US President Donald Trump has signaled that he does not plan to stop campaign rallies in spite of the increasing number of people diagnosed with the coronavirus.

Speaking on Saturday night at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, Trump said his campaign events would continue even as a case was confirmed for the first time within miles of the White House.

“We will have tremendous rallies and we’re doing very well, and we’ve done a fantastic job with respect to that subject,” Trump said when asked whether there will be more “Keep America Great” campaign events.

Asked if he was worried about the first case of the coronavirus near the White House, the president said, “No, I’m not concerned at all.”

The remarks by Trump come as over half of all US states have reported cases of the coronavirus, with the number of Americans tested positive standing at around 425, according to a case count by Johns Hopkins.

So far, nineteen people have succumbed to the virus nationwide after two more died in Washington state.

A state of emergency was declared in New York on Saturday after the number of confirmed cases there rose to 89.

While visiting the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta on Friday, Trump had warned about the quickly spreading coronavirus.

Hours later, however, Vice President Mike Pence walked back some of those comments, saying, “The president’s exactly right that for the state laboratories, for the communities that have been impacted, that have concerns about the coronavirus, we have been able to respond to requests for tests.”

Meanwhile, a leaked document published in media revealed US hospitals were preparing for a major coronavirus outbreak with unprecedented scale. The document estimates a death toll of 480,000 from 96 million coronavirus infections in the US.

According to media reports, hospitals and healthcare workers were already starting to feel the impact of the outbreak as it hits the cities across the US.

Source: Presstv

Italy has placed entire areas — including the financial capital, Milan — under forced quarantine in an attempt to contain an already widespread outbreak of the new coronavirus.

The new measures, announced by Italian Prime Minister Guiseppe Conte early on Sunday and taking immediate effect, imposed a lockdown on Lombardy, Italy’s northern rich region, as well as 14 provinces in four other of the country’s 19 regions. Some of the major cities included are Milan, Venice, Modena, Parma, Piacenza, Reggio Emilia and Rimini.

“We are facing an emergency, a national emergency. We have been applying precautionary measures from the beginning and we are facing the situation with awareness and without underestimating it,” Conte said in a televised speech as he announced the draconian measures.

The measures included the closure of all museums, cultural centers, cinemas, theaters, and other public venues and events in the affected areas, impacting a total of 16 million people in the country of 60 million.

“We want to guarantee the health of our citizens. We understand that all these measures will create inconveniences… But this is a time when we must take responsibility for ourselves. We need to understand that all of us need to adhere to the measures. We need to protect our own health, the health of our dear ones,” the Italian prime minister added.

The decree also banned city commute within the designated areas other than for emergencies or “essential work reasons.”

“There will be no movement in or out of these areas, or within them, unless for proven, work-related reasons, emergencies or health reasons,” Conte said.

Italy’s Civil Protection Agency announced in a statement that the number of coronavirus cases in the country reached 5,883 on Saturday, the biggest daily rise since the epidemic began just over two weeks ago.

Angelo Borrelli, the head of the agency, also told a news conference that the number of fatalities had risen to 233 people, up by 36.

Italy is now the country with the highest deaths after China, where the virus first emerged.

The measures taken by the Italian government on Sunday are similar to those adopted in China’s central Hubei Province, whose nearly 60-million-strong population has been kept under quarantine since late January.

The total number of the people diagnosed with the coronavirus, known as COVID-19, has passed 100,000 worldwide, while 3,500 people have lost their lives across 95 countries and territories.

China quarantine hotel collapse claims six lives

Meanwhile, six people were confirmed dead on Sunday following the collapse of a hotel used as a coronavirus quarantine facility in the eastern Chinese city of Quanzhou.

The Chinese Ministry of Emergency Management said rescuers had also retrieved 38 survivors from the rubble — with five in critical or serious condition — out of the 71 people initially trapped in the building.

The hotel’s first floor had been under renovation before the collapse of the building in the coastal city on Saturday evening.

Over 3,600 released from quarantine in North Korea: Reports

Also on Sunday, media reports said North Korea had released some 3,650 people quarantined over the new coronavirus after imposing strict restrictions and closing its borders in order to prevent the outbreak.

The individuals had been kept under quarantine in Kangwon and Chagang provinces, North Korea’s state radio reported, according to Yonhap news agency.

North Korea’s official KCNA news agency also announced on Friday that 221 out of the 380 foreigners who were under “strict medical monitoring” had been discharged from isolation.

Pyongyang has banned tourists and suspended international trains and flights to and from the country.

Maldives reports first coronavirus cases

In a related development, the Maldives reported its first two cases of the coronavirus infection on Sunday.

Local authorities said the two infected individuals — both of them staffers at a Kuredu Island resort facility — had tested positive late on Saturday and were suspected to have contracted the disease from an Italian tourist who had also tested positive after returning to his home country.

The Maldives restricted movement on Kuredu and several other resort islands.

Ali Waheed, the tourism minister of the country, said the two individuals had been quarantined.

“The period for the temporary restrictions will be decided by the medical teams. Right now, we have identified people who were in contact with the patients and they are in self-isolation along with secondary contacts. At this time we can say that these individuals will be monitored for 14 days,” he added.

The Maldives had already suspended direct air links with China, the epicenter of the virus.

Source: Presstv

Cameroon confirmed the central African state’s first case of COVID-19 on its territory Friday. Officials say it was discovered in a French citizen who arrived in Cameroon on Feb. 24. 

Cameroon Health Minister Manaouda Malachie says the 58-year-old man was immediately placed in solitary confinement in a special hospital in. Malachie credited surveillance measures put in place by Cameroon after COVID-19 appeared in China with detecting the case and called on Cameroon’s population to be calm.

He said shortly after it was suspected the man was a carrier of the virus, he was immediately confined to avoid contact with others. Malachie said health officials started tracing the people the infected man contacted from the airport of departure through the plane’s arrival in Cameroon, as well as taxis or cars he used.  They also disinfected places he visited. 

Malachie said this wasn’t the first case in which COVID-19 was suspected, but previous cases were found to be negative after thorough investigations.

Malachie called on citizens to be calm and vigilant, saying that medical staff in the country has been advised on how to handle coronavirus cases. 

But news of the first coronavirus in Cameroon has scared people. Some rushed to hospitals and pharmacies to ask for advice or buy medical facemasks. 

Forty-three-year-old Isaac Dufe, who bought three masks for his wife and two-year-old baby, said he doesn’t have confidence that the Cameroon government will be able to control the virus’s spread should many more people be found with it. 

“Cases of diseases have been recorded in this country, for instance, a case like cholera,” he said. “When there is an outbreak of cholera, in many situations in claims a lot of lives. But now we are talking about a very complicated disease like Coronavirus, so I am so scared that if adequate health measures are not taken, then the situation might be very difficult in Cameroon.”

Phanuel Habimana, a World Health Organization representative for Cameroon, said it is following up on the case. He says Cameroonians should not panic, but must make sure they respect basic hygiene norms.

“Cameroonians should remain calm,” Habimana said. “Cameroonians should not rush to pharmacies to try to get masks. Cameroonians should abide to the measures that the minister [of health] has been repeatedly mentioning. Personal hygiene, washing hands several times a day, when someone is coughing, cover the mouth and nose with handkerchiefs and also make sure that people do not get in contact closely with people who are suspected to be sick.”

Last January, Cameroon health officials announced they had improved checkpoints around airports as they feared the virus could be brought into the country by travelers from China and other countries.

Health Minister Malachie said as part of epidemiological surveillance, measures had been put in place to prevent any possible importation of the deadly virus, which he said was an epidemic that causes diseases in mammals and birds and that in humans, the virus causes respiratory infections, which are typically mild but, in rare cases, can be lethal. 

Symptoms include running nose, headache, cough, sore throat, fever and the feeling of being unwell. B There is no vaccine for this virus and the only way to protect oneself is through prevention, health officials in Cameroon say.

Source: VOA

The first case of Coronavirus has  been recorded in Cameroon. The Minister of Public Health confirmed the information earlier today.

According to the minister, a case of Coronavirus was confirmed at the Centre Pasteur laboratory in Yaoundé after a sampling carried out Thursday at the Cathedral Clinic on a French citizen who arrived in Cameroon since February 24.

“The Minister of Public Health, announced the confirmation of a case of Corvid-19, on Cameroonian territory. It is a 58-year-old French citizen who arrived in Yaounde on February 24, 2020″, says the press release of Dr. Manaouda Malachie.

“He has been placed in isolation in the care centre of the Yaounde Central Hospital for appropriate care,” the statement said.

Contacted by telephone, a doctor from the central hospital who requested anonymity confirmed that the patient had been placed in isolation.

By Rita Akana

A former American counter-terrorism specialist and military intelligence officer of the CIA has said that the “Coronavirus did not occur naturally through mutation but rather was produced in a laboratory, possibly as a biological warfare agent.”

Since the novel coronavirus outbreak began in China last December, it has infected more than 90,000 people globally and killed more than 3,000. The majority of cases and deaths remain in mainland China.

The death toll from the coronavirus in Iran, which has one of the highest numbers outside China, stood at 107, Health Ministry spokesman Kianush Jahanpur said Thursday.

“Several reports suggest that there are components of the virus that are related to HIV that could not have occurred naturally. If it is correct that the virus had either been developed or even produced to be weaponized it would further suggest that its escape from the Wuhan Institute of Virology Lab and into the animal and human population could have been accidental. Technicians who work in such environments are aware that “leaks” from laboratories occur frequently,” Philip Giraldi wrote in an article published by the Strategic Culture Foundation on Thursday.

“There is, of course and inevitably, another theory. There has been some speculation that as the Trump Administration has been constantly raising the issue of growing Chinese global competitiveness as a direct threat to American national security and economic dominance, it might be possible that Washington has created and unleashed the virus in a bid to bring Beijing’s growing economy and military might down a few notches. It is, to be sure, hard to believe that even the Trump White House would do something so reckless, but there are precedents for that type of behavior,” he said.

“In 2005-9 the American and Israeli governments secretly developed a computer virus called Stuxnet, which was intended to damage the control and operating systems of Iranian computers being used in that country’s nuclear research program. Admittedly Stuxnet was intended to damage computers, not to infect or kill human beings, but concerns that it would propagate and move to infect computers outside Iran proved to be accurate as it spread to thousands of PCs outside Iran, in countries as far flung as China, Germany, Kazakhstan and Indonesia,” he added.

“If one even considers it possible that the United States had a hand in creating the coronavirus at what remains of its once extensive biological weapons research center in Ft Detrick Maryland, it is very likely that Israel was a partner in the project. Helping to develop the virus would also explain how Israeli scientists have been able to claim success at creating a vaccine so quickly, possibly because the virus and a treatment for it were developed simultaneously,” he noted.

Israeli scientists have claimed to be close to developing a vaccine for coronavirus that could be available in about 90 days, saying they have developed an effective vaccine against avian coronavirus Infectious Bronchitis Virus (IBV), which is to be adapted soon and create a human vaccine against COVID-19.

Source: Presstv