus she could have interacted with, along with on public transport and at the airport. Many students are terrified they could be infected next, especially with thousands of Chinese classmates due to arrive on campus in coming weeks. The second Melbourne patient landed on January 21, though it is not clear which flight he was on, and wasn't diagnosed until Wednesday. The man in his 60s went to hospital two days later but was allowed out of isolation to celebrate Australia Day with his family. He was with five family members - three adults and two children - at The House of Delight in Glen Waverley between 5.30pm and 7pm. Victoria's chief health officer Dr Brett Sutton urged other diners to contact the health department and watch for coronavirus symptoms. Other businesses in the same building as the restaurant on 52 Montclair Avenue have closed until February 9 and others are thinking about shutting up shop. A cleaner was brought in to disinfect buttons in the building's lift. One of the patient's adult relatives and one of the children have tested negative so far, and all five are in isolation with him. The seventh victim has the most capacity to have infected hundreds of others. The 44-year-old Chinese tourist arrived in Melbourne from Wuhan via Singapore on January 22 and spent several days travelling with a tour group. On Thursday night it was confirmed that one of them, a 42-year-old woman, contracted the virus herself, while three others were sick. All eight of his fellow holidaymakers are now in isolation with him at Gold Coast University Hospital. They all took Tiger Air flight TT566, landing on the Gold Coast about 8pm on Monday on a plane that carries up to 189 passengers. Queensland Health chief officer Dr Jeannette Young on Thursday said she was concerned about everyone on the plane. 'My concern is that those 150-200 people on that plane when he started getting symptoms and then his 24 hours in the Gold Coast community, I need to track exactly where he went,' she said. Tiger Air said it was in the process of contacting the passengers and crew to notify them so they could visit their GP for testing. The 44-year-old stayed at an apartment in the Oracle building in Broadbeach, which is in the same building as the $900-a-night Peppers hotel frequented by celebrities including Taylor Swift. He became increasingly unwell after first developing symptoms before the flight out of Melbourne and called an ambulance about 3.30pm on Tuesday. A Chinese tourist who arrived in Melbourne early last week was diagnosed on Thursday a week after she got sick. Her exposure to the public is believed to be more limited as she spent the vast majority of her time with family members she was visiting. People the nine patients infected could pass the virus on to others before they even know they are sick or were exposed at all. Scientists are still trying to fully understand this strain of coronavirus and work out how contagious it is and how to stop it. The infection rate of diseases is called its basic reproduction number, known as R0 or r-nought, brought to public attention by 2011 film Contagion about a fictional worldwide pandemic. Imperial College London estimated coronavirus' R0 to be 2.6, meaning that on average each patient would infect 2.6 others before they died, were isolated, or got better. This number changes over time as the virus spreads or is brought under control by health authorities - an R0 of less than 1 means it is under control. Measles is particularly contagious, with a score as high as 16, while SARS was 2 to 5, as is HIV, while a standard flu is about 1.3. Some particularly deadly diseases, like ebola, have low scores because they kill patients too fast to infect many people, or produce symptoms too fast. Coronavirus has a mortality rate of about 2 per cent, compared to 9.5 per cent for SARS and 34.5 per cent in the 2012 MERS outbreak. Australia is starting at a low base of infection, but this can quickly multiply if the average R0 observed in China is met. Coronavirus has killed 170 so far, all in China, and more than 7,800 are infected worldwide.

WHO Declares Outbreak an International Emergency: Virus Update [Bloomberg, 30 Jan 2020]

The World Health Organization called the outbreak of coronavirus in China a global health emergency, citing the risk that the sometimes-deadly virus could expand to other countries beyond the smattering of cases outside China so far. The declaration comes hours after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported the first case of human-to-human transmission of the coronavirus in the U.S., in a woman who traveled to China and then infected her husband. As confirmed cases in China have topped 8,000, nations are taking drastic measures to stop the virus’s spread. Key Developments: Recap Bloomberg’s live blog of the WHO press conference here Automakers to likely cut China production by 15%, supplier says Italian cruise ship will stay in port for now, despite negative diagnosis The World Health Organization declared the coronavirus outbreak centered in China a public health emergency of international concern, a step that will let public health authorities aid countries with less-robust health systems to stop the spread of the virus. WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus praised China‘s efforts to contain the outbreak, saying he had never seen a nation respond so aggressively to a disease, including building a new hospital in just 10 days. “Let me be clear: This declaration is not a vote of no confidence in China,” Tedros said. “On the contrary the WHO continues to have confidence in China’s capacity to control the outbreak.” It’s a contrast to the criticism China faced for a lack to transparency during the SARS pandemic 17 years ago, which killed almost 800 people. Tedros says there’s no need at this time for measures that interfere with travel and trade, even though many governments, airlines and businesses have already taken such steps. He also urged people to be careful of rumors and rushing to judgment. “This is the time for facts not fear,” Tedros said. “This is the time for science not rumors. This is the time for solidarity not stigma.” In the past, the WHO has come under fire for raising the alert too soon as well as too late. The last respiratory illness to trigger a health emergency was the flu pandemic of 2009, which caused widespread alarm but ended up being relatively mild. The WHO’s emergency committee, a group of infectious-disease experts, last week delayed a decision on whether to make the emergency declartion. U.S. Has First Human-to-Human Transmission (12:43 p.m. NY) A woman in Chicago who had been diagnosed last week with the coronavirus infected her husband, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Thursday, the first case of human-to-human transmission to occur in the U.S. Both patients are in their 60s and are doing well while being kept in isolation, CDC officials said on the call. The agency said the virus is not spreading widely and that the risk to the U.S. public remains low. Disease experts are still trying to understand exactly how the virus spreads, and at what point after a person has become infected they become contagious. It’s also not clear, said CDC officials, how long a person has to be sick for before they will test positive. Both factors can present a challenge for public health workers who are keeping close tabs on contacts of people considered at risk. The man and the woman had been in close contact, said the CDC, which appears to raise the risk of people becoming infected. European Airlines Halt China Flights (12:09 p.m. NY) European carriers led by British Airways said they’re temporarily quitting China as the deadly coronavirus spreads, following decisions by U.S. carriers to limit flights to the country. BA took the most dramatic step, saying Thursday it will cease flights to Beijing and Shanghai until March 1 after acting on U.K. Foreign Office advice. Iberia, its Spanish sister carrier at IAG SA, is also suspending operations, while Deutsche Lufthansa AG, Air France and SAS AB said they’ll exit China until Feb. 9. In the U.S., President Donald Trump’s economic adviser Larry Kudlow said the decision on canceling flights would be left to U.S. airlines, for now. Almost 11% of flights scheduled to or from China were scrapped between Jan. 23 and Jan. 28, based on research from Cirium, which analyzes air travel. Initial Tests Show No Coronavirus on Italy Ship (10:50 p.m. HK) Initial tests showed no coronavirus on a Carnival cruise ship that was blocked from leaving an Italian port. A 54-year-old woman from Macau had earlier demonstrated fever and respiratory symptoms. She has since been kept in isolation on board in the port of Civitavecchia, near Rome. Final results are expected later Thursday. Carnival Corp. stock pared declines to about 2% in the U.S. Russia Closes China Border as Fears Grow (8 p.m. HK) The Russian government ordered its vast land border with China shut as the Kremlin moves to keep the deadly coronavirus at bay. The closure affects movement of people, not goods. While it’s still possible to fly to China, the Foreign Ministry warned Russians to refrain from non-essential travel to the country. Russia hasn’t reported any cases of the virus. U.S. Plans Another Wuhan Evacuation Flight: Dow Jones (7 p.m. HK) The U.S. will provide an additional flight to evacuate private citizens from Wuhan on or about Feb. 3, Dow Jones reports, citing unidentified people familiar with the situation. An earlier flight carrying more than 200 Americans arrived at March Air Reserve Base in California, where the passengers are being monitored. Hong Kong Warns of Surgical Mask Shortage (6 p.m. HK) Hong Kong warned it’s struggling to supply enough surgical masks. Chief Secretary Matthew Cheung said the government has bought 13 million, but public hospitals are using five or six times as many as normal and Hong Kong is stepping up local production at correctional facilities to keep up with demand. Another 24 million should be available at retail outlets soon, he added. Hong Kong’s population is about 7 million. Chief Executive Carrie Lam will hold a briefing Friday on the government’s latest measures against the spread of the virus, Cheung said. India, Philippines Report First Virus Cases (4:55 p.m. HK) India and the Philippines reported their first confirmed cases of the coronavirus, as the illness continues its global spread. A student who attended Wuhan University tested positive in the southern Indian state of Kerala, the government said. Meanwhile, a 38-year-old female Chinese patient who arrived from Wuhan via Hong Kong on Jan. 21 has been confirmed as the first case in the Philippines. Chinese Regions Extend Holidays (2:57 p.m. HK): At least one Chinese city and several provinces have extended the Lunar New Year holiday beyond Feb. 2 in an effort to control the spread of the virus. Shanghai, the autonomous region of Inner Mongolia and provinces of Guangdong, Zhejiang, Jiangsu have said businesses need not start operations until at least Feb. 10. Hubei province, where Wuhan is located, has said the holiday will last until at least Feb. 14. China had already extended the holiday nationwide on Monday. It was originally due to end on Jan. 30, but was stretched to Feb. 2. Trump Appoints Coronavirus Task Force (12:24 p.m. HK) President Donald Trump appointed a task force to coordinate the U.S. response to the coronavirus outbreak. The task force will be led by Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar, said White House Press Secretary Stephanie Grisham in a statement. Other figures include Robert Redfield, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, as well as National Security Adviser Robert O’Brien. The White House also plans to send CDC experts to China to help respond to the outbreak. Supply-Chain Fears Hit Taiwan Stocks (12:08 p.m. HK) Concern that the virus outbreak will disrupt the global supply chain rippled through Taiwan’s stock market. Taiwan’s Taiex plunged more than 5%, the most since October 2018, as trading reopened following the Lunar New Year break. Foxconn’s Hon Hai Precision Industry Co., which assembles the majority of Apple Inc.’s iPhones from China and has minor operations in Wuhan, sank as much as 10%. Hon Hai said all of its facilities will resume full-scale production only from Feb. 10, more than a week later than originally planned. Virus Spread May Prompt WHO Action: Expert (11:40 a.m. HK) Developments over the past week may push the World Health Organization to issue a global alert over the coronavirus, after the agency last week stopped short of calling it a health emergency, according to a public health specialist. Evidence that the disease can be transmitted before a person shows any signs of illness could make a difference as WHO’s emergency committee meets later Thursday, said Raina MacIntyre, a professor of global biosecurity at the University of New South Wales in Sydney. The global spread of the virus could also be a factor, she said. “That brings a more complex issue to disease control,” McIntyre said in a phone interview Thursday. “It becomes much harder to control infection where you have got transmission without symptoms.” Three Japanese Evacuated From Wuhan Have Virus (9:09 a.m. HK) Three of the 206 people who returned to Japan from Hubei Province on Wednesday tested positive for the new coronavirus, with two not showing any symptoms, Japan Health Minister Katsunobu Kato told a parliamentary committee. Two other evacuees on the charter plane declined to be tested and were sent home, according to the Health Ministry. Kato said officials did not have the legal power to force them to be tested. A second charter plane carrying 210 more evacuees arrived in Tokyo from Wuhan on Thursday morning. China Virus Cases Surge to Over 7,700 (7:47 a.m. HK) China’s death toll from the coronavirus rose to 170 from 132 previously, while the number of cases on the mainland jumped to 7,711, according to the National Health Commission. U.S. to Send Experts to China: Kudlow (6:45 a.m. HK) President Donald Trump’s top economic adviser said the U.S. would send experts to China to help the nation contain the coronavirus outbreak. “We are sending our best experts from CDC to help them,” Larry Kudlow told reporters on Wednesday, referring to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “The Chinese invited us to do so.” Asked whether the White House is considering restricting flights to China, Kudlow said, “there’s a lot of discussions going on one way or another.” — With assistance by James Paton, Michelle Cortez, Bryce Baschuk, Josh Wingrove, Linly Lin, Jason Gale, Sofia Horta e Costa, Pradeep Kurup, Andreo Calonzo, Claire Jiao, Jeff Sutherland, Thomas Mulier, Alberto Brambilla, Jake Rudnitsky, and Mark Schoifet

Coronavirus: How are patients treated? [BBC News, 30 Jan 2020]

People confirmed to have the new coronavirus are getting hospital treatment - but what kind of treatment are they getting and how effective is it? What is this virus? The virus, so far called 2019-nCoV, is known to have killed 170 people in China and infected more than 7,000. It has also spread to 16 other countries. It's a newly identified member of the coronavirus family - common infections which cause cold-like symptoms, a fever, coughing and respiratory problems. Many people who get this new virus will only suffer mild symptoms, and most are expected to make a full recovery. But like Sars (also a coronavirus) and influenza, this new one appears to pose a particular risk for elderly people and those with pre-existing illnesses. There is no cure, in the same way that there is no cure for the common cold. • 'Breakthrough' coronavirus copy grown in Australia • Coronavirus: How worried should we be? • China coronavirus: Misinformation spreads online • Can wearing masks stop the spread of viruses? What happens in hospital? Those who get admitted to hospital are given treatment for their symptoms while their immune systems try to fight the virus off. Hospitalisation also serves to isolate patients and stop the virus spreading, says Prof Jonathan Ball, a virologist at the University of Nottingham. In severe cases, the virus can cause pneumonia - an inflammation of the lungs. In those cases breathing may need to be supported, Prof Ball says. Patients are given oxygen and in the worst cases may be put on a ventilator. About one in four cases are thought to be severe. "If a patient has respiratory symptoms they support breathing. If it is pressure on organs they would try to support the body in alleviating that pressure," says Prof Ball. In milder cases, patients struggling to maintain blood pressure can be given an intravenous drip. Fluids can also be given in cases of diarrhoea, and ibuprofen is also available for pain relief. Zhang Dingyu, head of the Wuhan Jinyintan Hospital, told China's state broadcaster CCTV that patients who'd recovered there were "in good condition". Some may have some lingering lung issues, he said, "but I'm optimistic that they will recover well". Could HIV drugs help? Although there's no vaccine against the new coronavirus, tests are under way in China to see whether two antiviral drugs used to treat HIV - lopinavir and ritonavir - could be an effective treatment. These drugs were shown to help fight the Sars virus in 2003, after evidence emerged that HIV patients who were using the drugs and who also had Sars had better outcomes. The hope is that Sars and the new coronavirus are similar enough for the drugs to have an impact, Prof Ball says. "If there are early signs it might work, it might get used on a compassionate basis - in severe cases - because the drugs haven't been approved for that use." "Compassionate use" is when unapproved medicine are made available, under strict conditions, to the very ill or most at-risk patients. What about the search for a vaccine? The race is on to develop a vaccine but, realistically, it could be years away. Despite research into Sars and Mers - which appeared in 2003 and 2012 respectively - there are still no vaccines for them. Any vaccine would first need to be proven effective and safe in animals and then again in humans before being licensed, Prof Ball says. Before being given to anyone, it would need to be approved by the World Health Organization - unless it was used on a compassionate basis. "In theory there could be a vaccine in a year or two but definitely not in the next six months," Prof Ball says.

Experts warn U.S. to plan for a much bigger coronavirus outbreak [Axios, 30 Jan 2020]

by Sam Baker The U.S. should be preparing for the worst as the Chinese coronavirus spreads, and somebody at the White House needs to be in charge of coordinating that effort, public health experts say. The big picture: The virus may never become a crisis here, but experts say the responsible thing right now is to plan for the worst and hope that those plans aren't needed. The catch: The National Security Council official who would have been in charge of leading the response to a pandemic left in 2018, and now no one is around to do the job. • "They need to put someone at the White House in charge," Ron Klain, who served as then-President Obama's "Ebola czar," said this week on Axios' Pro Rata podcast. • Containing and combating a viral outbreak involves border patrol and national security officials; public health agencies at the federal, state and local levels; public and private vaccine researchers; and coordinating with individual hospitals. • It makes sense to put one person in charge of coordinating all of that, Klain said. Where it stands: There have only been five confirmed cases of the coronavirus in the U.S., and there are still big unanswered questions about it. The primary goal so far has been to contain the virus — that's why China has locked down the Wuhan area and the U.S. has expanded travel screenings for people traveling from China. • But keeping a lid on the coronavirus may simply be impossible. • "Global & national planning efforts should now be aimed at possibility that [the virus] cannot be contained," Tom Inglesby, an infectious-disease expert at Johns Hopkins University, wrote on Twitter. China has already seen neatly 6,000 confirmed cases, touching every region of the country, and it has shown up now in 15 other countries, according to the latest World Health Organization update. • That suggests that the coronavirus spreads similarly to the flu virus, said Michael Osterholm, the director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota. And the flu spreads pretty easily. "What you get concerned about is the contact of the contact of the contact of the person that was in China," Osterholm said. • That's part of the reason travel screening or travel restrictions may not make much of a difference, he said. What’s next: Experts say there are a handful of priorities at this stage. Hospitals need to stock up on protective equipment, to the extent they can find more supplies. • Health care workers are particularly susceptible to catching and spreading viruses like this one. But in terms of having enough protective equipment on hand, hospitals are "woefully unprepared" for a large-scale outbreak, Osterholm said. The federal government also needs to be ready to step in, if a large number of cases start to crop up in concentrated areas. • Tracking infected people's contacts is "going to overwhelm state and local public health departments very, very quickly," Klain said. Another lesson from the Ebola scare, experts said, is not to downplay the risks. • The U.S. was never at risk for a widespread Ebola outbreak, but Osterholm says too much emphasis on that fact might have made the public panic worse when a few isolated transmissions did occur. The bottom line: "Don't tell the public that everything's going to be OK, but at the same time, tell the public we're going to get through this," Osterholm said.

Limited data on coronavirus may be skewing assumptions about severity [STAT, 30 Jan 2020]

By HELEN BRANSWELL Health officials in China, racing to try to contain a fast-growing coronavirus outbreak, are principally recording severe cases of disease, using a case definition that cannot capture patients with mild illness, according to experts familiar with the surveillance efforts. The approach, the experts told STAT, is likely resulting in both an underestimate in the total number of cases and flawed assumptions about fatality rates calculated by those who ignore the repeated caution that it’s too soon to do that math. The experts were quick to note that the Chinese are not willfully underreporting cases. Rather, the approach is a testament to how challenging data collection can be during the early days of an epidemic. When thousands of sick people show up at hospitals looking for care, there is no time to go searching for people who have mild symptoms and who have stayed home. “I think right now things are so chaotic in China it may be hard to collect data on the whole spectrum of illness,” said Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Diseases Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota. Officially, an estimated 20% of cases in China are severely ill, according to the World Health Organization. But that calculation is derived based on known cases, and would not reflect mild, undetected ones. Without knowing for sure what percentage of cases is severe — and how easily the pathogen that causes the disease can be transmitted — it’s impossible to forecast what might happen if the virus continues to spread globally, the WHO’s emergencies chief, Mike Ryan, told reporters Wednesday. “We don’t understand either of those parameters well enough to make accurate predictions,” he said. Still, he added a warning for people who are concluding that the virus may be less fatal than some other known pathogens: “A relatively mild virus can cause a lot of damage if a lot of people get it.” The outbreak has infected upward of 7,700 people on the Chinese mainland, and killed 170 since the new virus, known provisionally as 2019-nCoV, was reported to the WHO on Dec. 31. Nearly 20 other countries have reported diagnosing infections in travelers from the Chinese city of Wuhan, the epicenter of the outbreak, but to date there has been little local spread of the virus in other countries. WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus and Ryan, who were in China earlier this week to consult with the Chinese government and assess the situation, praised the response by officials there. “The challenge is great but the response has been massive,” Ryan told reporters. The effort, which is of an unprecedented scale, involves quarantining whole cities that are home to tens of millions of people to try to stop spread of the virus. The WHO is still hopeful, Ryan said, that China will be able to stop the outbreak. If it cannot — or if exported infections seed outbreaks in other parts of the globe — the world could be looking at a more disseminated epidemic, admitted Tedros, as he is called. Among other factors, epidemiologists are interested in the severity of the outbreak and what is known as the virus’ “attack rate.” The attack rate means the percentage of people who will develop the disease if it spreads. With seasonal influenza, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates between 3% and 11% of people become sick with flu every year. But immune systems have experience with influenza; the attack rate might be higher with a virus that is wholly new to humans. Likewise it’s unclear how many mild infections are being missed. The Chinese are currently only testing people who are sick enough to seek medical care because they have pneumonia — a criterion that automatically excludes anyone on the mild end of the disease spectrum. With some diseases, there isn’t much mild illness. In the case of the 2002-2003 SARS outbreak, for example, most people who became infected ended up in hospital, noted Dr. Gabriel Leung, dean of medicine at Hong Kong University and a veteran of that city’s battle against the disease. It’s clear there are at least some mild cases with this new infection. Many of the 100 or so exported cases are people with mild illness; to date there have been no deaths among these cases. Some of the five cases in the United States are only in hospital to ensure they don’t infect anyone else. Such cases would not be tested in China using the current case definition. “The look and feel of the exported cases, I think, really support the argument that there’s a lot of mild disease that is not being detected in China at the moment for the very good reason that they just can’t do it,” said Dr. Allison McGeer, who fought SARS in Toronto and helped contain hospital outbreaks of MERS in Saudi Arabia. Both SARS and MERS are coronaviruses, related to the new virus. McGeer, an infectious diseases researcher at Toronto’s Mount Sinai Hospital, noted the types of studies needed to estimate how much mild disease this virus causes are very difficult to do. Infectious diseases experts use the analogy of an iceberg when they talk about the spectrum of a disease. The most severe cases represent the tip of the iceberg; they are visible, because they are sick enough that they seek health care. But the portion of the iceberg that is under water is harder to calculate, especially with a new disease. And without having a clear picture of total cases, it’s difficult to come up with an accurate fatality rate. Wang Linfa, director of the program in emerging infectious diseases at Duke-NUS Medical School in Singapore, is convinced there are a lot of mild infections. “Mild cases don’t go to hospital and there’s many, many cases that remain to be confirmed,” he said, noting laboratories are struggling to keep up with testing amid a reported shortage of test kits. Leung agreed: “It looks like the submerged bit of the iceberg is fairly large for this thing.” Some of the answers China cannot currently generate will come from watching what happens with the exported cases, said Dr. David Heymann, who oversaw the WHO’s SARS response and now teaches at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. “Now we are really going to begin to see things,” he said. Countries outside of China are using a broader approach to testing, looking for anyone who has recently traveled to or from Wuhan who has respiratory symptoms. These people, who the CDC calls “persons under investigation” or PUIs, do not need to have pneumonia in order to be tested.

Coronavirus updates: The latest news on the outbreak and the global response [NBC News, 30 Jan 2020]

By Yuliya Talmazan and Daniel Arkin There were more than 7,700 confirmed cases of the coronavirus in China on Thursday as the death toll reached 170. Here's what else is new today. • WHO declares global public health emergency • Death toll in China climbs to 170; more than 7,700 confirmed cases • 195 Americans evacuated from area near Wuhan — more evacuation flights are on the way • India and the Philippines confirm first cases • A number of airlines halted flights to and from China ________________________________________ WHO declares global public health emergency The World Health Organization on Thursday declared a global public health emergency over the outbreak of the new coronavirus. The WHO's director-general, Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said the declaration is not a "vote of no confidence" in China, which has been widely praised for its transparency and work to control the outbreak. — Erika Edwards CDC confirms first human-to-human spread in U.S. The CDC said Thursday that a contact of a person infected with the coronavirus has also fallen ill. The new patient, who lives in Chicago, marks the sixth person in the U.S. to be diagnosed with the virus. — Erika Edwards Movies about outbreaks seeing uptick in interest The coronavirus appears to have inspired renewed interest in movies about global pandemics, judging by the iTunes rental charts. "Contagion" (2010), Steven Soderbergh's thriller about the spread of a lethal China-born virus, jumped to No. 10 on the list of most-rented movies earlier this week. "Outbreak" (1995), a box-office hit about government scientists (Dustin Hoffman and Rene Russo) fighting against a fictional Ebola-style virus, also spiked on the charts. The real-life outbreak isn't just driving interest in films. "Plague, Inc.," a mobile game about viral outbreaks, has also seen a surge in popularity in recent days. The company behind the game issued a statement reminding players that their product was "not a scientific model, and that the current coronavirus outbreak is a very real situation which is impacting a huge number of people." — Daniel Arkin 6,000 passengers held on cruise ship in Italy Some 6,000 people are being kept on board an Italian cruise ship on Thursday, according to Reuters, as tests are carried out on two passengers suspected of having caught coronavirus, a spokesman for the Costa Crociere cruise company said. The Chinese couple arrived in Italy on Jan. 25 and boarded the ship, the Costa Smeralda, in the port of Savona that same day. They subsequently came down with a fever and are reportedly suffering breathing difficulties. On a what is supposed to be a week-long Mediterranean cruise, the liner has visited Marseilles in France, and the Spanish ports of Barcelona and Palma de Mallorca this week before docking at Civitavecchia, north of Rome. — Isobel van Hagen Russia closes Far East border with China Russian state media reported on Thursday that the country is closing its Far East border with China in an effort to prevent the spread of coronavirus. "A corresponding instruction was signed today. Work on it is already in progress. We will inform all those concerned properly about the measures to close the border in the Far Eastern region and other steps the government has taken," said Mikhail Mishustin, Russia’s prime minister, according to Russian news outlet TASS. — Jason Abbruzzese Chinese women's football team isolated in Brisbane Queensland health authorities said they have asked a Chinese football team and their support staff who arrived in Brisbane on Wednesday to remain in their hotel rooms until Feb. 5. "We are working closely with the hotel and the 32 individuals concerned – who are all well and not showing symptoms," Queensland's Chief Health Officer Jeannette Young said in a statement. The hotel is in the process of alerting other guests and staff and making suitable arrangements, health officials said. — Yuliya Talmazan Virus causing sport event cancellations and delays China’s state CGTN network reported Wednesday that the coronavirus outbreak has forced the cancellation of the first official Beijing 2022 test event next month. An International Ski Federation (FIS) Alpine Skiing World Cup was due to take place on the new Winter Olympic course in Yanqing between Feb. 15 and 16, but has now been called off. Meanwhile, the Chinese Football Association announced it would postpone domestic games in 2020 and the World Athletics Indoor Championships scheduled in the Chinese city of Nanjing in March have been postponed until 2021. — Yuliya Talmazan Americans evacuated from Wuhan, more planes on the way A plane with 195 Americans evacuated from the locked-down city of Wuhan, the epicenter of the epidemic, landed in California Wednesday. Public health officials said there were no signs of illness among the evacuated passengers who were screened multiple times in both China and during a refueling stop in Anchorage, Alaska. Hundreds of U.S. citizens remain in Wuhan, however, with many still wanting to leave the city. As of Tuesday night, over 700 private American citizens have requested U.S. government assistance in evacuating Wuhan, according to a U.S. official familiar with the current situation. The Department of State said Thursday it will be providing additional evacuation flights on or about Feb.3. Officials at China’s National Health Commission said that as of Wednesday, there were more than 7,700 confirmed cases of the coronavirus in the country as the death toll reached 170. — Yuliya Talmazan Women and children walk past personnel in protective clothing after arriving at March Air Reserve Base in California on Wednesday. Mike Blake / Reuters More countries move to evacuate their citizens A growing number of countries are planning to evacuate diplomatic staff and private citizens from Wuhan. Japan brought back 206 of its citizens on the first chartered flight Wednesday. A second charter flight carrying 210 Japanese nationals arrived in Tokyo on Thursday. South Korea and France are expected to send their planes to Wuhan imminently, while a slew of other nations are considering doing the same. The new coronavirus has now reached four continents, with infections having been reported in at least 16 other countries. No deaths have occurred outside China so far. — Yuliya Talmazan Trump announces 'coronavirus task force' to lead U.S. response President Donald Trump on Wednesday announced the formation of the "president's coronavirus task force," which the White House says will lead the U.S. government’s response to the outbreak. The virus has been confirmed in five people in the U.S. The Centers for Disease Control said Wednesday they have 165 people under investigation. — Yuliya Talmazan Australia to quarantine hundreds of citizens Australia is planning to quarantine hundreds of its citizens. Prime Minister Scott Morrison announced that around 600 Australian citizens will be flown out of Wuhan and neighboring cities in China’s Hubei province and will be isolated for up to 14 days on Christmas Island, about 1,600 miles northwest of Australia. Christmas Island houses a controversial immigration facility that Australia used to detain asylum-seekers from 2003 until 2018. — Yuliya Talmazan Japan reports three new cases Japan reported three new cases of the coronavirus Thursday, all from passengers on Wednesday’s first charter flight from Wuhan. The first case is a patient and the other two cases are carriers without any symptoms, Japan’s health ministry said. The three cases were among 206 Japanese people who were evacuated to Tokyo from Wuhan on Wednesday. — Yuliya Talmazan WHO to meet again to assess global public threat The World Health Organization's Emergency Committee is due to reconvene on Thursday to decide whether the virus constitutes a global emergency. The committee voted against the move last week. The WHO officials have raised concerns about signs of a few cases of human-to-human transmission in three countries outside China. On Wednesday, they also praised China for the "extraordinary steps" the government has taken to prevent the export of cases. "For that, China deserves our gratitude and respect," said WHO's director general, Tedros Adhanom. — Yuliya Talmazan JAN. 30, 202002:16 International airlines suspend service to China Many international airlines have suspended or reduced flights to China, including American Airlines, Delta, United, Air Seoul, British Airways, Lufthansa, KLM and Air Canada. British Airways said Wednesday that it has stopped flights to and from China following government advice against all but essential travel. American Airlines said that the company had suspended flights from Los Angeles to Shanghai and Beijing. German carrier Lufthansa, SWISS and Austrian Airlines will also suspend their flights both to and from mainland China until Feb. 9. — Yuliya Talmazan Outbreak could hit China’s economy Asian stocks and currencies fell as the death toll rose and more cases were reported with fears growing that the hit to China's economy will ripple around the world. Zhang Ming, an economist at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, a top government think tank, projected the outbreak would cut the country's first-quarter growth by one percent to 5 percent or lower. Concern is also growing that thousands of Chinese factory workers on Lunar New Year holidays may struggle to get back to work next week, due to travel restrictions imposed to stop the virus' spread. — Yuliya Talmazan India and the Philippines confirm first cases India on Thursday reported its first case of the novel coronavirus in the southern state of Kerala, the country's ministry of health said in a statement. The patient, who is a student at Wuhan University in China, is stable and in isolation at a hospital, the statement added. Meanwhile, Philippine health officials have also confirmed the country's first case, Reuters reported. A 38-year-old Chinese woman, who arrived in the country from Wuhan, China, on Jan. 21, said Health Secretary Francisco Duque. The patient, confined in a government hospital, is currently asymptomatic. — Yuliya Talmazan First case in Tibet Chinese health officials confirmed Wednesday the first case in the capital of Tibet. The patient is from the city of Suizhou in central China's Hubei Province, Xinhua news agency reported citing local health officials. He came to Lhasa, the capital, by train from Wuhan on Jan. 24 and was hospitalized a day later. The patient's vital signs are stable and close contacts have been put under medical observation, Xinhua said. — Yuliya Talmazan Ikea temporarily closes stores on the mainland The Swedish home furnishings chain Ikea said it is temporarily closing its stores in mainland China until further notice amid the epidemic. Ikea China said in a statement that some stores had already been closed or had their hours shortened out of caution for the health and safety of its customers and employees. The closure is effective Thursday local time, and online services are unaffected. — Yuliya Talmazan

Coronavirus Live Updates: W.H.O. Declares a Global Health Emergency [The New York Times, 30 Jan 2020]

The World Health Organization has declared the epidemic an international public health emergency, acknowledging that the virus now represents a risk beyond China. The U.S. reported its first case of human-to-human transmission on Thursday. The infected patient is the husband of a woman who returned from Wuhan, China. Here’s what you need to know: • W.H.O. declares the coronavirus outbreak a global health emergency. • U.S. reports its first case of person-to-person transmission. • 170 people have died. More than 7,834 cases have been confirmed. • As the virus spreads, so has anti-Chinese sentiment. • The effects of the outbreak are rippling through the arts world. • The U.S. commerce secretary sees a silver lining in China’s woes. • Thousands of people are trapped aboard a cruise ship over possible infection. W.H.O. declares the coronavirus outbreak a global health emergency. The World Health Organization declared on Thursday that the new coronavirus outbreak was a global health emergency, acknowledging that the disease now represents a risk beyond China, where it emerged last month. The declaration — officially called a Public Health Emergency of International Concern — serves notice to all United Nations member states that the world’s top health advisory body rates the situation as serious. Countries can then decide whether to close their borders, cancel flights, screen people arriving at airports or take other measures. The decision came as cases have begun to appear in people who had not traveled to China during the outbreak. U.S. reports its first case of person-to-person transmission. Health officials on Thursday reported the first case of person-to-person transmission of the new coronavirus in the United States. The patient is the husband of a woman who was the first reported case in Chicago, officials said at a news briefing. The woman, who is in her 60s, had returned from Wuhan, China, the epicenter of the virus. She was hospitalized but appears to be doing well, said Dr. Jennifer Layden, an epidemiologist at the Illinois Department of Public Health. Her husband, who had not traveled to China, recently began showing symptoms and was immediately isolated in the hospital. Lab tests have now confirmed that he was infected with the coronavirus, Dr. Layden said. Health officials are tracking the places visited by both patients and identifying all close contacts to monitor them. The public is at low risk, officials said. Person-to-person transmission may occur if someone who is sick breathes, talks, coughs or sneezes in the vicinity of others. Respiratory droplets carrying the virus may then travel from the sick person to other people or surfaces. Based on the transmission patterns seen in China and other countries, experts have expected to see some person-to-person spread in the United States, said. Dr. Robert Redfield, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “We understand that this may be concerning,” Dr. Redfield said. “But our assessment remains that the immediate risk to the American public is low.” The disease is not spreading widely in the U.S. and people who have not had close contact with someone who recently traveled to China are unlikely to get infected. 170 people have died. More than 7,834 cases have been confirmed. ◆ Thirty-eight more deaths in China from the coronavirus were announced on Thursday, bringing the toll to 170. Most of those recent deaths, 37, occurred in Hubei Province, the center of the outbreak. One person died in the southwestern province of Sichuan. ◆ Nearly 2,000 new cases were recorded in the past 24 hours for a total of 7,834 worldwide, according to the World Health Organization. The vast majority of the cases were inside China; 98 cases were confirmed in 18 other countries. ◆ Tibet reported its first confirmed case. This means that all of China’s provinces and territories have now been touched by the outbreak. ◆ Thailand has reported 14 cases of infection; Japan has 11; Hong Kong and Singapore have 10; Taiwan has eight; Australia, Malaysia and Macau each have seven; France and the United States have six; South Korea, Germany and the United Arab Emirates each have 4; Canada has three; Vietnam has two; and India, the Philippines, Nepal, Cambodia, Sri Lanka and Finland each have one. ◆ Confirming India’s first case, the government said the patient, in the southern state of Kerala, was a student at Wuhan University. It said arriving passengers with a history of travel to China were being screened at 20 airports, up from seven earlier in the week. ◆ Cases recorded in Taiwan, Germany, Vietnam, Japan and France involved patients who had not been to China. There have been no reported deaths outside China. As the virus spreads, so has anti-Chinese sentiment. The rapid spread of the coronavirus has unleashed a wave of panic and, in some cases, outright anti-Chinese sentiment across the globe. In Japan, the hashtag #ChineseDon’tComeToJapan has been trending on Twitter. In Singapore, tens of thousands of residents have signed a petition calling for the government to ban Chinese nationals from entering the country. In Hong Kong, South Korea and Vietnam, businesses have posted signs saying that mainland Chinese customers are not welcome. And in France, a front-page headline in a regional newspaper warned of a “Yellow Alert.” At a time when China’s rise as a global economic and military power has unsettled its neighbors in Asia as well as its rivals in the West, the coronavirus is feeding into latent bigotry against the people of mainland China. “Some of the xenophobia is likely undergirded by broader political and economic tensions and anxieties related to China, which are interacting with more recent fears of contagion,” said Kristi Govella, an assistant professor of Asian studies at the University of Hawaii, Manoa. The effects of the outbreak are rippling through the arts world. With China’s emergence as a major cultural market in recent years, the effects of the coronavirus outbreak quickly rippled through the arts world. The Boston Symphony Orchestra announced Thursday morning that it was canceling a tour of Asia that had been scheduled to begin next week. The Hong Kong Philharmonic called off a pair of Beethoven concerts this weekend under the baton of its music director, Jaap van Zweden, who holds the same post at the New York Philharmonic, after its venue was closed. Film shoots were shut down; movie premieres postponed; a dozen concerts by the Cantopop star Andy Lau were canceled; and some prominent galleries were calling for Art Basel Hong Kong, the prestigious international art fair scheduled for March, to be canceled. The Boston Symphony called off its tour, which was to have featured the pianist Yefim Bronfman, after learning that one of the halls it planned to play at, the Shanghai Oriental Art Center, had canceled its performances, and amid rising concerns about the spread of the virus. Tours are hugely expensive undertakings for large symphony orchestras, and the Boston Symphony, which does not carry insurance for tour concert interruptions, will now begin discussions about costs with various vendors — including for its flights, cargo, and hotels — as well as with the concert presenters. The National Symphony Orchestra, of Washington, is scheduled to perform in Beijing and Shanghai with its music director, Gianandrea Noseda, after several dates in Japan. Gary Ginstling, the orchestra’s executive director, said that the orchestra had been conferring with government officials, presenters and medical experts as it monitors the situation. The U.S. commerce secretary sees a silver lining in China’s woes. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said on Thursday that China’s loss might be America’s gain, because the coronavirus outbreak could prompt employers to move jobs to the United States. “I don’t want to talk about a victory lap over a very unfortunate, very malignant disease,” Mr. Ross said in an interview on Fox Business. “I think it will help to accelerate the return of jobs to North America. Some to the U.S., probably some to Mexico as well.” Mr. Ross cited previous disease outbreaks in China, suggesting that a prevalence of diseases there would become a factor in businesses leaving the country and relocating to North America. “You had SARS, you have the African swine virus there, now you have this,” Mr. Ross said. His remarks may be seen as insensitive to a country in crisis, and he has faced such criticism in the past. During the government shutdown in early 2019, Mr. Ross suggested that furloughed workers should take out loans while they went without pay for more than a month. Thousands of people are trapped aboard a cruise ship over possible infection. Italy has blocked thousands of people from leaving a cruise ship that docked on Thursday at an Italian port, over concerns that someone aboard might have the virus. According to Italy’s national news agency ANSA, a woman from Hong Kong aboard the Costa Smeralda, a vessel owned by Costa Cruises, had a fever and was experiencing respiratory problems. Both the woman and a man traveling with her, who did not present any symptoms, were being held in isolation in a hospital ward aboard the ship and were tested by infectious disease experts from a hospital in Rome. A statement from Costa Cruises confirmed that a “sanitary protocol” had been activated for a passenger. ANSA reported that about 6,000 people were aboard; the cruise line declined to give a number, but says the ship has a capacity of 6,522 passengers and 1,678 crew members. The cruise line said in an emailed statement that a 54-year-old woman with Chinese nationality and her “travel mate” had been in isolation since Wednesday night. The ship arrived Thursday morning at Civitavecchia, a port town northwest of Rome, after sailing from Palma, on the Spanish island Mallorca. The seven-day cruise in the Western Mediterranean, also included stops in La Spezia and Savona, Italy; Marseille, France; and Barcelona and Palma in Spain. Russia orders partial closure of its border with China and limits visas. Russia prepared for a partial closure of its 2,600-mile border with China as fears about the coronavirus outbreak mounted in Moscow. Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin on Thursday ordered 16 of the approximately 25 crossing points that Russia operates on the Chinese border to be closed as of midnight local time. He said the closures would be part of a new raft of measures to stop the infection from spreading to the country from Russia’s southeastern neighbor. Russia’s Foreign Ministry urged Russians to postpone all travel to China and suspended the issuance of electronic visas for Chinese citizens. Russian officials say that no cases of coronavirus infection have been confirmed in Russia. “We have to do everything to protect our people,” Mr. Mishustin said in televised remarks at a cabinet meeting. “We will inform everyone about the relevant actions being taken to close the border in the Far Eastern region and other measures being taken by the government.” Wuhan residents lashed out over handling of the outbreak. Anger and frustration have escalated in Wuhan, the center of the outbreak, as the city’s overwhelmed hospitals pleaded for urgent help to replenish diminishing supplies. A relative of a coronavirus patient assaulted a doctor at a hospital in Wuhan, pulling and damaging the doctor’s mask and protective clothing, the state broadcaster CCTV reported on Thursday, citing the local police. The Beijing Youth Daily, a state-owned newspaper, reported that two doctors had been attacked at the hospital, including one who was threatened and had his protective gown torn off. In the face of rising public anger, the central government has sought to present itself as intervening to hold accountable local officials in areas that have been hit hard by the epidemic. CCTV aired footage on Thursday showing a central government inspection team grilling officials in Huanggang, a city about 50 miles from Wuhan, about the number of beds they had set aside for coronavirus patients. As the two local health officials fumbled their responses to seemingly basic questions, the visiting inspectors’ questions took on a more impatient tone. Unusual in its blunt portrayal of inadequate government response, the report was quickly shared on Chinese social media sites with the hashtag “one question, three don’t knows.” Officials say medical supplies are running dangerously low in central China, despite gear being delivered in bulk from around the world. The Huazhong University of Science and Technology in Wuhan wrote on Weibo, a social media platform, that the city had received 240,000 masks, 25,000 protective gowns and 4,000 pairs of medical goggles from its alumni group in Germany. The Chinese community in Singapore sent 75,000 medical masks. Photographs posted online showed hospital workers, many still in protective gear, slumped over their desks and on the floors in exhaustion. In eerily quiet Wuhan, few people are venturing out except for food. From Chris Buckley, our chief China correspondent, on the ground in Wuhan: Since the central Chinese city of Wuhan went under official lockdown last week, most shops have shut, few cars venture onto the roads and fear has kept most people in their homes. When Wuhan residents do step outside, it’s mostly to the supermarkets, food stores and pharmacies that have stayed open as part of a government effort to sustain the city. Senior officials have promised that residents need not worry about supplies of vegetables, fruit or other staples, even as large swaths of the province, Hubei, are also locked down to curtail the outbreak. Yet Wuhan residents complained about price hikes, and expressed fear that a prolonged shutdown might choke off food supplies. Poorer people, both in urban Wuhan and in the countryside, would suffer more acutely from tightening supplies. “If we can’t bring in produce, it will become more expensive, or we might even have to close up,” said Zuo Qichao, who was selling piles of cucumbers, turnips and tomatoes. As he spoke, a woman accused him of unfairly raising the turnips’ price. “Every county, every village around here is now putting up barriers, worried about that disease,” Mr. Zuo said. “Even if the government says it wants food guaranteed, it won’t be easy — all those road checks.” Anger in Taiwan as China refuses its evacuation request. In Taiwan, anger has been growing over China’s refusal this week to let Taiwan evacuate about 300 of its people from Wuhan, even as it has given the United States, Japan and other countries permission to do so. China’s ruling Communist Party considers Taiwan, a democratically governed island, to be part of China, and the two sides have no formal ties. Referring to the rebuffed evacuation request on Tuesday, Ma Xiaoguang, a spokesman for China’s Taiwan Affairs Office, said in a statement that Taiwanese people in Hubei Province, which includes Wuhan, were receiving “appropriate care.” Kolas Yotaka, a spokeswoman for Taiwan’s government, said China was prioritizing politics over lives. Many of the Taiwanese seeking evacuation from Wuhan were tourists or on business trips, while others were residents of the city who suffered from chronic diseases, Ms. Kolas said. “We call on the Chinese government to demonstrate basic humanity and agree to our request as soon as possible,” she said. As part of its campaign to isolate Taiwan diplomatically, China has blocked it from participating in international bodies like the World Health Organization — a fact that has also angered Taiwanese people this week, as they try to prepare along with the rest of the world for the possibility of a worsening epidemic. Investors dump stocks and buy gold on coronavirus fears. Fears that a mysterious and fast-moving virus in China could impact the global economy drove investors in Asia to dump stocks on Thursday. Money fled riskier assets like stocks and oil and flowed instead into investments that are considered safe havens, like gold, as growing numbers of policymakers, economists and corporate executives sounded alarms. Major benchmarks across the region fell by more than 1 percent. Europe and Wall Street also looked poised for a day of selling. Early on, economists had speculated that China’s economy would not likely be as badly hit as it was during the 2002-2003 SARS epidemic. Some have now begun to revise their outlooks as more details emerge about the number of cases and speed of transmission of the coronavirus. A growing number of companies have also warned they will have to close or shift operations and could take a financial hit from widespread business disruptions in China. In Tokyo and Hong Kong, stocks were down 1.5 percent, while in Seoul they fell 1.7 percent. Traders in Taipei, returning from the Lunar New Year holiday, pushed the market down by 5.8 percent. China’s markets remain closed for an extended holiday until Feb. 3. Brent crude oil, the international benchmark, hit its lowest price this year before paring some of its losses. It was trading at about $59 a barrel. Policymakers in Japan and the United States issued warnings about the potential impact of the virus on the economy. “There will clearly be implications,” said the Federal Reserve chair, Jerome H. Powell, on Wednesday. “We just have to see what the effect is globally.” Furor erupts over Japanese evacuees’ refusal to submit to medical testing. Two of the Japanese citizens who have been evacuated from Wuhan refused to be tested for the coronavirus, leading the prime minister to explain that citizens could not be forced to submit to a medical examination. Japanese social media users said the travelers, who arrived in Tokyo on Wednesday, were putting the country at risk. Some called them terrorists. “We tried to persuade the two returnees from Wuhan for many hours” to be tested, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said in Parliament on Thursday, when asked about the government’s treatment of repatriated citizens. “But there is no legally binding force, and that’s a great regret,” Mr. Abe said, adding that “there is an issue of human rights.” He said that all citizens evacuated to Japan, on a government-sponsored charter plane Thursday and any subsequent flights, would be asked to submit to testing. Reporting was contributed by Russell Goldman, Austin Ramzy, Tiffany May, Elaine Yu, Alexandra Stevenson, Motoko Rich, Christopher Buckley, Anton Troianovski, Isabella Kwai, Chris Horton, Megan Specia, Christopher Cameron, Makiko Inoue, Daisuke Wakabayashi, Karen Weise, Iliana Magra, Elisabetta Povoledo, Mike Isaac, Knvul Sheikh, Roni Caryn Rabin, Donald G. McNeil Jr. and Karen Zraick. Elsie Chen, Zoe Mou, Albee Zhang, Amber Wang, Yiwei Wang and Claire Fu contributed research.

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Whether you believe in God or not, this message is a "must-read"!!

All throughout time, we can see how we have been strategically conditioned coming to this point where we are on the verge of a cashless society. Did you know that the Bible foretold of this event almost 2,000 years ago?

In the book of Revelation 13:16-18, we read,

"He (the false prophet who deceives many by his miracles--Revelation 19:20) causes all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on their right hand or on their foreheads, and that no one may buy or sell except one who has the mark or the name of the beast, or the number of his name.

Here is wisdom. Let him who has understanding calculate the number of the beast, for it is the number of a man: His number is 666."

Speaking to the last generation, this could only be speaking of a cashless society. Why's that? Revelation 13:17 says that we cannot buy or sell unless we receive the mark of the beast. If physical money was still in use, we could buy or sell with one another without receiving the mark. This would contradict scripture that states we need the mark to buy or sell!

These verses could not be referring to something purely spiritual as scripture references two physical locations (our right hand or forehead) stating the mark will be on one "OR" the other. If this mark was purely spiritual, it would indicate both places, or one--not one OR the other!

This is where it comes together. It is incredible how accurate the Bible is concerning the implantable RFID microchip. Here are notes from a man named Carl Sanders who worked with a team of engineers to help develop this RFID chip:

"Carl Sanders sat in seventeen New World Order meetings with heads-of-state officials such as Henry Kissinger and Bob Gates of the C.I.A. to discuss plans on how to bring about this one-world system. The government commissioned Carl Sanders to design a microchip for identifying and controlling the peoples of the world—a microchip that could be inserted under the skin with a hypodermic needle (a quick, convenient method that would be gradually accepted by society).

Carl Sanders, with a team of engineers behind him, with U.S. grant monies supplied by tax dollars, took on this project and designed a microchip that is powered by a lithium battery, rechargeable through the temperature changes in our skin. Without the knowledge of the Bible (Brother Sanders was not a Christian at the time), these engineers spent one-and-a-half-million dollars doing research on the best and most convenient place to have the microchip inserted.

Guess what? These researchers found that the forehead and the back of the hand (the two places the Bible says the mark will go) are not just the most convenient places, but are also the only viable places for rapid, consistent temperature changes in the skin to recharge the lithium battery. The microchip is approximately seven millimeters in length, .75 millimeters in diameter, about the size of a grain of rice. It is capable of storing pages upon pages of information about you. All your general history, work history, criminal record, health history, and financial data can be stored on this chip.

Brother Sanders believes that this microchip, which he regretfully helped design, is the “mark” spoken about in Revelation 13:16–18. The original Greek word for “mark” is “charagma,” which means a “scratch or etching.” It is also interesting to note that the number 666 is actually a word in the original Greek. The word is “chi xi stigma,” with the last part, “stigma,” also meaning “to stick or prick.” Carl believes this is referring to a hypodermic needle when they poke into the skin to inject the microchip."

Mr. Sanders asked a doctor what would happen if the lithium contained within the RFID microchip leaked into the body. The doctor replied by saying a terrible sore would appear in that location. This is what the book of Revelation says:

"And the first (angel) went, and poured out his vial on the earth; and there fell a noisome and grievous sore on the men which had the mark of the beast, and on them which worshipped his image" (Revelation 16:2).

You can read more about it here--and to also understand the mystery behind the number 666: [url=https://2ruth.org]HTTPS://2RUTH.ORG[/url]

The third angel's warning in Revelation 14:9-11 states,

"Then a third angel followed them, saying with a loud voice, 'If anyone worships the beast and his image, and receives his mark on his forehead or on his hand, he himself shall also drink of the wine of the wrath of God, which is poured out full strength into the cup of His indignation. He shall be tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels and in the presence of the Lamb. And the smoke of their torment ascends forever and ever; and they have no rest day or night, who worship the beast and his image, and whoever receives the mark of his name.'"

Great hope is in our midst, and is coming in a mighty way--the greatest revival for Jesus in the history of the world where we will see the most souls come to Him of all tribes, tongues, nations, and peoples (Rev. 7:9-10); for we have this promise in God's Word in the midst of these dark times:

"Then I saw an angel coming down from heaven, having the key to the bottomless pit and a great chain in his hand. He laid hold of the dragon, that serpent of old, who is the Devil and Satan, and bound him for a thousand years (not literal--rather a spiritual label for time spent in eternity); and he cast him into the bottomless pit, and shut him up, and set a seal on him, so that he should deceive the nations no more till the thousand years were finished. But after these things he must be released for a little while (when the Antichrist and false prophet will rise up and God will test the world)." (Revelation 20:1-3)

"The coming of the lawless one (the Antichrist) is according to the working of Satan, with all power, signs, and lying wonders, and with all unrighteous deception among those who perish, because they did not receive the love of the truth, that they might be saved. And for this reason God will send them strong delusion, that they should believe the lie, that they all may be condemned who did not believe the truth but had pleasure in unrighteousness." (2 Thessalonians 2:9-12)"

Who is Barack Obama, and why is he still in the public scene?

So what about his name? The meaning of someone's name can say a lot about a person. God throughout history has given names to people that have a specific meaning tied to their lives. How about the name Barack Obama? Let us take a look at what may be hiding beneath the surface.

Jesus states in Luke 10:18, "...I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven."

The Hebrew Strongs word (H1299) for "lightning": "bârâq" (baw-rawk)

In Isaiah chapter 14, verse 14, we read about Lucifer (Satan) saying in his heart:

"I will ascend above the heights of the clouds, I will be like the Most High."

In the verses in Isaiah that refer directly to Lucifer, several times it mentions him falling from the heights or the heavens. The Hebrew word for the heights or heavens used here is Hebrew Strongs 1116: "bamah"--Pronounced (bam-maw')

In Hebrew, the letter "Waw" or "Vav" is often transliterated as a "U" or "O," and it is primarily used as a conjunction to join concepts together. So to join in Hebrew poetry the concept of lightning (Baraq) and a high place like heaven or the heights of heaven (Bam-Maw), the letter "U" or "O" would be used. So, Baraq "O" Bam-Maw or Baraq "U" Bam-Maw in Hebrew poetry similar to the style written in Isaiah, would translate literally to "Lightning from the heights." The word "Satan" in Hebrew is a direct translation, therefore "Satan."

When Jesus said to His disciples in Luke 10:18 that He beheld Satan fall as lightning from heaven, if this were to be stated by a Jewish Rabbi today influenced by the poetry in the book of Isaiah, he would say these words in Hebrew--the words of Jesus in Luke 10:18 as, and I saw Satan as Baraq O Bam-Maw.

Malie and Natasha are the names of Obama's daughters. If we write those names backward (the devil does things backwards) it would be "ailam ahsatan". Now if we remove the letters that spell "Alah" (the false god of Islam being Allah), we would get "I am Satan". Mere chance? I don't think so!

Obama's campaign logo when he ran as President of the US in the year 2008 was a sun over the horizon in the west, with the landscape as the flag of the United States. In Islam, they have their own messiah that they are awaiting called the 12th Imam, or the Mahdi (the Antichrist of the Bible), and one prophecy concerning this man's appearance is the sun rising in the west.

"Then I saw another angel flying in the midst of heaven, having the everlasting gospel to preach to those who dwell on the earth—to every nation, tribe, tongue, and people— saying with a loud voice, 'Fear God and give glory to Him, for the hour of His judgment has come; and worship Him who made heaven and earth, the sea and springs of water.'" (Revelation 14:6-7)

Why have the words of Jesus in His Gospel accounts regarding His death, burial, and resurrection, been translated into over 3,000 languages, and nothing comes close (the Quran about 110 languages)? Because the same Spirit of God (YHVH) who created all people likewise transcends all people; therefore the power of His Word is not limited by people; while all other religions are man-made, therefore they tend to primarily stay within their own culture. The same God who speaks to all people through His creation of the heavens and earth that draws all people around the world likewise has sent His Word to the ends of the earth so that we may come to personally know Him to be saved in spirit and in truth through His Son Jesus Christ.

Jesus stands alone among the other religions that say to rightly weigh the scales of good and evil and to make sure you have done more good than bad in this life. Is this how we conduct ourselves justly in a court of law? Bearing the image of God, is this how we project this image into reality?

Our good works cannot save us. If we step before a judge, being guilty of a crime, the judge will not judge us by the good we have done, but rather by the crimes we have committed. If we as fallen humanity, created in God's image, pose this type of justice, how much more a perfect, righteous, and Holy God?

God has brought down His moral laws through the 10 commandments given to Moses at Mt. Siani. These laws were not given so we may be justified, but rather that we may see the need for a savior. They are the mirror of God's character of what He has written in our hearts, with our conscious bearing witness that we know that it is wrong to steal, lie, dishonor our parents, murder, and so forth.

We can try and follow the moral laws of the 10 commandments, but we will never catch up to them to be justified before a Holy God. That same word of the law given to Moses became flesh about 2,000 years ago in the body of Jesus Christ. He came to be our justification by fulfilling the law, living a sinless perfect life that only God could fulfill.

The gap between us and the law can never be reconciled by our own merit, but the arm of Jesus is stretched out by the grace and mercy of God. And if we are to grab on, through faith in Him, He will pull us up being the one to justify us. As in the court of law, if someone steps in and pays our fine, even though we are guilty, the judge can do what is legal and just and let us go free. That is what Jesus did almost 2,000 years ago on the cross. It was a legal transaction being fulfilled in the spiritual realm by the shedding of His blood with His last word's on the cross crying out, "It is finished!" (John 19:30).

For God takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked (Ezekiel 18:23). This is why in Isaiah chapter 53, where it speaks of the coming Messiah and His soul being a sacrifice for our sins, why it says it pleased God to crush His only begotten Son.

This is because the wrath that we deserve was justified by being poured out upon His Son. If that wrath was poured out on us, we would all perish to hell forever. God created a way of escape by pouring it out on His Son whose soul could not be left in Hades but was raised and seated at the right hand of God in power.

So now when we put on the Lord Jesus Christ (Romans 13:14), where God no longer sees the person who deserves His wrath, but rather the glorious image of His perfect Son dwelling in us, justifying us as if we received the wrath we deserve, making a way of escape from the curse of death; now being conformed into the image of the heavenly man walking in a new nature, and no longer in the image of the fallen man Adam.

Now what we must do is repent and put our trust and faith in the savior, confessing and forsaking our sins, and to receive His Holy Spirit that we may be born again (for Jesus says we must be born again to see and enter the Kingdom of God in John chapter 3). This is not just head knowledge of believing in Jesus, but rather receiving His words, taking them to heart, so that we may truly be transformed into the image of God. Where we no longer live to practice sin, but rather turn from our sins and practice righteousness through faith in Him in obedience to His Word by reading the Bible.

Our works cannot save us, but they can condemn us; it is not that we earn our way into everlasting life, but that we obey our Lord Jesus Christ:

Jesus says,

“Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in heaven. Many will say to Me in that day, ‘Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Your name, cast out demons in Your name, and done many wonders in Your name?’ And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness!’ (Matthew 7:21-23)

"And having been perfected, He became the author of eternal salvation to all who obey Him." (Hebrews 5:9)

"Now I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away. Also there was no more sea. Then I, John, saw the holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from heaven saying, 'Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and He will dwell with them, and they shall be His people. God Himself will be with them and be their God. And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes; there shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying. There shall be no more pain, for the former things have passed away.'

Then He who sat on the throne said, 'Behold, I make all things new.' And He said to me, 'Write, for these words are true and faithful.'

And He said to me, 'It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End. I will give of the fountain of the water of life freely to him who thirsts. He who overcomes shall inherit all things, and I will be his God and he shall be My son. But the cowardly, unbelieving, abominable, murderers, sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars shall have their part in the lake which burns with fire and brimstone, which is the second death.'" (Revelation 21:1-8)
by Sarahmug (2023-04-29 13:14)