Chinese fleeing coronavirus in the West, returning to China - The - The Washington Post

Greg Baker AFP/Getty Images Air China planes are seen on the tarmac at Beijing Capital International Airport on March 13 amid the coronavirus outbreak.

As the coronavirus started spreading across the United States last week, New York University student Jane Zhang knew what she needed to do. She needed to seek shelter from the outbreak. At home. In China.

“China has already contained the situation, and there are no new domestic cases in Beijing,” the 19-year-old sophomore said, “but I think the number of people with the virus in the United States is going to rise exponentially.”

So on Friday, the day the number of cases in New York state rose 30 percent overnight, she boarded a flight home to the Chinese capital. It just feels safer, she said, because authorities there have made more of an effort to ensure public health.

“The Chinese government basically pays for a patient’s recovery, so we don’t have to worry about how much treatment is going to cost,” she said, making a contrast with the U.S. health-care system.

Plus, she said, Americans didn’t seem to be taking the outbreak seriously enough.

In a matter of weeks, China has gone from being the epicenter of the virus to almost the only refuge from it, prompting hundreds of thousands of Chinese citizens abroad to flock home. About 20,000 people are arriving on flights into China every day, while five times as many arrive by land or sea, state media reported.

With many flights to China canceled amid the outbreak, seats were already relatively scarce. But the sudden spike in demand means prices have skyrocketed, with the few remaining economy-class seats from U.S. airports going for four or five times the usual rate.

[Locked down in Beijing, I watched China beat back the coronavirus]

Xiangyuan Li, a freshman at Franklin & Marshall College in Pennsylvania, had already decided to return home to Chengdu after being told on March 12 that his classes would move online. It would be boring with everyone gone from his college town, and he was worried about not being able to get into China for his summer internship.

Greg Baker

AFP/Getty Images

Passengers wear face masks as they arrive after an international flight at Beijing Capital International Airport on March 11.

But the growing outbreak in the United States cemented his decision.

“Certainly, China is indeed very safe now,” said Li, while the United States is becoming more dangerous.

“The U.S. can’t test everyone, like in China. Testing an entire planeload of passengers and providing results the next day is impossible in the U.S.,” he said, referring to the entry procedures he went through on arrival in his home country.

There has also been a rush of returns from Britain since a government adviser there advocated a “herd immunity” strategy, suggesting that it could be helpful if 60 percent of the population was infected.

Tickets from Britain are eye-wateringly expensive, if they can be found at all. A business-class charter flight from London via Geneva, operated by China Eastern Airlines, was selling seats for more than $25,000 at the weekend, according to the Yicai Global news site.

[Under fire over coronavirus response, China turns to a familiar fall guy: Trump]

But this mass influx of people has created a problem for Chinese authorities as they trumpet their achievements in containing the coronavirus and reducing infection rates to negligible levels: People are arriving with the disease.

For the fourth day in a row, China’s National Health Commission on Tuesday reported that the number of imported cases exceeded domestic transmissions. It said 21 infections had been diagnosed the previous day — 20 of which were “imported” from abroad. A total of 143 people have arrived in the country with the coronavirus, many of them from hot spots such as Iran and Italy.

“Preventing imported cases has become a key task of China’s epidemic prevention and control work,” Wang Jun, an official with the General Administration of Customs, told reporters in Beijing this week. “We must resolutely curb the spread across the border.”

Nine of the cases reported Tuesday were detected in Beijing, explaining why authorities in the capital are going to extreme measures to prevent the virus from spreading in the city that is home to the Communist Party’s top officials.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/video/world/a-wuhan-family-tries-to-keep-its-beijing-restaurant-afloat-in-the-age-of-coronavirus/2020/03/11/e96febc9-34a7-420f-8c7e-b76b30505449_video.html

Beijing’s municipal government on Sunday introduced rules requiring all people arriving in the capital to go into “centralized quarantine” at hotels for 14 days upon arrival, at their own expense.

The rules came into effect while one American, Jacob Gunter, was in the air on his way to Beijing. He live-tweeted his journey through various checks at the airport and intermediate staging posts before finally arriving at his quarantine hotel a full 12 hours later.

Other videos posted on social media showed huge crowds at Beijing Capital International Airport after weeks of it being empty, as multiple packed planes landed at the same time.

[First, China. Then, Italy. What the U.S. can learn from extreme coronavirus lockdowns.]

Areas across the country, from Inner Mongolia in the north to Sanya on the island of Hainan in the south, have instituted similar measures, requiring stays in quarantine centers rather than trusting people to isolate themselves at home. More local authorities are expected to follow suit.

All manner of methods are being employed to track down and punish those caught violating the rules.

Beijing police have made an example of a 37-year-old Chinese woman who works at Massachusetts biotechnology company Biogen and attended the Boston conference that has been linked to other infections, according to local media reports.

She failed to report that she was feeling sick before boarding her flight, took painkillers to suppress her fever and then lied to flight attendants about her condition, local police said.

Upon arrival, the suspicious attendants reported her to police authorities, who quarantined her and had her tested for the virus. It came back positive. She is under criminal investigation on charges of obstructing infectious-disease prevention.

Wang Yuan in Beijing contributed to this report.

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Coronavirus spread from China. Now, China doesn’t want the world spreading it back.

A Wuhan family tries to keep its Beijing restaurant afloat in the age of coronavirus

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2020-03-17 16:32:06Z
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Middle East in crisis now faces coronavirus too - The - The Washington Post

Ali Mohammadi Bloomberg News People in Tehran on Sunday walk by murals praising Iran’s medical services.

BEIRUT — The Middle East is shutting down as the novel coronavirus accelerates its spread across a part of the world where war, famine, financial collapse and political unrest threaten to compound the impact of the disease.

The vast majority of the 16,659 infections reported in the region as of Monday are in Iran, one of the world’s worst-hit countries and the origin of most of the 1,692 cases counted in other Middle Eastern and North African countries.

As the numbers climb around the region, governments are starting to act, upending life in a part of the world that has historically served as a crossroads of religion, trade and travel.

Prayers are being canceled, bars and cafes closed, flights grounded, and festivals and pilgrimages called off. The al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, and the Shiite Muslim shrine in Karbala, Iraq, are among the great religious sites that have been closed. Barbar, a beloved Lebanese eatery renowned for having stayed open throughout the country’s long civil war, has shut for the first time in memory.

Iraq is bracing for the imposition of a curfew starting Tuesday after the government declared a state of emergency. Lebanon began a two-week lockdown on Monday, and Saudi Arabia ordered government offices, businesses and malls to close.

Trade and travel are skidding to a halt. Saudi Arabia has suspended all travel in and out of the kingdom. The United Arab Emirates has suspended flights to many locations and stopped issuing visas, but said on Tuesday it would continue to allow visa-free entry to many countries, including the United States. Jordan, Lebanon and Iraq are sealing their borders and will close their airports within days.

The interruption of economic activity is going to exact a heavy toll on the region’s already struggling citizens at a time of severe economic strain, political instability and conflict, analysts say.

“There’s a series of cascading crises which ultimately feed into one another, an interconnected web of catastrophes,” said Jon Alterman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “These countries are not facing one; they are facing two or three crises simultaneously.”

Ammar Awad

Reuters

Worshipers pray in front of the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem’s Old City after al-Aqsa Mosque was closed because of the coronavirus.

A decade of upheaval since the Arab Spring revolts has ravaged economies that were in trouble before the coronavirus crashed global markets.

The oil price war launched by Saudi Arabia — partly as a consequence of the coronavirus and the collapse in worldwide demand — has cratered prices, threatening economies across the region. 

Oil producers in the Persian Gulf countries will be forced to cut back spending, and countries elsewhere that depend on remittances from expatriates in the gulf region will also suffer, said Nasser Saidi, a Dubai-based economist and former Lebanese finance minister.

Lebanon is in the throes of a financial crisis that has seen its currency collapse amid widespread street protests. Iraq, which depends on oil for almost all its income, will be badly hit at a time when political protests there have rocked the country.

The region will almost certainly slide into recession, Saidi said.

“It means unemployment will get worse. It means socioeconomic conditions will deteriorate. There will be more distress, more social problems and more political protests,” he said. “It’s not a pretty picture for the Middle East.”

Meanwhile, wars are raging in Syria, Yemen and Libya, which have not reported any cases but are home to millions of people who are impoverished, hungry and uniquely vulnerable to the spread of disease. Millions more are crowded into refugee camps and settlements in surrounding countries, where diseases spread rapidly, said Fabrizio Carboni, Middle East director for the International Committee of the Red Cross.

“Even, quote, advanced countries are struggling,” he said. “One can only imagine what the situation will be like in countries affected by conflict.”

Many of the region’s authoritarian governments are notoriously opaque, and there are widespread suspicions that some countries aren’t acknowledging the scale of their problems. Though Syria insists it has detected no coronavirus cases, health experts say it is unlikely to have escaped a virus that has embedded itself among its neighbors.

With the exception of some wealthy Arab gulf countries, health-care systems lag far behind those of the Western and Asian countries that are barely able to cope — and they are likely to be even more overwhelmed, said Emile Hokayem of the International Institute for Strategic Studies. Meanwhile, the wealthier countries on which they typically rely for aid during moments of crisis will be consumed with their own coronavirus challenges.

“This is going to supercharge and exacerbate all the existing problems at a time when every other country in the world will be focusing on the crisis at home and their own needs,” he said.

It may already be too late to halt the spread of the novel coronavirus in a region where the biggest countries were slow to wake up to the severity of the risk and to warn citizens of the dangers.

The realization that the Iranian government has been less than transparent about the toll exacted by the virus’s spread has spooked countries with large Shiite populations that travel and interact extensively with Iran, for reasons of politics, religion and trade.

Lebanon and Bahrain, with large Shiite populations, are reporting some of the highest growth rates in infections. The numbers are relatively small, but so are their populations, and on a per capita basis, they have rates as high as the fast-growing ones in European countries such as Britain and Germany.

Patrick Baz

AFP/Getty Images

Police in Beirut ask a jogger to leave the area on Monday, a day after the government urged people to stay at home for two weeks.

Iran’s closest neighbor, Iraq, has reported relatively few cases compared to its size — 110 infections and nine deaths — but there are fears the toll could be higher. After the extent of the problem in Iran began to emerge last month, Iraq swiftly barred entry to Iranians. But until last week, Iraqis continued to travel back and forth across the country’s long border with Iran.

Adham Ismail, the World Health Organization’s Iraq representative, said the number of infections could be higher by a few hundred, probably mild cases. There is, however, no reason to believe that a major spread is imminent, he said. Keeping the numbers as low as they are so far has been “a medical miracle,” he said.

But if there were to be a rapid escalation, the disease would quickly overwhelm Iraq’s limited health resources. The country has used up 80 percent of the approximately 6,000 testing kits delivered so far and is waiting for more, Ismail said. Years of war and rampant corruption have hollowed out its once superior health system, and there aren’t enough respirators or ventilation equipment to deal with a much larger outbreak, he said.

Even countries with relatively sophisticated health systems, such as Lebanon, will be swamped if the numbers climb higher, said Souha Kanj, who heads the infectious diseases department at the American University of Beirut. She added she believes they will.

Lebanon has imported cases from Egypt, Iran, China, France and the United Kingdom, but the most recent infections suggest community transmission is taking hold, making it harder to contain the spread of the disease, she said. Kanj said she suspects the real number of cases could be hundreds higher than the official number because of people failing to report their symptoms.

Only Egypt has yet to take any significant steps to combat the spread of the coronavirus, despite mounting evidence that it could be the origin of dozens of infections worldwide, including in the United States and parts of the Middle East. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Sunday that 60 infections had been found in 15 states linked to Nile cruises. 

Yasser Al-Zayyat

AFP/Getty Images

Expatriates returning from Egypt, Syria and Lebanon wait be tested for the virus in Kuwait City on Monday.

This story has been updated to clarify UAE policy.

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2020-03-17 15:37:41Z
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Singapore, Taiwan and Hong Kong Face Second Wave of Coronavirus Cases - The Wall Street Journal

Singapore, Taiwan and Hong Kong are witnessing fresh waves of coronavirus infections, as the growing number of cases around the world test their successful early defenses against the disease.

Singapore reported 23 new cases late Tuesday, its highest daily count since the epidemic started. Taiwan recorded a single-day high of 10 cases of infection, bringing its total to 77. Hong Kong added five new cases—a day after it recorded nine—the most since Feb 9.

...

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2020-03-17 15:36:24Z
52780668647542

Middle East in crisis now faces coronavirus too - The - The Washington Post

Ali Mohammadi Bloomberg News People in Tehran on Sunday walk by murals praising Iran’s medical services.

BEIRUT — The Middle East is shutting down as the novel coronavirus accelerates its spread across a part of the world where war, famine, financial collapse and political unrest threaten to compound the impact of the disease.

The vast majority of the 16,659 infections reported in the region as of Monday are in Iran, one of the world’s worst-hit countries and the origin of most of the 1,692 cases counted in other Middle Eastern and North African countries.

As the numbers climb around the region, governments are starting to act, upending life in a part of the world that has historically served as a crossroads of religion, trade and travel.

Prayers are being canceled, bars and cafes closed, flights grounded, and festivals and pilgrimages called off. The al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, and the Shiite Muslim shrine in Karbala, Iraq, are among the great religious sites that have been closed. Barbar, a beloved Lebanese eatery renowned for having stayed open throughout the country’s long civil war, has shut for the first time in memory.

Iraq is bracing for the imposition of a curfew starting Tuesday after the government declared a state of emergency. Lebanon began a two-week lockdown on Monday, and Saudi Arabia ordered government offices, businesses and malls to close.

Trade and travel are skidding to a halt. Saudi Arabia has suspended all travel in and out of the kingdom. The United Arab Emirates has suspended flights to many locations and stopped issuing visas, but said on Tuesday it would continue to allow visa-free entry to many countries, including the United States. Jordan, Lebanon and Iraq are sealing their borders and will close their airports within days.

The interruption of economic activity is going to exact a heavy toll on the region’s already struggling citizens at a time of severe economic strain, political instability and conflict, analysts say.

“There’s a series of cascading crises which ultimately feed into one another, an interconnected web of catastrophes,” said Jon Alterman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “These countries are not facing one; they are facing two or three crises simultaneously.”

Ammar Awad

Reuters

Worshipers pray in front of the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem’s Old City after al-Aqsa Mosque was closed because of the coronavirus.

A decade of upheaval since the Arab Spring revolts has ravaged economies that were in trouble before the coronavirus crashed global markets.

The oil price war launched by Saudi Arabia — partly as a consequence of the coronavirus and the collapse in worldwide demand — has cratered prices, threatening economies across the region. 

Oil producers in the Persian Gulf countries will be forced to cut back spending, and countries elsewhere that depend on remittances from expatriates in the gulf region will also suffer, said Nasser Saidi, a Dubai-based economist and former Lebanese finance minister.

Lebanon is in the throes of a financial crisis that has seen its currency collapse amid widespread street protests. Iraq, which depends on oil for almost all its income, will be badly hit at a time when political protests there have rocked the country.

The region will almost certainly slide into recession, Saidi said.

“It means unemployment will get worse. It means socioeconomic conditions will deteriorate. There will be more distress, more social problems and more political protests,” he said. “It’s not a pretty picture for the Middle East.”

Meanwhile, wars are raging in Syria, Yemen and Libya, which have not reported any cases but are home to millions of people who are impoverished, hungry and uniquely vulnerable to the spread of disease. Millions more are crowded into refugee camps and settlements in surrounding countries, where diseases spread rapidly, said Fabrizio Carboni, Middle East director for the International Committee of the Red Cross.

“Even, quote, advanced countries are struggling,” he said. “One can only imagine what the situation will be like in countries affected by conflict.”

Many of the region’s authoritarian governments are notoriously opaque, and there are widespread suspicions that some countries aren’t acknowledging the scale of their problems. Though Syria insists it has detected no coronavirus cases, health experts say it is unlikely to have escaped a virus that has embedded itself among its neighbors.

With the exception of some wealthy Arab gulf countries, health-care systems lag far behind those of the Western and Asian countries that are barely able to cope — and they are likely to be even more overwhelmed, said Emile Hokayem of the International Institute for Strategic Studies. Meanwhile, the wealthier countries on which they typically rely for aid during moments of crisis will be consumed with their own coronavirus challenges.

“This is going to supercharge and exacerbate all the existing problems at a time when every other country in the world will be focusing on the crisis at home and their own needs,” he said.

It may already be too late to halt the spread of the novel coronavirus in a region where the biggest countries were slow to wake up to the severity of the risk and to warn citizens of the dangers.

The realization that the Iranian government has been less than transparent about the toll exacted by the virus’s spread has spooked countries with large Shiite populations that travel and interact extensively with Iran, for reasons of politics, religion and trade.

Lebanon and Bahrain, with large Shiite populations, are reporting some of the highest growth rates in infections. The numbers are relatively small, but so are their populations, and on a per capita basis, they have rates as high as the fast-growing ones in European countries such as Britain and Germany.

Patrick Baz

AFP/Getty Images

Police in Beirut ask a jogger to leave the area on Monday, a day after the government urged people to stay at home for two weeks.

Iran’s closest neighbor, Iraq, has reported relatively few cases compared to its size — 110 infections and nine deaths — but there are fears the toll could be higher. After the extent of the problem in Iran began to emerge last month, Iraq swiftly barred entry to Iranians. But until last week, Iraqis continued to travel back and forth across the country’s long border with Iran.

Adham Ismail, the World Health Organization’s Iraq representative, said the number of infections could be higher by a few hundred, probably mild cases. There is, however, no reason to believe that a major spread is imminent, he said. Keeping the numbers as low as they are so far has been “a medical miracle,” he said.

But if there were to be a rapid escalation, the disease would quickly overwhelm Iraq’s limited health resources. The country has used up 80 percent of the approximately 6,000 testing kits delivered so far and is waiting for more, Ismail said. Years of war and rampant corruption have hollowed out its once superior health system, and there aren’t enough respirators or ventilation equipment to deal with a much larger outbreak, he said.

Even countries with relatively sophisticated health systems, such as Lebanon, will be swamped if the numbers climb higher, said Souha Kanj, who heads the infectious diseases department at the American University of Beirut. She added she believes they will.

Lebanon has imported cases from Egypt, Iran, China, France and the United Kingdom, but the most recent infections suggest community transmission is taking hold, making it harder to contain the spread of the disease, she said. Kanj said she suspects the real number of cases could be hundreds higher than the official number because of people failing to report their symptoms.

Only Egypt has yet to take any significant steps to combat the spread of the coronavirus, despite mounting evidence that it could be the origin of dozens of infections worldwide, including in the United States and parts of the Middle East. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Sunday that 60 infections had been found in 15 states linked to Nile cruises. 

Yasser Al-Zayyat

AFP/Getty Images

Expatriates returning from Egypt, Syria and Lebanon wait be tested for the virus in Kuwait City on Monday.

This story has been updated to clarify UAE policy.

Read more:

Today’s coverage from Post correspondents around the world

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2020-03-17 14:47:14Z
52780662414427

Singapore, Taiwan and Hong Kong Face Second Wave of Coronavirus Cases - The Wall Street Journal

Singapore, Taiwan and Hong Kong are witnessing fresh waves of coronavirus infections, as the growing number of cases around the world test their successful early defenses against the disease.

Singapore reported 23 new cases late Tuesday, its highest daily count since the epidemic started. Taiwan recorded a single-day high of 10 cases of infection, bringing its total to 77. Hong Kong added five new cases—a day after it recorded nine—the most since Feb 9.

...

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2020-03-17 15:03:26Z
52780668647542

Middle East in crisis now faces coronavirus too - The - The Washington Post

Ali Mohammadi Bloomberg News People in Tehran on Sunday walk by murals praising Iran’s medical services.

BEIRUT — The Middle East is shutting down as the novel coronavirus accelerates its spread across a part of the world where war, famine, financial collapse and political unrest threaten to compound the impact of the disease.

The vast majority of the 16,659 infections reported in the region as of Monday are in Iran, one of the world’s worst-hit countries and the origin of most of the 1,692 cases counted in other Middle Eastern and North African countries.

As the numbers climb around the region, governments are starting to act, upending life in a part of the world that has historically served as a crossroads of religion, trade and travel.

Prayers are being canceled, bars and cafes closed, flights grounded, and festivals and pilgrimages called off. The al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, and the Shiite Muslim shrine in Karbala, Iraq, are among the great religious sites that have been closed. Barbar, a beloved Lebanese eatery renowned for having stayed open throughout the country’s long civil war, has shut for the first time in memory.

Iraq is bracing for the imposition of a curfew starting Tuesday after the government declared a state of emergency. Lebanon began a two-week lockdown on Monday, and Saudi Arabia ordered government offices, businesses and malls to close.

Trade and travel are skidding to a halt. Saudi Arabia has suspended all travel in and out of the kingdom. The United Arab Emirates has suspended flights to many locations and stopped issuing visas, but said on Tuesday it would continue to allow visa-free entry to many countries, including the United States. Jordan, Lebanon and Iraq are sealing their borders and will close their airports within days.

The interruption of economic activity is going to exact a heavy toll on the region’s already struggling citizens at a time of severe economic strain, political instability and conflict, analysts say.

“There’s a series of cascading crises which ultimately feed into one another, an interconnected web of catastrophes,” said Jon Alterman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “These countries are not facing one; they are facing two or three crises simultaneously.”

Ammar Awad

Reuters

Worshipers pray in front of the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem’s Old City after al-Aqsa Mosque was closed because of the coronavirus.

A decade of upheaval since the Arab Spring revolts has ravaged economies that were in trouble before the coronavirus crashed global markets.

The oil price war launched by Saudi Arabia — partly as a consequence of the coronavirus and the collapse in worldwide demand — has cratered prices, threatening economies across the region. 

Oil producers in the Persian Gulf countries will be forced to cut back spending, and countries elsewhere that depend on remittances from expatriates in the gulf region will also suffer, said Nasser Saidi, a Dubai-based economist and former Lebanese finance minister.

Lebanon is in the throes of a financial crisis that has seen its currency collapse amid widespread street protests. Iraq, which depends on oil for almost all its income, will be badly hit at a time when political protests there have rocked the country.

The region will almost certainly slide into recession, Saidi said.

“It means unemployment will get worse. It means socioeconomic conditions will deteriorate. There will be more distress, more social problems and more political protests,” he said. “It’s not a pretty picture for the Middle East.”

Meanwhile, wars are raging in Syria, Yemen and Libya, which have not reported any cases but are home to millions of people who are impoverished, hungry and uniquely vulnerable to the spread of disease. Millions more are crowded into refugee camps and settlements in surrounding countries, where diseases spread rapidly, said Fabrizio Carboni, Middle East director for the International Committee of the Red Cross.

“Even, quote, advanced countries are struggling,” he said. “One can only imagine what the situation will be like in countries affected by conflict.”

Many of the region’s authoritarian governments are notoriously opaque, and there are widespread suspicions that some countries aren’t acknowledging the scale of their problems. Though Syria insists it has detected no coronavirus cases, health experts say it is unlikely to have escaped a virus that has embedded itself among its neighbors.

With the exception of some wealthy Arab gulf countries, health-care systems lag far behind those of the Western and Asian countries that are barely able to cope — and they are likely to be even more overwhelmed, said Emile Hokayem of the International Institute for Strategic Studies. Meanwhile, the wealthier countries on which they typically rely for aid during moments of crisis will be consumed with their own coronavirus challenges.

“This is going to supercharge and exacerbate all the existing problems at a time when every other country in the world will be focusing on the crisis at home and their own needs,” he said.

It may already be too late to halt the spread of the novel coronavirus in a region where the biggest countries were slow to wake up to the severity of the risk and to warn citizens of the dangers.

The realization that the Iranian government has been less than transparent about the toll exacted by the virus’s spread has spooked countries with large Shiite populations that travel and interact extensively with Iran, for reasons of politics, religion and trade.

Lebanon and Bahrain, with large Shiite populations, are reporting some of the highest growth rates in infections. The numbers are relatively small, but so are their populations, and on a per capita basis, they have rates as high as the fast-growing ones in European countries such as Britain and Germany.

Patrick Baz

AFP/Getty Images

Police in Beirut ask a jogger to leave the area on Monday, a day after the government urged people to stay at home for two weeks.

Iran’s closest neighbor, Iraq, has reported relatively few cases compared to its size — 110 infections and nine deaths — but there are fears the toll could be higher. After the extent of the problem in Iran began to emerge last month, Iraq swiftly barred entry to Iranians. But until last week, Iraqis continued to travel back and forth across the country’s long border with Iran.

Adham Ismail, the World Health Organization’s Iraq representative, said the number of infections could be higher by a few hundred, probably mild cases. There is, however, no reason to believe that a major spread is imminent, he said. Keeping the numbers as low as they are so far has been “a medical miracle,” he said.

But if there were to be a rapid escalation, the disease would quickly overwhelm Iraq’s limited health resources. The country has used up 80 percent of the approximately 6,000 testing kits delivered so far and is waiting for more, Ismail said. Years of war and rampant corruption have hollowed out its once superior health system, and there aren’t enough respirators or ventilation equipment to deal with a much larger outbreak, he said.

Even countries with relatively sophisticated health systems, such as Lebanon, will be swamped if the numbers climb higher, said Souha Kanj, who heads the infectious diseases department at the American University of Beirut. She added she believes they will.

Lebanon has imported cases from Egypt, Iran, China, France and the United Kingdom, but the most recent infections suggest community transmission is taking hold, making it harder to contain the spread of the disease, she said. Kanj said she suspects the real number of cases could be hundreds higher than the official number because of people failing to report their symptoms.

Only Egypt has yet to take any significant steps to combat the spread of the coronavirus, despite mounting evidence that it could be the origin of dozens of infections worldwide, including in the United States and parts of the Middle East. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Sunday that 60 infections had been found in 15 states linked to Nile cruises. 

Yasser Al-Zayyat

AFP/Getty Images

Expatriates returning from Egypt, Syria and Lebanon wait be tested for the virus in Kuwait City on Monday.

This story has been updated to clarify UAE policy.

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2020-03-17 14:23:52Z
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Singapore, Taiwan and Hong Kong Face Second Wave of Coronavirus Cases - The Wall Street Journal

Singapore, Taiwan and Hong Kong are witnessing fresh waves of coronavirus infections, as the growing number of cases around the world test their successful early defenses against the disease.

Singapore reported 17 new cases late Monday, its highest daily count since the epidemic started. Taiwan recorded a single-day high of 10 cases of infection, bringing its total to 77. Hong Kong added five new cases—a day after it recorded nine—the most since Feb 9.

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2020-03-17 14:34:00Z
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