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The virus has infected almost 10,000 people globally in just two months, a troublesome sign of its spread that prompted the World Health Organization to declare the outbreak a global emergency. The death toll stood at 213, including 43 new fatalities, all in China.
Quarantine
U.S. health officials issued a two-week quarantine order for the 195 Americans evacuated earlier this week from the Chinese city of Wuhan, the epicenter of the outbreak, who are now in California. It was the first time a federal quarantine has been ordered since the 1960s.
Markets
Stocks fell sharply Friday amid rising concern that the spread of the virus will slam global economic growth. The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped more than 600 points, wiping out its January gains.
The number of confirmed coronavirus cases has gone up more than tenfold in a week, and Chinese officials Friday reported the highest death toll in a 24-hour period.
■ Forty-three more deaths in China were announced, bringing the toll to 213.
■ Nearly 2,000 new cases were recorded in the country in the past 24 hours, raising the worldwide total to nearly 9,800, according to Chinese and World Health Organization data. The vast majority of the cases are inside China; about 100 cases have been confirmed in 19 other countries.
■ Tibet has reported its first confirmed case. This means that all of China’s provinces and territories have now been touched by the outbreak.
■ Countries and territories that have confirmed cases: Thailand, Japan, Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan, Australia, Malaysia, Macao, Russia, France, the United States, South Korea, Germany, the United Arab Emirates, Canada, Britain, Vietnam, Italy, India, the Philippines, Nepal, Cambodia, Sri Lanka and Finland.
■ Cases recorded in Thailand, Taiwan, Germany, Vietnam, Japan, France and the United States involved patients who had not been to China. No deaths have been reported outside China.
Americans evacuated from Wuhan quarantined
The U.S. government has imposed a federal quarantine on 195 people who were evacuated Wednesday from Wuhan, China, to a California military base, officials said Friday.
The action means that the group will be held at March Air Reserve Base in Riverside, California, for 14 days, to ensure that its members are not infected with the Wuhan coronavirus that has sickened more than 9,800 people in China and killed more than 200.
First two confirmed cases in Britain
On Friday, Britain’s chief medical officer, Chris Whitty, said that two residents had tested positive for coronavirus, the first known cases in the country.
In a statement, Whitty said the patients were members of the same family.
“The NHS is extremely well prepared and used to managing infections,” Whitty said. “We are already working rapidly to identify any contacts the patients had, to prevent further spread.”
The announcement came as a flight carrying 83 British and 27 foreign nationals from Wuhan, China, the center of the outbreak, landed in Britain on Friday afternoon.
The Britons were to be quarantined at Arrowe Park Hospital in Wirral, in northwest England, according to the BBC. The others will be flown on to Spain.
China to evacuate Wuhan residents from foreign countries
As foreign governments evacuated their citizens from China this week, the government of China said it was arranging chartered flights to bring Wuhan residents who were overseas back to the epicenter of the outbreak.
Citing the “practical difficulties recently encountered” by residents abroad, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement Friday that evacuations would begin as soon as possible.
The decision to facilitate people’s return came after Wuhan’s mayor revealed that 5 million people had left the city last week before the Lunar New Year holiday, before travel restrictions were enforced.
Travel restrictions across China and the suspension of flights to the country have left Chinese travelers stranded around the world.