China expands its mass roundup of possible virus carriers to stamp out epidemic.
China’s leaders expanded a mass roundup of people possibly sickened with the coronavirus Thursday, widening their dragnet well beyond the epicenter of the outbreak to at least two more cities in what the government has called a “wartime” campaign to stamp out the epidemic.
But the campaign, first announced last week in the city of Wuhan, already has been marred by chaotic conditions that have isolated vulnerable patients without adequate care and, in some cases, left them alone to die.
The expansion of the decree to “round up everyone who should be rounded up” in the Wuhan area of central China has deepened the nation’s anxiety.
In their zeal to execute the edict, officials in Wuhan, a metropolis of 11 million, have haphazardly seized patients who have not yet tested positive for the coronavirus, in some cases herding them onto buses with no protective measures where they risked infection from others, their relatives said.
After that, patients have been sent to makeshift medical facilities that don’t provide the support they need to recover. With little to no dedicated medical staff on hand to help, some patients die.
A sudden spike in new cases could make the situation worse. Officials in Hubei province announced Thursday that they had expanded the criteria for counting new infections to include diagnoses by doctors based on a chest scan and symptoms, rather than a more complicated test. The tally from the outbreak surged as a result, with the province adding nearly 15,000 cases and 242 deaths in a single day.
The surge continued Friday when Hubei officials disclosed about 4,800 new cases and 112 additional deaths.
In other developments Thursday:
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the United States said a person under quarantine at a military base in San Antonio had tested positive for the virus, bringing the total number of confirmed cases in the U.S. to 15.
In Japan, health officials announced the first death from the virus in the country, a woman in her 80s in Kanagawa prefecture, which includes Yokohama, where more than 200 passengers on a quarantined cruise ship have been infected by the coronavirus.
Hundreds of cruise ship passengers long stranded at sea by virus fears cheered as they finally disembarked Friday and were welcomed to Cambodia by the nation’s authoritarian leader, who handed them flowers. Prime Minister Hun Sen agreed to let the Westerdam dock at the port of Sihanoukville after Thailand, Japan, Taiwan and the Philippines had barred the ship earlier. The Westerdam was unwelcome elsewhere even though operator Holland America Line said no cases of the
COVID19 viral illness have been confirmed among its 1,455 passengers and 802 crew members.
Beijing announced that both Wuhan and Hubei’s provincial Communist Party chiefs were fired and replaced with officials known for “stability maintenance” and closely allied with President Xi Jinping, the Los Angeles Times reported.
A John Hopkins University database showed a worldwide total of 64,437 infections and 1,383 deaths.