Cases outside China ‘could be spark’ for virus spread: WHO
Second plane leaves to Canada as toll jumps
BEIJING/ GENEVA• The World Health Organization said on Monday the spread of coronavirus cases among people who have not been to China could be “the spark that becomes a bigger fire” and the human race must not let the epidemic get out of control.
There are over 40,000 confirmed cases in China and 909 deaths, as well as 319 cases in 24 other countries, including one death, WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on Monday.
The death toll from the epidemic had jumped by 97 on Sunday — the largest number in a single day since the virus was detected in the Wuhan in December.
A second Canadian plane left the quarantined region of Hubei, China, on Monday bearing more Canadians who have asked to return from the centre of the outbreak, the government says.
Foreign Affairs Minister François- Philippe Champagne said there was room for about 200 passengers aboard. The plane is bringing back the last group of Canadians who want to be repatriated, said Champagne, who is travelling with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in Africa and the Middle East.
There were 236 Canadians hoping to board the plane as Chinese authorities try to contain the spread, Canadian officials said Sunday.
The government plans to unite the latest batch of evacuees with the 213 Canadians and their families who left Wuhan last week, and who are already under a mandatory quarantine at CFB Trenton in Ontario.
But they might not be staying in the same modern accommodations as those who arrived last week, Canada’s chief public health officer, Dr. Theresa Tam, warned in a briefing Monday.
While most evacuees are in rooms in the Yukon Lodge, a motel on the base, some of the new arrivals will be put up in Hastings Hall, which was built in 1934. Each room has a sink but washrooms are shared and will need to be cleaned frequently to make sure quarantine protocols are followed, Tam said.
Public health officials and Canadian Forces personnel are working to make the rooms as comfortable as possible, including installing wireless internet access.
Elsewhere, the Diamond Princess cruise ship with 3,700 passengers and crew on board remained quarantined in the Japanese port of Yokohama, with 65 more cases detected, taking the number of confirmed cases from the vessel to 135.
The ship has strictly confined passengers to their cabins since last Wednesday. They face a total lockdown until Feb. 19 and are only allowed to exercise on deck for 1.5 hours a day in small groups.
Britain said on Monday the number of confirmed coronavirus cases had doubled to eight as the government declared the virus a serious and imminent threat, giving it additional powers to isolate those suspected of being infected.
The new cases in England were all known contacts of a previously confirmed British patient in France, and were identified by public health officials working to trace possible cases.
“We now know the new cases announced today are all closely linked to one another,” Public Health England Medical Director Yvonne Doyle said in a statement. “Two of these new cases are health care workers.”
“As soon as they were identified, we advised them to self- isolate in order to keep patient contact to a minimum. We are now working urgently to identify all patients and other health care workers who may have come into close contact, and at this stage we believe this to be a relatively small number.”
The BBC reported a doctors’ practice in the English city of Brighton had been temporarily closed after a staff member tested positive for coronavirus.
Across mainland China, where people were trickling back to work after an extended Lunar New Year holiday, 3,062 new infections were confirmed on Sunday, according to the National Health Commission.
Wu Fan, vice- dean of Shanghai Fudan University Medical school, said there was hope of a turning point. But Ghebreyesus said there had been “concerning instances” of transmission from people who had not been to China.
“It could be the spark that becomes a bigger fire,” Ghebreyesus said in Geneva.