New Coronavirus News from 17 Feb 2020b

Did coronavirus start in Chinese lab where bats attacked scientists and peed on them? [METRO news, 17 Feb 2020]

By Faye Brown

Coronavirus may have started in a Chinese Lab where researchers were attacked by disease-ridden bats, scientists have claimed.

A new paper from the Beijing-sponsored South China University of Technology casts doubt on the government’s theory that the deadly infection emerged at a seafood market in Wuhan.
Scholars Botao Xiao and Lei Xiao said the city’s Centre for Disease Control, just 300 yards away from the market, ‘hosted animals in laboratories for research purposes’, including 605 bats. Their paper titled ‘The possible origins of 2019-nCoV coronavirus’ claims that bats once attacked a researcher and ‘blood of bat was on his skin.’ It says he quarantined himself for a total of 28 days after bats also urinated on him. The paper, which only gave maps as evidence of their theory, said that genome sequences from patients with coronavirus were between 89% and 96% identical to the coronavirus originally found in the horseshoe bat. TOP ARTICLES 1/5

The Wuhan Huanan Wholesale Seafood Market, where a number of people related to the market fell ill with coronavirus (Picture: AFP) The Chinese government say the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market was where coronavirus emerged (Picture: AFP) It read: ‘It is plausible that the virus leaked around and some of them contaminated the initial patients in this epidemic, though solid proofs are needed in future study.’

Bats are broadly considered to be the original host of the new coronavirus. Chinese scientists have previously said it spread to humans via an intermediate host animal – possibly pangolins (although evidence proving this theory was never published). As well as being close to the infamous seafood market where wildlife animals were being illegally traded, the lab is adjacent to the Union hospital where the first group of doctors became infected. WHO on coronavirus: 'This outbreak could still go in any direction' Play Video Loaded: 0% Progress: 0% PlayMute Current Time 0:00 / Duration Time 1:19 Fullscreen Adding weight to their theory, Botao and Lei said testimonies from 31 residents and 28 visitors to Wuhan suggested bats were never traded at the market or consumed locally. The scholars said that the closest native bats to Wuhan were around 600 miles away and that the probability of them flying that far was minimal.

The paper said: ‘The killer coronavirus probably originated from a laboratory in Wuhan.’ And as well as the Wuhan Health Centre for Disease Control (WHCDC), the report suggests that the Wuhan Institute of Virology could also have leaked the virus. Medical staff members working at the isolation ward of the Wuhan Red Cross Hospital in Wuhan , where thousands have died from coronavirus (Picture: AP) Scientists think it could have emerged in a lab where bats attacked researchers (Picture: AFP) The report said: ‘This laboratory reported that the Chinese horseshoe bats were natural reservoirs for the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus (SARS-CoV) which caused the SARS outbreak in 2003.’ SARS, a member of the coronavirus family of viruses, killed over 800 people when it emerged in Southern China 17 years ago. The new coronavirus, officially known as Covid-19, is far deadlier, with the number of fatalities soaring past 1,500 this week. Little is known about the novel strain, which has spread to 25 countries and infected over 67,000 people worldwide. Speculation about its origin is rife on social media, and experts have warned that fake news and conspiracy theories could lead to a greater number of cases. British man stranded on coronavirus ship: 'I've never felt less loved by my own country' Play Video Loaded: 0% Progress: 0% PlayMute Current Time 0:00 / Duration Time 1:05 Fullscreen Earlier this week, scientists at the forefront of the effort to track the deadly outbreak rubbished claims that it was genetically engineered in a Wuhan lab. One source of the rumour was a paper published by researchers in India, which was later withdrawn.

Trevor Bedford, of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Centre in Seattle, said at an international conference: ‘There is no evidence whatsoever of genetic engineering that we can find. ‘The evidence we have is that the mutations [in the virus] are completely consistent with natural evolution.’

South Korea sees rise in smishing with coronavirus misinformation [ZDNet, 17 Feb 2020]

By Cho Mu-Hyun

There have been 9,688 smishing attempts so far that exploited the novel coronavirus outbreak.

The South Korean government has warned the public of a sharp rise in smishing attempts -- scam text messages -- that use misinformation about the novel coronavirus outbreak.

As of February 15, 9,688 smishing texts had been sent that used false information on the novel coronavirus, the Ministry of Science and ICT, South Korean police, and the country's financial regulator said Monday in a joint statement.

These texts claim to provide free masks or pretend to be companies that have experienced delays in deliveries due to the coronavirus in order to scam people out of their private information.

165 phone calls have also been made, using fake numbers, claiming they were health authorities to scam people for money and information.

There was also one extreme voice phishing attempt where the scammer made a fraudulent call to a restaurant claiming they had the virus and recently dined there, and demanded money for not alerting the authorities.

The government said it would work with local telcos to alert the public about such scams. They will also delete numbers that have been used for phishing once they are detected, as well as block any URLs used.

Those who believe they have fallen victim to such attacks have been advised to call their respective telcos to block their numbers from being abused for such scams, the Ministry said.

The government added that it would make sure to protect the official phone numbers of health authorities from being manipulated.

The global outbreak of the coronavirus has caused MWC to be cancelled after myriad companies withdrew from the event. Other events such as Black Hat Asia and Cisco Live Melbourne have also been either postponed or cancelled as a result of the outbreak.

Coronavirus outbreak prompts Japan to limit public crowds [New York Post , 17 Feb 2020]

TOKYO – Japan canceled the emperor’s birthday celebrations next week as it moved on Monday to limit crowds to contain the spread of the coronavirus and said it will close the Tokyo Marathon to all but elite professional runners.

The widening fallout of the virus outbreak, which began in China in December and has already killed over 1,700 people, is damaging output and tourism in Japan, which is preparing to host the Olympic Games from late July.

A further spread of the virus in Japan, which last week reported its first fatality from the disease, could undermine growth and potentially push the country into recession, analysts say.
Citing “circumstances”, the Imperial Household Agency said it would cancel Emperor Naruhito’s public birthday address on Feb. 23, his first since his coronation last year. The event regularly attracts tens of thousands of people to the inner grounds of the Imperial Palace in the heart of Tokyo.

The last time the emperor’s birthday celebration was canceled was 1996, amid a hostage crisis at the Japanese embassy in Peru.

Organizers of the Tokyo Marathon, one of the world’s biggest such races, said the 38,000 general participants who signed up for the March 1 race will not be allowed to compete.

“We cannot continue to launch the event within the scale we originally anticipated,” the organizers said in a statement.

Instead, the event will be limited to top-level competitors. A total of 176 elite runners and 30 elite wheelchair athletes are registered for the race.

Shares of some of the marathon’s sponsors fell. Seiko Holdings, the maker of watches and clocks, slid 3.5 percent, as did shoe and sportswear maker ASICS Corp. The broader Tokyo market was little changed.

The marathon is not the only international sporting event in Japan the virus has affected: The FIBA Asia Cup 2021 postponed a qualifying basketball game between Japan and China, originally scheduled to be held near Tokyo this week.

Infections spread

An additional 99 people on a cruise ship docked in the Japanese port of Yokohama were confirmed on Monday to be infected with the virus, a day after 70 were confirmed to have the virus, bringing the total number of infections aboard the Diamond Princess to 454.

The United States evacuated hundreds of citizens from the ship early on Monday, with other countries preparing to do the same for their citizens on the luxury cruise, which was struck by the virus earlier this month.

A Japanese health ministry staff member helping to test passengers has also contracted the virus, the ministry said.

Infections have also been spreading on land, where 59 cases have been confirmed including one woman who died last week.

A hospital outside Tokyo said it would stop admitting new patients after one of its staff tested positive for the virus.

The hospital in Sagamihara, 31 miles west of Tokyo, said a nurse was infected after treating an inpatient who died of the disease this month.

On Monday morning, a fifth government-chartered flight carrying 65 Japanese arrived in Tokyo from Wuhan, China, the epicenter of the outbreak, bringing the total number repatriated to Japan from the city to 763, NHK said.

Companies are stepping up measures to prevent the spread of the virus as a growing number of cases have been reported in people who have neither visited China nor have had direct contact with people arriving from there.

Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corp, one of Japan’s biggest companies, said it was urging its roughly 200,000 group-wide employees to work from home or stagger their commutes.

On Friday, NTT Data Corp said a contract employee who worked at one of its buildings was confirmed as infected. The company has ordered 14 workers who were in close contact with that person to work at home, it said.

'The disruption is enormous.' Coronavirus epidemic snarls science worldwide [Science Magazine, 17 Feb 2020]

By Robert F. Service

Normal daily life has come to a virtual standstill in large parts of China as a result of the epidemic of COVID-19—and so has science. Universities across the country remain closed; access to labs is restricted, projects have been mothballed, fieldwork interrupted, and travel severely curtailed. But scientists elsewhere in the world are noticing an impact as well, as collaborations with China are on pause and scientific meetings for the next 5 months have been canceled or postponed.

The damage to science pales compared with the human suffering; the total number of cases has risen to 71,429, the World Health Organization (WHO) reported today, almost 99% of them in China, and there have been 1775 deaths. Still, for individual researchers, the losses can be serious—and stressful. “Basically, everything has completely stopped,” says John Speakman, who runs an animal behavior lab at the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) in Beijing that has effectively been shut since the Lunar New Year on 25 January. “The disruption is enormous.
The stress on the staff is really high.” But Speakman says he understands why the Chinese government took the measures. “It’s annoying, but I completely support what they have done,” he says.

Disruptions are particularly acute in Wuhan and other cities in Hubei province, the epicenter of the outbreak, that are almost completely blocked off from the outside world. Sara Platto, a professor of animal behavior at Jianghan University in Wuhan, says faculty and students living on campus are confined to their apartments. Living off-campus, Platto can venture outside, but only once every 3 days. “I’m working more now than ever before the epidemic,” she says. Platto is a scientific consultant for colleagues in Beijing who are carrying out genetic analyses to determine the relationship of the virus that causes COVID-19—which was officially named SARS-CoV-2 last week—to another coronavirus isolated from a pangolin. She says she’s taking part in 13 chat groups aimed at keeping the research moving forward. But a paper she is writing has been delayed because she left her notes in her office before the epidemic and now can’t get back on campus.

Impacts on science are being felt far beyond Wuhan. Throughout China, some 760 million people are under some sort of a residential lockdown, according to an analysis published by The New York Times yesterday. Experimental research "is largely halted at present because students and research staff are not allowed to return to the laboratories," says Poo Mu-ming, a neuroscientist at CAS's Center for Excellence in Brain Science and Intelligence Technology in Shanghai.

Jeffrey Erlich, a Canadian neuroscientist at New York University Shanghai, says he's been asked to stop all animal experiments and restrict personnel to animal husbandry only. For him, that would mean the loss of many studies with mice and other animal species that get trained on complex tasks. “If I have to stop training those animals because I’m not allowed to have staff maintain them, then I’d have to order another batch of animals and start from scratch, and that would put me back another 6 to 9 months,” he says.

Erlich says he is in negotiations about ways to continue the work but feels conflicted about it.
“It’s really hard balancing the research productivity of the lab and the safety and comfort of my staff,” he says. “When you’ve invested years of work into experiments, where do you draw the line about what’s considered essential? I said to the person who is still working, ‘If at any point you feel uncomfortable, please stop.’”

Deadlines extended

“Yes, unfortunately, the virus is very annoying with regards to work,” agrees Jingmai O’Connor, a paleontologist at CAS’s Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology in Beijing. “There is no one working the collection, no one to sign paperwork so things can’t get done, overseas travel is canceled, and CAS is not accepting applications for the next year. No samples can be analyzed, all we can do is work on pre-existing data on our computers,” O’Connor says. “It sucks!”

Some Chinese researchers are switching focus to writing up their research and doing grant funding paperwork. The National Science Foundation of China has postponed application deadlines for grants by several weeks, giving researchers time to make up for delays.

(Applications have gone completely online to avoid the need for official stamps.) Meanwhile, many universities and institutes have ramped up online classes to keep students on schedule. Poo says he is teaching daily 2-hour neurobiology lectures: “Surprisingly, there are thousands of people tuning in each day.”

China’s lockdown is felt even half a world away. Daniel Kammen, a renewable energy researcher at the University of California, Berkeley, says it is impeding his lab’s efforts to help set up green transportation projects throughout China. “The coronavirus outbreak has slowed our field development programs, including [electric] taxi rollouts in Chinese cities, because of logistical crackdowns,” he says.

The crisis has put some labs in overdrive, however. Zhang Linqi, an HIV researcher at Tsinghua University in Beijing is now focusing on the novel coronavirus. "My lab quickly changed gears," Zhang says. His lab members even decided to forgo the celebrations for the Lunar New Year last month: "[We] decided we would celebrate it by conducting research," Zhang says. They synthesized and characterized the ”spike” on the coronavirus’s surface, a protein that helps it enter human cells. The findings point toward several vaccine strategies that the team is now exploring with industrial partners, Zhang says.

Many researchers in the rest of the world have jumped on the new virus as well. Christopher Dye, an infectious disease expert at the University of Oxford, says his lab has idled much of its normal research. “The main effect has been the need to triage work, to push other projects to the back burner while we help our Chinese colleagues analyze the vast amount of new COVID-19 data,” Dye says.

Fears over the spread of the virus have also upended plans for numerous scientific conferences. So far, more than a dozen have announced cancellations or postponements—not just in China but elsewhere in Asia and Europe as well. Among the casualties: The International Society for Stem Cell Research’s International Symposium, scheduled for 13-15 March in Shanghai; the 2nd Singapore ECS Symposium on Energy Materials, slated for 1-5 April; and the Materials Beyond meeting on 18-19 June in Shanghai.

At last weekend’s annual meeting AAAS, which publishes Science, 31 registrants from China were unable to attend because of travel restrictions. Even organizers of the International Congress on Infectious Diseases, slated to begin on Thursday in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, postponed their meeting, saying the priority for its registrants is to fight the coronavirus outbreak in their home countries. Meanwhile, the 36th International Geological Congress, scheduled for New Delhi in early March, has angered some participants by banning all attendees with a Chinese passport—even if they haven’t been in China for years. Meeting organizers say the 480 Chinese registrants can join by Skype.

Drug stockpiles may run out

Concern is also rising that the availability of medicines could soon face disruptions worldwide.

An estimated 80% of all active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs)—the raw materials for drugs—are produced in China and India, according to recent testimony by Rosemarie Gibson, author of China Rx, before the United States-China Economic and Security Review Commission in Washington, D.C. They include the compounds used to treat everything from bacterial infections and cancer to heart disease and diabetes. With many factories in China still shuttered, stockpiles of many medicines could soon run short.

“This is a very acute issue now,” says Michael Osterholm, who heads the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. Osterholm notes there are 153 medicines people need immediate access to in life-threatening situations. Even before the coronavirus outbreak, overreliance on a small group of suppliers caused shortages of dozens of medicines every day, Osterholm says: “These supply chains are very thin.”

But Mariângela Simão, the assistant director general for access to medicines and health products at WHO, says she and her colleagues are not yet seeing signs that COVID-19 has affected supplies of essential medicines. Simão’s team is in daily contact with international pharmaceutical associations that are tracking shipping disruptions from their member companies. “The information we have so far is there is no immediate risk regarding APIs,” Simão says.

Part of the reason, she adds, is that many companies stockpiled 2 to 4 months of their products prior to the Lunar New Year celebrations, when many factories close. And while Hubei is home to some pharmaceutical companies, far more are in Shanghai and other parts of China that are less affected. That said, Simão notes, disruptions could still occur if the virus isn’t brought under control. “It will all depend on how the situations evolve with the outbreak.”

That sense of uncertainty about what’s in store is perhaps the most widespread concern in China and across the globe. Says Wengshen Wei, a geneticist at Peking University in Beijing:
“We don’t know when the outbreak will be over and when we could have all lab members come back to resume our projects.”

Scientific meetings that have been canceled or postponed

Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory and Cold Spring Harbor Asia have canceled all meetings planned for Suzhou, China “through at least the end of June.”

19th International Congress on Infectious Diseases, 20-23 February, Kuala Lumpur. Postponed until 10-13 September.

Second meeting of the open-ended working group on the Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework, 24-29 February. Moved from Kunming, China, to Rome.

36th International Geological Congress, New Delhi, 2-8 March. Ban on attendees with a Chinese passport.

Metamorphosis: Science, Information, Planet and Democracy, 12-13 March, Lisbon, Portugal. Canceled.

Stem Cells and Regenerative Medicine, 13-15 March, Shanghai. Postponed indefinitely.
2nd Singapore ECS Symposium on Energy Materials, 1-5 April, Singapore. Postponed indefinitely.

Materials Beyond, 18-19 June, Shanghai. Postponed until October.

Gordon Research Conference on Electrochemical Interfaces, 28 June-3 July, Hong Kong. Canceled.

Liu Zhiming, hospital director in Wuhan, fighting for his life from coronavirus [New York Post, 17 Feb 2020]

By Jackie Salo

The director of a hospital in Wuhan, the epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak in China, is fighting for his life from the deadly illness, according to a report — which came after state-run media initially said that he’d died.

Dr. Liu Zhiming, head of Wuchang Hospital, fell critically ill with the coronavirus that broke out in Wuhan in December, the Daily Mail reported, citing a local health official.

The People’s Daily initially reported that he had died, but later deleted the news from its English-language Twitter feed.

The backtrack followed the conflicting reports surrounding the death of Chinese whistleblower Dr. Li Wenliang earlier this month.

State media reported he had died, then Wuhan Central Hospital said Li was still on life support — only to eventually confirm that he had passed away.

The virus, known as COVID-19, has killed at least 1,770 people in China and spread to more than 70,000 others.

China: Blockchain Deployment Rises Amid Coronavirus Outbreak [Cointelegraph, 17 Feb 2020]

By Ana Alexandre

Amid the ongoing coronavirus epidemic, China has turned to blockchain technology to manage medical data, track supply of virus prevention materials and consult the public.

For the first two weeks of February, China saw the launch of as much as 20 blockchain-based applications designed to help fight the coronavirus outbreak, domestic news outlet People’s Daily Online reported on Feb. 17. Most of the apps are used to manage citizens’ personal data as many people are returning to work this month.

Blockchain is on guard for medical data security

Local authorities noted that blockchain lets them effectively track and secure collected information. Thus, Xi'an, the capital of Shaanxi Province, applies the tech for online consultation and screening, as well as securely manage health records. In Hangzhou, tech company Vastchain Technology rolled out a WeChat-based program dubbed Access Pass. The program generates a QR code that residents can use to enter gated communities.

In collaboration with the Zhejiang Provincial Health Commission and the Economy and Information Technology Department, mobile and online payment platform Alipay introduced a platform that enables charity organizations and initiatives to collaborate more efficiently and transparently.

Specifically, the app allows users to track allocation and donation of relief supplies, as well as the review, recording and tracing of demand and supply chains of medical supplies.
Coronavirus’s impact on businesses

The coronavirus has indeed compromised the normal course of things in Asia, forcing a number of cryptocurrency-related conferences to postpone. Hong Kong-based blockchain remittance startup Bitspark also abruptly announced its closure. The closure came along with the coronavirus outbreak in China and anti-government protests in Hong Kong, where Bitspark’s headquarters is located.

Crypto mining firms such as Bitmail, MicroBT and Canaan also published notices on their websites of delays in their after-sale services due to the outbreak of the virus.

As Cointelegraph reported earlier in February, insurance firms in China use blockchain to manage coronavirus-related claims amid the outbreak. Thus, online mutual aid platform Xiang Hu Bao added the coronavirus to the list of illnesses eligible for a maximum one-time payout of around $14,300 (100,000 yuan).

Blue Cross Insurance, owned by the Bank of East Asia is reportedly helping to decrease the bureaucratic impact of the coronavirus outbreak with a medical claims app.

In the meantime, it has been reported that China started a quarantine of its used bank notes to try to stop the spread of the coronavirus.

Multiple 'high risk' coronavirus patients from quarantined cruise ship brought to Omaha [KETV Omaha, 17 Feb 2020]

Two planes carrying Americans who were being held in quarantine on a cruise ship off the coast of Japan landed at Omaha's Eppley Airfield Monday morning.

The first flight arriving from Travis Air Force Base in California landed at 7 a.m. A second airplane from Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio Texas arrived about two hours later. The Omaha Police Department, Omaha Fire Department and Nebraska State Patrol helped secure the scene.

Officials confirmed the planes were carrying people who were taken off the Diamond Princess cruise ship, which was anchored off the coast of Japan. Some evacuees were kept in an isolated area of the plane where plastic drops were used to separate people.

Officials said that multiple "high risk patients," all adults, were brought to the Nebraska Medical Center campus in Omaha. Christopher Kratochvil, executive director of clinical research for the Global center for Health Security UNMC, said a total of 13 people were brought to Omaha.

“Around 2 or 3 this morning, we were asked to bring individuals who had tested positive or had a high likelihood of testing positive (for coronavirus), based on the symptoms they were showing,” Kratochvil said.

Those who have tested positive, believed to be 10, are showing mild symptoms of the disease.

One person was brought to the bio-containment unit. The patient had a fever, a cough and was light-headed. Officials said this person was taken to the bio-containment unit out of an abundance of caution. The rest will be kept in quarantine.

“All of these individuals, regardless of if they test positive or negative, will be here for 14 days," Kratochvil said, adding that someone that tests positive may stay much longer.

Kratochvil said it is possible Nebraska Medicine will be asked to accept more patients if evacuees brought from other bases test positive.

Shelly Schwedhelm, executive director Of emergency management and biopreparedness, Nebraska Medicine, said all of the evacuees have been retested and those results should be back Monday afternoon.

"We have no documentation, it has all been verbal," Schwedhelm said, in regards to how many people have tested positive vs. are likely to test positive. "We want to start from scratch so we know what's what."

Kratochvil said that there has been confusion due to the fact that the test results came back while the evacuees were being transported and some began showing symptoms while they were in transport.

Officials said all of the people brought to Omaha were "relieved" to arrive after their extremely long journey.

"They seemed comfortable and ready to relax and get some sleep," Kratochvil said.

A statement from Jeffrey P. Gold, chancellor of University of Nebraska Medical Center and University of Nebraska at Omaha reads:

"We were there for Ebola, we were there for the rescued Americans now being monitored at Camp Ashland and we're going to be there for these American citizens as well...Because we are one of the world leaders in this arena, we were asked by our federal partners, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, to rise to this challenge when our nation once more critically needs our expertise. Clearly, this is again, one of those times."

According to a joint statement by the U.S. State Department and the U.S. Department of Health, "14 passengers (evacuated from the ship), who had been tested 2-3 days earlier, had tested positive for COVID-19. These individuals were moved in the most expeditious and safe manner to a specialized containment area on the evacuation aircraft to isolate them in accordance with standard protocols."

Officials said that, by the time the positive test results came back, the evacuees were already on a bus. Once they were on a bus, officials received information that there had been lab testing days earlier.

Officials stressed that none of the evacuees were showing symptoms when they were taken from the boat.

The State Department allowed those people to fly because they were not showing any symptoms.

The State Department and DHHS said the potential patients would be held in quarantine for 14 days to monitor for symptoms of COVID-19.

On Feb. 7, 57 people were taken to quarantine at Camp Ashland, located west of Omaha. After more than a week in isolation, none of them have shown symptoms of COVID-19, including a woman who was taken to UNMC as a precaution on Feb. 14.

Apple warns revenue will be lower than expected because of coronavirus impact [The Verge, 17 Feb 2020]

By Jay Peters

Worldwide iPhone supply is ‘temporarily constrained’

In a rare investor update on Monday, Apple said the global effects of the coronavirus outbreak are having have a material impact on the company bottom line. The company does not expect to meet its own revenue guidance for the second quarter due to the impact of the virus, and warns that “worldwide iPhone supply will be temporarily constrained.” Store closures and reduced retail traffic in China are also expected to have a significant impact.

All of Apple’s iPhone manufacturing partner sites have been reopened but are “ramping up more slowly than we had anticipated,” which means that fewer iPhones than expected will be manufactured. As a result, “[t]hese iPhone supply shortages will temporarily affect revenues worldwide,” says Apple.

Regarding Apple’s retail presence in China, the company said that it is “gradually reopening our retail stores and will continue to do so as steadily and safely as we can.” The company says its corporate offices and contact centers in China are open.

Cook echoed those sentiments in a memo sent to Apple staff, which was obtained by Bloomberg. “I want to thank everyone for their dedication, empathy, understanding, and care,” Cook wrote. “Our paramount concern is with the people who make up Apple’s community of employees, partners, customers, and suppliers in China.”

In its latest earnings call at the end of January, Apple CEO Tim Cook said that Apple already had a “wider-than-usual” revenue range for the second quarter due to uncertainty around coronavirus. Still, it appears that revenue range wasn’t wide enough to account for the growing impact of the public health emergency.

Apple also said it would be doubling a previously announced donation to help with coronavirus relief efforts, though the company hasn’t put a dollar figure to that number.

Coronavirus Empties European Cities of Chinese Tourists [The New York Times, 17 Feb 2020]

by Norimitsu Onishi

Hotels, stores and destinations across the Continent have come to rely on visitors from China. Quarantine measures have changed all that.

PARIS — The line in front of the Louis Vuitton store was barely a line by Paris standards: only 10 people. All were Asian and many spoke in Chinese, with one couple dictating Mandarin into a smartphone and waiting for the answers in French.

“Sometimes, the line’s been even shorter recently,’’ Yasmine Ben, who works at a kiosk directly facing the store, said on a recent morning. “Usually, it’s wider, much, much longer, and it snakes around the back.’’

Louis Vuitton, in the Galeries Lafayette department store in central Paris, is a favorite stop inside one of the favorite shopping destinations of Chinese tourists to France. And the line there is prime evidence of the growing economic impact that the coronavirus, which broke out in Wuhan, China, late last year, has had on tourism in Paris and elsewhere across Europe.

Though it is too soon to quantify it precisely, the potential economic impact of the coronavirus is evident nearly everywhere. From the streets of Paris to the wineries of Burgundy, from the German town of Füssen near the fairy tale castle of Neuschwanstein to a shopping outlet in Oxfordshire, England, the numbers of Chinese tourists have visibly dropped since Beijing banned overseas group tours on Jan. 27.

Fears were heightened over the weekend after an 80-year-old Chinese tourist died of the virus at a hospital in Paris — the first fatality outside Asia since the start of the outbreak.

The effects, especially on businesses catering to the ever-growing Chinese market, have been immediate. Last week, the Italian government considered allocating assistance to hard-hit tour operators.

“It’s seen as on par with an earthquake, a situation of emergency,” said Mattia Morandi, a spokesman for Italy’s ministry of culture and tourism.

As elsewhere in Europe, Italy’s tourism sector has benefited greatly from China’s economic rise over the past two decades. In 2000, three years before the outbreak of the SARS virus across Asia, Chinese tourists overseas spent $10 billion, according to the United Nations World Tourism Organization. In 2018, that figure was $277 billion.

On Jan. 21, Italy’s minister of culture and tourism, Dario Franceschini, and his Chinese counterpart, Luo Shugang, inaugurated a yearlong multifaceted program aimed at boosting cultural exchanges and tourism between the two countries.

They discussed an “intense” calendar of initiatives involving the performing arts, movie productions and numerous exhibitions, including a show of ancient Roman sculptures at the National Museum of China in Beijing and one of terra-cotta warriors at the Reggia di Caserta.
Direct flights between Italy and China had been expected to triple over the year, rising to 108 per week from 56.

But only 10 days after the ministers met, Italy suspended flights to and from China, as the coronavirus outbreak spread around the world and the death toll continued to rise in China.

As more nations have restricted travel to and from China, effectively quarantining the world’s most populous nation, the ever-present large groups of Chinese tourists, arms often laden with brand-name shopping bags, have disappeared from the European landscape.

With the outbreak showing few signs of abating, tourism-dependent businesses across Europe are bracing for empty hotel rooms and stores in the coming high season.

In some places, the spread of coronavirus has also had a chilling effect on tourists from other nations.

“People don’t want to be on trains or planes or go to conferences,” said Alberto Corti, who is responsible for the tourism sector for Confcommercio, a leading business association in Italy.
He described it as a “psychosis effect.”

Last week, the world’s biggest mobile communications trade fair, scheduled to start in Barcelona, Spain, on Feb. 24, was canceled as participants withdrew over fears linked to the virus.

The Spanish authorities and the organizers of the fair, Mobile World Congress, had insisted that Barcelona was fully prepared to avoid the spread of coronavirus. But the list of cancellations had grown longer every day, and included Amazon, Intel and Facebook.

It was the most important business event so far to be canceled outside Asia since the start of the outbreak.

According to Ada Colau, the mayor of Barcelona, the conference had been expected to bring the city more than 100,000 visitors and revenues of 500 million euros, about $540 million. It had also been expected to create 14,000 temporary jobs and allow hotels to reach full occupancy during the low season.

Overall, despite the explosive growth in the number of Chinese tourists in Europe, they still represent a relatively small share of visitors, outnumbered by other Europeans or Americans.

In the most popular destinations, like Paris, already overwhelmed with tourists, the overall economic impact has been limited so far, officials said. The Louvre Museum, which Chinese were second only to Americans in visiting last year, has not suffered a decrease in visitors since the start of the outbreak, said a spokeswoman, Sophie Grange.

The Chinese account for 3 percent of visitors to Paris — about 800,000 visitors a year, compared with 2.4 million from the United States, according to the city’s Convention and Visitors Bureau.

China represents “a small fraction of our tourism economy," said Corinne Menegaux, the bureau’s director. “If it were the United States, it would be something else.”

Still, Ms. Menegaux said that because Chinese tourists often traveled in groups and tended to use specific hotels and stores, some businesses have been disproportionately affected. Sales at some duty-free stores and other businesses, where Chinese account for 80 percent of the clientele, have plummeted, she said.

Also hard hit are Europe’s luxury boutiques, a favorite of Chinese tourists seeking to avoid knockoff goods.

At Galeries Lafayette — where many salespeople are Chinese and even the French greet all
Asian customers with a “ni hao” — foot traffic has slowed considerably because of the outbreak, salespeople said.

The company has aggressively courted Chinese tourists to Paris and also opened stores in China. Margaux Berthier, a spokeswoman for Galeries Lafayette, declined to comment on the outbreak’s impact on its business.

In Dijon, Chinese tourists’ second-favorite French city after Paris, Chinese tour operators canceled reservations for 3,000 rooms in about 40 hotels in February.

“Unfortunately, there are no tourists to take their place,” said Patrick Jacquier, president in the Dijon region for UHIM, the main trade group for hotels and restaurants.

In Britain, visitors from China spend an average of 16 nights per stay, more than double the overall average of a week, according the national tourism agency, Visit Britain.

In Oxfordshire, England, Chinese visitors disappeared almost overnight from a top discount luxury retail destination, Bicester Village.

In Germany, where the Chinese account for about 3 percent of visitors, favorite destinations like Munich and Heidelberg have reported cancellations of tour groups and drops in tourist numbers.

In Füssen, near the fairy tale castle of Neuschwanstein, Chinese bookings at the euro Park Hotel International have been canceled through the first half of April.

To ensure that other guests feel comfortable, the hotel has taken extra measures, including misting the rooms with disinfectant even before the regular cleaning staff make their rounds and individually treating every room key after each use, said the hotel’s director, Fabien Geyer.
Containers of hand disinfectant are also available to guests for free.

In Austria, the Chinese love the salt-mining town of Hallstatt, a UNESCO World Heritage site, so much that they built a copy at home in Guangdong Province.

“Chinese tourists are very valuable to us. They spend money when shopping and tend to spend the night in higher-end hotels,” said Gregor Gritzky, head of the regional tourism bureau that covers Hallstatt.

While the region attracts European skiers in winter, Mr. Gritzky said he was worried about the warmer months that usually drew the Chinese.

“We are hoping for signs that this won’t last too long,” he said of the outbreak.

Reporting was contributed by Aurelien Breeden and Constant Méheut in Paris; Marc Santora and Ceylan Yeginsu in London; Melissa Eddy in Berlin; Raphael Minder in Madrid; and Elisabetta Povoledo in Rome.

Coronavirus could impact 5 million companies worldwide, new research shows [CNBC, 17 Feb 2020]

by Elliot Smith

• A special briefing issued by global business research firm Dun & Bradstreet analyzed the Chinese provinces most impacted by the virus, and found they are intricately linked to the global business network.

• Almost half (49%) of the companies with subsidiaries in impacted regions are headquartered in Hong Kong, while the U.S. accounts for 19%, Japan 12% and Germany 5%.

• Dun & Bradstreet researchers found that at least 51,000 companies worldwide, 163 of which are in the Fortune 1000, have one or more direct or “tier 1” suppliers in the impacted region.

The new coronavirus outbreak and subsequent shutdown of huge swathes of China could impact more than 5 million businesses worldwide, according to a new study.

A special briefing issued by global business research firm Dun & Bradstreet analyzed the Chinese provinces most impacted by the virus, and found they are intricately linked to the global business network.

The affected areas with 100 or more confirmed cases as of February 5 are home to more than 90% of all active businesses in China, according to the report, and around 49,000 businesses in these regions are branches and subsidiaries of foreign companies.

Almost half (49%) of the companies with subsidiaries in impacted regions are headquartered in Hong Kong, while the U.S. accounts for 19%, Japan 12% and Germany 5%.

As of Monday, over 70,000 cases of the virus have been confirmed in China, resulting in 1,770 deaths, according to the Chinese National Health Commission

Dun & Bradstreet researchers found that at least 51,000 companies worldwide, 163 of which are in the Fortune 1000, have one or more direct or “tier 1” suppliers in the impacted region, while at least 5 million — and 938 in the Fortune 1000 — have one or more “tier 2″ suppliers.

The impact on businesses in China and around the world is already dragging down economic growth forecasts for the year.

In a research note published Monday, Moody’s revised down its global growth forecasts by two-tenths of a percentage point, expecting G-20 economies to collectively grow at an annual rate of 2.4% in 2020 with China slipping to 5.2%.

This assumes a baseline forecast that the spread of the virus is contained by the end of the first quarter, restoring “normal economic activity” in the second quarter. However, the global economic toll would be “severe” if the rate of infection and rising death toll do not abate, with international supply chain disruptions amplifying the shock.

“There is already evidence albeit anecdotal - that supply chains are being disrupted, including outside China. Furthermore, extended lockdowns in China would have a global impact given the country’s importance and interconnectedness in the global economy,” Moody’s Vice President Madhavi Bokil said in the research note.

The Dun & Bradstreet report identified that the top five major sectors, accounting for more than 80% of businesses within impacted provinces, were services, wholesale trade, manufacturing, retail and financial services.

Dun & Bradstreet hypothesized that a major portion of Chinese employment and sales originate from companies within the impacted region.

The impacted provinces of, for instance, Guangdong, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Beijing and Shandong account for 50% of total employment and 48% of total sales volume for the Chinese economy.

The Chinese economy constitutes around 20% of global GDP (gross domestic product) and analysts estimated that if containment of the outbreak is delayed beyond the summer, the “cascading effect” might cause a drag of around one percentage point on global GDP growth.

“No matter which scenario plays out, the Hubei region, China, and the global economy are indicated to see a churn in their business population and some lackluster employment and revenue growth in the near-term,” the company said in the report.

“When (not if) containment and eradication is achieved, factors within the impacted geography are bound to generate economic activity with consumers, satisfying pent-up demand once improved conditions are underway. The sum of the efforts to revitalize the region will place the global economy back on track for sustained growth.”

Xiaogan, Chinese city ravaged by coronavirus, places residents under house arrest [New York Post, 17 Feb 2020]

By Jackie Salo

Officials in the coronavirus-ravaged city of Xiaogan have two options — stay at home or face jail time, according to a report.

The city — which is the worst-impacted city after viral ground zero Wuhan — warned residents that they will be subject to 10 days in jail if they break the house arrest, the South China Morning Post reported.

“All urban residents must stay at home and are strictly forbidden from going out,” officials said. “Rural villagers are strictly forbidden from … visiting each other or holding any gatherings.”

More than 2,700 cases of the virus have been detected among the 4.8 million residents in Xiaogan, which is located around 37 miles from Wuhan in Hubei province, the report said.

The death toll in the city reached 70 on Sunday as the ban went into effect at midnight.
Xiaogan officials also ordered all businesses to close in addition to banning vehicles, motorcycles and bicycles from the roads, the report said. Anyone who doesn’t follow these orders will be fined 500 yuan, or $72.

The virus, also known as COVID-19, has killed at least 1,770 people in China and infected more than 71,000 others around the world.

Coronavirus outbreak prompts Japan to limit public crowds [New York Post, 17 Feb 2020]

TOKYO – Japan canceled the emperor’s birthday celebrations next week as it moved on Monday to limit crowds to contain the spread of the coronavirus and said it will close the Tokyo Marathon to all but elite professional runners.

The widening fallout of the virus outbreak, which began in China in December and has already killed over 1,700 people, is damaging output and tourism in Japan, which is preparing to host the Olympic Games from late July.

A further spread of the virus in Japan, which last week reported its first fatality from the disease, could undermine growth and potentially push the country into recession, analysts say.

Citing “circumstances”, the Imperial Household Agency said it would cancel Emperor Naruhito’s public birthday address on Feb. 23, his first since his coronation last year. The event regularly attracts tens of thousands of people to the inner grounds of the Imperial Palace in the heart of Tokyo.

The last time the emperor’s birthday celebration was canceled was 1996, amid a hostage crisis at the Japanese embassy in Peru.

Organizers of the Tokyo Marathon, one of the world’s biggest such races, said the 38,000 general participants who signed up for the March 1 race will not be allowed to compete.

“We cannot continue to launch the event within the scale we originally anticipated,” the organizers said in a statement.

Instead, the event will be limited to top-level competitors. A total of 176 elite runners and 30 elite wheelchair athletes are registered for the race.

Shares of some of the marathon’s sponsors fell. Seiko Holdings, the maker of watches and clocks, slid 3.5 percent, as did shoe and sportswear maker ASICS Corp. The broader Tokyo market was little changed.

The marathon is not the only international sporting event in Japan the virus has affected: The FIBA Asia Cup 2021 postponed a qualifying basketball game between Japan and China, originally scheduled to be held near Tokyo this week.

Infections spread

An additional 99 people on a cruise ship docked in the Japanese port of Yokohama were confirmed on Monday to be infected with the virus, a day after 70 were confirmed to have the virus, bringing the total number of infections aboard the Diamond Princess to 454.

The United States evacuated hundreds of citizens from the ship early on Monday, with other countries preparing to do the same for their citizens on the luxury cruise, which was struck by the virus earlier this month.

A Japanese health ministry staff member helping to test passengers has also contracted the virus, the ministry said.

Infections have also been spreading on land, where 59 cases have been confirmed including one woman who died last week.

A hospital outside Tokyo said it would stop admitting new patients after one of its staff tested positive for the virus.

The hospital in Sagamihara, 31 miles west of Tokyo, said a nurse was infected after treating an inpatient who died of the disease this month.

On Monday morning, a fifth government-chartered flight carrying 65 Japanese arrived in Tokyo from Wuhan, China, the epicenter of the outbreak, bringing the total number repatriated to Japan from the city to 763, NHK said.

Companies are stepping up measures to prevent the spread of the virus as a growing number of cases have been reported in people who have neither visited China nor have had direct contact with people arriving from there.

Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corp, one of Japan’s biggest companies, said it was urging its roughly 200,000 group-wide employees to work from home or stagger their commutes.

On Friday, NTT Data Corp said a contract employee who worked at one of its buildings was confirmed as infected. The company has ordered 14 workers who were in close contact with that person to work at home, it said.

Coronavirus: Russian court orders woman who fled quarantine back to hospital [The Guardian, 17 Feb 2020]

by Andrew Roth

Alla Ilyina blogged about escape after being told she had to be quarantined despite testing negative

A St Petersburg court has ordered a Russian woman to be forcibly confined to hospital after she dramatically broke out of coronavirus quarantine and blogged about her escape.

Alla Ilyina, 32, was escorted by bailiffs and medical staff back to the Botkin infectious diseases hospital, where she had been held under quarantine, before short-circuiting the electronic lock to her hospital door and sneaking past doctors to an elevator.

Ilyina fell ill after returning from the Chinese resort island of Hainan last month and was put under quarantine by doctors. But after she tested negative for the virus on 6 February, she was told she would be held under quarantine for two weeks regardless.

“When they told me I was totally healthy, I requested that the doctors let me go home,” she said in the video, which featured a schematic diagram detailing her escape plan. “I said that according to the constitution, I have a right to my freedom. Also under Russian law, I have a right to refuse hospitalisation. They refused. So, I worked out a plan.”

The story went viral and led to a police search for Ilyina, who had locked herself in her apartment. The court on Monday ordered her to be admitted to hospital until at least Wednesday, in order to receive new test results.

Russia has taken extraordinary measures to prevent the spread of the Covid-19 coronavirus, closing its borders with China and putting dozens more under quarantine. But patients have complained about delayed test results and draconian rules that have left them trapped in hospitals. At least three people have fled quarantine since the coronavirus outbreak began, including a 34-year-old mother who jumped out of a hospital window with her son in the city of Samara.

On Monday, the first Russian citizen was diagnosed with the new coronavirus – a woman onboard the Diamond Princess cruise ship docked in Yokohama, Japan. Two Chinese citizens in Russia were diagnosed with the disease and have since been released.

More than 140 Russians and others evacuees from Wuhan are also being quarantined at a sanatorium in western Siberia being patrolled by members of Russia’s national guard.

99 more cases of coronavirus confirmed on cruise ship | TheHill [The Hill, 17 Feb 2020]

BY ZACK BUDRYK

Officials have confirmed another 99 cases of novel coronavirus on a quarantined cruise ship docked in Japan’s port of Yokohama.

The new cases bring the confirmed infections on board the ship to 454, The Guardian reports.
Hundreds of U.S. nationals who were quarantined on the ship have been flown back to the U.S., with 14 passengers testing positive during the evacuation, according to the State Department.

Australia, meanwhile, said Wednesday that it will also evacuate nationals on the ship, with both Australian and U.S. officials saying citizens will be quarantined another two weeks after arriving home. Forty U.S. passengers with the virus have been transferred to Japanese hospitals.

“Many people are testing positive on the ship, but that is because we are testing everyone onboard, regardless of their medical condition,” said Shigeru Omi, the chief director of the Japan Community Health Care Organization, according to the newspaper. “And 70% of those testing positive are not showing any symptoms at all.”

The new confirmations come amid growing concern over the possibility of the virus’s presence on another liner that docked in Cambodia last week after being rejected by four other governments. A passenger from the MS Westerdam was on Sunday confirmed to have contracted the virus days after disembarking.

Holland America Line, the Westerdam’s cruise operator, told Reuters any passengers who left Cambodia would be “contacted by their local health department and be provided further information.”

As of Monday, 71,000 cases have been confirmed worldwide, with 1,770 deaths in China and give outside of China.

China is disinfecting and destroying cash to contain the coronavirus [11Alive.com WXIA, 17 Feb 2020]

By Jessie Yeung

Hong Kong (CNN Business)As the novel coronavirus outbreak continues to batter China, the country's central bank has implemented a new strategy to contain the virus -- deep cleaning and destroying potentially infected cash.

The new measures, announced by the People's Bank of China on Saturday, aim to contain the spread of the virus, officially known as Covid-19. There is still a lot unknown about the virus, which has infected more than 71,000 people globally and killed 1,775, the majority in China -- but it appears to survive for at least several hours on surfaces, according to the World Health Organization.

This is why buildings in affected areas are regularly disinfecting elevator buttons, door handles, and other commonly-touched surfaces -- and why people are worried about cash, which changes hands multiple times a day.

All Chinese banks must now literally launder their cash, disinfecting it with ultraviolet light and high temperatures, then storing it for seven to 14 days before releasing it to customers, said the central Chinese government in a press release Saturday.

Cash that comes from high-risk infection areas, like hospitals and wet markets, will be "specially treated" and sent back to the central bank instead of being recirculated.

And in the central bank's Guangzhou branch, these high-risk banknotes may be destroyed instead of merely disinfected, according to state-run tabloid Global Times.

To make up for the supply, the bank will issue large amounts of new, uninfected cash; in January, the bank allocated 4 billion yuan (about $573.5 million) in new banknotes to Wuhan, the Chinese city where the outbreak began, said the government press release.

Other measures includes suspending physical cash transfers between hard-hit provinces, to limit the possibility of virus transmission during the cash's transit.

It's unclear how "infected" cash in China may actually be -- the virus likely dies after a few hours on surfaces, especially if it's been killed with disinfectant. And most people in urban centers don't use cash anyway -- mobile payment apps are near-ubiquitous.

But as previous studies have found, money can be incredibly dirty. Each dollar, passed person to person, samples a bit of the environment it comes from, and passes those bits to the next person.

The list of things found on US dollar bills includes DNA from our pets, traces of drugs, and bacteria and viruses, according to a 2017 study in New York.

That doesn't mean cash is actually dangerous for our health; disease transmission linked to money is rare, and no major disease outbreaks have started from our ATMs. But with new cases being reported every day in China, the country's officials are taking no chances.

The new measures indicate "the financial system's full support in fighting the virus and resuming production," the government press release said.

China struggles to contain coronavirus

Since the outbreak began in Wuhan in December, it has spread to 28 countries and territories, sparking travel restrictions and emergency measures worldwide.

But mainland China remains the hardest hit. Of the 1,775 coronavirus deaths worldwide, only five occurred outside of mainland China. And of the 71,319 cases worldwide, 70,548 are in mainland China.

To limit the spread of the virus, Chinese authorities have implemented a number of other drastic measures including placing 60 million people under full or partial lockdown. People aren't just afraid to touch money -- just going outside risks infection, so many have stayed at home for the past few weeks, only venturing out to buy groceries.

Even when they do go out, they wrap themselves in protective plastic; travelers at a Beijing train station this week were seen wearing disposable plastic gloves, shower caps, full-face plastic visors, and even full-body plastic ponchos.

The lockdowns and halt in business have also taken a toll on the Chinese economy, with some warning that the outbreak could cost China $62 billion in lost growth. Experts warn that if businesses shut down entirely, unable to survive the prolonged suspensions, it could result in mass layoffs, unemployment, and housing foreclosures.

And so, millions of people are beginning to resume work -- in the safety of their apartments, in what may be the world's biggest work-from-home experiment.

Meanwhile, Chinese and international experts continue working together to learn more about the virus and contain its spread. On Sunday, a team of WHO and international experts arrived in Beijing for a joint mission with their Chinese counterparts, to analyze data and determine next steps for both China and the world.

What we know about claims of coronavirus in the metro area [11Alive.com WXIA, 17 Feb 2020]

By Adrianne M Haney & Joe Henke

11Alive has already debunked the claim that coronavirus was found in Rome. We are verifying some of the other claims.

ATLANTA — As the world watches the spread of a new and deadly virus, rumors of the illness being spotted locally are cropping up by the day.

In the last few weeks, claims have spread online that the illness - a form of coronavirus known as COVID-19 - have been spotted in Rome, Georgia, at Dobbins Air Reserve Base and even at Children's Healtcare of Atlanta facilities. But, in many of those cases, the claims are not true.
11Alive has already debunked the claim that this strain of coronavirus was found in Rome. We are verifying some of the other claims.

Claim No.1: 30 Cases of Coronavirus at Dobbins

A second claim says that there are 30 cases of coronavirus at Dobbins Air Reserve Base in Marietta.

11Alive reached out to the department of Public Health, who said that there are no confirmed cases of COVID-19 in Georgia at this time. It's also important to note that, so far, there are only 15 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the entire United States.

There are, however, some military bases being used across the nation as quarantine facilities for US citizens being evacuated from China, where the COVID-19 virus first emerged.

Dobbins was listed as a possible military instillation that could be used for coronavirus quarantine, if additional space was needed, should other facilities become filled.

Claim No.2: Coronavirus at Children's Healthcare of Atlanta

A post in a Facebook group outlines how a child tested positive for coronavirus.

11Alive's Joe Henke spoke to the person who originally posted the comment in the group, who confirmed that her child was indeed getting treatment for a form of coronavirus, but that it is
NOT the new strain of the virus - COVID-19 - that is causing panic worldwide.

The parent said that their child's doctors told her that the form of coronavirus that the child has is one of the strains commonly seen among children and has symptoms more similar to a common cold. It's also easily treatable.

But as far as COVID-19 being seen at Children's in Atlanta - that claim is not true.

Below is a statement from Children's Hospital:

The coronavirus currently receiving heightened media attention and first detected in Wuhan City, Hubei Province, China is the 2019 novel coronavirus (COVID-19). This novel coronavirus is not the same strain as the multiple strains that have been circulating in the human population for years.

While it is not uncommon for Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta to treat patients with coronavirus infections, we are not currently caring for any children with the novel coronavirus COVID-19. Coronaviruses are a family of viruses that commonly affect animals and can infect humans as well. Some types of coronavirus infections result in mild symptoms similar to the common cold, while others, like SARS or MERS, are associated with more severe symptoms.

China Detains Activist Who Accused Xi of Coronavirus Cover-Up [The New York Times, 17 Feb 2020]

By Javier C. Hernández

Xu Zhiyong, a prominent Chinese legal activist, went silent over the weekend. His girlfriend, Li Qiaochu, a social activist, has gone missing.

He portrayed China’s leader, Xi Jinping, as hungry for power. He accused Mr. Xi of trying to cover up the coronavirus outbreak in central China. In one of his most daring writings, he urged Mr. Xi to resign, saying, “You’re just not smart enough.”

Then, over the weekend, Xu Zhiyong, a prominent Chinese legal activist, went silent. The authorities in the southern city of Guangzhou detained him on Saturday, according to Mr. Xu’s friends, after he spent nearly two months in hiding. His girlfriend, Li Qiaochu, a social activist, went missing on Sunday, Mr. Xu’s friends said.

The activist is the latest critic to be caught up in Mr. Xi’s far-reaching efforts to limit dissent in China. The crackdown, which has ensnared scores of activists, lawyers, journalists and intellectuals, is likely to intensify as the ruling Communist Party comes under broad attack for its handling of the coronavirus outbreak, one of its biggest political challenges in years.

Mr. Xu, a 46-year-old former university lecturer, has long railed against government corruption and social injustice in China. He went into hiding in December as the police began rounding up human rights activists who met with him in the eastern city of Xiamen.

While in hiding, Mr. Xu continued to publish blunt critiques of Mr. Xi on social media, accusing him of leading a dictatorship.

He also criticized Mr. Xi’s handling of the outbreak in the central province of Hubei that has killed at least 1,770 people in China and sickened more than 70,000. In one of his last writings before he was detained, Mr. Xu mourned the death of a doctor in Wuhan whom the police had silenced after he warned about the virus.

“In their hearts,” Mr. Xu said of party leaders, “there is no right and wrong, no conscience, no bottom line, no humanity.”

Mr. Xu, a firebrand who has spent decades pushing for political reforms, has long clashed with the Chinese government.

He was sentenced to four years in prison in 2014 for “gathering a crowd to disturb public order,” a charge that stemmed from his role organizing the New Citizens Movement, a grass-roots effort against corruption and social injustice in Chinese society.

It is unclear what charges the authorities might bring against Mr. Xu. The circumstances of the disappearance of his girlfriend, Ms. Li, were also ambiguous. The police in Guangzhou did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Mr. Xu’s friends defended his actions.

“It is within the scope of freedom of speech under the Chinese Constitution,” said Hua Ze, an activist based in New Jersey and a friend of Mr. Xu who confirmed his detention.

Faced with growing public anger over the coronavirus outbreak, China’s leader has cited a need to “strengthen the guidance of public opinion,” a term that often refers to blocking independent news reporting and censoring critical comments on Chinese social media.

Many free-speech activists worry that the party, which is concerned about maintaining its control, is tightening the reins of public discourse despite a growing perception that the silencing of doctors and others who tried to raise alarms has enabled the virus to spread more widely.

Two video bloggers who attracted wide attention for their dispatches from Wuhan, the epicenter of the outbreak, have gone missing.

Yaqiu Wang, a China researcher at Human Rights Watch, an advocacy organization, said the detention of Mr. Xu showed that the authorities had no intention of loosening restrictions on speech.

“The Chinese government persists in its old ways: silencing its critics rather than listening to people who promote rights-respecting policies that actually solve problems,” she said.