Brazil confirms coronavirus has spread to Latin America
Brazil’s Health Ministry yesterday confirmed the first case of coronavirus in Latin America, after a Sao Paulo hospital recorded a positive test on a man, 61, who recently visited Italy.
Health Minister Luiz Henrique Mandetta said that the government had already taken measures to tackle the epidemic prior to its arrival in Brazil.
On Tuesday, the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention in the United States tweeted a warning that the disease, officially known as Covid-19, would probably spread across the US before long.
“Now is the time for US businesses, hospitals, and communities to begin preparing for the possible spread of Covid-19. CDC continues to work with business, education and healthcare sectors, encouraging employers to be prepared.”
Dr Nancy Messonnier, director of the National Centre for Immunisation and Respiratory Diseases, said “it’s not so much of a question of if this will happen any more but rather more a question of exactly when it will happen.”
Stock markets in the US plummeted shortly after the Brazil announcement.
Worldwide economic growth is forecast at 2.9 per cent this year, close to decade lows, as geopolitical uncertainties and the emergence of the deadly virus are expected to dampen a rise in confidence and investments, the Economist Intelligence Unit said yesterday.
“The global economic impact of the coronavirus outbreak is set to be more profound than that of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, owing to the much larger role that China plays in the global economy today,” said Agathe Demarais, the EIU’s global forecasting director. “Disruption of international trade will become entrenched as supply chains are diverted from China.”
Dozens of countries have now announced cases of coronavirus as authorities scramble to stop the spread of infection and scientists race to find a cure. In Europe, Asia and the Middle East, strict containment measures led to towns being cordoned off and people kept under quarantine after coming into contact with the infection.
On Monday, Oman, Iraq, Afghanistan, Kuwait and Bahrain confirmed their first cases of coronavirus, with increases in the number of infections announced over the subsequent days. All involved people who had travelled from Iran.
Gulf states suspended connections with Iran, which is linked to the majority of more than 210 cases of the virus now spread across the Middle East.
The national infection tally is 139 with 19 deaths from the disease, Iranian state TV reported yesterday, the deadliest outbreak outside China.
Schools, universities and cultural and entertainment centres across the country have been closed. President Hassan Rouhani said yesterday that it may take “one, two or three weeks” to get control of the virus.
Workers in the capital Tehran disinfected mass-transit buses and the capital’s normally busy underground metro system.
Yesterday, Greece announced a woman tested positive after returning from Italy.
The country reported a 45-per-cent one-day increase in infections as Austria, Croatia and Switzerland announced their first cases on Tuesday.
The three countries said the cases involved people who had travelled to Italy, which reported 12 deaths and 374 cases of the virus.
The deaths have been among elderly patients who suffered from other ailments, Italian officials said. Most are concentrated in the country’s north.
“Viruses don’t know borders and they don’t stop at them,” Health Minister Roberto Speranza said at the start of a crisis meeting with World Health Organisation and European Union representatives in Rome.
A hotel in the Canary Islands was put under quarantine after an Italian couple from the country’s hard-hit north tested positive. A guest in the hotel said it felt like being “monkeys in a cage”.
France, Germany and Spain also reported cases involving people who have recently been to Italy.
Italian Premier Giuseppe Conte defended measures taken by Italian health services to contain the outbreak and predicted a stabilising of numbers soon. But he acknowledged that the rise in cases – the most outside Asia – was worrisome.
“Obviously I can’t say I’m not worried because I don’t want anyone to think we’re underestimating this emergency,” he said before a meeting with a visiting World Health Organisation mission.
“But we trust that with the measures we’ve implemented there will be a containing effect in the coming days.”
Italy closed schools, museums and theatres in the two regions where clusters formed and troops are enforcing quarantines around 10 towns in Lombardy and the centre of the Veneto cluster, Vo’Euganeo.
In South Korea, workers sanitised public buses, while in China, banks disinfected banknotes using ultraviolet rays. In Germany, authorities stressed “sneezing etiquette” while in the United States, doctors announced a clinical trial of a possible coronavirus treatment.
Around the world, events were cut short or cancelled to prevent the spread of infection, with Japan calling off the football league and Italy closing the Venice Carnival. Religious ceremonies were also affected.
As Christians marked the start of Lent with Ash Wednesday, they found churches closed and congregations wearing face masks.
Services in Singapore were broadcast online to keep people from crowded sanctuaries and bishops in South Korea closed churches for what they said was the first time in the Catholic Church’s 236-year history there.
Yesterday, South Korea reported more than 100 new cases of coronavirus, raising the total number of infections to 1,261.
More than 81,000 people have now been infected with coronavirus, which originated at an animal market in Wuhan, China.
While the infection rate is slowing in mainland China, around the world the number of new cases is increasing.
The WHO called for countries to “prepare for a potential pandemic” as the virus spreads across continents.
Iran is linked to the majority of more than 210 confirmed cases of the virus now spread across the Middle East
European nations suggested that the mechanism meant to ease the effect of US sanctions on Iran could help Tehran as it grapples with a major coronavirus outbreak.
Germany, France and Britain met the other signatories to Iran’s nuclear deal in Vienna yesterday. An official communique noted that the meeting took place against the backdrop of a developing coronavirus crisis in Iran, as well as in China.
In the same statement, the parties noted that the financial Instex mechanism, designed to funnel humanitarian and medical essentials to Iran around the sanctions barrier, was close to processing its first transactions.
“Participants welcomed positive developments in the processing of the first transactions by Instex,” the commission said after the meeting. The talks, which were chaired by the EU’s foreign affairs chief Josep Borrell, placed the discussions in the context of the health crisis in Iran as the coronavirus spreads.
In Iran, the nation in the Middle East hit hardest by the coronavirus, there have been 139 recorded cases of the disease and 19 deaths.
Yesterday, Iran’s deputy foreign minister Abbas Araghchi tweeted to say that the virus had hit the country harder than US sanctions.
“The American economic sanctions were not – and will not be – as effective as a Covid-19 virus,” he said.
The European Leadership Network had suggested that Instex could allow Tehran to bypass US sanctions and elevate its reliance on WHO support.
“Instex can be used to ensure Iran remains able to make payments to European suppliers and receive speedy and reliable deliveries of the equipment necessary to deal with the coronavirus outbreak,” the think tank in London said.
European nations, with China and Russia, redoubled their efforts to resuscitate the faltering Iran nuclear deal at the meeting in Vienna.
The signatories discussed their efforts to revive the deal.
The 2015 deal has been on life support since 2018 when the US unilaterally withdrew from the accord. The relationship between Tehran and Washington has steadily deteriorated in the intervening months as a result of the US “maximum pressure” policy on Iran and the imposition of sanctions.
Relations reached a nadir at the start of this year after the US assassination of Iranian military leader Qassem Suleimani in Iraq. Europe has sought to act as an intermediary between the two nations.
However, in response to Iran’s regular flouting of the limits of the nuclear deal, Germany, France and Britain triggered the deal’s dispute resolution mechanism in January.
The move, which could lead to new UN sanctions on Iran, had been aimed at bringing the country back within the confines of the deal after Iran suspended all limits on the production of enriched uranium.
The material can be used to make reactor fuel, but also nuclear weapons.
Senior Research Fellow at the Netherlands Institute of International Relations Erwin van Veen, told The National that Iran and the European nations, were sticking with the deal owing to a lack of better options.
“There is nothing better on offer from the European perspective.
“They don’t like the US policy line because it may lead to regional conflict and it also puts Iran in a place where nothing will move because there is just too much pressure,” he said.