San Diego Union-Tribune (Sunday)
NEW INFECTIONS CLIMB AS WORLD FIGHTS VIRUS
South Korea and China both reported a rise in new coronavirus cases today, as the South Korean prime minister warned that the fastspreading outbreak linked to a local church and a hospital in the country’s southeast had entered a “more grave stage.”
The death toll in Iran climbed to six, the highest outside China, and a dozen towns in northern Italy effectively went into lockdown as authorities tested hundreds of people who came into contact with an estimated 79 confirmed cases there. Two people have died in Italy.
The Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said that 113 of the 120 new cases were reported in the fourth-largest city of Daegu and surrounding areas. The agency said 70 of them are linked to a branch of the Shincheonji church in Daegu, which has become the biggest cluster of viral infections in the country, which now has a total of 556 cases.
Mainland China reported 648 new infections for a total of 76,936. The daily death toll fell slightly to 97. In all, 2,442 people have died in the country from COVID-19, the disease caused by the new coronavirus.
The number of new Chinese cases has seesawed daily but remained fewer than 1,000 for the past four days. Several changes to how the infections are counted, however, have made it difficult to draw conclusions from the figures.
The central Chinese city of Wuhan and other parts of Hubei province, where the outbreak first emerged in December, remain under lockdown. More than 80 percent of the country’s cases are in Hubei.
China’s Politburo, made up of senior officials of the ruling Communist Party, cautioned Friday that while the epidemic has been “preliminarily contained,” the country has yet to see a turning point.
Officials signaled that regular activities should gradually resume after the virus prompted an extension of last month’s Lunar New Year holiday. Many workplaces have opted to have their employees work remotely, and schools are conducting online classes in place of physical ones.
The Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said a male patient hospitalized at Cheongdo city, near Daegu, died today, the country’s fourth fatality. He was believed to be 57 years old, but no other details on him were made available.
On Saturday night, Prime Minister Chung Sye-kyun said in a nationally televised address that the virus outbreak had entered “a more grave stage” and repeated that the government is making all-out efforts to contain the further spread of the disease. Chung also said his government will sternly deal with any acts that hamper national quarantine efforts.
Globally, nearly 78,000 people have been infected in 29 countries. In some countries, some virus clusters have shown no direct link to travel to China.
A team of global experts with the World Health Organization is on the way to China’s Wuhan, the epicenter of the outbreak, WHO Director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said Saturday. It has been visiting other parts of China this week.