READ UPDATES IN CHINESE: 新冠病毒疫情最新消息汇总
Here’s what you need to know:
- Japan reported the deaths of two passengers who had been aboard a quarantined cruise ship.
- China saw a significant decline in new cases.
- The operator of the cruise ship docked in Cambodia said all the crew members aboard were virus-free.
- South Korea confirmed the death of a coronavirus patient, and a jump in cases linked to a church.
- Here’s a look at how China is counting coronavirus cases.
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 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,” said Benjamin 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.
A 35-year-old man from Washington State who last month became the first confirmed coronavirus patient in the United States has made a full recovery, health officials in Snohomish County, Wash., said on Wednesday.
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.
https://news.google.com/__i/rss/rd/articles/CBMiRGh0dHBzOi8vd3d3Lm55dGltZXMuY29tLzIwMjAvMDIvMjAvd29ybGQvYXNpYS9jaGluYS1jb3JvbmF2aXJ1cy5odG1s0gFIaHR0cHM6Ly93d3cubnl0aW1lcy5jb20vMjAyMC8wMi8yMC93b3JsZC9hc2lhL2NoaW5hLWNvcm9uYXZpcnVzLmFtcC5odG1s?oc=5
2020-02-20 12:28:59Z
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