Coronavirus cases top 20K
Mainland’s death toll reaches 425
BEIJING — China said Tuesday the number of infections from a new virus surpassed 20,000 as medical workers and patients arrived at a new hospital and President Xi Jinping said “we have launched a people’s war of prevention of the epidemic.”
Mr. Xi presided over a special meeting of the top Communist Party body for the second time since the crisis started, telling the Politburo standing committee on Monday the country must race against time to curb the spread of the virus. He also said those who neglect their duties will be punished, state broadcaster CCTV reported.
Hong Kong on Tuesday reported its first death from the illness, a man who had traveled from the mainland city of Wuhan that has been the epicenter of the outbreak. The semi-autonomous territory shut almost all of its land and sea border crossings with the mainland at midnight after medical workers began a strike demanding the border be closed completely. More than 2,000 hospital workers went on strike Monday, and their union has threatened a bigger walkout Tuesday.
Hong Kong was hit hard by SARS, or severe acute respiratory syndrome, in 2002-03, an illness from the same family of viruses as the current outbreak and which many believe was intensified by official Chinese secrecy and obfuscation.
The mainland’s latest figures of 425 deaths and 20,438 confirmed infections with the new coronavirus were up from 361 deaths and 17,205 cases the previous day. Outside mainland China, at least 180 cases have been confirmed, including two fatalities, in Hong Kong and the Philippines.
Other countries are continuing evacuations and restricting the entry of Chinese or people who have recently traveled in the country. A plane carrying Malaysians from Wuhan, the capital of Hubei province where the illness has been concentrated, arrived in Kuala Lumpur on Tuesday morning, and the 133 people on board were to be screened and quarantined for 14 days, the maximum incubation period for the virus.
Medical teams from the People’s Liberation Army were arriving in Wuhan to relieve overwhelmed health workers and to staff the new 1,000-bed hospital. It was built in just 10 days, its prefabricated wards equipped with state-of-the-art medical equipment and ventilation systems.
A 1,500-bed hospital also specially built for patients infected with the new virus is due to open within days.
With no end to the outbreak in sight, authorities in Hubei and elsewhere extended the Lunar New Year holiday break, due to end this week, well into February to try to keep people at home and reduce the spread of the virus. All Hubei schools are postponing the start of the new semester until further notice.
Chinese scientists said they have more evidence the virus, which was first detected in Wuhan in December, likely originated in bats. In a study published in the journal Nature, Shi Zhen-Li and colleagues at the Wuhan Institute of Virology reported that genome sequences from seven patients were 96% identical to a bat coronavirus.
The coronavirus broke out at a seafood market in Wuhan that reportedly sold exotic animals for consumption — similar to the outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS. During the SARS outbreak, China had 349 deaths and 5,327 cases, according to the World Health Organization.
The World Health Organization last week declared the virus a global health emergency and expressed concern about how it was spreading in other countries, beyond those who were Chinese or who had traveled in Hubei recently.
Deutsche Presse-Agentur and The New York Times contributed.