The death toll from the outbreak has risen to 56, while authorities said just over 2,000 have been infected.Health experts believe the real number of cases to be higher, as hospitals across Wuhan, the centre of the outbreak, have experienced shortages of testing kits.
Another 1,000 cases are expected in Wuhan, the city’s mayor said. Zhou Xianwang said it was stepping up construction of specialist hospitals. He added that 5million people had left the city for new year celebrations.
The US, France and Japan said they were arranging evacuation flights for people trapped in Wuhan, which has been placed under quarantine. The US and Japan each reported a new case, taking the number of people infected to three and four respectively. Malaysia, Singapore and South Korea each confirmed a new case, while Thailand said it had identified three new cases.
In the UK, 52 people have tested negative for the coronavirus, the Department of Health and Social Care said. No one in the UK has tested positive.
The UK home secretary, Priti Patel, refused to confirm or deny reports that Britain is planning to evacuate more than 200 of its citizens in Wuhan. The foreign office has advised against travel to Hubei province.
A nationwide ban on trading wildlife has been imposed in China after experts warned that the sale of sometimes endangered species for human consumption is the cause both of the new coronavirus outbreak and other past epidemics.
Residents of Hubei province are to be banned from Hong Kong. The city state will also ban entry from Monday to people who have visited Hubei province in the past 14 days, the city’s government said. The rule does not apply to Hong Kong residents.
Long-distance buses have been suspended in the eastern province of Shandong, which has a population of 100 million people. Long-distance buses have also been banned from departing from or arriving at Beijing and Shanghai.
The financial hub of Shanghai, which has extensive international air connections, on Sunday reported its first death: that of an 88-year-old man who already had health problems.
Beijing said that the reopening of schools and universities after the new year holiday had been indefinitely suspended.
Upcoming tennis (Fed Cup) and football (Women’s Olympic qualifying) events have been moved from China. Boxing and basketball events had already been relocated because of the coronavirus.
Two of Hong Kong’s biggest attractions, Hong Kong Disneyland and Ocean Park, announced they would close indefinitely. The city state reported its sixth case of coronavirus on Sunday.
Jonathan Ashworth, the UK’s shadow health secretary, urged the government to reassure the public it is sufficiently prepared as the NHS is already struggling in the flu season.
He told the Guardian:
The NHS is currently under immense strain this winter with staff already working flat out and hospitals overcrowded. We need urgent reassurance from ministers they have a plan to ensure we have capacity in place to deal with Coronavirus should we need to,
AFP’s Hong Kong correspondent is reporting what is believed to be the youngest person - a baby girl - infected so far.
First recorded case of infant being infected of #nCoV2019 was reported in Beijing tonight. The baby girl is only 9 months old and has travel history in Wuhan. pic.twitter.com/n7vmJ9juyX
This gives an idea on how difficult it may be to prevent the coronavirus spreading despite the quarantine.
Mayor of #Wuhan, epicenter of #coronavirus, said at briefing that 5mln people have left the city due to #LunarNewYear travel and the outbreak. 9mln are still in the city.
Hong Kong has imposed new restrictions on people from the province at the centre of the outbreak, AFP’s correspondent there reports:
#BREAKING Hubei residents and visitors who have been to Hubei in the past 14 days won't be allowed in Hong Kong from Sunday midnight till further notice, Hong Kong government announced. E-channels will be open only to HK residents. Visitors must approach counter for clearance. pic.twitter.com/baNL9FULsA
Earlier, I reported on protests in Hong Kong against a plan to turn a newly built but currently empty public housing block in Fanling into a quarantine facility for people with coronavirus.
Here ia an update from AFP:
Dozens of local residents and protesters opposed to the idea held rallies outside the complex on Sunday, with some setting up road blocks.
In the evening, police said assailants threw petrol bombs at the buildings.
An AFP photographer on the scene saw fierce flames coming from the entrance of two apartment blocks before firefighters got the blaze under control.
Riot police were on scene and protesters had left, although some local residents were arguing with officers who used pepper spray.
The Centre for Health Protection said the plan to turn the housing estate into a quarantine zone would be suspended.
The agency has already turned a holiday park in an isolated rural area into a working quarantine facility. Two other holiday parks located away from major housing estates are also ready to be used as similar facilities.
But officials say they have struggled to find hotels and spare rooms for doctors and nurses working on the isolation wards where patients are being treated.
The virus outbreak comes at a time when Hong Kong is already boiling with widespread anti-government sentiment after seven months of often violent pro-democracy protests.
First aid volunteers work to extinguish a fire set by local residents at a building of the Fai Ming Estate, in the Fanling district of Hong Kong, after the Hong Kong government announced it would requisition the unoccupied housing project to house quarantined patients of the new viral coronavirus illness. Photograph: Vincent Yu/AP
As of Sunday afternoon, 52 people across England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland had been tested for the new coronavirus, but all tests were confirmed as negative, the Department for Health and Social Care has just said.
It said it will be providing an update on the figures every day at 2pm.
Nathalie MacDermott, NIHR (National Institute for Health Research) academic clinical lecturer, at King’s College London, has said the suggestion that coronavirus is infectious during the incubation period is “not surprising”, adding:
This was taken account of in some of the modelling exercises undertaken by colleagues recently, and was likely given the degree of spread of the outbreak within China. There is often the question of whether individuals who may be infected with the virus but never show any symptoms (asymptomatic or subclinical cases) may also be contagious to others.
The report from Zhejiang suggests this may be the case, but further confirmation is required. This report highlights the importance of identifying individuals who may have travelled from affected regions or had contact with a known case of 2019-nCoV infection to establish if they may have symptoms and to request they limit their attendance at public gatherings in order to try and contain the spread of infection.
While these findings may cause concern, the possibility of transmission of virus during the incubation period and from asymptomatic individuals has been considered by public health authorities and the WHO, and has been included as a factor within response plans to tackle an outbreak of an airborne virus.
AFP has a report from an overwhelmed-sounding hospital in Wuhan:
At one Wuhan hospital AFP visited, there were long queues of sick patients, many coughing, with overwhelmed staff unable to process them quickly.
Outside the Red Cross facility - which is one of the hospitals people are sent to for initial tests if they show signs of infection - patients told AFP they felt exasperated and helpless.
“It has been two days since I slept, and I have been wandering from hospital to hospital,” said a man in his 30s, who was trying to see a doctor because he was worried he might be infected.
“At this rate, my turn will be tomorrow morning at best.”
Those who spoke to AFP told of extremely long queues and disorganisation.
One spoke of a fear that sick patients with fevers will infect each other while waiting in long queues, even if they didn’t have the coronavirus when they first arrived at the hospital.
Another man said he had seen several people faint while waiting.
Many people carried their own plastic stools to sit on, while one pragmatic man had brought a lounge chair with him.
“It takes at least five hours to see a doctor,” one woman, who didn’t want to be named, told AFP.
The woman, who was with her son, said the management of the hospital was “really messy”.
An old man wearing a Mao cap said he had waited all day to see a doctor, only to be sent home because of a “lack of room”.
AFP saw some patients inside the hospital who were without masks, despite city orders that anyone going out must wear them.
Patients were taking their own temperatures with mercury thermometers, by mouth or armpit, and there were no checks on anyone entering or leaving the hospital.
“There is no more space, the staff are overwhelmed, there is a shortage of some medicine, and patients are being left to fend for themselves,” said one 30-year-old.
The death toll from the outbreak has risen to 56, while authorities said almost 2,000 have been infected.Health experts believe the real number of cases to be higher, as hospitals across Wuhan, the centre of the outbreak, have experienced shortages of testing kits.
The US, France and Japan said they were arranging evacuation flights for people trapped in Wuhan, which has been placed under quarantine. The US and Japan each reported a new case, taking the number of people infected to three and four respectively. Malaysia, Singapore and South Korea each confirmed a new case, while Thailand said it had identified three new cases.
The UK home secretary, Priti Patel, refused to confirm or deny reports that Britain is planning to evacuate more than 200 of its citizens in Wuhan. The foreign office has advised against travel to Hubei province.
A nationwide ban on trading wildlife has been imposed in China after experts warned that the sale of sometimes endangered species for human consumption is the cause both of the new coronavirus outbreak and other past epidemics.
Long-distance buses have been suspended in the eastern province of Shandong, which has a population of 100 million people. Long-distance buses have also been banned from departing from or arriving at Beijing and Shanghai.
The financial hub of Shanghai, which has extensive international air connections, on Sunday reported its first death: that of an 88-year-old man who already had health problems.
Beijing said that the reopening of schools and universities after the new year holiday had been indefinitely suspended.
Two of Hong Kong’s biggest attractions, Hong Kong Disneyland and Ocean Park, announced they would close indefinitely. The city state reported its sixth case of coronavirus on Sunday.
World Animal Protection has welcomed China’s decision to impose a wildlife trade ban, effective from today.
Kate Nustedt, the organisation’s global wildlife director, said:
We commend China’s decision to impose a nationwide ban on wildlife trade in response to the deadly coronavirus outbreak. This ban will prevent the terrible suffering endured by millions upon millions of wild animals across the country.
Crucially, it will also put a stop to the horrific conditions that serve as such a lethal hotbed of disease. We hope that this courageous step is made permanent and extended to all wildlife imports and exports, to help prevent any future crises of this nature.
Wild animals belong in the wild. This wildlife trade ban by China will help keep them there.
Thailand, the country with the most confirmed cases outside China of the new coronavirus, said on Sunday that three of the people infected were being treated and five had recovered and gone home.
The public health minister, Anutin Charnvirakul, called an emergency meeting on Sunday, pledging:
We can control the situation and are confident in our ability to handle the crisis.
The Thai government has faced accusations that it is prioritising tourism - China is Thailand’s biggest source of tourists with nearly 11 million visitors last year - over public health.
The hashtag #crapgovernment was top trending on Twitter in Thailand on Saturday with more than 400,000 tweets. Users complained about the management of the virus and other health issues.
Anutin insisted the government would not prioritise tourism revenue over health.
If it reaches a point where public health is in danger, we will take (more) action ...Detecting infected patients is a good sign because it shows that our system is efficient.
All but one of the eight cases in Thailand were tourists from Wuhan, the central Chinese city that is at the centre of the outbreak. One Thai national, who had visited Wuhan over the New Year, contracted the disease.
There have been no cases of human-to-human transmission in Thailand.
The government is scanning passengers arriving on flights from Guangzhou across five airports including the main Suvarnabhumi airport, Chiang Mai, Phuket, Don Muang and Krabi.
Based on numbers during the Sars outbreak in 2003, three months of reduced travel from China would result in 50 billion baht ($1.52 billion) of lost tourism revenue, the minister of tourism and sports, Phiphat Ratchakitprakarn, said.
Major shopping malls in Thai tourist spots have introduced hygiene measures. Mass transit operators including the Bangkok skytrain and subways are increasing the frequencies of wipedowns and spraying disinfectant in trains, the Transport Ministry said.
