Warning as virus crosses globe
Chinese officials have warned that any citizens found covering up information about the country’s deadly coronavirus will be ‘‘nailed on a pillar of shame for eternity’’, as the US confirmed its first case and Asian countries increased their screening.
Authorities are urging people in the southeastern city of Wuhan to avoid crowds and public gatherings, after warning that the virus could spread further.
The number of new cases has risen sharply in China, the centre of the outbreak. There were 440 confirmed cases as of yesterday in 13 jurisdictions, said Li Bin, deputy director of the National Health Commission.
Nine people have died, all in Hubei province, since the outbreak emerged in its provincial capital Wuhan late last month.
‘‘There has already been human-tohuman transmission and infection of medical workers,’’ Li said at a news conference with health experts. ‘‘Evidence has shown that the disease has been transmitted through the respiratory tract, and there is the possibility of viral mutation.’’
The illness comes from a newly identified type of coronavirus, a family of viruses that can cause the common cold as well as more serious illnesses such as the severe acute respiratory syndrome (Sars) outbreak that spread from China to more than a dozen countries in 2002-03 and killed about 800 people.
Authorities in Thailand yesterday confirmed four cases, a Thai national and three Chinese visitors. Japan, South Korea, the US and Taiwan have all reported one case each. All are people from Wuhan or who recently travelled there.
‘‘The situation is under control here,’’ said Thai Public Health Minister Anutin Charnvirakul, adding that there were no reports of the infection spreading to others.
Travel agencies that organise trips to North Korea said the country had banned foreign tourists because of the outbreak. North Korea also closed its borders in 2003 during the Sars scare.
Other countries have stepped up screening measures for travellers from China. Worries have been heightened by the coming of the Lunar New Year holiday rush, when millions of Chinese travel at home and abroad.
A World Health Organisation panel was due to meet to determine if the outbreak should be deemed an international health emergency.
The agency has used the label only a handful of times, including during the H1N1 (or swine flu) pandemic of 2009, and the current long-running Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
In a bid to head off accusations that the government has failed to be transparent about the disease, the Chinese political body responsible for law and order warned citizens and lower-level officials against hiding new cases.
‘‘Anyone who puts the face of politicians before the interests of the people will be the sinner of a millennium,’’ it said in a social media post.
With information slow to trickle out of China, memories of the Chinese Government’s attempts to cover up the Sars outbreak in 2002-03 have resurfaced.
Yesterday, a traveller from China was diagnosed in Seattle with the Wuhan coronavirus, according to the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
The man, in his 30s, was in a good condition and was not considered a threat to medical staff or the public, health officials said.
Screening of passengers from Wuhan has been under way at New York City’s Kennedy airport, and Los Angeles and San Francisco airports. Yesterday the CDC announced that it would add Chicago’s O’Hare airport and Atlanta’s airport to the list later this week. – Telegraph Group, AP