WHO calls for calm; toll now 106
BEIJING: The head of the World Health Organisation said yesterday he is confident in China’s ability to contain a new coronavirus that has killed 106 people and he called for calm, saying he did not think foreigners should be evacuated, Chinese media reported.
As concern mounted about the impact of the coronavirus on the world’s secondbiggest economy, Chinese authorities reported a surge in cases, while the United States warned citizens against travel to China and financial markets wilted.
Although cases of the flulike virus have appeared in more countries, Germany, Sri Lanka and Cambodia being the latest, none of the 106 deaths has been outside China, and all but six have been in the central city of Wuhan, where the virus emerged last month.
The head of the WHO, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, in a meeting with State Councillor Wang Yi in Beijing, said he approved of the Government’s measures to curb the outbreak, the Xinhua state news agency said.
A WHO panel of 16 independent experts twice last week declined to declare an international emergency over the outbreak.
While more cases have been emerging outside China in people who have travelled from there recently, the WHO said only one of the overseas cases involved humantohuman transmission.
Wuhan, a city of 11 million in Hubei province, where the virus apparently jumped from an animal in a market where wildlife was illegally sold, has been all but put under quarantine, thee being a lockdown on almost all transport.
Tens of millions of others in Hubei live under some form of travel curbs set up to try and stifle the virus before it can radiate out across China and beyond.
Yesterday’s toll of 106 dead was up from 81 the day before. The number of confirmed cases in China surged to 4515 from 2835 the previous day, the National Health Commission said.
Global stocks fell again as oil prices hit threemonth lows, and China’s yuan currency dipped to its weakest in 2020, as investors worried about damage to the economy from travel bans over the Lunar New Year holiday period, which China extended in a bid to keep people isolated at home.
A growing number of countries have said they would evacuate their citizens from Wuhan.
Officially known as ‘‘2019nCoV’’, the coronavirus can cause deadly pneumonia, but it is too early to know just how dangerous it is and how easily it spreads.
Some health experts question whether China can contain it.
Chinese health officials say the incubation period could range from one to 14 days, and the virus is infectious during that time. The WHO estimated an incubation period of two to 10 days.
Authorities in Hubei, home to nearly 60 million people, have been the focus of public outrage on China’s heavily censored social media over what many see as a bungled initial response to the virus. — Reuters