The death toll of the novel coronavirus reached 11 in the United States on Wednesday as the epidemic spread, resulting in the first fatality outside of Washington state, that of a 71-year-old in northern California.
As of Wednesday evening, health officials had reported at least 153 cases of the virus across the country, including 45 people who had been on the quarantined Diamond Princess cruise ship in Japan. Most domestic deaths so far have been linked to a nursing home near Seattle.
While no additional states reported patients on Wednesday, both New York and California experienced serious upticks in the spread of the virus. Health officials confirmed nine more cases in New York and six in Los Angeles County, which has also declared a local health emergency.
Elsewhere in California, Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) announced a state of emergency while asking that another cruise ship be held off its coast. The vessel had recently carried several coronavirus patients, including the 71-year-old who died, and Newsom said he wanted passengers and crew members to undergo testing first.
Meanwhile, hospitals and public health labs are bracing for the impact of the growing outbreak.
Following a declaration from Vice President Pence earlier this week that any American can get tested with a doctor’s order, 60 labs are now running the test for the novel coronavirus. That capacity is expected to increase as more labs come online and private companies ship thousands of test kits, but CDC guidelines have nonetheless created panic.
In Kirkland, Wash., which has emerged as center of the epidemic, Pence’s order has become a rallying cry: Some residents with even mild symptoms of a common cold are demanding a coronavirus test, as others elsewhere in the country say they have not been able to get tested at all.
Many hospitals and doctors, meanwhile, have been forced improvise emergency plans daily without a clear sense of how bad the crisis will become. Doctors in Rhode Island have been testing patients in a hospital parking lot, officials in Washington state are buying a motel to house patients in isolation, and small hospitals in rural Texas worry they may not be able to reach central testing labs hours away.
Militants linked with the Afghan Taliban gather Monday for a ceremony in Laghman province, celebrating the agreement the group signed with the U.S. over the weekend. Since the deal was announced, the Taliban has resumed its attacks in Afghanistan.
Noorullah Shirzada/AFP via Getty Images
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Noorullah Shirzada/AFP via Getty Images
Just days after the U.S. and Taliban announced the terms of a deal lauded as a foundation for peace, Afghanistan is once more embroiled in deadly violence.
On Wednesday, the U.S. carried out its first airstrike on the Islamist militant group since announcing the agreement. A U.S. military spokesman said the "defensive strike" in Helmand province was aimed at disrupting Taliban fighters "who were actively attacking an [Afghan security] checkpoint."
"Taliban leadership promised the [international] community they would reduce violence and not increase attacks," Col. Sonny Leggett of the U.S. forces in Afghanistan said in a series of tweets, noting that Tuesday alone saw the militant group launch 43 attacks on checkpoints across Helmand.
"We call on the Taliban to stop needless attacks and uphold their commitments. As we have demonstrated, we will defend our partners when required."
In a span of just 24 hours, a wave of Taliban assaults has left civilians and security forces dead in more than a dozen provinces, according to a spokesman for the Afghan Ministry of Interior. Local media report that at least 16 Afghan soldiers were killed in an attack in the province of Kunduz.
Amid the Taliban offensive, President Trump spoke on the phone Tuesday with the group's chief negotiator, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, making history with what is thought to be the first direct call between a president and a top Taliban official since the U.S. invaded Afghanistan nearly two decades ago.
"We had a good conversation. We've agreed there's no violence. We don't want violence," Trump told journalists Tuesday after the Taliban publicized the call. "We'll see what happens. They're dealing with Afghanistan, but we'll see what happens."
The White House has not officially released a readout, but the Taliban, in its own summary of the 35-minute conversation, says the president commended Baradar.
"You are a tough people and have a great country, and I understand that you are fighting for your homeland," Trump told the Taliban official, according to the group's readout. "We have been there for 19 years and that is a very long time, and withdrawal of foreign forces from Afghanistan now is in the interest of everyone."
More than 2,400 Americans have died in Afghanistan since the U.S. invaded the country with the intent to overthrow the Taliban — which had harbored Osama bin Laden, leader of al-Qaida and orchestrator of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks. The financial cost of the war has been estimated at roughly $1 trillion.
Now, the Trump administration is seeking an exit from the longest war in U.S. history. The deal announced Saturday lays the groundwork for the withdrawal of all American troops and supporting personnel within 14 months, beginning with a 135-day window to reduce its troop levels in Afghanistan to 8,600.
U.S. officials, though, have insisted that the drawdown is conditioned on the Taliban's commitment to severing ties with — and preventing operations by — other insurgents, such as al-Qaida and the Islamic State. And Leggett, the U.S. forces spokesman, said Wednesday that American troops have the responsibility of defending their partners in the Afghan security forces.
Taliban fighters "appear intent on squandering this [opportunity] and ignoring the will of the people for peace," Leggett added.
Other signs of trouble for the deal have surfaced in the capital, Kabul, where Afghan President Ashraf Ghani earlier this week rejected the timeline of another key element of the agreement: a prisoner swap that includes the release of up to 5,000 Taliban fighters in exchange for up to 1,000 Afghan security forces.
"It can be part of the negotiations," Ghani told a news conference Sunday, "but it cannot be a precondition."
International observers, including the United Nations, have called for the Taliban to halt its offensive and resume the "reduction in violence" deal that lapsed late last month.
The partial truce, according to the U.N. Assistance Mission in Afghanistan, is necessary to maintain "an environment conducive to the start of intra-Afghan negotiations, which should lead to a permanent ceasefire and a lasting political settlement."
The Italian Cabinet was meeting Wednesday to discuss the proposal, as it tries to contain the outbreak that has already killed 79 people there.
"We asked the technical-scientific committee for further information, the decision will come in the next few hours," the Minister of Education Lucia Azzolina said in a statement sent to CNN by the Prime Minister's office.
Some international schools have already issued letters informing parents and guardians they will be closed as a preventative measure as of Thursday, with remote online teaching beginning Friday.
The Italian education ministry has launched a website with information about how to deal with a possible coronavirus outbreak in schools. It also launched an information portal focused on remote learning and said 2,000 teachers participated in webinars on distance learning on Tuesday, the first day of the program.
Italy is experiencing the worst outbreak of the disease in Europe. It has reported more than 2,500 confirmed cases and 79 deaths.
The government has put several cities and towns in the country's north on lockdown. The measures include banning people from entering or leaving affected areas, suspending public events and closing attractions, such as museums, to the public, according to the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control. An estimated 100,000 people are effectively under quarantine.
Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte was forced to admit last week that a hospital in the northern town of Codogno had mishandled the region's first coronavirus case and had contributed to the deadly virus' spread.
Reacting to the “defensive” airstrike against Taliban forces after signing a peace deal, Sen. Marco Rubio on Wednesday warned that the Taliban will retake Afghanistan and implement sharia law as soon as U.S. troops withdraw.
“No, I don’t think we can trust them,” the Florida Republican told “America’s Newsroom.”
“The bottom line is that the Taliban will institute a severe version of sharia Law and no elections. That’s what they want, they have the battlefield advantage over the government of Afghanistan," said Rubio.
The U.S. military conducted a “defensive” airstrike against Taliban forces in Afghanistan, less than a week after signing a historic peace deal with the militant group.
U.S. military spokesman Col. Sonny Leggett said in a tweet that the airstrike Wednesday was conducted against four Taliban fighters in Nahr-e Saraj, in the Helmand province, who he said were “actively attacking” an Afghan National Defense and Security Force (ANDSF) checkpoint.
“This was a defensive strike to disrupt the attack,” he added. “This was our 1st strike against the Taliban in 11 days.”
Leggett, who called on the militant group to uphold their commitments to the peace deal signed on Feb. 29, added that Taliban forces had conducted 43 attacks on Afghan troops on Tuesday in the same province.
Though withdrawing troops does not bode well for Afghanistan, the problem is that an “enduring presence” of the U.S. military there is also not “feasible," Rubio explained.
“I hope this works out but I want to be frank with everybody: I think the likeliest outcome at the end of the day is that once the U.S. leaves, within a short period of time, the Taliban will retake the country, will reinstitute sharia, will not have elections.”
Rubio said that the only way to keep the Taliban at bay would be for U.S. troops to stay "forever." Host Ed Henry called it a "chilling scenario," especially if the Taliban harbors terrorist organizations who plot attacks on the U.S. and Western targets.
President Trump said Tuesday he spoke on the phone to a Taliban leader, making him the first U.S. president believed to have spoken directly to the militant group responsible for the deaths of thousands of U.S. troops in nearly 19 years of fighting in Afghanistan.
"I spoke to the leader of the Taliban today," Trump told reporters on the South Lawn. "We had a very good talk."
He didn't provide any more details, but Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid confirmed Trump spoke with Taliban leader Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar.
The coronavirus that causes COVID-19 can be contained, says WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. Here, an Indian student wears a self-made mask as he listens to a teacher in Hyderabad, India, on Wednesday. The country has reported at least 29 cases of the virus.
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The coronavirus that causes COVID-19 is now in at least 75 countries, the World Health Organization said in a Wednesday update on the respiratory disease that has killed more than 3,200 people globally. Italy is being hit particularly hard, with more than 2,000 cases.
Despite the increase in cases, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus says, "We can push this virus back."
"This virus is not SARS, it is not MERS, and it is not influenza," Tedros said at a briefing in Geneva. "The nature of this virus means we have an opportunity to break the chains of transmission and contain its spread."
The COVID-19 illness has been confirmed in more than 94,000 people worldwide. Of that number, 51,000 people have recovered, according to a dashboard created by the Johns Hopkins Whiting School of Engineering.
More than 80,000 cases are in mainland China, and most of that country's new cases continue to be reported in Hubei province – home to Wuhan, the center of the coronavirus outbreak.
The U.S. has reported more than 100 cases nationwide, and health officials expect the number to rise as more labs gain the ability to test for the virus. At least nine people in the U.S. have died — all in Washington state.
But in recent days, the fastest growth of new coronavirus cases has come outside of China – particularly in South Korea, Italy, Iran and Japan.
South Korea now has 5,328 cases, according to the Korean Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Of that figure, 32 people have died and 41 have been discharged after recovering from the disease.
As of late Wednesday local time, South Korea had carried out more than 136,000 tests for the coronavirus.
At least 95 countries and territories have imposed restrictions to limit travel between their region and South Korea, including 36 total bans on Korean citizens, according to the Korean foreign ministry.
Italy has also been walloped by the virus, with 2,263 confirmed cases, according to its health ministry. COVID-19 is also linked to 79 deaths.
People remain on lockdown in the "red zone" of the outbreak, the Italian Ministry of Health says. The area includes 10 towns in the Lombardy region (which has 1,520 cases) and one in Veneto.
In the affected areas, schools and universities have been closed and public events canceled; Italian officials are now considering extending those shutdowns nationwide.
Iran hascanceled Friday prayer gatherings in every provincial capital, as the country confirmed more than 2,900 coronavirus cases. It also has 92 deaths — the most of any country outside of China.
"Those infected include top leaders and clerics. President Hassan Rouhani posted to his official website the news that coronavirus has now affected almost every province in the country," NPR's Peter Kenyon reports. "Even so, Rouhani told a cabinet meeting that Iran would get over the crisis quickly."
To stop the spread of infection, officials have shut down schools and universities and cancelled public gatherings such as concerts and sport events.
Japan currently has more than 280 cases, and the country has performed more than 8,111 tests for the coronavirus, the health ministry says.
Japan's new cases include a man in his 40s who arrived at an airport near Nagoya and tested positive for the virus. The man arrived back in his home country after traveling internationally for more than two weeks, making stops in Cambodia, Vietnam and the Philippines. He developed a fever on Feb. 21; respiratory symptoms emerged this week, including chest pain.
While the WHO's top priority is to help contain COVID-19, Tedros acknowledged that countries should also prepare for "sustained community transmission" within their populations, suggesting COVID-19 could continue to disrupt daily life and tax health systems in more areas.
"At the very least, we can slow it down and buy time," he said.
To help stop the virus from spreading, the WHO recommends washing hands for at least 20 seconds or using a hand sanitizer. Face masks should be worn only by people who are either sick or caring for someone who is, the agency says.
The death rate from the novel coronavirus is higher than first thought, the World Health Organization has admitted.
“Globally, about 3.4% of reported COVID-19 cases have died,” the organization’s director-general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said Tuesday — markedly higher than all the initial predictions.
“By comparison, seasonal flu generally kills far fewer than 1% of those infected,” Tedros noted, saying that COVID-19 “causes more severe disease.”
“While many people globally have built up immunity to seasonal flu strains, COVID-19 is a new virus to which no one has immunity,” he said, noting 3,110 deaths recorded as of his remarks Tuesday.
Tedros stressed that the medical community is racing to find treatment, saying that “more than 20 vaccines are in development.”
“We understand that people are afraid and uncertain,” he said.
“Fear is a natural human response to any threat, especially when it’s a threat we don’t completely understand.”
The COVID-19 virus has hit thousands more across the globe, the majority of cases in China, South Korea, Italy and Iran. The U.S. death toll had risen to nine as of Wednesday, all of which were reported in Washington state.
New cases have also been recently reported in Morocco, Latvia, Saudi Arabia and Senegal, according to the latest report by the World Health Organization (WHO) on Tuesday.
The virus, which was first identified in Wuhan city in the Hubei province of China, has now affected at least 93,160 people. Of that figure, 80,270 are in China, including 2,871 deaths. Around the world, the death toll has reached 3,198, according to the latest figures from Johns Hopkins University.
The WHO warned that "severe and mounting disruption to the global supply of personal protective equipment (PPE)—caused by rising demand, panic buying, hoarding and misuse—is putting lives at risk from the new coronavirus and other infectious diseases," in a statement on Tuesday.
"WHO has so far shipped nearly half a million sets of personal protective equipment to 47 countries, but supplies are rapidly depleting," it added.
WHO's director-general, Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said in the statement: "Without secure supply chains, the risk to healthcare workers around the world is real. Industry and governments must act quickly to boost supply, ease export restrictions and put measures in place to stop speculation and hoarding. We can't stop COVID-19 without protecting health workers first."
The increase of the virus in the eastern Mediterranean is of great concern, the WHO said.
"While the numbers inside China have been rapidly declining, the sudden increase in cases in countries outside China, including in our Region, is deeply alarming. We remain concerned about the surge of cases and deaths in the Region and the increase in the number of travel-related confirmed cases," the WHO regional director of the Eastern Mediterranean region, Dr. Ahmed Al-Mandharim, said in a statement.
"We have also seen cases of local transmission in our Region, and it is likely that the outbreak may continue to progress from case importation to local transmission."
The graphic below, provided by Statista, illustrates the spread of the COVID-19 virus as of March 4.
A map by Statista shows the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases as of March 4.
Death toll climbs in the U.S.
The U.S has confirmed three more deaths in Washington, bringing the death toll to nine in the country, all of which were reported in the state. Eight of the deaths were in King County, while one of them was in the neighboring Snohomish County.
There are now 27 confirmed cases across the state, 21 of which are in King County, while the remaining six are in Snohomish County, according to the Washington State Department of Health.
The state has placed 231 others under "public health supervision," which includes those at risk of having been exposed to the virus "who are monitoring their health under the supervision of public health officials," as well as those who have returned from China in the past 14 days.
"This is a very fluid, fast-moving situation as we aggressively respond to this outbreak," said Dr. Jeff Duchin, a health officer for Seattle and King County.
A second case has tested positive in New York City, Governor Andrew Cuomo confirmed. The patient was reported to be a man from Westchester County who commutes to work in Manhattan and lives with school-age children, the governor told Long Island radio station 103.9.
Berkley and Contra Costa County each reported their first case of the virus, while Santa Clara County is expected to see more cases, with older residents, especially those aged above 80, facing the greatest risk of developing serious conditions from infection.
North Carolina's department of health confirmed the state's first "presumptively positive" case of the virus on Tuesday, meaning it has been confirmed as positive by a public health lab and is pending confirmation from testing by a U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) lab. The individual, who is from Wake County, was reported to be in isolation at home.
"Local health department officials are identifying close contacts to monitor symptoms and contain spread," the department said in a statement.
"Today's [Tuesday] announcement represents an isolated case, and COVID-19 is currently not widespread in North Carolina," it added.
New Hampshire announced its second presumptive positive case on Tuesday. The individual is an adult male from Grafton County who was in close contact with an infected person, the New Hampshire Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) confirmed.
The DHHS has also been tracing the contacts of the state's first presumptive positive case, an employee of Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center (DHMC), who has defied the department's instruction for isolation.
"Through the course of the investigation, DHHS has determined that the first patient, despite having been directed to self-isolate, attended an invitation-only private event on Friday, February 28. DHHS has issued an official order of isolation to the first patient under RSA-141-C:11," the department said in the statement.
"DHHS is managing the investigation into individuals in the community who may have been exposed to the virus," it added.
Nearly 120 people who were quarantined for 14 days in the Lackland Air Force Base in Texas after being aboard the Diamond Princess cruise ship were released yesterday, while around 15 were reported to be "locally in medical care or quarantine because of their close contact with a confirmed case," according to a CDC statement.
Two people in Wisconsin are also being tested, while the first person who tested positive in the state last month has recovered and is no longer in isolation, CBS 58 WDJT-Milwaukee said.
South Korea cases surpass 5,000
South Korea, which has the highest number of cases outside China, had confirmed at least 5,328 cases as of Wednesday, an increase of 516 since Tuesday, according to the Korea Centers for Disease Control.
Most of the cases continue to concentrate around the city of Daegu, which has seen more than 4,000 patients to date, while the capital Seoul has seen 99, followed by 93 cases in Busan.
Most patients have been linked to a religious group known as the Shincheonji, Church of Jesus, the Temple of the Tabernacle of the Testimony (SCJ), with several members of the secretive sect reported having been infected by an infected member who attended a service in Daegu.
SCJ is known for hosting large services with people sitting close to each other for long periods.
The leader of the group, Lee Man-hee, issued an official apology to the public after authorities in Seoul accused him of failing to cooperate in containing the outbreak.
Appreciated the opportunity to meet with Vice Foreign Minister Cho @MOFA_Kr to discuss our strong continued cooperation to defeat #COVID19. We remain confident in the South Korean government’s robust and comprehensive response efforts to limit the spread of the virus pic.twitter.com/VsvDfFAvXf
Prosecutors have been asked by Seoul officials to file charges of homicide against Lee and 11 other SCJ leaders, alleging the leaders submitted false lists of church members to authorities who were trying to track other possibly affected individuals.
"We remain confident in the South Korean government's robust and comprehensive response efforts to limit the spread of the virus," US ambassador Harry Harris said on his official Twitter account Wednesday after meeting with the country's prime minister, Cho Sei-young, to discuss measures around the coronavirus outbreak.
Italy reports highest number of deaths outside China
Italy has reported 79 deaths, surpassing Iran as the nation with the highest number of deaths outside China. Most of the deaths were reported to be in the high-risk category and the older population has seen the highest number of cases so far.
The country has seen the greatest outbreak of the virus in Europe, with at least 2,502 cases confirmed. Italy has reported 27 more deaths and nearly 500 new cases since Tuesday, according to the latest figures from Johns Hopkins University.
Europe has seen more than 3,190 confirmed cases, according to Johns Hopkins University, the majority of which has been in Italy, followed by France (212), Germany (203) and Spain (165), which reported its first death, in the city of Valencia, on Tuesday.
"Despite contact tracing measures initiated to contain further spread, there continue to be cases exported between EU/EEA [European Union/ European Economic Area] countries, and an increasing number of sporadic cases across EU/EEA countries," the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control said in its latest assessment on Wednesday.
Tourists wear protective masks in front of the Trevi fountain downtown Rome, on March 3, 2020.Getty Images
"The probability of further transmission in the EU/EEA and the UK is considered high. There is still a level of uncertainty regarding several unpredictable factors in a situation that is still evolving."
A new concentration of cases has been reported in the Italian city of Bergamo, just northeast of Milan, including a newborn baby. It has yet to be determined how the baby was infected.
The recent surge in cases in the Milan area may see another quarantine zone be imposed around the region, according to the head of Italy's national health institute.
The majority of the cases and deaths in Italy are in the northern region of Lombardy, which has seen around 55 deaths and 1,500 positive cases, while the second worst-hit region is Emilia Romagna with 420 positive cases and 18 deaths.
The Veneto region has reported 307 positive cases and 3 deaths, while two were reported in Marche and one was reported in Liguria. The Alpine region of Valle d'Aosta, the country's smallest and least populated region, is the only unaffected patch in Italy.
"None of us can be sure about the future evolution of the disease. This is an important week to understand what will happen," Angelo Borrelli, head of Italy's civil protection agency, said at a news conference.
French President Emmanuel Macron announced on his official Twitter account that the country, which reported its fourth death on Tuesday, will regulate the distribution of face masks to be sure they are reserved for the infected and healthcare professionals.
Nearly 2,000 surgical masks were reportedly stolen from a hospital in Marseille in southern France.
"We requisition all stocks and the production of protective masks. We will distribute them to healthcare professionals and French people affected by the Coronavirus," Macron said on Twitter.
The country's finance minister, Bruno Le Maire, has reportedly directed France's consumer watchdog to launch an investigation following reports that prices for masks and hand sanitizers have doubled or tripled.
"I'm ready to regulate prices of masks and gels by decree if the abuses are numerous," he said on his official Twitter account.
Elsewhere in Europe, Poland reported its first case on Wednesday, while cases rose to 203 in Germany and doubled in Sweden from 15 on Monday to 30 by Tuesday.
More cases in Africa, Middle East, Asia and Australia rations toilet paper
Australia's confirmed cases rose to 41 on Wednesday, which includes 10 from the Diamond Princess cruise ship. Most other cases involve people who have traveled to China, Iran, Japan, South Korea, Singapore and the United Arab Emirates, while two infections are of unknown origin, Australia's department of health confirmed.
The panic buying of supplies has ensued since the outbreak, prompting Woolworths, Australia's largest grocery store, to place a four-pack limit on toilet paper purchases on Wednesday.
"Before this we were seeing people with trolley loads, more than folks need," a Woolworths spokesperson said.
"The demand has been pretty unprecedented, unlike anything we've seen before.
"Our teams are continuing to work hard on restocking stores with long-life food and groceries from our distribution centers," the spokesman said.
The ration was introduced after Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison contacted Woolworths to ensure essential supplies would not run out.
The prime minister has reassured locals that supplies are guaranteed and that they should not panic.
Elsewhere in the world, Algeria confirmed three more cases, bringing its total to eight, while Qatar and India also confirmed new cases.
Six more were confirmed in Oman, bringing its total to 12.
Argentina also reported its first case, while Pakistan's total cases reached five, following a new case confirmed on Tuesday.
