Credit to Author: Tempo Desk| Date: Mon, 03 Feb 2020 09:48:17 +0000

A HOSPITAL official, wearing protective equipment, looks out from an isolated room at Undata hospital in Palu, Central Sulawesi, Indonesia as part of the country’s preparation to prevent and minimize the new virus outbreak. (AFP)

BEIJING, China (AFP) – China’s death toll from a new coronavirus jumped above 360 yesterday, surpassing the number of fatalities of its Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome  crisis two decades ago, with dozens of people dying in the epicenter’s quarantined ground zero.

The 57 confirmed new deaths was the single-biggest increase since the virus was detected late last year in the central city of Wuhan, where it is believed to have jumped from animals at a market into humans.

The virus has since spread to more than 24 countries, despite many governments imposing unprecedented travel bans on people coming from China.

The World Health Organization has declared the crisis a global health emergency, and the first foreign death from the virus was reported in the Philippines last Sunday.

In China, all but one of the 57 new deaths reported yesterday were in Wuhan and the rest of Hubei province, most of which has been under lockdown for almost two weeks to stop people leaving and transmitting the virus.

The national death toll reached 361, exceeding the 349 mainland fatalities from the SARS outbreak of 2002-03.

SARS, caused by a pathogen similar to the new coronavirus and also originated in China, killed 774 people – with most of the other deaths in Hong Kong.

The virus is also having an increasingly heavy economic impact, shutting down businesses across China, curbing international travel, and impacting production lines of major international brands.

Stock markets in Shanghai and Shenzhen plunged by nearly nine percent yesterday morning as investors returned from a Lunar New Year holiday that had been extended to stop people travelling around China.

Hundreds of firms tumbled by the maximum 10 percent as investors got their first chance in more than a week to react to a barrage of bad news from the spiraling outbreak.

Travel and tourism shares plummeted after domestic and international travel curbs were imposed to slow the virus.

In Wuhan, which has been transformed from a bustling industrial hub into a near-ghost town, residents have been living in deep fear of catching the virus.

The city’s medical facilities have been overwhelmed, with state news agency Xinhua reporting yesterday that 68 medical teams of 8,300 staff from across China had been sent to Hubei to “aid novel coronavirus control.”

The number of infections in China also jumped significantly yesterday, passing 17,200.

Amid mounting pressure, the government has been racing to build two new hospitals in extraordinarily quick timeframes.

The first of those, a 1,000-bed facility, was due to open yesterday, just 10 days after construction began.

About 1,400 military medics will treat patients at the hospital, dubbed “Fire God Mountain,” according to state media.

However, with the death toll surging in Wuhan and other areas of Hubei, it was not immediately clear what overall impact the hospitals would have on the virus spreading elsewhere.

In a worrying signal about it already spreading in significant numbers to other parts of China, the eastern industrial city of Wenzhou was on Sunday placed under a similar lockdown to Wuhan.

Roads in Wenzhou, 800 kilometers  to the east, were closed and its nine million people were ordered to stay indoors.

Only one resident per household in Wenzhou is allowed to go out every two days to buy necessities, authorities announced.

The emergence of the virus coincided with the Lunar New Year, when hundreds of millions travel across the country in planes, trains, and buses for family reunions.

The holiday – originally scheduled to end last Friday – was extended by three days to give authorities more time to deal with the crisis.

But some major cities – including Shanghai – extended the holiday again, and many schools and universities delayed the start of new terms.

Road traffic on Sunday, when hundreds of millions of people would have been ex
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