Toll 170 as more countries hit China orders farmers to ramp up food production

Beijing, Jan. 30: China counted 170 deaths from a new virus Thursday and more countries reported infections, including some spread locally, as foreign evacuees from China’s worst-hit region returned home to medical observation and even isolation.

Locally spread cases outside China have been a worrying concern among global health officials, as potential signs of the virus spreading more easily and the difficulty of containing it.

The World Health Organisation is reconvening experts on Thursday to assess whether the outbreak should be declared a global emergency.

The virus has infected more people in China than were sickened there during the 2002-2003 SARS outbreak, another type of coronavirus.

Thursday’s figures for mainland China cover the previous 24 hours and represent an increase of 38 deaths and 1,737 cases for a total of 7,711. Of the new deaths, 37 were in Hubei province, of which Wuhan is the capital, and one in the southwestern province of Sichuan.

Three of Japan’s confirmed cases were among a group of evacuees who returned on a governmentchartered flight from Wuhan on Wednesday. Japan’s foreign ministry said a second flight carrying 210 Japanese evacuees landed Thursday at Tokyo’s Haneda airport. Reports said nine of those aboard the flight showed signs of cough

● and fever.

Philippine health officials say a woman who travelled to the country from Wuhan via Hong Kong had tested positive.

A flight arranged between the European Union and China departed Portugal en route to China to bring back 350 Europeans from the affected area. The United States said additional flights were planned for around Monday, after it evacuated 195 Americans from

Wuhan on Wednesday. They are being tested and monitored at a Southern California military base.

New Zealand, Australia, Singapore and other countries are also trying to get out their citizens.

Taiwan, the self-governing republic China considers its own territory, has also asked to be able to repatriate its passport holders from Wuhan, but it and the United Kingdom said they were awaiting approval from Beijing.

Israel’s El Al, Spain’s Iberia and Korean Air joined the growing list of airlines suspending or reducing service to China.

Chinese authorities are “stepping up efforts to ensure continuous supply and stable prices,” Xinhua reported.

Beijing, Jan. 30: China ordered its farmers to ramp up food production Thursday following days of rising prices, with agricultural supplies disrupted by a deadly viral outbreak. The government in Beijing has taken extraordinary steps to combat the spread of the new coronavirus, restricting transport across the country and effectively locking down more than 50 million people in Hubei province, the epicentre of the disease.

But officials said some local initiatives, such as roadblocks to stop travel between provinces, had also obstructed produce supply chains. “This has caused vegetables and other products... to be unable to leave the villages and reach cities, as well as difficulty in replenishing the feed for livestock and poultry in time,” the agriculture, transport and public security ministries said in a joint statement. It said feed producers should “speed up” production to meet demand for animal feed, and slaughterhouses needed to “increase the effective supply of livestock and poultry products”.

The notice came as the China Shouguang vegetable price index, a daily benchmark of national produce costs, surged to its highest level in almost four years, Xinhua reported. Food prices were already under pressure after African swine fever raced through the pig herds, pushing up pork prices by 97 percent on-year in December.