Selasa, 04 Februari 2020

Wuhan coronavirus: Confirmed cases top 20,000 as China marks deadliest day - CNN

The total number of confirmed cases in China stands at 20,438 as of Tuesday morning, an increase of 3,235 on the previous day -- an over 18% jump. The death toll is now at 425 in China, an increase of around 65 from Sunday.
Outside of China, the prevalence of the virus remains far lower, but more than 185 cases have been reported in over two dozen countries and territories. Two people have died outside mainland China since the outbreak began. One in the Philippines, and another in the semi-autonomous Chinese city of Hong Kong, which reported on Tuesday that a 39-year-old man who had traveled to Wuhan last month had died.
In a meeting with top officials Monday, Chinese President Xi Jinping called the virus outbreak a "major test of China's system and capacity for governance," as the extended Lunar New Year holiday and growing concerns began to take a toll on the country's economy.
According to state media, Xi demanded "resolute opposition against bureaucratism and the practice of formalities for formalities' sake in the prevention work," adding that those who disobeyed would be punished. His comments could be an indication that frustration is growing over the failure to rein in the virus, and the slow initial response by Wuhan officials, some of whom have already offered to resign over their handling of the crisis.
Xi also called for an improvement in the country's emergency management system, an "overhaul of environmental sanitation," improvements to public health, and a "crackdown on illegal wildlife markets and trade."

Worldwide crisis

Even as cases of the virus are reported worldwide, the majority of patients have a link to China, either tourists or people returning home from a visit to the country. Person-to-person transmission of the virus has been confirmed, however, including among some patients overseas, and countries are scrambling to ensure it does not spread further afield.
On Monday, authorities in Japan quarantined a cruise ship at a port in Yokohama, south of Tokyo, after an elderly male passenger on the vessel was found to be infected with the virus when he disembarked in Hong Kong in late January.
Japanese health authorities said around 2,500 passengers and some 1,000 crew members are on board the Diamond Princess, which returned to Yokohama after stops in Hong Kong, Vietnam, Taiwan, and the Japanese prefectures of Okinawa and Kagoshima. At least seven people on board said they feel ill, though none have been confirmed to have the virus.
All passengers will be checked, authorities said, with the results expected Tuesday evening.
Japan is one of around a dozen countries which have evacuated citizens from Wuhan, which remains on tight lockdown along with much of surrounding Hubei province. Italy repatriated 56 nationals on Monday, as the US said it would send additional flights to evacuate hundreds of Americans who remain in Hubei.
Closer to China, the semi-autonomous city of Macao announced on Tuesday that it will suspend operations of gambling and related industries for half a month in an effort to contain the virus.
The outbreak has had a devastating impact on tourism in the gambling enclave, which relies heavily on mainland Chinese visitors. Gambling is illegal on the mainland and Lunar New Year is usually a particularly busy time for Macao's casinos. But not this year -- tourism to the city has dropped 73.6% year-on-year, the Macao government announced on January 29.
The self-governing island of Taiwan said on Tuesday that it will implement entry restrictions for foreign nationals who have been to China starting on Friday.
The restrictions mean that any foreign national who has visited or lived in mainland China in the past 14 days will be denied entry to Taiwan, barring exceptions for those needing to enter for "special reasons," according to the island's Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Hong Kong on Monday announced further closures to its borders with the mainland. All but three crossings, including the two busiest land borders, are now closed.
The announcement by the semiautonomous city's leader Carrie Lam came after health care workers began strike action Monday to demand the city be fully sealed off from the mainland. Memories of the deadly 2003 SARS outbreak run deep in Hong Kong, where many businesses have sent workers home to avoid spread of the virus. Unions said strike action will continue Tuesday unless further action is taken by Lam.

Economic pain

With the virus outbreak in its third month with no signs of slowing, cities across China have announced further efforts to try and stop it.
Hangzhou, the capital of eastern Zhejiang province, on Monday reportedly announced some of the tightest quarantine measures outside Hubei. People returning to the city from outside Hangzhou could face up to two weeks in quarantine, while all public places will be closed for the foreseeable future, according to local media.
The stringent restrictions and extended holidays across much of China are beginning to impact the country's economy, however. China's stock markets posted major losses on Monday, their first day open following the Lunar New Year break.
The losses on the Shanghai and Shenzhen markets wiped out a combined $445 billion in value. Monday was Shanghai's worst day since 2015, and Shenzhen's worst since 2007.
The value of the Chinese yuan also fell, while global oil prices have suffered amid fears that the virus outbreak will destroy demand in China, the world's largest crude importer.
Authorities in China have already announced a 1.2 trillion yuan ($173 billion) injection into Chinese markets to help maintain "reasonably ample liquidity" in the banking system and keep currency markets stable. The net amount of cash flooding into the market will be closer to 150 billion yuan ($22 billion), according to Reuters, as more than 1 trillion yuan worth of other short-term bond agreements matured Monday.
Hong Kong is also bracing for further difficulties. The city was already in a technical recession after more than six months of anti-government protests and the US-China trade war, and many analysts fear the effects of the virus could wipe out many businesses.
While the national economy is already suffering, it's unclear how long Chinese workers can remain at home, with many facing several weeks out of work since the beginning of the Lunar New Year holiday. Many migrant workers will have traveled home for the festival, potentially leaving them trapped in their provinces and unable to return to the east coast, where most major manufacturing areas are.

Treating the virus

Amid all the misery, there are some small signs of hope.
Officials in Thailand said Monday that a second patient has been treated with a new combination of HIV and flu drugs, after doctors said the cocktail had been successful in treating a 71-year-old woman from China with the virus. Officials have yet to provide an update on the success of the treatment for the second patient.
Thailand's Health Minister Anutin Charnvirakul told reporters that the 71-year-old had the most severe symptoms of all those in care in the country. While he cautioned against placing too much expectation on a tiny number of cases, Anutin said he hoped "other academic, medical or research institutions can take this treatment result and find more facts as much as they can do."
"And if it turned out the dosage and method of treatment we applied could cure every case, it will be beneficial to humanity, " Anutin added.
Gilead Sciences, a biopharmaceutical firm with an experimental antiviral drug called remdesivir that is used to treat the Ebola virus, said late Friday it is working with Chinese health authorities to see if the medication can combat the symptoms of coronavirus.
The company said in a statement that remdesivir has demonstrated some success in treating Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) and severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) -- two viruses similar to the Wuhan coronavirus -- in animals.
A purpose-built hospital dedicated to treating the virus also opened in Wuhan Monday. The institution was constructed in under a week, and a second is due to open Thursday. Both will only handle coronavirus patients, helping to take the pressure off the severely stretched Wuhan healthcare system.

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2020-02-04 07:54:00Z
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Senin, 03 Februari 2020

Coronavirus live updates: China says its death toll hits 425 as total cases rise to 20,438 - CNBC

Chinese residents line up to get a free protective mask at a local pharmacy on February 2, 2020 in Beijing, China.

Kevin Frayer | Getty Images

This is a live blog. Please check back for updates.

All times below are in Beijing time.

7:55 am: China confirms 64 additional deaths and 3,235 new cases

China's National Health Commission said there were an additional 64 deaths and 3,235 new confirmed cases. It said all of the additional deaths were in Hubei, where Wuhan is located. That brings the country's total to 425 deaths and 20,438 confirmed cases, the government said.

6:43 am: China's Hubei province confirms additional 64 deaths and 2,345 cases

The Hubei Provincial Health Committee confirmed an additional 64 deaths and 2,345 cases through the end of Monday. It confirmed that total cases have risen to 13,522 as the death toll in the province hits 414.

The province's capital, Wuhan, is considered the epicenter of the outbreak. Although other countries have reported their own cases, the vast majority are still located in China.

All times below are in Eastern time.

5 pm: Washington State patient has been treated and discharged

The coronavirus patient in Washington State has been treated and discharged from Providence Regional Medical Center in Everett, Washington, a spokeswoman from the Snohomish County Health District said. The patient is recovering in isolation at home, the spokeswoman said. "I am at home and continuing to get better," the patient, whose identity remains unknown, said in a statement. "I appreciate all of the concern expressed by members of the public, and I look forward to returning to my normal life."

4:43 pm: Goldman Sachs cancels annual partners meeting

Goldman Sachs canceled its annual partners meeting scheduled for this week because travel restrictions resulting from the coronavirus outbreak prevented some Asia-based employees from making it to the bank's New York headquarters, according to two people familiar with the plans. Chief Executive Officer David Solomon will instead host a townhall meeting for about 250 of the partners able to attend in New York, one of the people said.

4:38 pm: Prepping quarantine facilities for travelers from Hubei

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is now working with state and local health authorities to prepare facilities for quarantine. The Trump administration announced a mandatory 14-day quarantine on Friday for any American who has traveled to Hubei province in the two weeks prior to the announcement.

"The discussions about where those patients will go is a conversation the CDC has been having actively with the state and local health departments," Dr. Nancy Messonnier, director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, said Monday. "We are working through an operational plan that might be slightly different at each of those locations depending on how much preparation they've done."

There are currently 195 Americans in mandatory quarantine, according to health officials. But that number could grow.

For more coverage on the coronavirus, read the overnight blog from CNBC's U.S. team.

— CNBC's Berkeley Lovelace Jr. and William Feuer contributed to this report.

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2020-02-03 23:22:00Z
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Turkey suffers first deaths in direct combat with Syria since start of war - CNN

Nine other troops were also wounded in northwest Syria's Idlib province after they came under heavy artillery fire from the Syrian government Sunday, according to a Turkey defense department statement which added that the troops were reinforcements.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said up to 35 Syrian government soldiers had been killed Monday in response, and pledged further retaliation.
Children bearing the brunt of latest escalation in Syrian civil war
Erdogan said up to 40 Syrian targets were being considered as part of the operation, and warned Russia -- the most powerful backer of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad -- to "not stand in our way."
"We told the Russian authorities you are not party to this it is totally the regime and do not stand in our way. Because we have martyrs, we cannot remain silent. We will continue to respond, including with our F-16s, our howitzers, our artillery, it is all in the field firing on the targets determined by our national intelligence," Erdogan said.
Russia's military said Monday that Turkey had not given advance warning of Turkish troop reinforcements in Idlib.
"Overnight from February 2 to 3, units of the Turkish forces conducted maneuvers inside the Idlib de-escalation zone without giving notice to the Russian side and came under the fire of Syrian government troops on terrorists in the area west of the settlement of Saraqib," the Russian Center for Reconciliation of the Opposing Sides in Syria said, according to state-run news agency RIA Novosti.
Turkish soldiers are in the last rebel-held area of Syria as part of a 2018 de-escalation agreement between Ankara and Moscow. The Syrian government has mounted an aggressive air campaign in Idlib in recent weeks, amassing troops along strategic highways leading to the rebel enclave.
On January 12, Russia and Turkey announced a ceasefire that has failed to end the violence.
A Turkish military convoy of passes through the Syrian town of Dana on February 2.

Civilians killed in northwest Syria

Syrian government attacks killed 20 people in opposition-held parts of northwest Syria on Sunday and Monday, according to the volunteer rescue group, the White Helmets.
Nine were killed in an attack on a vehicle carrying members of the same family in the western countryside of Aleppo on Monday. An airstrike on a house in Idlib also killed eight on Sunday, according to the rescue group.
The recent violence has pushed people out of multiple towns. Syria announced the capture of the opposition-held city of Maraat Al Nouman on Thursday.
UNICEF estimates that more than 300,000 people have been displaced since December and that 1.2 million children are in desperate need.
The Syrian government and Russia deny targeting civilians and say they are targeting terrorists, pointing to the dominance of Hayat Tahrir Al Sham (HTS), a former al Qaeda affiliate, in the area.

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2020-02-03 12:49:00Z
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China Arrested Doctors Who Warned About Coronavirus Outbreak. Now Death Toll's Rising, Stocks Are Plunging. - The Daily Beast

HONG KONG—The new coronavirus that has spread consternation around the world over the last few weeks has now killed more people in China than the SARS epidemic of 2002-2003. China’s health commission reported Sunday that there were 361 deaths nationwide. During the SARS outbreak, 349 people died in mainland China and 774 altogether around the world. The Chinese stock markets took major hits Monday, and the whole nation feels its growing isolation.

Yet last December—before people all over China were falling sick with pneumonia-like symptoms, before people around the world grew alarmed about a disease leaping from captured wild animals to human shoppers in dense Chinese food markets, and before coronavirus reached new shores after being carried onto planes by human hosts, forcing the World Health Organization to declare a global emergency—eight people discussed how several patients in Wuhan were experiencing severe, rapid breakdowns in their respiratory systems.

They were part of a medical school’s alumni group on WeChat, a popular social network in China, and they were concerned that SARS, Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, was back. 

It wasn’t long before police detained them. The authorities said these eight doctors and medical technicians were “misinforming” the public, that there was no SARS, that the information was obviously wrong, and that everyone in the city must remain calm. On the first day of 2020, Wuhan police said they had “taken legal measures” against the eight individuals who had “spread rumors.”

Since then, the phenomenal spread of the virus has created cracks even within the normally united front of the Chinese Communist Party. “It might have been fortunate if the public had believed the ‘rumor’ and started to wear masks, carry out sanitization measures, and avoid the wild animal market,” a judge of China’s Supreme People’s Court wrote online last Tuesday.

Li Wenliang, a doctor who was among the eight people who tried to sound the alarm before the coronavirus infected many thousands and killed hundreds, has been diagnosed as someone infected with the coronavirus and is being treated at a hospital.

As of 5 p.m. Monday, the official tally of coronavirus damage runs at more than 17,000 confirmed infections, more than 21,000 under observation, 361 dead. But the actual numbers must be far higher, possibly by a considerable magnitude, according to estimations by doctors in China and infectious-disease experts around the world.

Authorities are still actively censoring social-media posts and news articles that are questioning the government response to the outbreak. One local man, Fang Bin, uploaded footage of corpses in a van and a hospital in Wuhan, and was then tracked down and taken into custody. His laptop was confiscated, and he had to pedal for three hours on a bicycle to get home after he was questioned, warned, and released. His coronavirus video went viral.

The Chinese government is eager to project the image that everything is under control. Beijing pushed back the post-Lunar New Year opening of financial markets by a few days, and traders returned to their posts Monday morning. The Shanghai Composite Index and Shenzhen Composite Index quickly dropped 8.7 percent and 8.6 percent, respectively. By lunch time, more than 2,600 stocks had tripped regulator-imposed breakers after losing 10 percent in value. At market closing at 3 p.m., the indices were unable to recover from their nosedives.

This was the worst plummet in China’s markets since an equity bubble burst in 2015, and it isn’t difficult to see why. Schools have been closed indefinitely. Flights have been grounded, and domestic travel has been limited or even halted. Office buildings, restaurants, and malls are empty. Public functions have been canceled. Overwhelmingly, white-collar workers across the country are telecommuting. The country, it seems, is a network of ghost towns with wide boulevards and glass towers. Combined with the ongoing swine flu and a new outbreak of avian flu south of Wuhan, the coronavirus is hitting China’s economy on many fronts.

Perhaps the most striking development in China is how borders became tangible. Villages, towns, and cities are physically blocked off from each other, sometimes with local officials posted on roads to stop anyone except emergency relief personnel from passing through. Married couples who hail from different parts of the country have been separated if they chose to travel over the Lunar New Year; as they returned home after the break, local officials in some locations barred one spouse, whoever is an “outlander,” from entering city limits.

The coronavirus is isolating China from the rest of the world, too. Many countries have imposed travel restrictions on Chinese nationals, or even banned visitors who have recently been in mainland China. Over in Hong Kong, medical workers who joined a newly formed union voted to begin a strike Monday to pressure the city’s officials into sealing the border with mainland China. Clashes have broken out at sites where the government had attempted to set up mass quarantine facilities in Hong Kong.

Back in Wuhan, one of two speed-build hospitals began absorbing patients on Monday. It took 10 days to build, has 1,000 beds, and is staffed by 1,400 military doctors who are managing the symptoms of those under their care. The additions are welcome, but people living in Hubei, the province where Wuhan is the capital, have doubts about how effective the facilities will be. There’s a severe shortage of testing kits, and sick people are still being turned away from hospitals. It is common for patients to wander between several emergency rooms before giving up to head home and tough it out.

This outbreak has given new meaning to a well-worn adage: When China sneezes, the world catches a cold. People recall a lack of transparency when SARS was hitting China, even though the WHO has praised Beijing repeatedly for improving its performance this time around. But that may not be enough. Right now, every country in the world is trying to prevent the epidemic from flaring up on its own shores.

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2020-02-03 13:44:00Z
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Iran plane pilot heard in leaked air traffic control audio talking about "missile" hitting Ukraine passenger jet - CBS News

Kiev, Ukraine — A leaked recording of an exchange between an Iranian air-traffic controller and an Iranian pilot purportedly shows that authorities immediately knew a missile had downed a Ukrainian jetliner after takeoff from Tehran, killing all 176 people aboard, despite days of denials by the Islamic Republic.

Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskiy acknowledged the recording's authenticity in a report aired by a Ukrainian television channel on Sunday night.

In Tehran on Monday, the head of the Iranian investigation team, Hassan Rezaeifar, acknowledged the recording was legitimate and said that it was handed over to Ukrainian officials.

After the January 8 disaster, Iran's civilian government maintained for days that it didn't know the country's paramilitary Revolutionary Guard, answerable only to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, had shot down the aircraft. The downing of the jetliner came just hours after the Guard launched a ballistic missile attack on Iraqi bases housing U.S. forces in retaliation for an earlier American drone strike that killed the Guard's top general, Qassem Soleimani, in Baghdad.

U.S. forces harmed by missiles get treatment

A transcript of the recording, published by Ukrainian 1+1 TV channel, contains a conversation in Farsi between an air-traffic controller and a pilot reportedly flying a Fokker 100 jet for Iran's Aseman Airlines from Iran's southern city of Shiraz to Tehran.

"A series of lights like ... yes, it is a missile, is there something?" the pilot calls out to the controller.

"No, how many miles? Where?" the controller asks.

The pilot responds that he saw the light by the Payam airport, near where the Guard's Tor M-1 anti-aircraft missile was launched from. The controller says nothing has been reported to them, but the pilot remains insistent.

"It is the light of a missile," the pilot says.

"Don't you see anything anymore?" the controller asks.

"Dear engineer, it was an explosion. We saw a very big light there, I don't really know what it was," the pilot responds.

The controller then tries to contract the Ukrainian jetliner, but unsuccessfully.

IRAN-UKRAINE-CANADA-AVIATION-ACCIDENT
Rescue teams are seen on January 8, 2020 at the scene of a Ukrainian airliner that crashed shortly after take-off near Imam Khomeini airport in the Iranian capital Tehran. AKBAR TAVAKOLI/Getty Images

Publicly accessible flight-tracking radar information suggests the Aseman Airlines aircraft, flight No. 3768, was close enough to Tehran to see the blast.

Iranian civil aviation authorities for days insisted it wasn't a missile that brought down the plane, even after Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and U.S. officials began saying they believed it had been shot down.

Iranian officials should have immediately had access to the air-traffic control recordings and Zelensky told 1+1 that "the recording, indeed, shows that the Iranian side knew from the start that our plane was shot down by a missile, they were aware of this at the moment of the shooting."

Ukraine's president repeated his demands to decode the plane's flight recorders in Kiev - something Iranian officials had promised last month but later backtracked on. On Monday, Ukrainian investigators were to travel to Tehran to participate in the decoding effort, but Zelensky insisted on bringing the so-called "black boxes" back to Kiev.

"It is very important for us," he said.

Iranian authorities, however, condemned the publication of the recording as "unprofessional," saying it was part of a confidential report.

"This action by the Ukrainians makes us not want to give them any more evidence," said Rezaifar, the head of the Iranian investigators, according to a report by the semiofficial Mehr news agency.

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2020-02-03 12:46:00Z
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China accuses US of spreading 'panic' over coronavirus outbreak - New York Post

The Chinese government on Monday accused the US of spreading “panic” over the coronavirus outbreak by pulling its citizens out of the country and restricting travel instead of offering significant assistance.

The US was the first country to begin evacuations, issued a travel warning against going to China, and from Sunday barred entry to foreigners recently in China.

Washington has “unceasingly manufactured and spread panic,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said, noting that the World Health Organization had advised against trade and travel restrictions, according to Reuters.

“It is precisely developed countries like the United States with strong epidemic prevention capabilities and facilities that have taken the lead in imposing excessive restrictions contrary to WHO recommendations,” she added, saying countries should make reasoned and science-based judgments.

There are more than 17,000 confirmed cases of the virus in China. More than 360 people have died, all but one in the country.

At least another 171 cases have been reported in more than two dozen other countries and regions, including the US, where 11 cases have been confirmed, officials said Sunday.

There are three suspected cases in the Big Apple. The results of their tests are pending.

Conducting her daily news briefing via the WeChat app, Hua criticized Washington for lack of help, despite President Trump’s weekend comments that US officials had offered “tremendous help.”

“So far, the US government has yet to provide any substantial assistance to China,” she said.
But national security adviser Robert O’Brien told an interviewer that China had not yet accepted American offers of aid.

Trump said this weekend that the US had “shut down” the coronavirus threat.

“We can’t have thousands of people coming in who may have this problem,” he said on Fox.

Meanwhile, the World Health Organization said Monday it was working around the clock with internet and social media giants to fight widespread misinformation about the outbreak.

WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus warned of the dangers posed by “the spread of rumors and misinformation,” according to Agence France-Presses.

“We have worked with Google to make sure people searching for information about coronavirus see WHO information at the top of their search results,” Tedros said in opening remarks to the UN health agency’s Executive Board meeting in Geneva.

“Social media platforms including Twitter, Facebook, Tencent and Tiktok have also taken steps to limit the spread of misinformation,” he said.

The WHO chief’s comments were interrupted by a fit of coughing, but he assured the assembly that there was no need to worry.

“It is not corona,” he said.

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2020-02-03 11:18:00Z
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China's coronavirus hospital built in 10 days opens its doors, state media says - NBCNews.com

A 1,000-bed hospital built in just 10 days to handle the coronavirus epidemic in Wuhan, China, welcomed its first patients Monday.

Built specifically to handle patients infected with the novel coronavirus that has sickened thousands of people and left more than 360 dead, it took workers just 10 days to complete work on the Huoshenshan Hospital on the outskirts of the city with its 11 million residents, where the outbreak is believed to have originated.

On Monday, the hospital — which covers 60,000 square meters (645,000 square ft) — opened its doors and welcomed its first patients, according to Chinese state media. There was no information about the patients or their conditions.

Construction of the hospital began on Jan. 24 with a crew of 7,000 people working around the clock. Live video of the construction site was carried by Chinese state media and showed the sheer scale and speed of the project.

A second dedicated hospital with 1,300 beds is also expected to be ready later this week.

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Medical equipment at the Huoshenshan temporary field hospital in Wuhan.AP

China's state news agency Xinhua reported Sunday the new hospital has a capacity for 1,000 beds, intensive care units and sections for diagnosis and infection control.

Hundreds of doctors and medical personnel have been drafted in from China's military to treat patients at the hospital, Xinhua also said.

Many of the 1,400 medical specialists have worked in the past to treat Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), which the novel coronavirus is related to, and the Ebola virus in Sierra Leone and Liberia, the agency added.

The Huoshenshan hospital in Wuhan seen from the air. AP

Project manager Fang Xiang whose team worked on the hospital was quoted by China Central Television (CCTV) Monday as saying that a project of this scale usually takes at least two years.

"It takes at least a month to construct a temporary building, not to mention a new hospital for infectious diseases," he said, according to CCTV.

Thousands of workers worked in shifts to complete the construction, CCTV said.

China's state CGTN network showed a video of several workers who said they slept only two hours in three days while completing the construction of the hospital.

It’s not the first time China has had to build a specialized medical facility on a tight deadline. During the SARS epidemic in 2003, a hospital in Beijing was constructed in just a week.

Wuhan has been on lockdown for nearly two weeks with millions of its inhabitants barred from leaving the city. The Chinese government has not yet signaled when the lockdown could be lifted.

Associated Press contributed.

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2020-02-03 10:38:00Z
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