As more stores reopen, streets still quiet in China
BEIJING — More offices and stores in Beijing and other parts of China finally reopened Monday after the Lunar New Year break was extended to discourage travel and contain the new coronavirus, but many workers and shoppers appeared to stay home.
Public health authorities are watching closely to see whether the return to business worsens the spread of the virus, which has infected more than 40,000 people globally and killed more than 1,000, with the vast majority of cases in China.
Even before the slow and cautious reopening, China on Monday reported a rise in new cases, dimming optimism that the near-quarantine of some 60 million people and other diseasecontrol measures might be working.
Britain, meanwhile, declared the virus a “serious and imminent threat to public health” and said it would forcibly detain infected people if necessary. France tested scores of children and their parents after five British tourists contracted the virus at a ski resort.
The director-general of the World Health Organization said the agency is still unable to predict where the outbreak is heading but that he believes there is still an opportunity to contain it.
“In recent days, we have seen some concerning instances of onward transmission from people with no travel history to China, like the cases reported in France yesterday and the U.K. today,” said Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. “The detection of the small number of cases could be the spark that becomes a bigger fire, but for now, it’s only a spark.”
In Beijing, China’s powerful but recently aloof leader toured several public places Monday afternoon to oversee efforts to contain the coronavirus outbreak, according to a flurry of reports in the state media.
Xi Jinping, whose most recent public appearance came during a meeting with Cambodia’s prime minister last week, traveled first to a neighborhood roughly 5 miles north of his residence near the Forbidden City and toured a local government office.
He later visited a city hospital, where he took part in a video conference with officials and workers at a hospital in Wuhan, the city at the center of the outbreak more than 600 miles to the south.
Xi, wearing a powder blue surgical mask, declared Wuhan “a city of heroes,” according to a commentator on CCTV’s flagship nightly news program. He also called the outbreak a “people’s war.”
“We must have confidence that we will win,” he said in one of the video calls.
Meanwhile, Japan said an additional 65 cases were found aboard a cruise ship quarantined in Yokohama, near Tokyo, raising the total to 135.
Health Minister Katsunobu Kato said the Japanese government was considering testing all 3,700 or so passengers and crew members on the Diamond Princess, which would require them to remain aboard until results were available. Health authorities are scrambling to deliver medicine requested by more than 600 passengers.