China freezes travel to halt virus

● China, struggling to contain rising public anger over its response to a spreading coronavirus, took unprecedented steps to slow the outbreak, restricting travel for 40million people on the eve of Lunar New Year.

The government ordered travel agencies to suspend sales of domestic and international package tours after imposing transport curbs on cities near the centre of the outbreak.

The turmoil comes as the virus stymies efforts to track infected patients. While the death toll continues to rise, some infected patients aren’t showing a fever, a symptom governments around the world have been using to screen for the pathogen.

The pressure is rising on China as it tries to come to grips with a disease that some fear could rival severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), which 17 years ago claimed almost 800 lives.

While global experts have mostly praised efforts to contain the virus, Chinese citizens are anxious as travel restrictions grow to encompass a population bigger than Australia.

Public events to mark the new year were cancelled, Shanghai Disneyland said it was closing indefinitely and cinema chains were shut. The halt to activity comes during what is usually a peak period for spending, putting China’s economic stabilisation at risk. Chinese consumption, a key growth driver in an economy transitioning from investment, is set to take a blow from the coronavirus outbreak that hit just as millions of people set out on vacation, S&P Global Ratings said.

“This is unprecedented in China, and maybe even in the history of modern health,” said Yanzhong Huang, director of the Centre for Global Health Studies at Seton Hall University in New Jersey, of the widening travel restrictions.

The death toll had risen to 25 by Friday, though the World Health Organisation stopped short of calling the virus a global emergency. Confirmed cases in mainland China rose to more than 800 as of Thursday.

Patients with the infection have been found across Asia, including Singapore, Japan and South Korea. The US has reported two cases.

Chinese tourists spent $130bn (about R1.9-trillion) overseas in 2018, so the restriction on package tours could have significant economic ramifications elsewhere.

In China, what should have been a day of celebration and reunion was coloured by growing panic and anger.

Local media issued sharp criticisms of the slow response from officials in Hubei province, whose capital city is Wuhan, the centre of the outbreak.

Rumours have spread on social media, encompassing everything from a shortage of hospital beds to the spraying of disinfectant from planes.

The ruling Communist Party is anxious to avoid a repeat of SARS, during which it was criticised for initially covering up the scale of the problem.

Public health experts gathered by the WHO to review the situation were split over whether they should recommend declaring a public health crisis of international concern, and instead opted to continue monitoring the outbreak.

“Make no mistake, this is an emergency in China, but it has not yet become a global health emergency,” WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said at a briefing in Geneva on Thursday. “It may yet become one.”

Chinese consumption is set to take a blow from the coronavirus outbreak

S&P Global Ratings