Local residents protest the plans to quarantine evacuees from coronavirus-hit China at a local hospital, in the settlement of Novi Sanzhary, Ukraine, on Thursday.
Maksym Mykhailyk/AFP via Getty Images
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Maksym Mykhailyk/AFP via Getty Images
China reported 889 new cases of novel coronavirus infection on Friday, including more than 200 from a prison, and an additional 118 deaths – all but three in the province of Hubei, bringing the total deaths in the country to more than 2,200.
The latest count came as South Korea, with the highest number of cases outside China, reported another jump in infections to 204.
And residents clashed with police in a central Ukrainian town where evacuees from Wuhan, the Chinese province where the epidemic began, arrived for a two-week quarantine.
The numbers from China — which come 24 hours after the daily new case count there reached its lowest point in weeks — reflect a more general downward trend.
Cumulative new cases in China are now at 75,567. That figure includes people who have recovered, as well as those who have died from COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus.
According to the latest World Health Organization situation report, there have been another 1,073 confirmed cases in 26 other countries, and an additional eight deaths.
On Thursday, the government in China's eastern province of Shandong said that a prison guard at Rencheng jail in Jining, a city of eight million, had shown COVID-19 symptoms in early February and that subsequently more than 2,000 inmates and staff were tested, with 200 prisoners and seven officers coming back positive.
Los vecinos del distrito de Novi Sanzhary se enfrentan a la policía porque el Gobierno ha decidido alojar en el hospital local a 72 repatriados de China
Conociendo la tasa de contagio y la expansión del virus se puede entender su temor. pic.twitter.com/dwyIgt4uQW
Infections were also reported at three prisons in Hubei province, according to the South China Morning Post.
Outside China, rising infection numbers and civil unrest
In South Korea, officials on Thursday said the number of cases had doubled in a 24-hour period. On Friday they confirmed another 100 cases, bringing the total there to 204.
Among those infected were scores of members of the religious sect Shincheonji Church of Jesus. The infection was traced to a 61-year-old woman who apparently spread the virus to congregants as she attended church services before being diagnosed.
Evacuated Ukrainians and foreign nationals on their way to the Novi Sanzhary Medical Center of the National Guard in Poltava Region for medical observation, on Thursday.
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Barcroft Media/Barcroft Media via Getty Images
Meanwhile, in the central Ukrainian town of Novi Sanzhary, where coronavirus evacuees arrived from China, angry residents chanted "Shame on you!", scuffled with police and hurled stones at six buses carrying masked passengers on their way to a two-week quarantine. The residents blocked a road to a medical facility where the evacuees were to be housed.
Authorities said the group, which included 45 Ukrainians and 27 foreign nationals, had been screened for the virus before being allowed to fly from Wuhan, China, the disease epicenter. None had tested positive or shown signs of COVID-19, officials insisted.
Prime Minister Oleksiy Honcharuk, Health Minister Zoriana Skaletska and Interior Minister Arsen Avakov traveled to Novi Sanzhary to talk to the residents.
When Avakov pointed out that none of the evacuees was infected, one person replied "So far," according to BBC.
"Isn't there any other place in Ukraine ... that is located in more or less remote villages or in far-off areas where there is no threat to population?" another resident, Yuriy Dzyubenko, was quoted by Reuters as saying.
President Volodymr Zelenskiy called for calm and warned against the danger of "forgetting that we are all human."
NPR's Jason Beaubien in Hong Kong, Emily Feng in Beijing and Anthony Kuhn in Seoul contributed to this report.
Tehran, Iran - Polls have opened across Iran in the country's eleventh parliamentary election, seen as a test for the popularity of President Hassan Rouhani's reformist-moderate camp, which has dominated Parliament since 2016.
Elections for Iran's 290-member Parliament are set amid escalating political tensions, economic struggles and concerns of low participation. The spectre of the coronavirus infection that has killed two people also adds another layer of uncertainty to the electoral process.
Supreme Leader Ali Hosseini Khamenei cast his vote in the capital, Tehran, minutes after the polls opened on Friday at 8am local time (04:30 GMT).
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In a speech after he cast his vote, Khamenei reiterated calls for a higher voter turnout, telling Iranians to participate in the elections "if they were interested in the country's national interests".
Voters on Friday will also choose replacements for seven deceased members of the Assembly of Experts, a clerical body responsible for appointing the Supreme Leader.
Nearly 58 million people are eligible to vote on pre-selected lists of candidates that represent more than 250 registered parties. All voters must be more than 18 years of age. Almost three million are first-time voters.
Supervisors were present at polling centres to receive reports of electoral violations, a Guardian Council spokesman said [Arwa Ibrahim/Al Jazeera]
A total of 55,000 polling stations have been set up at mosques throughout the country. More than 7,000 candidates, including 666 women, are competing.
Long queues could be seen at the main polling station set up at Masjid al-Nabi, the main mosque in the middle-class Narmak neighbourhood where former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad lives.
A spokesman for the Guardian Council, Abbas Ali Kadkhodaei, said in a statement that 200,000 supervisors from the council were overseeing the polls throughout the country.
Polls are expected to close at 6pm (14:30 GMT) but can be extended. During the previous parliamentary elections in 2016, voting was extended due to a high turnout.
Also known as the Majlis, Iran's Parliament is responsible for passing legislation in the country, approving the annual budget and ratifying international agreements and treaties.
All legislation passed by the Majlis is then approved by the Guardian Council and the President.
The Parliament has a limited say in foreign affairs, although it played a crucial role in some of the country's pivotal moments, including in 2015 when it approved the nuclear deal with world powers.
The Majlis plays a bigger role in economic and other domestic politics.
Went to Tajrish Sq in northern Tehran today and finally found some signs of the upcoming general election on Friday 21 Feb to vote in the country’s 290-member parliament. #IranVotepic.twitter.com/MO53leI8Fp
The vote also sets the tone for next year's presidential elections.
Five seats are reserved for the country's religious minorities including Zoroastrians, Jews, Assyrians, Chaldean Christians and Armenian Christians.
"This vote is very important for our nation and its national interests against our enemies in the EU - France, the UK and Germany - as well as the United States," Ali Javanrodi, a 35-year-old civil servant, said.
"I am voting for candidates who will resist our enemies and unite our nation," he told Al Jazeera.
This vote will 'send a clear and strong message that we are one and can respond to any attacks,' Ali Javanrodi said [Arwa Ibrahim]
Importance of vote
The vote is key as it is the first parliamentary election since the US withdrew from the nuclear deal between Iran and world powers in 2018, and reimposed sanctions against Tehran, including on its oil and banking sectors.
The financial measures put Iran's economy into a tailspin with inflation reaching 33.5 percent and growth declining by at least six percent last year.
The vote will determine the direction of the country as it grapples with a worsening economic crisis and a punishing "maximum-pressure" campaign by the US.
According to Tehran-based political commentator and analyst Mohammad Eslami, the vote will "reflect the way people want the government to approach the West after the breakdown of the deal.
"It will tell whether people want more cooperation with West, or with Russia, China and tapping into domestic potentials instead," he told Al Jazeera.
Zahra Khalaf, 30, an alternative medicine practitioner, said: "Voting was an easy and smooth process like it always is."
"It's important to vote because we can choose members of our Parliament who are responsible for questioning the ministers," she told Al Jazeera.
"Ultimately, I want a Parliament that will work for the well-being of our people and bettering our economy."
Zahra Khalaf said she wants a Parliament that supports the Supreme Leader and one that is not too leftist nor to the right [Arwa Ibrahim/Al Jazeera]
Low turnout?
Despite calls from officials including the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei for a high turnout, surveys in the run-up to the vote indicated a potentially lower voter attendance than at previous parliamentary polls four years ago.
Sitting at a park in Tehran, Mohamed Feli, 31, sipped a cup of tea and chatted with his friends. He told Al Jazeera he had no intention to vote.
"I won't be voting because the elections in Iran are useless. They make no difference and aren't even free and fair," he said. "We don’t want this regime any more."
In addition to the deteriorating economy, which officials blame on US sanctions, some voters said they would boycott the vote because of adeadly crackdown by security forces on tens of thousands of people protesting against fuel price rises in November.
Nearly 58 million people are eligible to vote on pre-selected lists of candidates that represent over 250 registered parties [Abedin Taherkenareh/EPA]
The military's shooting down of a Ukrainian airliner on January 8 that killed all 176 people on board, mostly Iranians, was another reason cited for the boycott.
But observers said things might change on the day.
"Iranians tend to decide on the day whether or not they will vote. So many people may actually end up at the ballot boxes," Fatima al-Samadi, a senior researcher at the Al Jazeera Center for Studies, said in the run-up to the vote.
Key points
For most voters, the most important issue in the election is the economy. Other key concerns include corruption, foreign affairs and the nuclear deal.
"This vote is about Iran's economic conditions. We want a Parliament to resolve our high levels of unemployment and poor living conditions," Mohamed Maleki, a 31-year-old journalist from Tehran, told Al Jazeera.
Ahmad Torkashavan, 55, a former Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) soldier who participated in the Iran-Iraq war at the age of 14 and then joined the Revolutionary Guard afterwards, said: "I feel it is a national duty to [vote], despite the difficult economic conditions that have discouraged some people".
Parliamentary candidates in Iran are usually aligned with reformists or conservatives as the two main political currents.
But this time, the election will likely be a competition between conservatives supporting Tehran's former mayor Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, who backed the 2015 nuclear deal and ultra-conservatives who rejected it.
All ballots are counted manually, delaying official results for up to two or three days after the vote.
"Wartime" measures have been implemented in some parts of the Chinese province of Hubei, which is home to Wuhan — the epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak. Some residents have been barred from leaving their apartments, and officials in protective suits were going door-to-door in Wuhan this week looking for infected people.
"This must be taken seriously," Wang Zhonglin, Wuhan's newly selected Communist Party secretary, said, according to the Associated Press.
China has been widely criticized for its initial handling of the outbreak. Authorities were accused of trying to silence doctors, and residents complained of overcrowded and under-resourced hospitals.
There are now tens of thousands of confirmed cases of the new coronavirus globally and more than 2,000 deaths — most of them in mainland China.
Medical personnel are seen walking among patients with mild symptoms of coronavirus resting at night in a temporary hospital set up in a sports stadium in Wuhan, China, February 18, 2020.
Contributor/AFP via Getty Images
Police officers secure a crime scene behind a police cordon in front of a bar in Hanau, near Frankfurt, on Feb. 20, 2020.
PATRICK HERTZOG/Getty Images
A gunman opened fire on two hookah bars near Frankfurt Wednesday night, killing nine people in an attack apparently targeting immigrants in the German city. The 43-year-old shooter, identified by German authorities as only Tobias R. for legal reasons, espoused far-right racist views in text and videos on the web, advocating for the elimination of minority ethnic groups and immigrants in Germany. German officials said they are treating the mass shooting, one of the deadliest in the country in years, as a terrorist attack.
The attack began in a hookah bar frequented by the immigrant community in Hanau, a city 16 miles east of Frankfurt, around 10 p.m. After opening fire into the Midnight shisha bar, the shooter then fled in a dark car to the Kesselstadt neighborhood, where the attack continued at the Arena Bar and Café. A seven-hour manhunt ensued with police ultimately tracing the suspected gunman through witness statements and surveillance cameras to his home in the city. German authorities say the man returned to his apartment where he is believed to have shot himself and his 72-year-old mother. Both were found dead due to gunshot wounds.
Local media reported the man suspected of carrying out the attack left a confession letter and a video, which have been recovered by police. The apparent xenophobic motive for the shooting again shines a spotlight on a troubling trend of far-right extremist politics in Germany that has until recently been governed from the center. “While violent crime is relatively rare in Germany, the country has experienced a rise in far-right and Islamist terrorism as well as an organized-crime wave,” the Wall Street Journal reports. “According to Germany’s domestic intelligence agency, far-right extremists committed 10,105 violent crimes in the last decade, as well as 83 murders since 1990. In comparison, Islamist terrorists killed 17 people in the same period. Around 12,000 people are listed as far-right extremists by law enforcement agencies in Germany… Last Friday, federal prosecutors arrested 12 people as part of a probe into a far-right extremist group suspected of plotting attacks on politicians, asylum seekers and Muslims.”
Protesters from the village of Novi Sanzhary in Ukraine blocked the road leading a quarantine building where evacuees arriving by plane from Wuhan, China are due to be held for at least two weeks. The plane carrying Ukraine nationals landed at the Kharkiv Airport Thursday.
Hundreds of police were dispatched to keep order, and some were seen dragging some protesters away from the crowd at the demonstration, which the authorities said had started overnight on Wednesday.
Local media reported thatresidents of the town in the Poltava region protested the people arriving from China by blocking the road and burning tires. They also engaged in clashes with police.
The protest prompted President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to issue a statement Thursday reassuring Ukrainians that there was no danger, that the authorities had done everything possible to make sure the virus would not spread to Ukraine.
“But there is another danger that I would like to mention. The danger of forgetting that we are all human and we are all Ukrainian,” he said.
“Attempts to block routes, block hospitals, not allow Ukrainian citizens into Ukraine - this does not show the best side of our character. Especially when you consider that most passengers are people under 30 years of age. For many of us, they are almost like children.”
The Ukrainian authorities say all passengers on board had been screened twice for the virus before being allowed to fly, but that was not enough to quell the protesters.
Ukraine has no confirmed cases of the virus. — Oksana Parafeniuk and Reuters
China warned on Thursday that it might take more action against the Wall Street Journal, a day after revoking the press credentials of three of the U.S. newspaper's correspondents over a column that China said was racist.
“Regrettably, what the WSJ has done so far is nothing but fudging the issue and dodging its responsibility. It has neither issued an official apology nor done anything on accountability,” Geng Shuang, a spokesperson for China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said on Thursday.
“We are not interested in the structural divide at the WSJ,” he said. “There is only one media agency called the WSJ, and it must be responsible for what it has said and done.”
China on Wednesday revoked the press credentials of the newspaper's Beijing deputy bureau chief, Josh Chin, and reporters Chao Deng and Philip Wen, also based in Beijing, ordering them to leave the country in five days.
The decision came after authorities repeatedly called on the newspaper to apologize and investigate those responsible for the headline of a Feb. 3 column that called China the "real sick man of Asia".
Also on Wednesday, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo condemned China’s expulsion of the three foreign correspondents and said that China should not restrict freedom of speech. — Eric Baculinao
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Two people diagnosed with COVID-19, the disease caused by novel coronavirus, who were at one point on board a quarantined cruise ship have died, Japan’s health minister said in parliament Thursday.
13 more coronavirus cases were also reported on the ship Thursday, bringing the total number of cases on the ship to 634.
The deaths appear to be the first involving cases from the Diamond Princess, which was quarantined off Yokohama with around 3,700 passengers and crew after a one-time passenger later tested positive for the virus.
Health Minister Katsunobu Kato offered his condolences to the family of the couple, who were both were Japanese nationals — a man and woman in their 80s.
The man was taken off the cruise ship on Feb. 11 and the woman was taken off on Feb. 12 after testing positive for the coronavirus.
The health ministry has also confirmed that two government officials who performed administrative duties on the cruise ship have tested positive for the virus.
People were quarantined on the cruise ship for around two weeks, and those who have tested negative have begun to leave the ship.
Princess Cruises, the operator of the Diamond Princess, said Thursday that around 600 passengers had been cleared by the Japanese health ministry to disembark on Wednesday, and several hundred others were expected to be cleared Thursday.
The two deaths linked to the Diamond Princess brings the number of people who have died in Japan to three. The other death was not connected to the cruise ship. — Olivier Fabre and Phil Helsel
The novel coronavirus quarantine measures put in place by Japanese officials on board a cruise ship where thousands of people have been kept in isolation were “completely chaotic,” an infectious disease specialist who visited the vessel has claimed.
In two YouTube videos, one in English and one in Japanese, Kentaro Iwata, a professor at Kobe University Hospital in the central Japanese city of Kobe, criticized the situation on the Diamond Princess.
Feb. 19, 202001:36
“Everybody could have the virus,” he said, adding, "The cruise ship was completely inadequate in terms of the infection control.” — Matthew Mulligan and Yuliya Talmazan
Health officials in Hubei province, the center of the coronavirus outbreak, recorded a big drop in the number of new confirmed cases Wednesday.
Over the last 24 hours there were 349 new confirmed cases, down from 1,693 a day earlier.
However the number of deaths in Hubei jumped to 2,029, up by 108 the previous day.
On Wednesday, China's health authority released the sixth edition of it`s diagnostic criteria for the coronavirus, removing a category of cases diagnosed clinically, such as through chest x-rays, in Hubei.
The Hubei health commission did not say in its statement if the sharp drop in the province's new confirmed cases on Wednesday was due to the change.
Last week, the province tweaked its diagnostic methodology to include clinically confirmed cases, resulting in a massive spike in new confirmed cases.
Meanwhile, nationwide, the death toll from the coronavirus outbreak climbed to 2,118 as of Wednesday. It surpassed 2,000 the day before. The total number of confirmed cases rose to 74,576. — Leou Chen, Dawn Liu and Reuters
South Korea has reported its first death of a person infected with coronavirus as well as 22 new cases, bringing the nation's total to 104.
The exact cause of death is being investigated, the country’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in a statement.
Meanwhile, the mayor of a large South Korean city told residents to stay indoors Thursday as a surge in confirmed cases linked to a local church raised the prospect of wider transmission.
Malls, restaurants and streets in Daegu, the country's fourth largest city with a population of 2.5 million, were largely empty in scenes that local social media users likened to a disaster movie.
The cases in the city have been traced to an infected person who attended a local church, a scenario that KCDC described as a "super-spreading event."
Workers wearing protective gear spray disinfectant in front of a church in Daegu, South Korea, on Thursday. Kim Jun-beom / AP
The mayor cautioned that at least 90 more of the around 1,000 other people who attended services at the Temple of the Tabernacle of the Testimony were also showing symptoms. — Nayeong Kim and Reuters
Iran has recorded its first two deaths linked to the coronavirus outbreak, an adviser to the country’s minister of health told Mehr news agency Wednesday.
Alireza Vahabzadeh said the two people died in hospital due to age, respiratory illness and immune deficiency.
Six other people and families of the two dead have also been put under quarantine as schools and universities in the city of Qom closed their doors to stop the spread of the virus.
On Thursday, thee more patients were confirmed to have the virus, bringing the total number of confirmed cases in the country to five, according to the head of health ministry's public relations office. — Amin Hossein Khodadadi
Thousands of travelers who have returned to the United States after recent trips to China are spending nearly half a month behind closed doors under voluntary self-quarantine, even though they do not pose any immediate coronavirus-related health risk to others and are showing no symptoms.
Instead, they simply traveled in China within the past few weeks and have since been flagged by health officials at one of the 11 airports nationwide through which all U.S. citizens and their families flying from China are being routed.
And now they're being asked to stay home for 14 days — the maximum amount of time it's thought to take to develop the illness after being exposed — limiting physical contact with others as much as possible and watching for symptoms. — Erika Edwards
A bus carrying passengers who disembarked from the Diamond Princess cruise ship in Yokohama, Japan, on Thursday.Credit...Kazuhiro Nogi/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Japan reported the deaths of two passengers who had been aboard a quarantined cruise ship.
Two passengers from the cruise ship quarantined in Japan have died after contracting the new coronavirus, the first deaths among the more than 600 people on board who have been infected, a Japanese health ministry official said on Thursday.
The two people, both Japanese, were an 87-year-old man and an 84-year-old woman, the Japanese broadcaster NHK reported. They were taken to hospitals on Feb. 11 and 12, and both had underlying health issues, the broadcaster said. No other information about them was immediately available.
Hundreds of passengers have begun disembarking from the ship, the Diamond Princess, after Japan declared the two-week quarantine over, even as cases of the virus on the vessel have continued to rise.
The authorities have said they are releasing only people who have tested negative for the virus and are showing no symptoms. But experts on infectious diseases have pointed to deficiencies in the quarantine protocols on the ship and questioned the decision to let them go free.
China saw a significant decline in new cases.
China reported a dramatic decrease in new coronavirus infections on Thursday, as health officials changed the way they counted confirmed cases for the second time in over a week.
The country’s health commission said that there were 394 new cases across the country in the previous 24 hours. This was a significantly slower increase compared to the number of new infections reported in the several days preceding it, which has hovered between nearly 1,700 reported Wednesday and more than 2,000 on Feb. 14.
The total number of infections rose to 74,576. There were 114 more deaths on Wednesday, bringing the toll to 2,118.
It was not immediately clear if the decline in new infections was the result of changes in how the government categorizes new cases. But the modification of the criteria quickly threw into confusion the methodology that the country at the center of the outbreak is using to track transmissions.
The operator of the cruise ship docked in Cambodia said all the crew members aboard were virus-free.
All 747 crew members remaining aboard the cruise ship Westerdam in Sihanoukville, Cambodia, have been tested for the coronavirus, and none of them were found to be infected, the cruise company, Holland America Line, announced Thursday.
With these tests results, all 1,528 passengers and crew members who remained in Cambodia have tested negative for the virus and are cleared to leave the country, the cruise company said.
“This completes the testing ordered by the Cambodian Ministry of Health related to Westerdam,” Holland America said.
The ship, which left Hong Kong on Feb. 1 with more than 2,200 people aboard, was turned away by ports in five countries before Cambodia agreed to let it dock a week ago.
The Coronavirus Outbreak
What do you need to know? Start here.
Updated Feb. 10, 2020
What is a Coronavirus? It is a novel virus named for the crown-like spikes that protrude from its surface. The coronavirus can infect both animals and people, and can cause a range of respiratory illnesses from the common cold to more dangerous conditions like Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, or SARS.
How contagious is the virus? According to preliminary research, it seems moderately infectious, similar to SARS, and is possibly transmitted through the air. Scientists have estimated that each infected person could spread it to somewhere between 1.5 and 3.5 people without effective containment measures.
Where has the virus spread? The virus originated in Wuhan, China, and has sickened tens of thousands of people in China and at least two dozen other countries.
How worried should I be? While the virus is a serious public health concern, the risk to most people outside China remains very low, and seasonal flu is a more immediate threat.
Who is working to contain the virus? World Health Organization officials have praised China’s aggressive response to the virus by closing transportation, schools and markets. This week, a team of experts from the W.H.O. arrived in Beijing to offer assistance.
What if I’m traveling? The United States and Australia are temporarily denying entry to noncitizens who recently traveled to China and several airlines have canceled flights.
How do I keep myself and others safe? Washing your hands frequently is the most important thing you can do, along with staying at home when you’re sick.
The company said there was never any sign of coronavirus aboard the ship, but one passenger, an American woman, was found to have the virus after she departed and was stopped by airport health inspectors in Malaysia.
Some health experts fear that the woman, 83, may have exposed other passengers who have returned to their homes around the world. More than 600 passengers on the ship were American.
Holland America said Wednesday that all 781 passengers who remained in Cambodia had tested negative for the disease and were free to leave the country.
About 25 crew members will leave the Westerdam for their homes and the ship will depart from Cambodia in a few days, the cruise company said. The Westerdam’s next cruise, which was scheduled for Japan, has been canceled.
Earlier this week, a comedian from Oregon who had performed on the Westerdam posted a video on YouTube boasting about how he slipped out of his hotel and headed to the airport before his test results had come back.
The man, Frank King, said in the video that he had eluded hotel security. KOMO-TV in Seattle reported that he arrived home on Monday. He said that he had been “cleared by the C.D.C.” and did not have any symptoms, but regretted his decision because of a backlash on social media.
In an email to The Times on Thursday, he said that in hindsight, he would have chosen to stay “simply to avoid recrimination.”
South Korea confirmed the death of a coronavirus patient, and a jump in cases linked to a church.
South Korea reported what officials said could be its first death from the coronavirus on Thursday, as the number of people infected soared to 104.
A 63-year-old patient with symptoms of pneumonia died on Wednesday at the Daenam Hospital in Cheongdo, a town in the southeast of South Korea, according to the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. On Thursday, officials learned that the patient had been infected with the coronavirus.
The patient had been hospitalized in the psychiatric ward of the hospital for the past 20 years, officials said. Health officials have been testing the 109 patients in the psychiatric ward, as well as staff members, since two patients tested positive for the virus on Wednesday.
South Korea reported 53 additional cases of the coronavirus on Thursday, bringing the country’s total number of patients infected to 104.
The number of people who have tested positive for the virus has increased sharply in the past couple of days, with 43 members of a church in Daegu, 180 miles southeast of Seoul, the capital, confirmed to have been infected.
All but two of the 53 new patients were residents of Daegu or the surrounding province of North Gyeongsang. Twenty-eight of them were members of the church.
A 61-year-old South Korean woman in Daegu was diagnosed with the virus earlier this week. Since then, health officials have been tracking down people who may have come in contact with her before she was quarantined, including members of her church.
She had visited the Shincheonji Church of Jesus twice since she first developed a sore throat, a potential symptom of the virus, on Feb. 7, officials said.
The woman has not visited China in recent months, and officials were trying to find out how she contracted the virus. The church has stopped services, and the authorities were monitoring all 1,001 members who had visited the church while she was there in the past two weeks.
Officials were also investigating a possible connection between the woman and the Daenam Hospital in Cheongdo, which she visited in early February. A total of 15 patients at the hospital have tested positive so far, including the man who died on Wednesday.
Mayor Kwon Young-jin of Daegu said on Thursday that the city has reached 600 Shincheonji church members, 90 of whom reported fever and other potential symptoms. Health officials will test those 90 for the virus, he said. But the city was still trying to reach nearly 400 church members who remained incommunicado.
“We keep calling them at this moment, trying to reach them,” Mr. Kwon told reporters.
The Shincheonji Church of Jesus said it was urging all members to cooperate with the government.
Here’s a look at how China is counting coronavirus cases.
When the Chinese health authorities announced on Thursday that they were using new criteria to count cases of the coronavirus, they appeared to be undoing a change they had announced just a week ago.
That earlier change, announced in Hubei Province, the hardest-hit area of the outbreak, allowed local health officials to take into account cases diagnosed in clinical settings, including with the use of CT scans showing lung infections, not just those confirmed with specialized testing kits.
The government in Hubei has been confronted with a severe shortage of testing kits and hospital beds, and officials described the use of CT scans and clinical symptoms as a way to help identify and get more patients into needed care.
But in the sixth and latest iteration of a diagnosis plan, the government said it would now apply the same criteria across the country, including in Hubei. There would only be “suspected” and “confirmed” cases from now on, and cases would only be considered confirmed after genetic testing.
The change has caused confusion among public health experts, who said it is now even more difficult to track the outbreak in China.
“For an epidemiologist, it’s really frustrating when case definitions keep on changing,” saidBenjamin Cowling, a professor of epidemiology at the University of Hong Kong. “Why can’t they work out what’s a probable, suspected and confirmed case? It’s totally confusing.”
Health officials have run into problems with the specialized testing kits, which can be difficult to conduct and often turn up false negatives. It also takes at least two days to process the results of the test.
But lung scans are also an imperfect means to diagnose patients, leading to the possibility of an overcount. Even patients with ordinary seasonal flu may develop pneumonia visible on a lung scan.
More than 100 Diamond Princess passengers were taken to a quarantine site in Hong Kong.
More than 100 Hong Kong residents who had been quarantined on the Diamond Princess cruise ship in Japan arrived back in the city aboard a chartered flight on Thursday.
The passengers had all tested negative for the virus, but were immediately ferried onto buses and taken to a quarantine facility, where they will be required to spend 14 days.
A live-stream on a government website showed passengers in face masks waving and snapping photos as they exited the plane. The flight was operated by the city’s flagship airline, Cathay Pacific, and was met by customs officers and medical workers.
About 55 Hong Kong residents on the cruise ship were infected by the virus and will have to remain in Japan for treatment, said John Lee, Hong Kong’s secretary for security. About 33 people identified as their close contacts will also have to stay in Japan, he said.
Beijing defended its expulsion of 3 Wall Street Journal reporters.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs in China defended its decision to expel three Wall Street Journal reporters in retaliation for a coronavirus-related headline in the newspaper’s opinion section.
Geng Shuang, a spokesman for the ministry, pushed back against the notion that the reporters should not be faulted for a piece in the editorial pages, which operate separately.
“We are not interested in the division of work within the WSJ,” Mr. Geng Shuang said at a news conference on Thursday. “There is only one media agency called the WSJ, and it must be responsible for what it has said and done,” he added.
The headline, “China Is the Real Sick Man of Asia,” appeared on an essay by the scholar Walter Russell Mead that was published on Feb. 3. The piece criticized China’s initial response to the coronavirus outbreak and the state of the country’s financial markets.
The expression “sick man of Asia” is a derogatory characterization of China’s weaknesses in the late 1800s and early 1900s.
“Those media who blatantly insult China, pitch racial discrimination and maliciously smear China must pay their price,” Mr. Geng said.
The first coronavirus patient in the U.S. has recovered.
Since his discharge from the hospital about three weeks ago, the man has remained at home and in isolation at the request of local health officials. He was supplied with groceries, and on Valentine’s Day was given a cupcake.
But after consulting with state and federal officials, the Snohomish Health District concluded that it was safe to release him from all restrictions.
“He is now considered fully recovered and free to go about his regular activities,” Snohomish officials said in a statement.
Chinese banks lower interest rates to soften the economic blow.
China’s banks are lowering borrowing costs for companies and households in a move to try to soften the economic blow of the coronavirus.
The move follows a series of policies enacted by China’s central bank to shore up an economy hobbled by weeks of a near-nationwide shutdown of businesses. On Thursday, the People’s Bank of China said it had lowered the one-year loan prime rate from 4.15 percent to 4.05 percent, and slashed the five-year loan rate to 4.75 percent from 4.8 percent.
Dozens of business owners have complained about China’s efforts to contain the virus by locking down dozens of cities. The move grounded to a halt the daily activity of local businesses — including small shops and large factories.
Economists are lowering their growth expectations for China this year as businesses are only just haltingly beginning to get back to work.
One-third of small firms in China are on the brink of running out of cash over the next four weeks, according to a survey by Peking University and Tsinghua University of 1,000 business owners. Another third will run out of cash in the next two months. Many of these firms have already laid off employees.
U.S.-China relations were already fraying. The outbreak has damaged them further.
The coronavirus epidemic has become the latest and potentially most divisive issue driving apart the United States and China. For the fiercest critics of China within the Trump administration, panic over the coronavirus has provided a new opening to denounce the rule of the Communist Party, which they say cannot be trusted.
But the hard-liners’ message has been undermined at times by President Trump, who has publicly commended President Xi Jinping’s handling of the crisis and even called for greater commercial ties, including the sale of jet engines to China.
“Look,’’ Mr. Trump said on Tuesday, “I know this: President Xi loves the people of China, he loves his country, and he’s doing a very good job with a very, very tough situation.”
It has become a staple of the Trump administration: sending mixed messages that reflect a good-cop-bad-cop tactic, a real internal disagreement over policy or simply the caprice of the president. But over all, the most hawkish voices on China have dominated the conversation, lashing out at Beijing as it reels from one challenge after another — a trade war with Washington, protests in Hong Kong and now the struggle to contain the coronavirus.
Whether it is because of the assertiveness of the hard-liners, the ambiguities fueled by the competing messages or Beijing’s policies, the relationship between the United States and China has become so strained and unpredictable that even the need for a united effort to address a global health crisis has not overcome the suspicions that have increasingly taken root on both sides.
Reporting and research were contributed by Choe Sang-Hun, Alexandra Stevenson, Richard C. Paddock, Karen Zraick, Russell Goldman, Sui-Lee Wee, Steven Lee Myers, Elaine Yu, Tiffany May, Edward Wong, Makiko Inoue and Eimi Yamamitsu.
