11, March 2020
COVID-19: China reports new infections; Turkey, Bolivia confirm 1st cases 0
China has reported an increase in its new confirmed cases of coronavirus infection, reversing four consecutive days of decreases, and more countries are reporting their first infections.
Chinese health officials on Wednesday reported 24 new cases of COVID-19 infection and 22 deaths in mainland China over the previous 24 hours.
China’s National Health Commission said that of the new infections, 10 were imported cases, bringing the overall cases from abroad to 79.
Those figures bring China’s totals to 80,778 infections and 3,158 deaths since the outbreak emerged in Wuhan, the provincial capital of Hubei, in December last year.
Officials reported just 13 new infections in Wuhan — a city of 11 million people — on Tuesday.
Wuhan and several other cities had been under lockdown to prevent the spread of the virus. Amid the decreases in tallies over the past days, a few cities in Hubei started to loosen restrictions on the movement of people and goods. But, at least one reversed that decision as new increases emerged on Tuesday.
The outbreak of the new coronavirus continues to grow in other countries, and some nations have reported their fist cases.
According to the latest figures from John Hopkins University, 98 out of the 195 countries in the world have so far reported cases of the coronavirus.
More than 4,200 people have died of COVID-19 across the world, and more than 113,000 people have also been infected, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). About 64,000 people have also recovered from the illness, globally.
Turkey reports first case
Turkey announced its first case of the new coronavirus infection on Wednesday.
The patient is a male who had returned from Europe, Health Minister Fahrettin Koca said, without providing further personal information, citing the patient’s right to privacy.
Koca said the patient was isolated and his family members and other people who had come into contact with him had been quarantined.
Bolivia detects first cases
The coronvirus has also reached South America, with Bolivia reporting its first two cases on Tuesday.
Health Minister Anibal Cruz said the patients were two women over 60 years of age who arrived in the country from Italy initially without symptoms of the disease.
Panama registers first death
Meanwhile, Panama’s Health Ministry confirmed the country’s first death from the coronavirus, along with seven new cases of infection in the Central American nation.
South Korea reports jump in new cases
South Korea, the worst-hit country after China, reported a jump in new cases on Wednesday, after health officials detected a cluster of viral infections at an insurance company in the capital, Seoul.
The Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Wednesday reported 242 new cases of coronavirus infection from the past 24 hours, bringing its total to 7,755.
Europe
In Europe, Italy has been hit the worst by the new coronavirus, with more than 10,000 infections and 631 deaths so far.
Authorities have imposed drastic quarantine measures to contain the spread of the pathogen.
Trains, planes, and vehicles leaving the country faced new restrictions on Tuesday; and many other countries, including Spain and Portugal, suspended air traffic to and from Italy for two weeks.
Austria, meanwhile, ordered a halt to flights and trains from Italy; and Slovenia said it would impose controls at its border with the country.
British Airways said on Tuesday it had canceled Italian flights. Air France and some low-cost carriers said they would scrap flights from the country’s airports until early April as well.
Air Canada also suspended flights to Italy until at least May 1.
Source: Presstv
11, March 2020
WHO declares COVID-19 ‘a pandemic’, concerned by ‘alarming levels of inaction’ 0
The World Health Organization declared Wednesday that the global coronavirus crisis is now a pandemic, expressing increasing alarm about mounting infections.
“We are deeply concerned both by the alarming levels of spread and severity and by the alarming levels of inaction. We have therefore made the assessment that COVID-19 can be characterised as a pandemic,” WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told a news conference.
“All countries can still change the course of this pandemic. If countries detect, test, treat, isolate, trace and mobilize their people in the response,” Ghebreyesus said.
The novel coronavirus, which emerged in China in December, has spread around the world, halting industry, bringing flights to a standstill, closing schools and forcing the postponement of sporting events and concerts.
The WHO declared a public health emergency of international concern, its “highest level of alarm”, on January 30 when there were fewer than 100 cases of COVID-19 outside China and eight cases of human-to-human transmission of the disease.
Now there are more than 118,000 cases in 114 countries, and 4,291 people have died, Ghebreyesus said, with the numbers expected to climb.
The WHO no longer has a category for declaring a pandemic, except for influenza.
But WHO officials have signalled for weeks that they may use the word “pandemic” as a descriptive term, but stressed that it does not carry legal significance. The novel coronavirus is not the flu.
Under its previous system, the Geneva-based agency declared the 2009 H1N1 swine flu outbreak a pandemic. It turned out to be mild, leading to some criticism after pharmaceutical companies rushed development of vaccines and drugs.
(FRANCE 24 with AP and REUTERS)