Here’s what you need to know:
- The virus may have been in Washington State for weeks.
- Seoul seeks a murder inquiry into leaders of a church linked to the outbreak.
- As U.S. marks its first death, Trump announces new travel restrictions.
- The global total: Nearly 87,000 cases.
- Xi Jinping says China must do better.
- A Diamond Princess passenger is Australia’s first death from the virus.
The virus may have been in Washington State for weeks.
As Washington State declared a state of emergency over the new coronavirus, researchers who studied two cases in the state say that the virus may have been spreading there for weeks, suggesting the possibility that up to 1,500 people in the state may have been infected.
The state became the site of the country’s first coronavirus death on Saturday, at a time when President Trump issued new foreign travel warnings and restrictions in an effort to stop the spread of the virus, while also urging calm among members of the public.
The number of confirmed cases worldwide had reached nearly 87,000 as of Sunday, with more than 7,000 cases outside mainland China, where the outbreak began late last year. The virus has now been detected in at least 60 countries.
With 71 cases confirmed in the United States, the Food and Drug Administration announced this weekend that testing for the coronavirus would be greatly expanded in the country, a move that is expected to improve the pace of detecting infections and help identify patterns of suspected or confirmed cases.
In Washington State, researchers compared two cases in the hopes of gaining such insight. One case, which last month became the first in the United States, appeared in a patient from whom health officials took a sample on Jan. 19. Another case that surfaced in the region last week probably descended from it, based on an analysis of the virus’s genetic sequence.
The findings suggest that the virus has been spreading in the community for close to six weeks, according to one of the scientists who compared the sequences, Trevor Bedford, an associate professor at the University of Washington.
If that is true, it could mean that 150 to 1,500 people “have either been infected and recovered or currently are infected now,” said Mike Famulare, a researcher at the Institute for Disease Modeling in Bellevue, Wash., who performed the analysis. Those cases, if they exist, have thus far been undetected.
Many of those people might not yet be contagious, Dr. Famulare said.
His estimation was based on a simulation using what scientists have learned about the incubation period and transmissibility of the virus. He characterized his estimate of community cases as a “best guess, with broad uncertainty.” Another method, based on census data and estimated sampling, produced similar results, he said.
[Do you know anyone who lives or works at Life Care Center in Kirkland, Wash.? If so, please email our reporter, Mike Baker, at mike.baker@nytimes.com.
Seoul seeks a murder inquiry into leaders of a church linked to the outbreak.
The city of Seoul, South Korea, on Sunday asked prosecutors to investigate the founder of a church at the center of the country’s coronavirus outbreak and other top leaders of the sect on murder and other criminal charges.
Official believe that the church has contributed to the country’s rising death toll from the virus — which reached 18 as of Sunday — by failing to provide disease-control officials with a full accurate list of church members and by interfering with the government’s efforts to fight the outbreak.
In a Facebook post, Mayor Park Won-soon of Seoul said the church’s behavior was tantamount to “murder through to willful negligence.”
Officials say that nearly 60 percent of the 3,736 confirmed cases in South Korea are in members of Shincheonji Church of Jesus in the southeastern city of Daegu or people who came into contact with them.
Prosecutors have yet to decide whether to begin a formal investigation into the founder, Lee Man-hee, and other sect leaders.
Shincheonji officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Sunday. The church has said it was fully cooperating with the government, calling itself the victim of a “witch hunt.”
South Korean officials also said on Sunday that some church members had visited the Chinese city of Wuhan in January. The global outbreak is believed to have begun in a seafood and poultry market in Wuhan.
Officials in South Korea have been trying to figure out how the virus reached the congregation. The church has acknowledged having members in Wuhan, but it said none of them had visited South Korea since December.
As U.S. marks its first death, Trump announces new travel restrictions.
President Trump has sought to more aggressively address the coronavirus after weeks of confusion over his administration’s response, urging public calm and issuing new foreign travel warnings and restrictions.
At a White House news conference on Saturday, Mr. Trump acknowledged the first death recorded in the United States, in Washington State. Vice President Mike Pence said the administration was issuing its highest-level warning, a “do not travel” warning, to areas of Italy and South Korea most affected by the virus.
The United States is also banning all travel to Iran and barring entry to any foreign citizen who has visited Iran in the past 14 days. There will also be screenings of travelers coming from Italy and South Korea.
Speaking later on Saturday at the Conservative Political Action Conference, Mr. Trump suggested that the United States was ready to help Iranians amid an outbreak there.
“If we can help the Iranians, we have the greatest health care professionals in the world,” he said, adding that “we would love to be able to help them.”
“All they have to do is ask,” he said.
The global total: Nearly 87,000 cases.
Of the nearly 87,000 coronavirus cases recorded globally as of Sunday, more than 7,000 were outside mainland China. It has now been detected in at least 60 countries.
The Chinese authorities reported 573 new cases. That brings the country’s total to 79,824 since the outbreak began, a figure that includes people who have recovered or died. China also reported 35 new deaths on Sunday, a drop from the previous day’s toll of 47.
South Korea, which has the largest coronavirus outbreak outside China, reported 586 new cases on Sunday, bringing its total to 3,736.
Iran, which has been at the center of the virus’s spread in the region, said on Sunday that 385 new cases were detected this weekend, bringing its official total to 987. The death toll rose to 54 — a number many public health experts say indicates a wider spread than officials have acknowledged. Nearby Qatar confirmed its first case on Saturday, a 36-year-old who had been in quarantine since recently returning from Iran, the country’s health ministry said.
The numbers also continued to rise in Europe. Italy, the center of the outbreak on the Continent, has a total of 1,128 confirmed cases and 29 deaths. France has reported 100 cases and two deaths. And Germany said on Sunday that cases there had risen to 117, including 66 in North Rhine-Westphalia, its most populous state.
Ireland reported its first case, the country’s Health Protection Surveillance Center said on Twitter on Sunday, while in neighboring Britain officials said that its number of cases had risen to 23. A school in Reading, in southeastern England, said on Saturday that a staff member had tested positive, forcing the school to “shut for some days to allow for a deep clean,” the school’s head teacher said in a message to the pupils’ parents.
In Norway, two more staff members at Oslo University Hospital tested positive for the virus, a hospital spokesman said on Sunday, raising the total number of cases in the country to 17, while Sweden has confirmed its 13th case.
Also Sunday, Australia, which has 25 confirmed cases, reported its first death from the virus.
Xi Jinping says China must do better.
China’s initial response to the coronavirus epidemic was marred by policy stumbles that fueled public anger, the nation’s leader, Xi Jinping, said in published speech excerpts that laid out his ideas for strengthening the country’s defenses against such outbreaks.
Mr. Xi’s comments, drawn from two internal speeches that he made in February, were published on Saturday in Qiushi, or “Seeking Truth,” the ruling Communist Party’s leading journal. They seemed intended to highlight the policy and legal changes that Mr. Xi intends to push to confront the epidemic.
Those include banning the trade in wildlife that scientists believe may have let the coronavirus jump from animals into the human population; more effective monitoring of potential epidemics; and stronger coordination to direct emergency medical supplies when an outbreak happens.
While praising the Chinese government’s response to the crisis, Mr. Xi also acknowledged problems, using blunter language than he has in previous public comments on the epidemic.
“Some localities and departments were at a loss in how to react to this sudden epidemic,” Mr. Xi said. “Some protective measures went through abrupt changes, and in some areas there was even lawless and criminal conduct that seriously impeded containing the epidemic, and there was public dissatisfaction about this.”
Mr. Xi did not elaborate on what he meant by criminal conduct. Chinese news media have reported cases of officials neglecting stricken families, as well as crude, unhygienic efforts to transfer patients.
After more than a month of emergency measures that have locked down cities, towns and villages, and shut down much transportation, commerce and industry, China appears to be taming the new coronavirus disease, labeled Covid-19, that emerged late last year in Wuhan, a city in the country’s center. On Saturday, China officially recorded 573 new infections, and another 35 deaths, from the virus.
In his latest comments, Mr. Xi tried to look beyond the immediate crisis, laying out areas where he wants changed policy. These included:
Improved health services. China has been building a safety net of medical insurance for citizens, but the expense and inadequacies of basic health care remain a source of public ire — and a problem highlighted by the epidemic. Mr. Xi signaled that the government would try to channel more spending to ease those problems. “Don’t let small ailments brew into major epidemics,” he said.
That would entail more spending on medical training, especially for general practitioners, he suggested. Chinese hospitals often refer patients to specialists, even for common illnesses that general practitioners could easily treat.
Cracking down on the illegal trade in wildlife. Scientists generally believe that the coronavirus may have spread from a wholesale market in Wuhan, the capital of Hubei Province, where some vendors sold wildlife. They say the pathogen may have jumped from bats to other animals, possibly pangolins, and to humans.
“Resolutely ban and harshly attack the illegal market and trade in wildlife,” he said in the comments published Saturday. “Contain major public health hazards at their source.”
Improved emergency preparations. The Chinese government has touted its vast mobilization of officials, doctors and medical resources to fight the epidemic. In his latest comments, Mr. Xi said that even so, China could do better. He called for clear lines of command in response to public health emergencies.
As Mr. Xi often does, he emphasized the potential of new, data-driven technology to improve the government’s response. “We must encourage the application of big data, artificial intelligence, cloud computing and other digital technology to play a better supporting role in monitoring and analyzing outbreaks, tracing viruses, prevention and treatment, and allocating resources,” he said.
No signs of liberalization. One notable thing was what Mr. Xi did not say. Many Chinese people, including health experts, have said that the epidemic illustrated the risks to public health created by official censorship, which early in the epidemic led to doctors being silenced by the authorities after they discussed the outbreak with colleagues. One of those doctors, Li Wenliang, himself died from the virus, making him into a martyr-like symbol of the costs of speaking out.
But Mr. Xi gave no indication that loosening censorship was on his agenda. The government, he said, would continue to crack down on “concocting and spreading rumors” — the accusation that the police in Wuhan leveled against Dr. Li.
A Diamond Princess passenger is Australia’s first death from the virus.
A 78-year-old man died of the coronavirus early Sunday at a hospital in Perth, Australia, the first known death from the illness in that country, officials said. He had been a passenger on the Diamond Princess cruise ship, where a large concentration of coronavirus infections emerged last month as it was docked in Japan.
The man’s death was announced by Andrew Robertson, chief health officer at the Western Australia Department of Health. The man’s wife, who had also been on the cruise ship and was later discovered to have the virus, was in stable condition, Mr. Robertson said.
Australia has reported 25 confirmed cases of the new virus, nine of which were associated with the Diamond Princess. Fifteen of these patients have recovered.
“We still need to make the point very clear that there isn’t community spread within Australia,” Mr. Robertson said. “This very tragic case is still related to the Diamond Princess.”
“The public shouldn’t be panicking at this stage,” he said.
Reporting was contributed by Sheri Fink, Choe Sang-hun, Knvul Sheikh, Mike Baker, Michael Crowley, Keith Bradsher, Raymond Zhong, Iliana Magra and Tess Felder.
https://news.google.com/__i/rss/rd/articles/CBMiPmh0dHBzOi8vd3d3Lm55dGltZXMuY29tLzIwMjAvMDMvMDEvd29ybGQvY29yb25hdmlydXMtbmV3cy5odG1s0gFCaHR0cHM6Ly93d3cubnl0aW1lcy5jb20vMjAyMC8wMy8wMS93b3JsZC9jb3JvbmF2aXJ1cy1uZXdzLmFtcC5odG1s?oc=5
2020-03-01 12:33:45Z
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