‘Window to stop virus shrinking’
Credit to Author: Agence France-Presse| Date: Sat, 22 Feb 2020 16:23:39 +0000
Cases surge in ME; Italian town on lockdown
BEIJING: Fears mounted on Saturday over the rise of new cases and fatalities outside China from the new coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19) outbreak as the World Health Organization (WHO) warned of a shrinking window to stem the spread of the deadly disease.
The warning came as the first European died from the new Covid-19 strain, which first emerged in December in central China but has now spread to over 25 countries and caused more than a dozen deaths outside the country.
WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus warned that the “window of opportunity” to contain the international spread of the outbreak was “narrowing” as cases surged across the Middle East and in South Korea.
He warned that if countries did not quickly mobilize to fight the spread of the virus, “this outbreak could go in any direction. It could even be messy.”
Cases of the deadly virus were reported in a range of countries in the Middle East on Friday (Saturday in Manila) with the first cases in Israel and Lebanon.
Iran said four people there had died and 18 had been infected from the outbreak.
Iraq and Kuwait, which share borders with Iran, were on high alert for a potential outbreak after banning travel to and from the Islamic republic, although they have not confirmed any cases domestically.
A 78-year-old Italian man died after testing positive for the virus, and a number of cases reported across the Middle East, including the first infections in Israel and Lebanon.
A second person died in South Korea, authorities reported Saturday, as the number of cases in the country spiked.
Italy has locked down 10 towns and asked over 50,000 people to stay home — a move with echoes of China’s lockdown of entire cities in Hubei province at the center of the outbreak.
Lockdown
Streets were deserted and residents warned to keep out of an emergency room on Saturday in an Italian town placed under lockdown as a second death from coronavirus sparked fears throughout the region.
“No entry” read the sign on the emergency room in the small town of Codogno with a population of 15,000 where three people have already tested positive for the virus, including one 38-year-old man now on life support.
On Saturday, Italian news agency ANSA reported a second death from the virus in the Lombardy region, where Codogno is located.
It came one day after the death of a 78-year-old retired bricklayer from the Padua area in the nearby Veneto region, the first local person in Europe to die from the coronavirus.
ANSA reported that the new victim was a woman. No further information was immediately available.
Italy’s health minister said that the man who died on Friday, Adriano Trevisan, had been admitted to hospital 10 days earlier for an unrelated health issue.
He was one of two people in the Veneto region with the virus, where another confirmed case overnight in a 53-year-old man brought that number to three, president of the Veneto region, Luca Zaia told Rai24 news.
In Lombardy, 16 other people were discovered to have caught the virus and the region took immediate measures to isolate affected areas.
In Rome, three people are being treated in isolation for the virus.
Hotspots
In China, the number of cases outside Hubei, where millions remain under quarantine, has been generally declining, although new hotspots were found in several prisons and hospitals Friday.
But just 31 new cases were reported outside the central province Saturday, as the national number of cases rose past 76,000.
The outbreak has now claimed 2,345 lives in China.
Concerns have also risen about the reliability of the official data, however, after Hubei officials changed methods of counting cases and amended their figures again.
The United States advised citizens to avoid traveling by cruise liner in Asia because it said the vessels acted as amplifiers of the virus.
Several Australians and an Israeli evacuated earlier this week from the stricken Diamond Princess cruise ship tested positive for coronavirus on returning to their home countries.
They were previously cleared in Japan.
‘Critical moment’
Nearly 400 new cases were reported nationwide in China on Saturday, less than half the number of new cases the previous day.
The drop in new cases of the novel coronavirus came as officials in Hubei province were ordered to revise figures to clear “doubt” around the data.
Officials retroactively revised upwards previously reported data for two days in the last week — the latest in a string of amendments to the figures officially reported at the epicenter.
Several changes in Hubei’s counting method have further complicated efforts to track the spread of the illness.
China has said the slowing cases are evidence that its drastic containment measures are working — but fresh infections emerged at two Beijing hospitals, and more than 500 others were reported in prisons across the country.
In a letter to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation thanking the organization for its financial support, Chinese President Xi Jinping said China was at a “critical moment” in the fight against the outbreak.
Xi said the “unprecedented measures” were “delivering substantial results.”