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Coronavirus Live Updates: Vietnam and Australia Curb Access to China as Death Toll Passes 250 https://nyti.ms/2RL1Ary

As New Virus Spread, China’s Old Habits Delayed Fight.... At critical turning points, Chinese authorities put secrecy and order ahead of openly confronting the growing crisis and risking public alarm or political embarrassment.

By Chris Buckley and Steven Lee Myers | Published Feb. 1, 2020, 12:30 p.m. ET | New York Times | Posted Feb 1, 2020 |

WUHAN, China — A mysterious illness had stricken seven patients at a hospital, and a doctor tried to warn his medical school classmates. “Quarantined in the emergency department,” the doctor, Li Wenliang, wrote in an online chat group on Dec. 30, referring to patients.

“So frightening,” one recipient replied, before asking about the epidemic that began in China in 2002 and ultimately killed nearly 800 people. “Is SARS coming again?”

In the middle of the night, officials from the health authority in the central city of Wuhan summoned Dr. Li, demanding to know why he had shared the information. Three days later, the police compelled him to sign a statement that his warning constituted “illegal behavior.”

The illness was not SARS, but something similar: a coronavirus that is now on a relentless march outward from Wuhan, throughout the country and across the globe, killing at least 259 people in China and infecting more than 11,700.

The government’s initial handling of the epidemic allowed the virus to gain a tenacious hold. At critical moments, officials chose to put secrecy and order ahead of openly confronting the growing crisis to avoid public alarm and political embarrassment.

A reconstruction of the crucial seven weeks between the appearance of the first symptoms in early December and the government’s decision to lock down the city, based on two dozen interviews with Wuhan residents, doctors and officials, on government statements and on Chinese media reports, points to decisions that delayed a concerted public health offensive.

In those weeks, the authorities silenced doctors and others for raising red flags. They played down the dangers to the public, leaving the city’s 11 million residents unaware they should protect themselves. They closed a food market where the virus was believed to have started, but told the public it was for renovations.

Their reluctance to go public, in part, played to political motivations as local officials prepared for their annual congresses in January. Even as cases climbed, officials declared repeatedly that there had likely been no more infections.

By not moving aggressively to warn the public and medical professionals, public health experts say, the Chinese government lost one of its best chances to keep the disease from becoming an epidemic.

“This was an issue of inaction,” said Yanzhong Huang, a senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations who studies China. “There was no action in Wuhan from the local health department to alert people to the threat.”

The first case, the details of which are limited and the specific date unknown, was in early December. By the time the authorities galvanized into action on Jan. 20, the disease had grown into a formidable threat.

It is now a global health emergency. It has triggered travel restrictions around the world, shaken financial markets and created perhaps the greatest challenge yet for China’s leader, Xi Jinping. The crisis could upend Mr. Xi’s agenda for months or longer, even undermining his vision of a political system that offers security and growth in return for submission to iron-fisted authoritarianism.

On the last day of 2019, after Dr. Li’s message was shared outside the group, the authorities focused on controlling the narrative. The police announced that they were investigating eight people for spreading rumors about the outbreak.

That same day, Wuhan’s health commission, its hand forced by those “rumors,” announced that 27 people were suffering from pneumonia of an unknown cause. Its statement said there was no need to be alarmed.

“The disease is preventable and controllable,” the statement said.

Dr. Li, an ophthalmologist, went back to work after being reprimanded. On Jan. 10, he treated a woman for glaucoma. He did not know she had already been infected with the coronavirus, probably by her daughter. They both became sick. So would he.

HAZMAT SUITS AND DISINFECTANTS

Hu Xiaohu, who sold processed pork in the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market, sensed by late December that something was amiss. Workers were coming down with nagging fevers. No one knew why but, Mr. Hu said, several were in hospital quarantine.

The market occupies much of a block in a newer part of the city, sitting incongruously near apartment buildings and shops catering to the growing middle class. It is a warren of stalls selling meats, poultry and fish, as well as more exotic fare, including live reptiles and wild game that some in China prize as delicacies. According to a report by the city’s center for disease control, sanitation was dismal, with poor ventilation and garbage piled on wet floors.

In hospitals, doctors and nurses were puzzled to see a cluster of patients with symptoms of a viral pneumonia that did not respond to the usual treatments. They soon noticed that many patients had one thing in common: They worked in Huanan market.

On Jan. 1, police officers showed up at the market, along with public health officials, and shut it down. Xinhua news agency reported that the market was undergoing renovation, but that morning, workers in hazmat suits moved in, washing out stalls and spraying disinfectants.

It was, for the public, the first visible government response to contain the disease. The day before, on Dec. 31, national authorities had alerted the World Health Organization’s office in Beijing of an outbreak.

City officials struck optimistic notes in their announcements. They suggested they had stopped the virus at its source. The cluster of illnesses was limited. There was no evidence the virus spread between humans.

“Projecting optimism and confidence, if you don’t have the data, is a very dangerous strategy,” said Alexandra Phelan, a faculty research instructor in the department of microbiology and immunology at Georgetown University.

“It undermines the legitimacy of the government in messaging,” she added. “And public health is dependent on public trust.”

Nine days after the market closed, a man who shopped there regularly became the first fatality of the disease, according to a report by the Wuhan Health Commission, the agency that oversees public health and sanitation. The 61-year-old, identified by his last name, Zeng, already had chronic liver disease and a tumor in his abdomen, and had checked into Wuhan Puren Hospital with a raging fever and difficulty breathing.

The authorities disclosed the man’s death two days after it happened. They did not mention a crucial detail in understanding the course of the epidemic. Mr. Zeng’s wife had developed symptoms five days after he did.

She had never visited the market.

THE RACE TO IDENTIFY A KILLER

About 20 miles from the market, scientists at the Wuhan Institute of Virology were studying samples from the patients checking into the city’s hospitals. One of the scientists, Zheng-Li Shi, was part of the team that tracked down the origins of the SARS virus, which emerged in the southern province of Guangdong in 2002.

As the public remained largely in the dark about the virus, she and her colleagues quickly pieced together that the new outbreak was related to SARS. The genetic composition suggested a common initial host: bats. The SARS epidemic began when a coronavirus jumped from bats to Asian palm civets, a catlike creature that is legally raised and consumed. It was likely that this new coronavirus had followed a similar path — possibly somewhere in or on the way to the Huanan market or another market like it.

Around the same time, Dr. Li and other medical professionals in Wuhan started trying to provide warnings to colleagues and others when the government did not. Lu Xiaohong, the head of gastroenterology at City Hospital No. 5, told China Youth Daily that she had heard by Dec. 25 that the disease was spreading among medical workers — a full three weeks before the authorities would acknowledge the fact. She did not go public with her concerns, but privately warned a school near another market.

By the first week of January, the emergency ward in Hospital No. 5 was filling; the cases included members of the same family, making it clear that the disease was spreading through human contact, which the government had said was not likely.

No one realized, the doctor said, that it was as serious as it would become until it was too late to stop it.

“I realized that we had underestimated the enemy,” she said.

At the Institute of Virology, Dr. Shi and her colleagues isolated the genetic sequence and the viral strain during the first week of January. They used samples from seven of the first patients, six of them vendors at the market.

On Jan. 7, the institute’s scientists gave the new coronavirus its identity and began referring to it by the technical shorthand nCoV-2019. Four days later, the team posted the genetic sequence of the new virus on a database of sequences of nucleotides, the molecules that are basic units of DNA.

That allowed scientists around the world to study the virus and swiftly share their findings. As the scientific community moved quickly to devise a test for exposure, political leaders remained reluctant to act.

‘POLITICS IS ALWAYS NO. 1’

As the virus spread in early January, the mayor of Wuhan, Zhou Xianwang, was touting futuristic health care plans for the city.

It was China’s political season, when officials gather for annual meetings of People’s Congresses — the Communist Party-run legislatures that discuss and praise policies. It is not a time for bad news.

When Mr. Zhou delivered his annual report to the city’s People’s Congress on Jan. 7 against a backdrop of bright red national flags, he promised the city top-class medical schools, a World Health Expo, and a futuristic industry park for medical companies. Not once did he or any other city or provincial leader publicly mention the viral outbreak.

“Stressing politics is always No. 1,” the governor of Hubei, Wang Xiaodong, told officials on Jan. 17, citing Mr. Xi’s precepts of top-down obedience. “Political issues are at any time the most fundamental major issues.”

Shortly after, Wuhan went ahead with a massive annual potluck banquet for 40,000 families from a city precinct, which critics later cited as evidence that local leaders took the virus far too lightly.

As the congress was taking place, the health commission’s daily updates on the outbreak said again and again that there were no new cases of infection, no firm evidence of human transmission and no infection of medical workers.

“We knew this was not the case!” said a complaint later filed with the National Health Commission on a government website. The anonymous author said he was a doctor in Wuhan and described a surge in unusual chest illnesses beginning Jan. 12.

Officials told doctors at a top city hospital “don’t use the words viral pneumonia on the image reports,” according to the complaint, which has since been removed. People were complacent, “thinking that if the official reports had nothing, then we were exaggerating,” the doctor explained.

Even those stricken felt lulled into complacency.

When Dong Guanghe developed a fever on Jan. 8 in Wuhan, his family was not alarmed, his daughter said. He was treated in the hospital and sent home. Then, 10 days later, Mr. Dong’s wife fell ill with similar symptoms.

“The news said nothing about the severity of the epidemic,” said the daughter, Dong Mingjing. “I thought that my dad had a common cold.”

The government’s efforts to minimize public disclosure persuaded more than just untrained citizens.

“If there are no new cases in the next few days, the outbreak is over,” Guan Yi, a respected professor of infectious diseases at the University of Hong Kong, said on Jan. 15.

The World Health Organization’s statements during this period echoed the reassuring words of Chinese officials.

It had spread. Thailand reported the first confirmed case outside China on Jan. 13.

A CITY BESIEGED

The first deaths and the spread of the disease abroad appeared to grab the attention of the top authorities in Beijing. The national government dispatched Zhong Nanshan, a renowned and now-semiretired epidemiologist who was instrumental in the fight against SARS, to Wuhan to assess the situation.

He arrived on Jan. 18, just as the tone of local officials was shifting markedly. A health conference in Hubei Province that day called on medical workers to make the disease a priority. An internal document from Wuhan Union Hospital warned its employees that the coronavirus could be spread through saliva.

On Jan. 20, more than a month after the first symptoms spread, the current of anxiety that had been steadily gaining strength exploded into public. Dr. Zhong announced in an interview on state television that there was no doubt that the coronavirus spread with human contact. Worse, one patient had infected at least 14 medical personnel.

Mr. Xi, fresh from a state visit to Myanmar, made his first public statement about the outbreak, issuing a brief set of instructions.

It was only with the order from Mr. Xi that the bureaucracy leapt into action. At that point the death toll was three; in the next 11 days, it would rise above 200.

In Wuhan, the city banned tour groups from visiting. Residents began pulling on masks.

Guan Yi, the Hong Kong expert who had earlier voiced optimism that the outbreak could level off, was now alarmed. He dropped by one of the city’s other food markets and was shocked by the complacency, he said. He told city officials that the epidemic was “already beyond control” and would leave. “I hurriedly booked a departure,” Dr. Guan told Caixin, a Chinese news organization.

Two days later, the city announced that it was shutting itself down, a move that could only have been approved by Beijing.

In Wuhan, many residents said they did not grasp the gravity of the epidemic until the lockdown. The mass alarm that officials feared at the start became a reality, heightened by the previous paucity of information.

Crowds of people crushed the airport and train stations to get out before the deadline fell on the morning of Jan. 23. Hospitals were packed with people desperate to know if they, too, were infected.

“We didn’t wear masks at work. That would have frightened off customers,” Yu Haiyan, a waitress from rural Hubei, said of the days before the shutdown. “When they closed off Wuhan, only then did I think, ‘Oh, this is really serious, this is not some average virus.’”

Wuhan’s mayor, Zhou Xianwang, later took responsibility for the delay in reporting the scale of the epidemic, but said he was hampered by the national law on infectious diseases. That law allows provincial governments to declare an epidemic only after receiving central government approval. “After I receive information, I can only release it when I’m authorized,” he said.

The official reflex for suppressing discomforting information now appears to be cracking, as officials at various levels seek to shift blame for the government’s response.

With the crisis worsening, Dr. Li’s efforts are no longer viewed as reckless. A commentary on the social media account of the Supreme People’s Court criticized the police for investigating people for circulating rumors.

“It might have been a better way to prevent and control the new coronavirus today if the public had believed the ‘rumor’ then and started to wear masks and carry out sanitary measures and avoid the wild animal market,” the commentary said.

Dr. Li is 34 and has a child. He and his wife are expecting a second in the summer. He is now recovering from the virus in the hospital where he worked. In an interview via text messages, he said he felt aggrieved by the police actions.

“If the officials had disclosed information about the epidemic earlier,” he said, “I think it would have been a lot better. There should be more openness and transparency.”

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This article is based on reporting and research by Elsie Chen, Sheri Fink, Claire Fu, Javier Hernandez, Zoe Mou, Amy Qin, Knvul Sheikh, Amber Wang, Yiwei Wang, Sui-Lee Wee, Li Yuan, Albee Zhang and Raymond Zhong.

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China Increasingly Walled Off as Countries Seek to Stem Coronavirus

The number of deaths from the virus outbreak rose to 259 and the number of cases soared to nearly 12,000. Australia and Japan joined the United States in imposing travel restrictions.

By Alexandra Stevenson | Published Feb. 1, 2020, 3:52 p.m. ET | New York Times | Posted February 1, 2020 |

HONG KONG — New walls are rising between China and the world as the country grapples with a fast-moving coronavirus and its mounting death toll.

Vietnam on Saturday became the latest country to try to close itself off from the world’s most populous country, barring all flights from and to China. Over all, nearly 10,000 flights have been canceled since the outbreak.

Australia joined the United States in temporarily denying entry to noncitizens who have recently traveled to the country. There are officially eight confirmed cases in the United States, including one person connected to the University of Massachusetts-Boston.

Japan also said it would bar foreigners who had recently been in the Chinese province at the center of the outbreak, or whose passports were issued there.

As the death toll increases and more countries cut off China, the economic and political crisis caused by the virus is only intensifying there, with authorities coming under scrutiny for their slow initial response.

Major businesses have started to acknowledge the effect that the virus — and China’s near shutdown — is having on their bottom lines. Earlier, Apple had said it was rerouting part of its supply chain but would shut only one store. By Saturday, it said it would close all 42 of its stores in mainland China, its third-biggest market and where it generates about one-sixth of its sales.

It was the latest move by some of the world’s biggest companies to shift supply chains and adjust operations in China.

Chinese officials have been changing course after their initially slow response to the virus.

A prominent government expert admitted that he had been wrong to say the virus was under control in early January.

And the mayor of a town near Wuhan, the center of the outbreak, was fired for negligence after the disabled teenage son of a quarantined patient died. The cause of death was still under investigation.

But the Chinese authorities also appeared to be taking tougher measures to stifle criticism, for example scrubbing the internet of an article critical of the government in The Global Times, a tabloid controlled by the governing Communist Party.

As the number of deaths and new cases rapidly rose this past week — 259 deaths and nearly 12,000 by Saturday — one by one, international organizations and foreign countries reacted.

The State Department issued a travel alert urging Americans not to go to to China because of the public health threat.

Delta, United and American Airlines suspended all flights between the United States and mainland China.

By the time the World Health Organization declared the outbreak a global health emergency on Thursday, some of the world’s biggest companies had barred their employees from any travel to China, and countries began to close their borders.

Even as some countries took drastic measures, their leaders also acknowledged the economic impact.

“It’s going to hurt us,” warned Lee Hsien Loong, the prime minister of Singapore, after announcing that the small island state would bar all Chinese visitors and foreigners who had traveled to China within the past 14 days. (The incubation period for the disease is believed to be one to two weeks.)

“China is a very big source of tourists for Singapore,” Mr. Lee told reporters after announcing the ban. Restaurants, travel operators and hotels in Singapore were all “bound to be significantly affected.”

On Saturday, Australia joined the United States and a growing list of other countries and cities that have issued travel warnings in an attempt to stem the flow of people who could be carrying the virus. The American government said on Friday that it would temporarily deny entry to noncitizens who had recently traveled to China.

The Australian government also urged Australian nationals to “reconsider their need to travel” to China. Prime Minister Scott Morrison said that “Australian citizens, Australian residents, dependents, legal guardians or spouses” would still be allowed to return.

Qantas, Australia’s biggest airline, canceled its mainland flights, though it said it would still fly to Hong Kong.

Taiwan said it would bar Chinese nationals from the southern coastal province of Guangdong from entry beginning Sunday and travelers who recently visited the area would be subject to a mandatory 14-day quarantine.

Vietnam, China’s neighbor along its southern border, joined Singapore and Mongolia in essentially shutting off its borders to China, banning all flights coming from mainland China, Hong Kong and Macau until May 1, according to the Federal Aviation Administration. Only flights that have received approval from the country’s Civil Aviation Authority will be allowed following the ban, which took effect on Saturday.

The Mongolian authorities also shut the border with China until March 2, while other countries and regions this past week stopped short of sealing off their borders entirely.

Hong Kong halved the number of flights from China, shut down rail service to mainland China, and also limited visas to the semiautonomous region in a move that has prompted criticism from trade unions including hospital workers, some of whom have voted to strike. They want to shut the city off from the mainland.

In a twist, Hun Sen, the leader of Cambodia, one of China’s close neighbors, emerged as a contrarian when he decided not to limit any travel and movement of Chinese tourists to his country.

He was defiant in his decision, saying that doing so would “be an attack on the Cambodian economy” and would “strain relations” with China.

“I don’t care what other countries think — Cambodia does not behave this way,” he said.

Cambodia is home to many Chinese businessmen and China is the country’s largest benefactor.

North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un, sent a letter to President Xi Jinping of China offering condolences — and aid — to help Beijing fight the coronavirus outbreak, the North’s state-run news agency reported on Saturday.

But North Korea was one of the first countries to shut its borders to visitors from China to keep out the coronavirus.

Amid the expanding crisis and growing criticism of Beijing’s strategy, a prominent respiratory expert who originally told Chinese state news media that the coronavirus was under control and preventable admitted that his choice of words had been inappropriate.

The expert, Wang Guangfa, head of the department of pulmonary medicine at Peking University First Hospital in Beijing, compared himself and other medical professionals tackling the outbreak to soldiers walking onto a battlefield.

“All the bullets are flying,” Dr. Wang said in an interview with Jiemian, a finance-focused news site founded by Shanghai United Media Group, which is controlled by the Shanghai government.

The doctor has come to symbolize how slowly China recognized the urgency of the outbreak. Dr. Wang himself contracted the coronavirus, apparently during a visit to Wuhan.

He initially said that the virus could not be spread by person-to-person contact. But 11 days later, he confirmed to state news outlets that he had the virus and that he might have contracted it during a trip to the center of the outbreak with a group of experts.

In his interview, Dr. Wang said that he had misdiagnosed his symptoms as those of flu, and that he had waited days before checking himself into a hospital. He said he had since recovered and was discharged on Thursday.

Asked why he had originally called the coronavirus “preventable and controllable,” Dr. Wang blamed limited information at the time of his Wuhan visit. A clearer picture of the virus’s transmissibility would have required “epidemiological data, which is difficult to judge,” he said.

His interview has been widely shared on Weibo, China’s Twitter-like social media platform. Some of the most popular comments have come from angry users.

Criticism about how long it took for the authorities to act has grown online. The initial reports of the virus began in early December, but it was not until late January that Chinese officials sprung into action, eventually locking down entire cities around the epicenter and halting public transport across the country during its busiest holiday travel period of the year.

China’s sudden action drew praise from the World Health Organization and other bodies overseas, but at home, anguished and angry comments sneaked past censors.

Yet not all criticism made it through the great firewall. On the Chinese internet, people complained that censors’ were working in overdrive as many articles and social media posts were deleted.

One of the starkest examples of censorship that critics pointed to was an article written by Hu Xijin, the editor of The Global Times, the nationalist tabloid of the Communist Party.

Mr. Hu wrote that the heads of the national health commission and the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention should take responsibility for the delay in reporting the seriousness of the epidemic.

A few hours after it was posted on Friday, his article was deleted from The Global Times’s website.

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Reporting was contributed by Elaine Yu, Carlos Tejada, Yuan Li and Cao Li in Hong Kong, Choe Sang-Hun in Seoul, South Korea, and Motoko Rich in Tokyo.

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Coronavirus Live Updates: Vietnam and Australia Curb Access to China as Death Toll Passes 250..... Australia joined the United States in temporarily barring foreigners who have recently visited China. Vietnam barred almost all flights from and to China.

Published February 1, 2020 | The New York Times | Posted February 1, 2020 |

Taiwan is barring Chinese nationals from the southern coastal province of Guangdong.

HERE’S WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW:

READ UPDATES IN CHINESE: 武汉疫情每日汇总中文版

United States, Australia and Japan expand travel restrictions.

The United States and Australia are temporarily denying entry to noncitizens who have recently traveled to China, hoping to limit the spread of the new coronavirus to their countries, while Japan will bar foreigners who have been in the Chinese province at the center of the outbreak.

The American restrictions, announced on Friday, exempt immediate family members of American citizens and permanent residents. Prime Minister Scott Morrison announced Australia’s temporary ban on Saturday, saying that “Australian citizens, Australian residents, dependents, legal guardians or spouses” would still be allowed into the country.

American officials also said that any United States citizen returning home who has been in the Hubei province of China within the past 14 days — believed to be the virus’s incubation period — will be quarantined for up to 14 days. Wuhan, the epicenter of the outbreak, is in Hubei.

Those who have been to other parts of China within the past 14 days will be subject to “proactive entry screening” and up to 14 days of monitoring and self-quarantine.

Over all, nearly 10,000 flights have been canceled since the outbreak, according to Cirium, a global travel and data analytics company.

Vietnam barred almost all flights from and to mainland China, Hong Kong and Macau until May 1, according to the United States Federal Aviation Administration. Only flights that have received approval from Vietnam’s Civil Aviation Authority will be allowed during the ban, which took effect on Saturday.

Four airlines in the Philippines announced they were reducing or canceling flights to China: Cebu Pacific Air, Philippine Airlines, Philippines AirAsia and the local unit of AirAsia Group Bhd, the Reuters news agency reported.

In Japan, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said the country would bar entry to foreigners who had visited Hubei within the past 14 days, or who had passports issued in Hubei.

Taiwan is barring Chinese nationals from the southern coastal province of Guangdong from entry beginning Sunday and travelers who recently visited the area will be subject to a mandatory 14-day quarantine, Taiwan state media said on Saturday.

The United States will also funnel all flights from China to just a few airports, including Kennedy in New York, O’Hare in Chicago and San Francisco International Airport.

Several countries were evacuating their citizens from Hubei.

South Korea, India and Bangladesh have flown hundreds of their citizens home from Wuhan, while Indonesia and Turkey have sent planes there, according to The Associated Press reported.

On Monday, the Russian military will begin evacuating Russians from affected regions in China, Russian media reported.

Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said the American actions were being taken because there were “a lot of unknowns” surrounding the virus and its transmission path.

The announcement came as major air carriers suspended flights between the United States and mainland China. American Airlines, Delta Air Lines and United Airlines said direct air service would be halted for months, news that rattled the stock market and industries that depend on the flow of goods and people. Qantas followed suit on Saturday, announcing its own suspension of flights to China.

Turkmenistan Airlines began an indefinite suspension of flights to Beijing from Saturday because of the outbreak, according to a statement. Qatar Airlines also suspended flights to China.

Death toll passes 250, with nearly 12,000 infections confirmed.

Chinese officials on Saturday reported the highest death toll so far in a 24-hour period.

◆ The 46 new deaths in China raised the toll to 259.

◆ About 2,100 new cases were also recorded in the country in the past 24 hours, raising the worldwide total to nearly 12,000, according to Chinese and World Health Organization data. The vast majority of the cases are inside China; about 100 cases have been confirmed in 21 other countries.

◆ All of China’s provinces and territories have now been touched by the outbreak.

◆ Countries and territories that have confirmed cases: Thailand, Japan, Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan, Australia, Malaysia, Macau, Russia, France, the United States, South Korea, Germany, the United Arab Emirates, Canada, Britain, Vietnam, Italy, India, the Philippines, Nepal, Cambodia, Sri Lanka, Finland and Sweden.

◆ Cases recorded in Thailand, Taiwan, Germany, Vietnam, Japan, France and the United States involved patients who had not been to China.

◆ No deaths have been reported outside China.

◆ China has asked the European Union for help in purchasing urgent medical supplies from its member countries, the official Xinhua news agency said on Saturday.

MASSACHUSETTS CONFIRMS ITS FIRST CASE OF CORONAVIRUS.

The first case of coronavirus in Massachusetts has been confirmed, officials said on Saturday: a man in his 20s who returned from Wuhan and lives in Boston, bringing the total number of confirmed cases in the United States to eight.

The University of Massachusetts-Boston confirmed in a separate statement on Saturday that a member of the school’s community had contracted the virus. The statement also said that it expected “business as usual” on campus.

The authorities in Massachusetts were notified by the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention of the positive test results late Friday evening, according to a statement by the Boston Public Health Commission.

The man recently traveled to Wuhan and sought medical care soon after his return to Massachusetts, the statement said. He will remain in isolation until he is cleared by public health officials and his close contacts are being monitored.

Monica Bharel, the Massachusetts public health commissioner, said in a statement that she was “grateful” that the man is recovering and sought medical attention immediately.

“Massachusetts has been preparing for a possible case of this new coronavirus, and we were fortunate that astute clinicians took appropriate action quickly,” she said.

SPAIN CONFIRMS ITS FIRST CASES OF CORONAVIRUS.

The Spanish health authorities said on Saturday that a German tourist has Spain’s first confirmed case of coronavirus and was healthy, but would remain isolated in a hospital in the Canary Islands.

Fernando Simón, the director of the Spanish Health Ministry’s emergency coordination center, told reporters that the German was not showing any serious symptoms of coronavirus. The patient contracted the virus in Germany before traveling to the island of La Gomera, which is part of Spain’s Canary archipelago.

The German, whose name was not disclosed, is part of a group of five tourists who have been quarantined in a hospital on La Gomera since Wednesday.

A CHINESE DOCTOR WHO CALLED THE VIRUS ‘CONTROLLABLE’ REGRETS HIS WORDS.

A prominent respiratory expert who originally told Chinese state media that the coronavirus was under control and preventable has admitted that his choice of words was inappropriate.

Wang Guangfa, head of the department of pulmonary medicine at Peking University First Hospital in Beijing, compared himself and other medical professionals tackling the outbreak to soldiers walking onto a battlefield.

“All the bullets are flying,” said Dr. Wang, in an interview with Jiemian, a finance-focused news site founded by Shanghai United Media Group, which is controlled by the government of Shanghai.

In many ways the doctor, who has been widely criticized for his reassuring early statements, has come to symbolize how slowly China recognized the urgency of the outbreak. Dr. Wang, who initially said that the coronavirus could not be spread by human-to-human contact, later contracted it himself, apparently during a visit to Wuhan.

As the virus began to spread through Wuhan in early January, people who spoke out about it online were silenced by censors and, in some cases, held by the police. When journalists from Hong Kong — whose news media were among the first to shed light on the virus — visited a Wuhan hospital, police officers detained them for hours.

In his interview with Jiemian, published on Friday, Dr. Wang said he had misdiagnosed himself as having flu, and that he had waited days before checking himself into a hospital. He said he had since recovered and was discharged on Thursday.

Asked why he had originally called the coronavirus “preventable and controllable,” Dr. Wang blamed limited information at the time of his Wuhan visit.

His interview has been widely shared on Weibo, China’s Twitter-like social media platform. Some of the most popular comments are from angry users.

“‘Could be prevented and controlled,’ Wang Guangfa,” said one user, who wrote under a pseudonym based on “Gorbachev” in Chinese characters. “Because of this line, the most critical half-month was squandered! And resulted in this.”

HONG KONG MEDICAL WORKERS VOTE TO STRIKE.

A newly formed union of medical workers in Hong Kong voted Saturday to go on strike next week to pressure the territory’s government into barring arrivals from mainland China. The Hospital Authority Employees Alliance says that local medical services are in danger of being overwhelmed by visitors from the mainland, and efforts to stop the spread of the coronavirus in Hong Kong will not be effective without a full closure of the border.

Last week Carrie Lam, Hong Kong’s top official, announced several steps to drastically cut arrivals of people from the mainland into Hong Kong, an autonomous part of China. Hong Kong has closed several border points and rail stations and cut flight arrivals by half. The central government has also said it will stop issuing permits for individual visitors.

But the new medical workers union says those steps do not go far enough.

“As country after country begins to announce the banning of foreigners’ entry from China, the Hong Kong government chooses to keep its doors wide open,” the group wrote on Facebook after the results of their strike vote were confirmed. “The already limited resources and manpower in Hong Kong that are necessary for healthcare will soon be completely depleted, as an endless stream of non-Hong Kong residents continues to come into the city, seeking for medical care.”

The union has about 18,000 members out of about 80,000 Hospital Authority personnel. It says 9,000 of its members have signed a pledge to strike. Out of 3,164 votes cast by its members on Saturday, 3,123 were in favor. Without a response from the government, the union says the strike will begin Monday with non-emergency personnel.

Hong Kong has 13 confirmed cases of people infected with the new coronavirus, health officials say.

A VIEW OF THE EPICENTER FROM A NEW YORK TIMES REPORTER.

Amy Qin, who covers China from Beijing, on Friday arrived in Wuhan, the city at the center of the coronavirus outbreak that has killed over 250 people so far. Follow Amy as she reports around Wuhan.

Amy arrived in a wary city that has been cut off from the rest of the world for more than a week.

Streets were mostly empty as people avoided contact with one another and stayed fearfully at home. Not everybody could bear to stay inside, however.

All around the city, authorities and businesses have worked to create an air of normalcy.

It’s clear, however, that the city has been strained to its limits by the epidemic.

APPLE WILL CLOSE ITS CHINA STORES FOR A WEEK.

Apple on Saturday said it would close its stores in mainland China, one of its biggest markets, until Feb. 9.

In a statement, the iPhone maker said it was closing stores, corporate offices and contact centers “out of an abundance of caution and based on the latest advice from leading health experts.” Its online store would remain open, it said.

The company operates 42 stores in mainland China, though its iPhones and other devices are widely available through other retailers.

Apple generates about one-sixth of its sales and one-quarter of its operating income in China. While its results there fell last year, Tim Cook, Apple’s chief executive, told investors last week that the company’s new iPhone 11 was selling well in the country.

But he also cautioned that the coronavirus outbreak had kept the company from offering more specific guidance about its financial performance in the coming months.

Mr. Cook also said the company was looking for ways to minimize supply disruptions. Apple makes most of its iPhones and other gadgets in China, usually in factories owned by third-party contractors like Foxconn of Taiwan.

Apple is only one of a slew of global companies reconsidering their China operations as the outbreak has spread. A prolonged slowdown or closure in China could have a major impact on global economic growth.

China’s central bank, the People’s Bank of China, addressed such concerns on Saturday, pledging to make sure the country’s financial system had enough cash to deal with the economic blow.

NORTH KOREA OFFERS AID AND CONDOLENCES, BUT KEEPS ITS BORDER CLOSED.

North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un, has sent a letter to President Xi Jinping of China offering condolences — and a rare donation of aid — to help Beijing fight the coronavirus outbreak, the North’s state-run news agency reported on Saturday.

North Korea was one of the first countries to shut its borders to visitors from China to keep out the coronavirus.

But in his letter to Mr. Xi, Mr. Kim “sent warm greetings to all the party members and medical workers of China active in the first line for the prevention of the epidemic, and expressed deep consolation for the families who lost their blood relatives due to the infectious disease,” the North Korean news agency said.

Along with Mr. Kim’s letter of condolence, North Korea’s ruling Workers’ Party sent an undisclosed amount of “aid fund” to its Chinese counterpart under a decision its Political Bureau made on Friday, the North Korean news agency said.

Mr. Kim “conveyed his sincere feelings of wanting to share the suffering and trial of the fraternal Chinese people and to render help even a bit,” it said.

A QUARANTINED PATIENTS SON DIES OF NEGLECT, AND THE LEADERS OF A CHINESE TOWN ARE FIRED.

The mayor and Chinese Communist Party chief of a town in Huanggang, a city near Wuhan, have been fired over negligence that resulted in the death of the teenage son of a quarantined coronavirus patient.

The patient, Yan Xiaowen, had returned from Wuhan to the town of Huajiahe in mid-January. A few days later, on Jan. 22, he developed a fever and was immediately quarantined. His 16-year-old son, who had cerebral palsy and required round-the-clock medical attention, was entrusted to the care of relatives, village cadres and village doctors.

On Jan. 29, the day Mr. Yan’s coronavirus was diagnosed, his son was deemed a close contact and transferred to an observation ward. He died around an hour later. The cause of death was still being investigated.

Mr. Yan had appealed for help on social media, worried that his son was not receiving regular care and saying that village party officials told him that his son had been fed only twice in five days, The South China Morning Post reported.

A statement released by the local county government on Saturday said the cadres did not act “dutifully” or “do their best” to care for him. The town’s mayor and party secretary were removed from office as a result, the statement added.

‘BE HEALTHY and SAFE!’ BUT DON’T COME BACK, SAY TEXTS TO BEIJING RESIDENTS in HUBEI.

“Are you and your family doing well? We’ve been worrying about you all this time!” read a text message sent on Saturday to Wuhan’s visitors from Beijing.

But they were more than just innocent greetings. Beijing’s Center for Disease Prevention and Control appeared to have tracked the city’s residents who were on trips to Hubei Province and asked them not to return. Wuhan, the heart of the outbreak, is the provincial capital of Hubei.

“You and your family must protect yourselves and manage your health well, and strictly abide by the epidemic prevention and control measures by the local governments in Hubei and not return to Beijing for the time being,” the message continued.

China’s cellular service providers can use their networks to track and locate phone users.

Beijing, China’s capital, has also taken extra steps to keep people off the streets and public places. Companies in Beijing, except for utilities and pharmaceutical or medical equipment firms as well as supermarkets, would postpone reopening until Feb. 10, a week after an extended Lunar New Year was to end, the official Beijing Daily reported.

Southeast of Beijing, the city of Tianjin, which is home to 15 million people, had also suspended all schools and businesses indefinitely, according to local state media.

WORLD LEADERS WEIGH THE COST OF CHINA RESTRICTIONS.

As the coronavirus continues to spread through China and globally, world leaders are having to weigh the cost of reacting by closing their borders to Chinese travelers.

The outbreak and China’s tightening of its own border are beginning to expose how dependent many nations are on China and the cash its selfie-snapping tourists bring in.

For Australia, which on Saturday joined the United States in temporarily barring foreigners who had recently been to China, China was the single largest source of visitors in 2018, and its tourists spent 12 billion Australian dollars, or about $8 billion, that year.

As some countries took drastic measures, their leaders acknowledged the economic impact of the moves. “It’s going to hurt us,” warned Lee Hsien Loong, the prime minister of Singapore, after announcing that the small island-state would bar all Chinese visitors and foreigners who had traveled to China within the past 14 days.

“China is a very big source of tourists for Singapore,” Mr. Lee told reporters on Friday. Restaurants, travel operators and hotels in Singapore were all “bound to be significantly affected,” he said, as would the rest of the economy, given that China is one of Singapore’s biggest trading partners.

The authorities in Mongolia, which is heavily dependent on China’s demand for its coal and copper, closed their country’s border with China until March 2.

Other countries have kept their borders open.

1 note · View note

dztropective · 5 years ago

Photo

“Even in Fear” by Zhou Xiaohu THEN @whiterabbitgallery . . . . . #whiterabbitgallery #whiterabbitcollection #chinesecontemporaryart #chineseartist #privatecollection #artexhibtion #sydney #china #contemporaryart #artgallery #judithneilson #installation #then #dangrove #artconservation #artstoragefacility #privateartgallery #contemporary #whiterabbit #artist #arttour #freetour #free #zhouxisohu #underpants #neonlights #eveninfear #pinkroom #hotpink #galleryphotography #artphotography #sydney #sydneyart #sydneylocal (at White Rabbit Gallery) https://www.instagram.com/p/B28hPjdAFlP/?igshid=tbdjksz9tjp2

0 notes

mastcomm · 5 years ago

Text

As New Virus Spread, China’s Old Habits Delayed Fight

“So frightening,” one recipient replied, before asking about the epidemic that began in China in 2002 and ultimately killed nearly 800 people. “Is SARS coming again?”

By not moving aggressively to warn the public and medical professionals, public health experts say, the Chinese government lost one of its best chances to keep the disease from becoming an epidemic.

Image

Dr. Li Wenliang

“The disease is preventable and controllable,” the statement said.

Hazmat Suits and Disinfectants

“It undermines the legitimacy of the government in messaging,” she added. “And public health is dependent on public trust.”

She had never visited the market.

The Race to Identify a Killer

No one realized, the doctor said, that it was as serious as it would become until it was too late to stop it.

“I realized that we had underestimated the enemy,” she said.

‘Politics is Always No. 1’

As the virus spread in early January, the mayor of Wuhan, Zhou Xianwang, was touting futuristic health care plans for the city.

Even those stricken felt lulled into complacency.

“The news said nothing about the severity of the epidemic,” said the daughter, Dong Mingjing. “I thought that my dad had a common cold.”

The government’s efforts to minimize public disclosure persuaded more than just untrained citizens.

“If there are no new cases in the next few days, the outbreak is over,” Guan Yi, a respected professor of infectious diseases at the University of Hong Kong, said on Jan. 15.

The World Health Organization’s statements during this period echoed the reassuring words of Chinese officials.

It had spread. Thailand reported the first confirmed case outside China on Jan. 13.

A City Besieged

Mr. Xi, fresh from a state visit to Myanmar, made his first public statement about the outbreak, issuing a brief set of instructions.

It was only with the order from Mr. Xi that the bureaucracy leapt into action. At that point the death toll was three; in the next 11 days, it would rise above 200.

In Wuhan, the city banned tour groups from visiting. Residents began pulling on masks.

Two days later, the city announced that it was shutting itself down, a move that could only have been approved by Beijing.

Crowds of people crushed the airport and train stations to get out before the deadline fell on the morning of Jan. 23. Hospitals were packed with people desperate to know if they, too, were infected.

Dr. Li in Wuhan Central Hospital on Friday.

The official reflex for suppressing discomforting information now appears to be cracking, as officials at various levels seek to shift blame for the government’s response.

“If the officials had disclosed information about the epidemic earlier,” he said, “I think it would have been a lot better. There should be more openness and transparency.”

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0 notes

pistolas · 13 years ago

Quote

La utopía debe ser un objetivo inalcanzable.

Zhou Xiaohu.

#Zhou Xiaohu

0 notes

performamagazine · 13 years ago

Text

Zhou Xiaohu's Crazy English rehearsal!

Rehearsal of Zhou Xiaohu's Performa Premiere Crazy English. Learn English in a way you never imagined! The performance takes place on November 19th; more information is available here.

#Zhou Xiaohu #Performa Premiere #Performa 11

0 notes

andcarrotrope · 13 years ago

Text

I should start this essay I was supposed to do for two days ago

Like, now would be a good time to get it sorted

Found a good artist relevant too, Zhou Xiaohu.

#zhou xiaohu #need to do this now #stop writing tags and get to work chris

0 notes

garageccc-projects-blog · 13 years ago

Photo

Zhou Xiaohu – Concentration Training Camp

http://www.commercialbreak.org/#178

#Zhou Xiaohu #Concentration Training Camp #commercial break #Garage Center for Contemporary Culture #garage projects #video art

0 notes

mastcomm · 5 years ago

Text

As New Virus Spread, China’s Old Habits Delayed Fight

“So frightening,” one recipient replied, before asking about the epidemic that began in China in 2002 and ultimately killed nearly 800 people. “Is SARS coming again?”

By not moving aggressively to warn the public and medical professionals, public health experts say, the Chinese government lost one of its best chances to keep the disease from becoming an epidemic.

Image

Dr. Li Wenliang

“The disease is preventable and controllable,” the statement said.

Hazmat Suits and Disinfectants

“It undermines the legitimacy of the government in messaging,” she added. “And public health is dependent on public trust.”

She had never visited the market.

The Race to Identify a Killer

No one realized, the doctor said, that it was as serious as it would become until it was too late to stop it.

“I realized that we had underestimated the enemy,” she said.

‘Politics is Always No. 1’

As the virus spread in early January, the mayor of Wuhan, Zhou Xianwang, was touting futuristic health care plans for the city.

Even those stricken felt lulled into complacency.

“The news said nothing about the severity of the epidemic,” said the daughter, Dong Mingjing. “I thought that my dad had a common cold.”

The government’s efforts to minimize public disclosure persuaded more than just untrained citizens.

“If there are no new cases in the next few days, the outbreak is over,” Guan Yi, a respected professor of infectious diseases at the University of Hong Kong, said on Jan. 15.

The World Health Organization’s statements during this period echoed the reassuring words of Chinese officials.

It had spread. Thailand reported the first confirmed case outside China on Jan. 13.

A City Besieged

Mr. Xi, fresh from a state visit to Myanmar, made his first public statement about the outbreak, issuing a brief set of instructions.

It was only with the order from Mr. Xi that the bureaucracy leapt into action. At that point the death toll was three; in the next 11 days, it would rise above 200.

In Wuhan, the city banned tour groups from visiting. Residents began pulling on masks.

Two days later, the city announced that it was shutting itself down, a move that could only have been approved by Beijing.

Crowds of people crushed the airport and train stations to get out before the deadline fell on the morning of Jan. 23. Hospitals were packed with people desperate to know if they, too, were infected.

Dr. Li in Wuhan Central Hospital on Friday.

The official reflex for suppressing discomforting information now appears to be cracking, as officials at various levels seek to shift blame for the government’s response.

“If the officials had disclosed information about the epidemic earlier,” he said, “I think it would have been a lot better. There should be more openness and transparency.”

from WordPress https://mastcomm.com/as-new-virus-spread-chinas-old-habits-delayed-fight/

#Event

0 notes