In early 2020, an outbreak of new coronavirus in Wuhan, China, sparked fears that the virus could cause a pandemic. It also inspired a significant amount of misinformation.

For example, on Feb. 17, 2020, the website Cityscrollz.com falsely reported that a Cameroonian college student studying in China contracted coronavirus but recovered “because of his blood genetic composition which is mainly found in the genetic composition of subsaharan Africans.”

If such a claim, that people from African backgrounds are more resistant to coronavirus than others, were true, one would expect it to be a major news story. Instead, it’s being reported exclusively in viral social media posts and junk sites. That’s because it’s not true.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), anyone who comes into close contact with someone infected with the coronavirus is at risk for contracting it.

That said, it is true that Kem Senou Pavel Daryl, a 21-year-old Cameroon national studying in China, became ill after contracting coronavirus and was hospitalized. His recovery was not the result of a superior immune system possessed by people hailing from African countries but, according to news reports, rounds of antibiotics and other drugs.

As BBC News reported, Senou recovered after being placed in isolation for 13 days. “The CT scan showed no trace of the illness. He became the first African person known to be infected with the deadly coronavirus and the first to recover. His medical care was covered by the Chinese state.”

As of this writing, the coronavirus outbreak has killed 1,770 people in mainland China. Millions of people are currently quarantined in and around Wuhan in an effort to contain the virus. So far, more than 71,000 people have been sickened worldwide. In mid-February, Egypt announced it had the first-reported case in Africa.

Source: Snopes.com

The toll from China’s coronavirus epidemic jumped to 1,868 on Tuesday after 98 more people died, according to the National Health Commission.

Nearly 72,500 people nationwide have been infected by the new COVID-19 strain of the virus, which first emerged in December before spiralling into a nationwide epidemic.

There were 1,886 new cases reported Tuesday — a decline on Monday’s figure, and the lowest single-day figure of new cases so far this month.

Most of the deaths were in Hubei province, the hard-hit epicentre of the outbreak, with five reported elsewhere in the country.

Hubei has been locked down to try to contain the virus, with tens of millions of people placed under effective quarantine in the province.

The number of new cases reported outside Hubei province was just 79, down from 890 on February 4.

It marks the lowest number of new cases outside the virus-struck province since January 23.

China’s national health authority has said the declining numbers are a sign that the outbreak is under control.

However, World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the trend “must be interpreted very cautiously”.

“Trends can change as new populations are affected. It is too early to tell if this reported decline will continue. Every scenario is still on the table,” he told reporters on Monday.

Chinese health officials have urged patients who recovered from the coronavirus to donate blood so that plasma can be extracted to treat others who are critically ill.

Plasma from patients who have recovered from a spell of pneumonia triggered by COVID-19 contains antibodies that can help reduce the virus load in critically ill patients, an official from the National Health Commission told a press briefing Monday.

More than 12,000 people have recovered and been discharged, according to health commission figures.

(AFP)

The death toll from China’s new coronavirus epidemic jumped to 1,770 after 105 more people died, the National Health Commission said Monday.

More than 70,500 have now been infected nationwide by the virus, which first emerged in December in central Hubei province before spreading across the country.

Chinese authorities have placed about 56 million people in Hubei and its capital Wuhan under quarantine, virtually sealing off the province from the rest of the country in an unprecedented effort to contain the virus.

New cases outside of the epicentre have been declining for the last thirteen days

There were 115 fresh cases outside the central province, according to the commission on Monday — sharply down from nearly 450 a week ago.

Local authorities elsewhere in China have introduced measures to try and stop the virus spreading, including a rule in Beijing requiring people coming to the capital to self-quarantine for 14 days, according to official media.

Most cases are still in Hubei, where nearly 2,000 were reported Monday.

The number of reported infections ballooned on Thursday last week after Hubei authorities changed their criteria for counting cases, retroactively adding 14,000 cases in a single day.

Monday’s figures for new cases were around 100 higher than those on Sunday but still sharply down on those from Friday and Saturday.

A spokesman for China’s national health authority said that the slowdown was a sign the outbreak was being controlled.

However, World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has warned it is “impossible to predict which direction this epidemic will take”.

International experts have arrived in Beijing and begun meeting with their Chinese counterparts over the epidemic, Tedros said on Twitter.

Global worries about its spread remain high and the epidemic’s reach was highlighted by the US announcing that more than three dozen Americans from a cruise ship quarantined off Japan were infected.

Source: AFP

The number of people infected with the deadly new coronavirus on a quarantined ship off Japan has risen to 355, the country’s health minister said Sunday, as the United States, Canada and Hong Kong prepare to repatriate their residents on board.

The figure is a jump of 70 cases from a government tally released Saturday and comes as Katsunobu Kato voiced worries that the rising infection count among the nation’s general population could mean the virus’s spread has entered a new phase.

“So far, we have conducted tests for 1,219 individuals. Of those, 355 people tested positive,” Kato told a roundtable discussion for public broadcaster NHK on conditions aboard the Diamond Princess cruise ship.

The vessel has been in quarantine since February 5 at the port of Yokohama near Tokyo and Japan’s efforts to control the viral infections on board have prompted international concern.

The ship was carrying more than 3,700 passengers and crew from more than 50 countries and territories when it docked and was placed in isolation, after authorities found a passenger who got off in Hong Kong during the voyage had tested positive for the virus.

Japanese officials continued to find new infections among the passengers and crew and rushed them to local hospitals, while others have been told to stay inside their cabins during the 14-day quarantine period set to end Wednesday.

The US was preparing Sunday to evacuate some of its citizens but said those repatriated will go through another two-week quarantine period at home.

– Limited supplies –

“Based on the high number of COVID-19 cases identified on board the Diamond Princess, the Department of Health and Human Services made an assessment that passengers and crew members on board are at high risk of exposure,” the US embassy said in a letter to its citizens on the boat.

Hong Kong has also said it will offer its 330 city residents on board the chance to take a charter flight back.

Canada announced a similar decision to repatriate its nationals.

Japan has not been able to test all those on board due to limited supplies of testing kits, facilities and manpower, which are also needed by authorities tracking the spread of the virus on land.

But the health ministry said Saturday that passengers older than 70 are being examined and those testing negative and in good health will be allowed to leave the ship from Wednesday.

Tests on younger passengers were expected to start Sunday and healthy people will be allowed to get off after Wednesday, it said.

Meanwhile, Japan has seen 53 infections across the nation, including a dozen new cases reported on Saturday and 13 cases among more than 760 Japanese nationals and their relatives repatriated from Wuhan, China, the epicentre of the outbreak.

Kato said Japan will boost efforts to encourage people with possible infections to quickly seek medical care.

“If you look at the figures, we are seeing changing situations compared with before,” Kato said on the NHK show.

“What we have to think about now is preventing cases from becoming severe and preventing deaths.”

Source: AFP

The death toll from China’s virus epidemic neared 1,400 on Friday, with six medical workers among the victims, underscoring the country’s struggle to contain a deepening health crisis.

Nearly 64,000 people are now recorded as having fallen ill from the virus in China, with officials revealing that 1,716 health workers had been infected as of Tuesday.

The scale of the epidemic swelled this week after authorities in central Hubei Province, the epicenter of the contagion, changed their criteria for counting cases, adding thousands of new patients to their tally.

The health emergency in China has caused fears of further global contagion, with more than two-dozen countries reporting hundreds of cases among them. Three people have died outside mainland China.

The majority of cases of infections among health workers was in Hubei’s capital, Wuhan, where many have lacked proper masks and gear to protect themselves in hospitals dealing with a deluge of patients.

Battling the epidemic is a “big test for the country’s governance system and governance ability,” said Chinese President Xi Jinping, who chaired a political meeting on government reforms, according to state broadcaster CCTV.

The outbreak has exposed “shortcomings,” Xi acknowledged, adding that China needed to reform its public health and epidemic prevention and control systems.

New count

Authorities in Hubei on Thursday started counting patients who were “clinically diagnosed” via lung imaging, in addition to those who undergo lab tests.

The revision added nearly 15,000 patients to Hubei’s count in a single day, with officials explaining that past cases were included. The first cases emerged in December last year in Wuhan.

On Friday, Hubei’s health commission said another 116 people had died and more than 4,800 new cases were reported. Of those cases, more than 3,000 were “clinically diagnosed.”

The WHO said the numbers included cases going back weeks.

The sharp one-day increase “does not represent a significant change in the trajectory of the outbreak,” said Michael Ryan, head of the WHO’s health emergencies program.

The move will ensure patients get treated as early as possible, instead of having to wait for laboratory tests, health officials said.

“There have been some backlogs in testing and this is also going to help in ensuring that people get adequate care,” Ryan said.

The National Health Commission said the new criteria would only apply to Hubei.

The commission reported five other deaths and 217 new cases elsewhere in China, as the number of new patients outside Hubei fell for a 10th straight day.

It also disclosed a statistical error, saying it removed 108 previous deaths in Hubei that had been double-counted. The nationwide toll still rose to 1,380.

Authorities have placed some 56 million people in Hubei under quarantine since late last month, in an unprecedented effort to stop the new coronavirus from spreading.

Some cities in Hubei tightened restrictions this week, sealing off neighborhoods in what they liken to “war-time” measures.

Several countries have banned arrivals from China, while major airlines have halted flights to and from the country.

(Source: AFP)

Hunkered down at the epicentre of China’s virus epidemic and cut off from the world, the remaining foreigners in Wuhan are eking out a life in fear.

A coronavirus outbreak that has killed more than 1,300 people and locked down the central Chinese city has left thousands of foreigners trapped as authorities impose an unprecedented quarantine.

“We want to go back. We can’t survive any more,” said Gaurab Pokhrel, a Nepali doctoral student in Wuhan and one of 200 from his country yet to be evacuated.

He said food was in short supply and foreign students were competing with locals at the few stores that were open.

As of Monday, 27 foreigners in China had been infected with the virus — 22 of whom were in quarantine, officials said. Two of those have died — an American and a Japanese man.

While many have managed to escape on government-chartered planes, a dwindling group of the unlucky — or in some cases hardy — remain, either adapting to life or still seeking a way out.

They told AFP of their plight via phone, email, text messages and social media.

Ruqia Shaikh, a Pakistani postdoctoral researcher stranded at Wuhan’s Zhongnan University of Economics and Law, said most students at the school were confined to their dormitories, watching TV.

She said the university was providing students with essential commodities, but at double the usual price.

“We are fed up of eating the same food –- boiled rice and vegetables –- over and over again. The only physical activity we have is a walk on the terrace, and that exposes us to the risk,” Shaikh said.

“Last week I went to Walmart. It was the first time I had gone out in weeks. It was scary…

“Since I came back I have been counting the days until I was very sure I didn’t have any virus.”

– No plans for evacuation –

She added that while many Pakistani students wanted to leave, there were risks in returning to their country.

“We are worried about how the authorities are going to treat us when we go back to Pakistan — some students who went back told us the officials treated them very badly,” she said.

Pakistani authorities say more than 500 students from the country are in Wuhan, but they have not announced any plans for an evacuation effort.

Unlike many countries, Islamabad has maintained flights to and from other cities in China. The health ministry justifies the move with assurances that all passengers are screened on landing in Pakistan.

Yemen too has no plans to evacuate its 115 nationals from the virus-hit city.

Fahd al-Tawili, a 31-year-old Yemeni under quarantine at the China University of Geosciences, said conditions were desperate.

“Everybody’s being evacuated except us. The latest are the Sudanese,” al-Tawili said.

“When we are allowed to go out, the few shops open are crowded and we have to wait in line for a long time to make rare purchases.”

Al-Tawili said Yemen’s government had turned a deaf ear to requests to leave, and financial aid promised to scholarship holders had not been sent.

Another Yemeni student, a 23-year-old studying at Huazhong University of Science and Technology, said students were living in “total terror for fear of being infected”.

Bangladesh last week evacuated 312 people, mostly students, and planned a second flight for another 171 until pilots for national carrier Biman refused to fly for fear of catching the virus.

“No crew wants to go there. The crew who went there earlier don’t want to go either,” Foreign Minister AK Abdul Momen told reporters Saturday.

He said the government was trying to charter a Chinese-run flight, but so far without success.

France has left a group of between 30 and 50 citizens in Wuhan after evacuating hundreds on three earlier flights.

Its consul general in the city, Olivier Guyonvarch, said some want to leave, but Paris has no plans to send another plane.

“We have no way to get you out,” Guyonvarch says he told them.

Others are choosing to stay the course to minimise the risk of contracting the virus on the road.

Australian Edwin Reese said his wife was in the city and he was reluctant for her to leave.

“If she stays where she is, they have a small garden with fruit and vegetables… they have everything they need,” he said.

“Why would they go out and expose themselves? They would be crazy to do that.”

Source:  AFP

The Chinese government and the African community in China have hailed the first African to survive the deadly coronavirus in China.

Doctors seeking for a cure to treat the dreadful virus were amazed to see Senou still alive and fit even after contracting the virus which has claimed 1,112 lives since it broke out in Wuhan couple of weeks ago.

The Chinese doctors confirmed that he stayed alive because of his blood genetic composition which is mainly found in the genetic composition of subsaharan Africans.

Senou has left the hospital, cured and in good shape.

Source: ghgossip.com

The death toll from the coronavirus epidemic in China has risen to 1,113, and health experts have finally picked a name for the virus.

Chinese health officials said on Wednesday that 97 new deaths and 2,015 new cases had emerged in the previous 24 hours nationwide.

Cases of infection also now stood at 44,653, the officials said.

Authorities have locked down tens of millions of people in the epicenter of the epidemic — Hubei Province’s capital, Wuhan — and several other cities and regions in an unprecedented effort to contain the outbreak.

International efforts are also being made to contain the virus, which has spread to dozens of countries across the globe so far.

Virus named

Meanwhile, health experts at the World Health Organization (WHO) have picked a name for the virus.

At a conference in Geneva on Tuesday, WHO experts announced the name “COVID-19” for the novel coronavirus, which had until now been assigned a generic name.

WHO began a two-day meeting on Tuesday to discuss the epidemic. Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus urged countries to step up measures to detect and contain the virus.

“A virus can have more powerful consequences than any terrorist action. If the world doesn’t want to wake up and consider this enemy virus as public enemy number 1, I don’t think we will learn from our lessons,” he said.

Tedros said there were fewer than 400 cases in 24 other countries, with one death.

“The first vaccine could be ready in 18 months. So we have to do everything today using the available weapons to fight this virus while preparing for the long term using the preparations for the vaccines,” he said.

‘No coronavirus cases in Iran’

An Iranian health official has denied speculation and reports that an Iranian patient has died in hospital because of a coronavirus infection, saying no cases of infection have been detected in Iran.

Kianoush Jahanpour, the director of public relations at the Iranian Health Ministry, told IRNA on Wednesday that rumors about suspected infections or deaths due to the coronavirus in Iran were baseless.

Citing the newspaper Iran, Reuters had earlier in the day reported that an Iranian woman had died of a suspected coronavirus infection.

Jahanpour said Iran was still clear of the virus. A group of Iranian students recently returned from China’s Wuhan, he said, have also tested negative for the virus, and are currently halfway through a two-week quarantine.

Infections on a cruise ship off Japan

Thirty nine more passengers and crew members on a cruise ship quarantined off Japan’s coast have tested positive for the new coronavirus, bringing the new cases linked to the ship to 175.

“Out of 53 new test results, 39 people were found positive,” Japan’s Health Minister Katsunobu Kato said Wednesday morning. “At this point, we have confirmed that four people, among those who are hospitalized, are in a serious condition, either on a ventilator or in an intensive care unit.”

The Diamond Princess cruise ship has been in quarantine since arriving off the Japanese coast early last week after the virus was detected in a passenger who got off the ship last month in Hong Kong.

Elsewhere, a British man who caught the virus while attending a conference in Singapore and then passed it on to at least 11 other people while on holiday in the French Alps before finally being diagnosed himself back in Britain, said Tuesday he had fully recovered but remained in isolation in a central London hospital.

Source: Presstv

The number of deaths from China’s new coronavirus epidemic jumped to 902 on Monday after the hardest-hit province of Hubei reported 91 new fatalities.

In its daily update, Hubei’s health commission also confirmed another 2,618 new cases in the central province, where the outbreak emerged in December.

There are now more than 39,800 confirmed cases across China, based on previously released figures from the government.

The new virus is believed to have emerged last year in a market that sells wild animals in Hubei’s capital Wuhan, the city at the centre of the outbreak, before spreading across the country.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) said Saturday that the number of cases being reported daily in China was “stabilising”, although the health body warned it was too early to say if the virus had peaked.

A WHO “international expert mission” left late Sunday for China, the agency’s director general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on Twitter.

The only confirmed fatalities outside the mainland are a Chinese man in the Philippines and a 39-year-old man in Hong Kong.

The toll has overtaken the global number of deaths caused by the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) virus, which killed 774 people in 2002-03.

(AFP)

A Chinese doctor, among the first to raise the alert about China’s new coronavirus, himself died from the pathogen on Friday, emphasizing the depth of a worsening crisis that has killed at least 630 people.

Global panic also spread, with thousands trapped on quarantined cruise ships.

Ophthalmologist Li Wenliang died at 2:58 am, Wuhan Central Hospital said in a post on its verified account on Chinese social media platform Weibo.

The 34-year-old sent out a message about the new coronavirus to colleagues on December 30, but was later among eight whistleblowers summoned by police for “rumour-mongering.” 

He later contracted the disease while treating a patient and has been hailed as a hero by Chinese internet users.

Li was among more than 28,000 people who have been infected in China, where authorities are struggling to contain the outbreak, despite ordering millions indoors in a growing number of cities.

Two dozen countries have confirmed cases of the respiratory disease, which emerged from a market selling exotic animals in the central Chinese city of Wuhan late last year.

Thousands of holidaymakers on cruise ships in Hong Kong and Japan face an agonising wait to find out if more among them have been infected.

At least 20 people on the Diamond Princess — off Yokohama since Monday — have tested positive. Some 3,700 passengers and crew from more than 50 countries have been confined to quarters.

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said another cruise ship, the Westerdam, was heading to the country with one confirmed case.

He said no foreigners from the vessel, capable of carrying nearly 3,000 passengers and crew, would be allowed to disembark.

Anxiety in Hong Kong

In Hong Kong, 3,600 people spent a second night confined aboard the World Dream. Authorities conducted health checks after eight former passengers tested positive for the virus.

Hong Kong has been particularly nervous because the crisis revived memories of another coronavirus that causes Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS). It killed nearly 300 people in the city and another 349 on the Chinese mainland in 2002-2003.

Panic buying in semi-autonomous Hong Kong left supermarkets empty of toilet paper following false online claims of shortages, prompting authorities to appeal for calm.

One person has died after contracting the virus in Hong Kong.

While the death toll rises in China with the death of Li and others, experts have stressed that at two percent mortality, 2019-nCoV is far less deadly than SARS, which killed around 10 percent of the people it infected 17 years ago.

The outbreak has nevertheless been declared a global health emergency, prompting several governments to warn against travel to China and ban arrivals from the country, while airlines have halted flights and brought home their citizens.

Almost 200 Canadians showed up at the airport in Wuhan for the country’s first evacuations, most on a commercial airliner chartered by Ottawa, officials said. 

Germany’s foreign ministry said it was working to bring home several nationals who had not made it out on a flight that reached Frankfurt last Saturday.

Saudi Arabia banned citizens and resident foreigners from travelling to China, while Air France-KLM extended its flight suspension by another month until March 15.

Chinese President Xi Jinping told Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in a call that all countries should “follow World Health Organization guidelines on travel and health in a timely manner”, state news agency Xinhua reported.

After Britain advised nationals to leave China, Beijing’s ambassador to London said there should not be “such a panic.”

Short of medical staff 

China has enacted unprecedented measures to contain the virus, which spread during the Lunar New Year holiday in late January, when millions criss-crossed the country.

But deaths and new infections continue to rise, especially at the epicentre in Hubei province, where 18 cities housing 56 million people have been under virtual lockdown since late last month.

There is a shortage of 2,250 medical personnel in Hubei, deputy provincial governor Yang Yunyan said Thursday. The inability to offer health workers adequate protective gear is hindering the numbers that can be deployed on the front lines, he added.

With Hubei’s capital Wuhan overwhelmed, authorities were due to open a second, 1,600-bed field hospital.

The central government has announced measures intended to ensure the supply of vital resources, with tax breaks for manufacturers of medical equipment.

BGI Group, a genome sequencing company in southern China, said it had opened a lab in Wuhan able to test 10,000 people a day.

‘Don’t go out’ 

More cities are ordering people to stay indoors.

They include Hangzhou, 175 kilometres (110 miles) from Shanghai, where fences block streets and loudspeakers tell people: “Don’t go out!”

In Beijing — where streets remain eerily quiet — restaurants have been barred from accepting reservations for parties.

And in Nanchang, the capital of Jiangxi province which borders Hubei, pharmacists must send reports to the authorities on anyone buying fever or cough medicine. 

The outbreak has also hit major businesses.

Workers making iPhones at tech giant Foxconn’s plant in Henan province, bordering Hubei, will be quarantined for up to two weeks, the company said.

China said it would halve tariffs on $75 billion worth of US imports, as part of a trade truce with Washington and as officials look to calm markets unnerved by the outbreak.

(AFP)