Here’s what you need to know:
- France announces the first coronavirus death in Europe.
- The U.S. says it will evacuate Americans from the cruise ship quarantined off Japan.
- China reports more than 2,000 new cases and 139 deaths, most in Hubei.
- Beijing imposes new quarantine rules.
- Protests against coronavirus clinics spring up in Hong Kong.
France announces the first coronavirus death in Europe.
France’s health minister, Agnès Buzyn, said on Saturday that a 80-year-old Chinese tourist had died of coronavirus on Friday at a hospital in Paris.
Ms. Buzyn said the man, who was from the Chinese province of Hubei, the center of the outbreak, arrived in France on Jan. 16 and had been hospitalized at the Bichat-Claude Bernard Hospital since Jan. 25.
“His condition had quickly worsened and he had been in critical condition for several days,” Ms. Buzyn said in a televised statement.
She did not name the patient. The man’s daughter also has the coronavirus and was also hospitalized in Paris, Ms. Buzyn said, adding that she should be discharged soon.
The victim and his daughter were among 11 confirmed cases in France, which also included five British citizens who stayed in a ski chalet in the French Alps.
A total of nine cases have been confirmed in Britain, and on Saturday the country’s National Health Service said that all but one had been discharged from hospitals.
The death in France is the fourth from the virus outside of mainland China, where about 1,500 people have died, most of them in Hubei Province. The Philippines, Hong Kong and Japan have each reported one death.
The U.S. says it will evacuate Americans from the cruise ship quarantined off Japan.
The United States will evacuate Americans from the cruise ship that has been quarantined for more than a week in Japan because of coronavirus infections on board, the United States Embassy in Tokyo told Americans aboard the ship on Saturday.
American passengers and crew members were told in an email from the embassy that a chartered flight would arrive on Sunday for those who wanted to return to the United States.
The ship, the Diamond Princess, was placed under quarantine at the city of Yokohama early last week with about 3,700 passengers and crew members aboard, after a man who had disembarked in Hong Kong was diagnosed with the coronavirus. Since then, at least 218 cases have been confirmed aboard the ship.
There are hundreds of Americans aboard, and at least 40 who were infected with the virus have been taken off the ship for treatment.
Japan has more confirmed coronavirus cases — the vast majority of them from the ship — than any country outside China, and it reported its first death from the virus on Thursday.
China reports more than 2,000 new cases and 139 deaths, most in Hubei.
Infections and deaths continued to climb after the government this week changed the criteria by which it tracks cases. Officials early Saturday reported 2,641 new coronavirus cases and 143 additional deaths in the previous 24 hours.
The new numbers came hours after Beijing announced new restrictions on people returning to the capital from elsewhere in the country.
Most of the new cases and deaths were reported in Hubei Province, the center of the epidemic.
In all, more than 66,000 people have been infected and at least 1,523 have died worldwide. The vast majority of cases, and all but a few of the deaths, have been in mainland China, with the heaviest concentration there in Hubei, the center of the epidemic.
The tally in Hubei jumped drastically on Thursday after the authorities changed the diagnostic criteria for counting new cases. The government now takes into account cases diagnosed in clinical settings, including the use of CT scans, and not just those confirmed with specialized testing kits.
In an interview with the news agency Reuters on Friday, China’s foreign minister, Wang Yi, declared that the outbreak was “over all, under control.”
“We have taken the most correct, the most rigorous and decisive measures,” he said, rejecting widespread criticism that the authorities had suppressed warnings and restricted vital information in the early days of the outbreak.
The minister also told Reuters that some of the travel restrictions imposed on Chinese citizens by other countries were an overreaction and likely to be eased.
“I’m sure that those countries are reflecting on this as the situation evolves,” he said, adding, “Because at the end of the day, these countries need to interact with China.”
Beijing imposes new quarantine rules.
Chinese state-run television announced on its website on Friday evening that everyone returning to Beijing would be required to isolate themselves for 14 days.
Anyone who does not comply “shall be held accountable according to law,” according to a text of the order released by state television. The order was issued by a Communist Party “leading group” at the municipal level, not the national Communist Party.
It was the latest sign that China’s leaders were still struggling to set the right balance between restarting the economy and continuing to fight the coronavirus outbreak.
Tens of millions had gone home to celebrate Lunar New Year holidays before the government acknowledged the seriousness of the epidemic. They have faced local government checkpoints on the way back to work and then lengthy quarantines upon their return to big cities.
The new rules also require those returning to the city to give advance warning of their arrival to the authorities in their residential area.
Protests against coronavirus clinics spring up in Hong Kong.
Protests against neighborhood clinics designated by the Hong Kong government to treat suspected coronavirus cases cropped up in multiple districts across the city on Saturday.
Many of the demonstrators, numbering in the hundreds, were dressed in black, the signature color of the city’s antigovernment protests.
The government has said that the clinics would treat people with mild symptoms of the virus to relieve pressures on hospitals, but critics said residents had not been consulted.
In the northern town of Tin Shui Wai, riot officers fired pepper spray at demonstrators, and other protesters tried to set a train station turnstile ablaze, according to local reports.
Separately, the city’s Hospital Authority said that a clinic in the district of Tai Po had been vandalized. A police spokesman said broken glass pieces were found near the clinic’s door on Saturday morning and a bottle containing unknown liquid was found nearby, but did not say if the property was damaged.
Another clinic has suffered two arson attacks over the past week.
Last month, the government shelved a plan to turn an unoccupied housing project into a quarantine center after protesters set a fire in the lobby.
Workers who helped build a new coronavirus hospital in 10 days are infected.
At least two workers who were sent to Wuhan at the end of January to help build one of the new hospitals to treat victims of the coronavirus have been infected with it, company and health officials said.
Huoshenshan Hospital, whose name means fire god mountain, was one of two hospitals built in the city in a matter of days to help cope with the crush of patients.
Ma Ke, 28, tested positive for the coronavirus on Thursday, a manager for his company, Hunan Dawei Construction, said. The second, a 48-year-old worker identified only by his surname, Lin, tested positive for the virus on Feb. 10 after spending two days in quarantine in a hospital in Xiangtan, according to that city’s health commission.
Hunan Dawei sent 10 workers, including Mr. Ma, to help with the construction. The company’s general manager, Li Guangda, said in a telephone interview that working conditions at the construction site were poor and that there were shortages of protective equipment, including high-quality masks.
“There were several types of workers working on things at the same time,” Mr. Li said. “The workers there were also crowded together as they worked. The population density was very high.”
Mr. Li said that Mr. Ma, who with the others worked on installing water and electricity, was asymptomatic. Mr. Lin’s condition was not immediately known.
China’s banks scramble to disinfect cash.
The central banking authorities of China are disinfecting, stashing and reportedly even destroying cash in an effort to stop the spread of the coronavirus.
Fan Yifei, deputy governor of the People’s Bank of China, said at a news conference on Saturday that the cash collected by commercial banks must be disinfected before being released back to customers.
Cash collected from hospitals and food markets must be handled separately and disinfected before depositing the notes to the People’s Bank of China, Mr. Fan said. In severely hit regions, the collected cash must undergo ultraviolet or high-temperature disinfection and be stored for 14 days before going back to the market, he added. In less impacted areas, the bank notes must be disinfected and stored for a week before use.
A People’s Bank of China branch in the southern city of Guangzhou is even destroying bank notes that came from hospitals, food markets and public transportation, according to a report by Nanfang, a state-owned outlet in Guangdong province.
Many people in major Chinese cities primarily use their smartphones to pay for just about anything, increasingly rendering cash obsolete. But hundreds of millions of people in the country are not connected to the internet, and some older residents still prefer cash.
The virus is taking a heavy toll on the global luxury goods sector.
The virus has caused the quarantine of more than 50 million people in China, and travel and visa restrictions to more than 70 countries. Alongside widespread shutdowns of stores and malls in China, it has taken a heavy toll on the global luxury goods sector, long dependent on the spending of Chinese shoppers at home and abroad.
The investment bank Jefferies estimates that Chinese buyers accounted for 40 percent of the 281 billion euros, or $305 billion, spent on luxury goods globally last year, and drove 80 percent of the past year’s sales growth in the sector, making them the fastest-growing luxury shopper demographic in the world.
With the latest season of fashion weeks well underway — and several runway show cancellations in New York, London, Milan and Paris — some of the biggest names in the industry are publicly counting the cost of coronavirus-related disruption on bottom lines.
A Japanese couple who visited Hawaii tests positive for coronavirus.
A man who became ill while on a vacation in Hawaii and his wife, who was traveling with him, have both tested positive for the coronavirus, officials said.
The couple, who are in their 60s, visited Hawaii in late January and early February, and the man fell ill during the second week of the vacation, while they were staying at a time-share in Honolulu, on the island of Oahu. Before that, the couple had been in Maui, but neither showed symptoms while there.
Officials said the man began showing symptoms on Feb. 3, and wore a mask when he went outside the time-share, the Grand Waikikian. He was most likely infected either before he came to Hawaii or while he was on his way to Hawaii in late January, said Dr. Sarah Park, the state epidemiologist. He tested positive for the coronavirus in Japan on Friday.
On the same day, the woman went to a hospital with a fever and on Saturday, her case was confirmed, according to Japan’s Health Ministry. The ministry said she is from Nagoya, the country’s fourth largest city. NHK, the public broadcaster, and Nagoya city officials said she and the diagnosed man were married.
Lt. Gov. Josh Green, who is an emergency physician, said in an interview on Friday that the authorities were contacting the management at the guest facilities where the man stayed, as well as those who were working there.
“The only way to do this right is to contact everyone,” he said. “We are not worried about minimal contact, but those who had extensive contact will be given whatever support is necessary.”
‘Thermometer guns,’ used on the outbreak’s front lines, are known to misfire.
It has become an iconic image of the coronavirus outbreak in China: a masked official aiming what appears to be a small white pistol at a traveler’s forehead.
For weeks, these ominous-looking devices have been deployed at checkpoints across China — tollbooths, apartment complexes, hotels, grocery stores, train stations — as government officials and private citizens screen people for fevers in an effort to prevent the spread of the deadly coronavirus.
But experts say the “thermometer guns” are unlikely to stop the outbreak.
The thermometers determine temperature by measuring the heat emanating from the surface of a person’s body. Often, however, those wielding the tools don’t hold them close enough to the subject’s forehead, generating unusually low temperature readings, or hold them too close and get a high reading. The measurements can be imprecise in certain environments, like a dusty roadside, or when someone has taken medication to suppress a fever.
“These devices are notoriously not accurate and reliable,” said James Lawler, a medical expert at the University of Nebraska’s Global Center for Health Security. “Some of it is quite frankly for show.”
A musical boot camp lifts the spirits of a talented young violinist.
Anthea Kreston, an acclaimed American violinist, has been giving Yunhe Tang, a talented Chinese 14-year-old, lessons via Skype once a week since last summer. But something seemed very wrong this month: He had not practiced, and he always practices.
The teenager, who prefers the name Kevin, lives in Chengdu, one of dozens of Chinese cities that are effectively on lockdown because of the coronavirus crisis. Schools are closed for the rest of the month and most businesses are struggling to reopen. Kevin’s family is healthy, but he has mostly been stuck inside.
Ms. Kreston said she couldn’t stop thinking about Kevin, and decided to help take his mind off the lockdown. She messaged his family and asked if they would like to temporarily step up Kevin’s lessons at no extra cost. As long as he was shut indoors, she wanted to have daily contact with him, and run a kind of violinist’s boot camp. The family agreed.
Kevin’s challenge would be to learn a new concerto — Lalo’s “Symphonie Espagnole” — in a few weeks, something she said would normally take 100 days. Ms. Kreston also gave him daily exercises to practice.
Two weeks into the boot camp, Kevin is feeling much better, though he longs for the outdoors. He now practices four hours every day, and said his technique has improved and his sound has become more beautiful.
“The virus is terrible,” Kevin said, “but music gives us the confidence to overcome.”
Reporting and research were contributed by Elian Peltier, Motoko Rich, David Yaffe-Bellany, Keith Bradsher, Elaine Yu, Claire Fu, Elizabeth Paton, Alex Marshall and Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs.
https://news.google.com/__i/rss/rd/articles/CBMiUWh0dHBzOi8vd3d3Lm55dGltZXMuY29tLzIwMjAvMDIvMTUvd29ybGQvYXNpYS9jb3JvbmF2aXJ1cy1jaGluYS1saXZlLXVwZGF0ZXMuaHRtbNIBVWh0dHBzOi8vd3d3Lm55dGltZXMuY29tLzIwMjAvMDIvMTUvd29ybGQvYXNpYS9jb3JvbmF2aXJ1cy1jaGluYS1saXZlLXVwZGF0ZXMuYW1wLmh0bWw?oc=5
2020-02-15 13:24:16Z
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