Coronavirus makes way into prisons
129 passengers from cruise ship back in Canada
BEIJING/SEOUL • The coronavirus has infected hundreds of people in Chinese prisons, authorities said on Friday, contributing to a jump in reported cases beyond the epicentre in Hubei province, including 100 more in South Korea.
A total of 234 infections among Chinese prisoners outside Hubei ended 16 straight days of declines in new mainland cases.
Another 271 cases were reported in prisons in Hubei — where the virus first emerged in December in its now locked-down capital, Wuhan — though provincial officials did not say when they had been diagnosed.
State television quoted Communist Party rulers as saying the outbreak had not yet peaked, and more than 30 cases in a hospital in Beijing highlighted a sharp jump in the tally there.
Total cases in the Chinese capital of the coronavirus — known as COVID-19 — were at 396 with four deaths, out of an official mainland toll of 75,400 cases and 2,236 deaths.
The World Health Organization warned that the window of opportunity to contain the international spread of the epidemic was closing after cases were reported in Iran and Lebanon.
The virus has emerged in 26 countries and territories outside mainland China, killing 11 people, according to a Reuters tally.
“This outbreak could go in any direction,” World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in Geneva. “If we do well, we can avert any serious crisis, but if we squander the opportunity then we will have a serious problem on our hands.”
Chinese Vice Science and Technology Minister Xu Nanping said China’s earliest vaccine would be submitted for clinical trials around late April. That timetable is in line with research in other countries, and a WHO estimate of a vaccine reaching the market in about 18 months.
South Korea is the latest hot spot with 100 new cases taking its total to 204, most in Daegu, a city of 2.5 million, where scores were infected in what authorities called a “super-spreading event” at a church.
Another centre of infection has been the Diamond Princess cruise ship held under quarantine in Japan since Feb. 3. Japan reported the deaths of two elderly passengers Thursday, the first fatalities from aboard the ship where more than 630 cases account for the biggest cluster of infection outside China.
Meanwhile, a plane carrying 129 Canadians and their families who have spent weeks confined to the ship arrived in Canada on Friday and were taken to Cornwall, Ont., about 100 km southeast of Ottawa, where they are under quarantine.
Of the roughly 250 Canadians aboard the ship, 47 contracted the illness and are being treated in Japan.