The quarantined Diamond Princess cruise ship has 65 new cases of coronavirus, Japanese officials announced Monday. Here, passengers with ocean-facing rooms stand on their balconies as the ship sits at the Daikoku Pier Cruise Terminal in Yokohama, Japan.
Charly Triballeau/AFP via Getty Images
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There are 65 new coronavirus cases aboard the Diamond Princess cruise ship that's been under a quarantine since last week, Japan's health ministry announced Monday. With the latest cases, a total of 135 people from the ship have been confirmed to have the respiratory virus.
Those newly diagnosed include 45 Japanese and 11 Americans, as well as smaller numbers of people from Australia, Canada, England, the Philippines and Ukraine, according to Princess Cruises.
Even before the latest cases were confirmed, the cruise ship already represented the largest cluster of Wuhan coronavirus cases outside mainland China. The virus, identified as 2019-nCoV, has killed more than 900 people in China, where more than 40,000 people have been infected since it emerged in the city of Wuhan, in Hubei province.
The Diamond Princess is under a 14-day quarantine that's set to expire on Feb. 19. But health officials say the isolation period could be extended for any passengers and crew in close contact with people who are newly diagnosed with the coronavirus.
Passengers aboard the ship have been told to stay in their rooms for all but brief periods of the day, with the crew bringing meals and other necessities to their door.
The ship had roughly 3,700 passengers and crew aboard when it arrived at the Yokohama terminal south of Tokyo early last week. Japan's health ministry has been taking people off the cruise ship using special sanitation measures, such as a tent-like tunnel and white medical suits. Patients are then transported to local hospitals with infectious-disease wards.
To limit the potential spread of the coronavirus, passengers are allowed to visit the deck only in shifts, for roughly 90-minute periods. They're also checking their temperatures regularly, using thermometers distributed by the crew. During their brief time in larger groups, the passengers are asked to keep their distance from other people and to wash their hands thoroughly afterward.
Princess Cruises has announced compensation for the passengers — some of whom are already facing four weeks on the ship because of the quarantine — saying it will refund their full fare and other expenses, from air travel to hotel and transportation costs.
"In addition, guests will not be charged for any onboard incidental charges during the additional time onboard," the company said.
The cruise line said it will also give guests a future travel credit, for a trip equal to the fare they paid for the current voyage — which officially ended Feb. 4, when the ship was held at the Japanese port.
To ease the strain of prolonged isolation, Princess Cruises announced last week that it is providing free Internet and phone service to passengers. And to stave off boredom, it also expanded the passengers' TV and movie options, along with offering games, puzzles and other distractions.
BEIJING—Chinese President
Xi Jinping
paid his first public visit to the front lines of the coronavirus outbreak, stopping at a Beijing hospital treating infected patients and at a local disease-control office after weeks of remaining largely out of public view.
Mr. Xi visited Monday the office of a neighborhood community center in Beijing’s Chaoyang district, where he had his temperature taken by a local staff member, received a briefing on disease-prevention work and waved at families cooped up in their apartments, according to footage released by state media.
Later, he visited Beijing Ditan Hospital, where coronavirus patients in the Chinese capital are being treated. There, Mr. Xi shared a video chat with Wuhan hospitals and heard reports from officials in Hubei province, according to state broadcaster China Central Television.
The report didn’t mention whether Mr. Xi, who was pictured wearing a white lab coat and a surgical mask, met with any patients in person, though state media captured Mr. Xi telling a crowd of well-wishers that there would be no handshakes, given the circumstances.
A woman wearing protective gear sits on the subway in Beijing on Monday.
Photo:
Andrea Verdelli/Getty Images
At Chaoyang district’s Center for Disease Control and Prevention, Mr. Xi learned about how the district, on the eastern edge of central Beijing, was coping with the outbreak, CCTV reported.
Mr. Xi in his remarks acknowledged that some medical workers had “sacrificed their lives,” an apparent indirect reference to a young Wuhan doctor,
Li Wenliang,
whose death last week triggered an emotional response across the country, much of it frustration directed at officials. Dr. Li had been taken in by authorities early last month for warning about the dangers of the deadly new virus before he contracted it himself.
The inspection visit to Beijing’s Chaoyang district comes after weeks in which the virus spread across the country, with other officials appearing at the epicenter in Wuhan to meet with medical workers and patients.
Mr. Xi’s absence has been conspicuous in recent weeks as his deputy, Premier
Li Keqiang,
traveled there last month. Mr. Li was also made the head of a new Communist Party “leading group” to tackle the outbreak, in a surprise move.
Tracking the Coronavirus
97 people died in China on Sunday, pushing the death toll to 908.
The death toll from the outbreak has now surpassed that of the SARS epidemic nearly two decades ago.
China confirmed another 3,062 infections, bringing the total to 40,171.
Sun Chunlan, a vice premier and a member of the Communist Party’s Politburo who oversees public health policy, has visited Wuhan at least four times since late January.
Mr. Xi appears to have remained mainly in Beijing, staying largely out of view except on a few occasions—for instance, to meet with World Health Organization Director-General
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus
and with Cambodia’s prime minister, Hun Sen.
Mr. Xi’s coronavirus inspection on Monday came as China’s National Health Commission reported a single-day high of 97 deaths in mainland China on Sunday from the coronavirus, bringing the death toll to 908.
It also confirmed 3,062 more cases of infection, bringing the count to 40,171, while adding that 632 people were released from hospitals, putting the total of discharged patients at 3,281.
The WHO’s Dr. Tedros raised concerns separately on Twitter late Sunday in Geneva about the spread of infection from people who hadn’t traveled to mainland China.
“The detection of a small number of cases may indicate more widespread transmission in other countries; in short, we may only be seeing the tip of the iceberg,” Dr. Tedros wrote.
Beijing’s normally bustling streets remained empty. Bicycles from bike-sharing companies are parked outside a subway station.
Photo:
Andy Wong/Associated Press
A preliminary report by a team including
Zhong Nanshan,
one of China’s most highly regarded epidemiology experts and the leader of a National Health Commission task force on the outbreak, said Sunday that the incubation period for the coronavirus could be as long as 24 days in some cases, though it found that the median time between transmission and the onset of symptoms was three days.
The study, an unpublished manuscript that hasn’t been peer reviewed, was uploaded to the medical website medRxiv on Sunday. Though Dr. Zhong said in an email to The Wall Street Journal that the draft was still being edited, and the incubation period information may not be included, the preliminary study triggered concern on China’s social media that the outbreak could spread more easily, and last longer, than previously expected. Lead author Guan Weijie told domestic Chinese media that the 24-day incubation period was found only in individual cases.
The study, conducted by Dr. Zhong’s team at the Guangzhou Institute of Respiratory Disease, was based on 1,099 patients from 552 hospitals across the country. An earlier study, based on 425 patients and published in the New England Journal of Medicine, found a median incubation period of about five days, with the longest being seven days.
Even so, many governments have coalesced around 14 days for the quarantine of many patients and suspected patients, given research pointing to a maximum two-week incubation period.
Meanwhile on Monday, an advance team of experts sent by the WHO was set to arrive in Beijing to discuss further collaboration with the Chinese government on the coronavirus response.
China’s National Health Commission said it would later welcome a larger team of WHO experts, including some from the U.S., to carry out epidemic prevention and control.
In Beijing, the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress, China’s top legislative body, will add a revision of China’s Wild Animal Protection Law onto its agenda this year, the state-run Xinhua News Agency reported Monday, in an apparent move to address complaints that the consumption of wild animals had helped the coronavirus spread to humans.
In coastal Zhejiang province, just south of Shanghai, officials on Sunday called on some districts to lift restrictions on people’s movements.
Wuhan and surrounding Hubei province, an area of nearly 60 million people at the center of the crisis, have been quarantined. Across China several local governments, including some far from the center of the crisis, have restricted people’s movement.
In Sichuan province, officials said they are monitoring a fresh outbreak of H5N6 avian influenza, which has killed nearly 2,000 birds, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs said. Though avian influenza doesn’t spread easily to humans, it is likely to add to the country’s economic strain as consumer inflation, largely driven by food prices amid an earlier outbreak of swine fever and the coronavirus, reaches the highest levels in more than eight years. Earlier this month, authorities reported a recurrence of H5N1 avian flu in Hunan province.
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In Chongqing, a city of 34 million people with hundreds of confirmed cases of the virus and which borders Sichuan province, one in 10 infections has been diagnosed in people working in the food industry, making eating out and gathering for meals risky, Xia Pei, a city health official said Sunday, according to Xinhua.
Hong Kong authorities have traced several cases among the roughly three dozen confirmed in the city to a hot pot meal shared among 18 relatives, one of whom spread it to nine others, authorities said.
In Japan, 65 new cases of the virus were identified aboard the Diamond Princess cruise ship docked in Yokohama, bringing the total to 135, the country’s Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare said Monday. Earlier the ship’s captain had said the number of additional patients was 66. The ship alone has more confirmed cases than anywhere outside mainland China, according to the WHO.
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Chinese state media have publicized several new hospitals that have taken less than two weeks to build. WSJ’s Chao Deng visited one of the facilities quickly built from scratch to see just how complete and ready it is to accept patients. Photo: Chinatopix/Associated Press
—Fanfan Wang,
Xiao Xiao,
Raffaele Huang and Suryatapa Bhattacharya contributed to this article.
Christian Democratic Union party (CDU) chairwoman and Defense Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer attends a party's board meeting at the headquarters in Berlin, Feb. 10, 2020.
BERLIN — German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s would-be successor said on Monday she will not run for the premiership following a rocky year at the helm of the her party which culminated in a crisis last week as regional representatives aligned with the far-right.
The announcement from Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, the leader of Merkel’s Christian Democrats, that she will not run for chancellor in next year’s elections plunged the party, and the country, into political uncertainty.
Kramp-Karrenbauer said she will step aside as party leader when a new candidate for the premiership is chosen. “We are currently feeling strong centrifugal forces within our society and party,” she said in a news conference. “We have to be stronger, stronger than today.”
She said that she believed that the separation of the role of chancellor and the party leadership had weakened the Christian Democrats.
Government spokesman Steffen Seibert said that Kramp-Karrenbauer wishes to remain defense minister and Merkel supports that “wholeheartedly.”
The move opens up the party leadership to more conservative strains within the Christian Democrats who want to steer it back to the right as it jettisons voters. A protege of Merkel, Kramp-Karrenbauer beat out rivals to take over the reins of the conservative Christian Democrats in late 2018. However, she has failed to rally the party behind her and there was widespread speculation that she would be ousted before the annual party conference in November after a series of missteps.
At that conference she came out swinging against her rivals in a combative speech, but developments in the eastern German state of Thuringia last week left her authority in tatters.
The local branch of the Christian Democrats defied party guidance over political cooperation with the far-right when it backed the same candidate for the state premiership in the Thuringia region as the far-right Alternative for Germany party.
The alignment shook German politics, breaking a pledge from mainstream parties that they would not cooperate with the far-right. Spontaneous street demonstrations took place in German cities after the move, which was seen as a break in the post-World War II political consensus.
The resignation throws the Christian Democrats into a leadership crisis. Merkel, chancellor for more than 14 years, has said she will not stand for reelection in 2021 and stepped aside as party leader in a move designed to open the door for the new generation.
When Kramp-Karrenbauer won the party leadership in 2018, it was seen as affirmation of Merkel’s legacy. But analysts say holding the role of party leader without the chancellery has left Kramp-Karrenbauer in an inherently weak position.
Karrenbauer pointed to that on Monday when she said that she believed that going forward, the two roles should not be separated.
But public criticism of her leadership has also mounted. She was lampooned for insulting transgendered people with a joke about gender neutral bathrooms and for announcing support for a safe-zone in Syria without consultation.
Kramp-Karrenbauer first announced the news in a meeting with politicians from her party on Monday morning. “It was a shock,” said Elmar Brock, a veteran politician with the Christian Democrats who was present. He said that the party faces a “difficult” future, but that a new clear leadership process could also bring opportunity.
China confirmed a rise in the number of new coronavirus cases on Monday, quashing hopes after several days of declining infection rates that strict control measures could be paying off. The death toll from the new virus had jumped to 908 by Monday morning, more than were killed during the SARS virus outbreak in 2003.
The number of confirmed infections in mainland China rose 15% Sunday to at least 40,171. More than 300 cases have been confirmed outside China, including 12 in the U.S., and global health officials have warned that could be just "the tip of the iceberg" as they learn more about how easily the disease spreads.
Dozens of new cases were confirmed Monday on a quarantined cruise ship in Yokohama, Japan, meanwhile, including more Americans. The number of passengers already removed or soon to be removed from the Diamond Princess for treatment in Japanese hospitals stood at 136 Monday. That includes at least 23 American passengers, 11 of whom were among the 66 new cases confirmed Monday. Most of the 3,711 passengers and crew remained under isolation orders on the ship.
The Chinese government's efforts to silence people who tried to raise the alarm about the outbreak early on — and allegedly ongoing efforts to stop people reporting on it — have created a mounting backlash on the country's heavily-censored social media.
Japanese soldiers and emergency workers in protective clothing walk from the Diamond Princess cruise ship at Daikoku Pier where it is being resupplied and newly diagnosed coronavirus cases taken for treatment as it remains in quarantine after a number of the 3,700 people on board were diagnosed with coronavirus, February 10, 2020 in Yokohama, Japan.
Carl Court/Getty
China confirmed a rise in the number of new coronavirus cases on Monday, quashing hopes after several days of declining infection rates that strict control measures could be paying off. The death toll from the new virus had jumped to 908 by Monday morning, more than were killed during the SARS virus outbreak in 2003.
The number of confirmed infections in mainland China rose 15% Sunday to at least 40,171. More than 300 cases have been confirmed outside China, including 12 in the U.S., and global health officials have warned that could be just "the tip of the iceberg" as they learn more about how easily the disease spreads.
Dozens of new cases were confirmed Monday on a quarantined cruise ship in Yokohama, Japan, meanwhile, including more Americans. The number of passengers already removed or soon to be removed from the Diamond Princess for treatment in Japanese hospitals stood at 136 Monday. That includes at least 23 American passengers, 11 of whom were among the 66 new cases confirmed Monday. Most of the 3,711 passengers and crew remained under isolation orders on the ship.
The Chinese government's efforts to silence people who tried to raise the alarm about the outbreak early on — and allegedly ongoing efforts to stop people reporting on it — have created a mounting backlash on the country's heavily-censored social media.
Japanese soldiers and emergency workers in protective clothing walk from the Diamond Princess cruise ship at Daikoku Pier where it is being resupplied and newly diagnosed coronavirus cases taken for treatment as it remains in quarantine after a number of the 3,700 people on board were diagnosed with coronavirus, February 10, 2020 in Yokohama, Japan.
Carl Court/Getty
BERLIN — Chancellor Angela Merkel’s anointed successor, Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, said on Monday that she would quit as party leader and no longer seek the country’s top position, adding to the political uncertainty in Europe’s most important democracy.
The move came in defiance of a direct order from Ms. Kramp-Karrenbauer, who as party leader had given clear instructions not to collaborate with the Alternative for Germany at any level.
Ms. Kramp-Karrenbauer, who is also defense minister, was chosen as leader of Ms. Merkel’s conservative party in December 2018 and had been widely expected to succeed her as chancellor because the two roles traditionally go hand in hand in Germany. She will remain as party leader until the summer, while a replacement is found.
But since becoming the party leader, Ms. Kramp-Karrenbauer had steadily lost support in opinion polls. The upheaval in Thuringia showed how far her authority had eroded, and the decision throws the race to succeed Ms. Merkel as chancellor wide open again.
Several potential candidates are waiting in the wings, most prominently Friedrich Merz, who narrowly lost to Ms. Kramp-Karrenbauer at the 2018 party conference but is popular with the Christian Democrats’ conservative wing. Mr. Merz said this month that he would step down from his job in finance to return to politics full time.
Another potential contender is Armin Laschet, the centrist leader of North-Rhine Westphalia, Germany’s most populous state. A former junior minister of integration and a staunch defender of Ms. Merkel’s refugee policy, Mr. Laschet is seen as the candidate of continuity. He did not throw his hat in the ring at the party conference, but he has indicated that he would be “available.”
In the current political climate, the crisis in Thuringia has given Ms. Kramp-Karrenbauer’s resignation particular symbolic importance. She has categorically rejected working with Alternative for Germany, which is commonly known by its German acronym, AfD.
In June, she accused the AfD of creating the “intellectual climate” in which a far-right extremist shot and killed Walter Lübcke, a regional government official, in what was the first far-right political assassination in Germany since World War II.
Ms. Kramp-Karrenbauer has said that anyone who toys with the idea of working with the AfD “should close their eyes and imagine Walter Lübcke.”
The far-right party was quick to hail her resignation as a victory. Alexander Gauland, a senior party leader, welcomed Ms. Kramp-Karrenbauer’s announcement as a sign that there was no longer a consensus inside the Christian Democrats on isolating the AfD.
“It is completely nonsensical and delusional not to want to work with the AfD in the long term,” Mr. Gauland said. “Her party grass roots have long understood this. “
Tedros Adhanom, Director General of the World Health Organization, (L) shakes hands with Chinese President Xi Jinping before a meeting at the Great Hall of the People, on January 28, 2020 in Beijing, China.
Naohiko Hatta - Pool | Getty Images
Chinese President Xi Jinping has been visibly missing in action in Wuhan, the epicenter of the new coronavirus outbreak, spurring talk about his control from a distance in Beijing.
Instead, Xi dispatched his second-in-command, premier Li Keqiang to Wuhan on Jan. 27 in a shot of confidence for the city which has been under lockdown.
Since then, Xi has not been out much in front of the cameras, although he has been reported in state media as commanding efforts to contain the outbreak.
Most recently, Xi emerged from the shadows on Feb. 5 to meet with Cambodian leader Hun Sen who was on a state visit to China. Before this, the Chinese president had been absent from the limelight for over a week since Jan. 28 when he met with Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the director-general at the World Health Organization.
As the inner workings of the Chinese Communist Party are opaque, observers are weighing why Xi hasn't been to ground zero or playing up his role in managing the crisis.
"While Xi has claimed to be personally leading the effort from Beijing, and the division of labor between general secretary and premier often call for such a sharing of responsibilities, there is an undercurrent of sentiment that Xi's response has felt impersonal, more focused on avoiding a political calamity for the party than on the people's health," wrote analysts from risk consultancy Eurasia Group about the political cost for Xi in an outbreak situation that would "return to normalcy" by early April.
Xi is the general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party.
On China's heavily policed social media networks, there has been sparse discussion about the country's top leaders on a personal level, even in private chats.
Indeed, despite anger after "the tragic death of the doctor who first alerted the system to the disease, Dr. Li Wenliang, the brunt of negative sentiment has been focused on officials in Hubei (province) and Wuhan (city,) with little spillover to Xi or other leaders in Beijing," the Eurasia Group analysts wrote in their report on Sunday.
But Xi's absence from ground zero could be an attempt to protect the top leadership from the potential fallout of the health-care crisis, experts say.
"While Li is an extremely able manager and bureaucrat, he has long been sidelined by Xi and has come to be seen as relatively weak and feckless, leading to speculation that Xi has made Li a possible scapegoat if the virus is not soon contained," Jude Blanchette at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington-based think tank, wrote in late January.
"This is in keeping with other problematic policy areas, including U.S.-China relations, where Xi has opted to remain somewhat aloof, preferring to place deputies on the front line. If a crisis is averted, Xi can claim ultimate responsibility, but if problems arise, he can point the finger at lower-level officials," Blanchette added.
While the mayor of Wuhan will be the first in line to shoulder the blame from the fallout, "he is too low-ranking to be the scapegoat," said Volker Stanzel, a former German ambassador to China at a discussion hosted by the Mercator Institute for China Studies in late January.
Li also "symbolizes the will and the determination of the leadership of Xi Jinping to pull the whole responsibility towards the almost-very center, but not quite very center of the power structure," added Stanzel.
"He is not putting himself into the shoes of the person who is responsible for resolving this. He is taking the number two in the country—meaning he can always get rid of him and still remain Xi Jinping," he said.
Duration of the outbreak is important for Xi
The Eurasia Group analysts said in their note that a shorter scenario for the outbreak would cause "little blowback for Xi or other senior officials."
But, even in that scenario where there is a "return to normalcy" by March or April, Xi would still be "mildly exposed," said the Eurasia analysts.
An enduring outbreak though could be damaging to Xi.
"A poor handling of a months-long crisis and the economic stabilization program could well erode Xi's political capital as he prepares to stay on for a third term in office in 2022," they wrote.
"There is little reason to think Xi will face stiff challenges in doing so, but a seriously mishandled coronavirus crisis will increase the levels of uncertainty around political dynamics in China," the Eurasia analysts added.
The pressure on Xi is immense.
"If the epidemic continues to last or endures for a sustained period of time and citizens start to feel that the government is not handling it properly, President Xi could come under criticism, particularly given that it's the Politburo Standing Committee which is now taking charge of managing this epidemic," said Cedric Chehab, global head of country risk at Fitch Solutions, referring to the top echelon of the Chinese Communist Party.
"So in that sense, President Xi, if he doesn't resolve the epidemic, is unable to control it, could come under more pressure absolutely," Chehab told CNBC.
At the end of the day, success against combating the coronavirus "must be clearly the success of the central government; if not, someone very much at the top will have to be the scapegoat," said Stanzel.
