The third U.S. case of coronavirus has been confirmed in Orange County, California, the OC Health Care Agency's Communicable Disease Control Division announced in a press release Sunday.
"The OC Health Care Agency's (HCA) Communicable Disease Control Division received confirmation from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) this evening that an Orange County, California case has tested positive for the novel coronavirus," the agency said.
The patient has been described as a traveler from Wuhan, China — the epicenter of the disease's outbreak — and is in isolation in a hospital in "good condition," according to the release.
The new respiratory illness has so far sickened more than 1,975 people and killed 56, the majority of which are in Wuhan.
The HCA said it will be monitoring any close contacts, but that there is "no evidence that person-to-person transmission has occurred in Orange County."
According to the CDC's guidance, people who have "casual contact with a case" — for instance, it says, in the same grocery store or movie theater — "are at minimal risk of developing infection."
"The current risk of local transmission remains low," the HCA said.
FILE PHOTO: U.S. President Donald Trump arrives to address U.S mayors in the East Room of the White House in Washington, U.S., January 24, 2020. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst
DUBAI (Reuters) - The United States will not lift sanctions on Iran in order to negotiate, U.S. President Donald Trump tweeted late on Saturday, seemingly in response to a Der Spiegel interview with Iran’s foreign minister.
“Iranian Foreign Minister says Iran wants to negotiate with The United States, but wants sanctions removed. @FoxNews @OANN No Thanks!” Trump tweeted in English on Saturday and later in Farsi.
Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif responded on Sunday by tweeting an excerpt from the interview with Der Spiegel published on Friday, where he said Iran is still open to negotiations with America if sanctions are lifted.
“@realdonaldtrump is better advised to base his foreign policy comments & decisions on facts, rather than @FoxNews headlines or his Farsi translators,” Zarif said in the tweet with the interview excerpt.
Tensions between Iran and the United States have reached the highest levels in decades after the U.S. killed top Iranian General Qassem Soleimani in a drone strike in Baghdad on Jan. 3, prompting Iran to fire missiles days later at bases in Iraq where U.S. troops are stationed.
Tensions between the two have been increasing steadily since Trump pulled the United States out of Iran’s nuclear pact with world powers in 2018 and reimposed sanctions that have driven down Iran’s oil exports and hammered its economy.
Reporting By Babak Dehghanpisheh; Editing by Tom Hogue
The United States has a contract with a transporter to evacuate diplomats from the US consulate in Wuhan, China. The consulate is closed and all US diplomats are "under ordered departure," the official said.
Details of the flight plan are still being finalized and the source said "a lot depends on what the Chinese authorities will allow us to do," adding that Beijing has been "very cooperative."
The State Department and White House have not yet responded to CNN's request for comment on the matter.
The Wall Street Journal first reported the planned evacuation.
According to the Journal, the US consulate in Wuhan is reaching out to the Americans it is aware of in the country to offer them a spot on the flight.
The flight, which seats about 230 people, will include diplomats from the US consulate in Wuhan, as well as Americans and their families, the Journal reported. The person told the newspaper that any available seats might be offered to non-US citizens and diplomats of other nations.
The flight will have medical personnel aboard to treat anyone with the virus and make sure it is contained, according to the Journal.
Passengers will be asked to foot the bill for the flight, which is expected to cost much more than a commercial flight from China to the US, the Journal reported.
The newspaper reported that the United States also plans to temporarily close its consulate in Wuhan.
It is unknown where the plane plans to fly to in the US, the Journal noted.
Roughly 1,000 American citizens are believed to be in Wuhan, according to the Journal.
On Thursday, the US State Department ordered non-emergency personnel and their families to depart the Hubei Province of China, of which Wuhan is the provincial capital, due to the coronavirus.
The Department also raised the travel advisory for the Hubei province to "Level 4: Do Not Travel," warning that the "U.S. government has limited ability to provide emergency services to U.S. citizens in Hubei province."
Chinese authorities have imposed indefinite restrictions on public transport and travel in an unprecedented effort to contain the spread of the virus.
Forty-one people in mainland China have now been killed by the Wuhan coronavirus, with over 1,200 confirmed cases.
CNN's Jennifer Hansler and Helen Regan contributed to this report. Jiang reported from Beijing.
ANKARA, Turkey – The death toll from a strong earthquake that rocked eastern Turkey climbed to 22 Saturday, with more than 1,000 people injured, officials said.
Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu, speaking at a televised news conference near the epicenter of the quake, said 39 people had been rescued from the rubble of collapsed buildings, including a woman recovered 14 hours after the main tremor.
Rescue workers were continuing to search for people buried under the rubble of collapsed buildings in Elazig province and neighboring Malatya, Health Minister Fahrettin Koca said earlier.
Emergency workers and security forces distributed tents, beds and blankets as overnight temperatures dropped below freezing in the affected areas. Mosques, schools, sports halls and student dormitories were opened for hundreds who left their homes after the quake.
Rescue workers try to reach people under a collapsed building following a strong earthquake in Elazig in the eastern Turkey, Saturday, Jan. 25, 2020. The earthquake rocked eastern Turkey on Friday, causing some buildings to collapse and killing scores of people, Turkish officials said. (IHA via AP)
“The earthquake was very severe, we desperately ran out (of our home),” Emre Gocer told the state-run Anadolu news agency as he sheltered with his family at a sports hall in the town of Sivrice in Elazig. “We don’t have a safe place to stay right now.”
The quake hit Friday at 8:55 p.m. local time (1755 GMT) at a depth of 6.7 kilometers (around 4 miles) near Sivrice, the Disaster and Emergency Management Presidency, or AFAD, said. Various earthquake monitoring centers gave magnitudes ranging from 6.5 to 6.8.
AFAD said it was followed by 228 aftershocks, the strongest with magnitudes 5.4 and 5.1.
At least five buildings in Sivrice and 25 in Malatya province were destroyed, said Environment and Urbanization Minister Murat Kurum. Hundreds of other structures were damaged and made unsafe.
Soylu said 18 people were killed in Elazig and four in Malatya. Some 1,030 people were hurt. Speaking at the same news conference, Koca said 34 people remain in intensive care.
Television footage showed emergency workers removing two people from the wreckage of a collapsed building in the town of Gezin. Another person was saved in the city of Elazig, the provincial capital, and two more from a house in Doganyol, Malatya.
A prison in Adiyaman, 110 kilometers (70 miles) southwest of the epicenter, was evacuated after being damaged in the quake.
AFAD said 28 rescue teams had been working around the clock. More than 2,600 personnel from 39 of Turkey’s 81 provinces were sent to the disaster site.
“Our biggest hope is that the death toll does not rise,” Parliament Speaker Mustafa Sentop said.
Rescuers work on a collapsed building after a strong earthquake struck in Elazig in the eastern Turkey, Saturday, Jan. 25, 2020. The earthquake rocked eastern Turkey on Friday, causing some buildings to collapse and killing scores of people, Turkish officials said. (IHA via AP)
Communication companies announced free telephone and internet services for residents in the quake-hit region, while Turkish Airlines announced extra flights.
Soylu said emergency work was proceeding under the threat of aftershocks.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Twitter overnight that all measures were being taken to "ensure that the earthquake that occurred in Elazig and was felt in many provinces is overcome with the least amount of loss."
Neighboring Greece, which is at odds with Turkey over maritime boundaries and gas exploitation rights, offered to send rescue crews should they be needed.
Elazig is some 565 kilometers (350 miles) east of the Turkish capital, Ankara.
Turkey sits on top of two major fault lines and earthquakes are frequent. Two strong earthquakes struck northwest Turkey in 1999, killing around 18,000 people.
A magnitude 6 earthquake killed 51 people in Elazig in 2010.
Chinese President Xi Jinping has held a special government meeting on the Lunar New Year public holiday to warn that the spread of a deadly new virus is "accelerating".
The country is facing a "grave situation" Mr Xi told senior officials, according to state television.
The coronavirus has killed at least 41 people and infected almost 1,300 since its discovery in the city of Wuhan.
Travel restrictions have already hit several affected cities.
And from Sunday, private vehicles will be banned from the central districts of Wuhan, the source of the outbreak.
A second emergency hospital is to be built there within weeks to handle 1,300 new patients, and will be finished in half a month, state newspaper the People's Daily said. It is the second such rapid construction project: work on another 1,000-bed hospital has already begun.
Specialist military medical teams have also been flown into Hubei province, where Wuhan is located.
The urgency reflects concern both within China and elsewhere about the spread of the virus which first appeared in December.
Lunar New Year celebrations for the year of the rat, which began on Saturday, have been cancelled in many Chinese cities.
Across mainland China, travellers are having their temperatures checked for signs of fever, and train stations have been shut in several cities.
In Hong Kong, the highest level of emergency has been declared and school holidays extended.
Several other nations are each dealing with a handful of cases, with patients being treated in isolation.
What is the coronavirus, and what does it do?
A coronavirus is a family of viruses which include the common cold.
But this virus has never been seen before, so it's been called 2019-nCov, for "novel coronavirus".
New viruses can become common in humans after jumping across the species barrier from animals.
The Sars [Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome] outbreak of 2003 started in bats and transferred to the civet cat which passed it on to humans.
This new virus also causes severe acute respiratory infection.
Symptoms seem to start with a fever, followed by a dry cough and then, after a week, lead to shortness of breath and some patients needing hospital treatment.
Based on early information, it is believed that only a quarter of infected cases are "severe", and the dead are mostly - though not exclusively - older people, some of whom have pre-existing conditions.
What's happening at the source?
The city of Wuhan is effectively on lockdown, with heavy restrictions on travel in and out, and public transport options from buses to planes cancelled.
It is a major population centre with up to 11 million inhabitants - comparable in size to London.
Pharmacies in the city have begun to run out of supplies and hospitals have been filled with nervous members of the public.
But even for those free of infection, there has been an impact on daily life, as officials have urged people to avoid crowds and gatherings.
"The whole transport system has been shut down," Kathleen Bell, who is is originally from the UK and works in Wuhan, told the BBC. "From midnight tonight private cars are not allowed on the road. And taxis aren't running."
"You have queues of people lining up to be seen, some may not have the virus, and some may, and they're all in the same space," she said.
Major Western brands such as McDonald's and Starbucks have closed in the city and in others nearby.
"The streets are pretty much empty," said Mustafa Siddiqui, a businessman in Wuhan. "No-one's going outside."
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"There's no real panic. There is calm. There is nothing really happening."
The surrounding Hubei province is also deeply affected, with nearly a dozen cities enduring some sort of travel restriction.
Where has it spread?
There are now nearly 1,300 confirmed cases all across China, though most concentrated in those closest to Hubei.
But it has also spread abroad - in isolated cases affecting small numbers of patients.
On Saturday, Australia confirmed its first four cases - first in Melbourne, and then three more in Sydney.
It has also spread to Europe, with three cases confirmed in France. The UK is investigating a number of suspected cases, with officials trying to trace around 2,000 people who have recently flown to the UK from Hubei province.
The cases largely involve people who had recently travelled from the affected region in China.
China's neighbours in the Asia region are on high alert, however, with cases reported in Thailand, Singapore, Japan, Taiwan, Malaysia, Vietnam, South Korea and Nepal.
There are also cases in the United States.
The World Health Organization has not classed the virus as an "international emergency", partly because of the low number of overseas cases.
What is the impact on new year celebrations?
The Lunar New Year is one of the most important dates in the calendar in China, where millions of people travel home - something that is a problem for preventing the spread of a virus.
Authorities have shut major tourist sites including the Forbidden City in Beijing and a section of the Great Wall, and cancelled major public events in other parts of the country, including:
Traditional temple fairs in Beijing
An international carnival in Hong Kong
Hong Kong's annual football tournament
All public Lunar New Year celebrations in Macau
Shanghai's Disney Resort is temporarily closing.
In the capital, Beijing, and also in Shanghai, officials have asked residents who return from affected areas to stay at home for 14 days to prevent the spread of the virus, local media report.
Many reports refer to the newly identified coronavirus in Wuhan, China, as a "mystery" virus. Is it really a mystery? Do masks help keep you from getting infected? If an animal carries the virus, will cooking it make it safe to consume?
These are some of the questions circulating about the virus called 2019-nCoV. Here are some answers.
Will a mask protect me?
There's a run on masks in China, with the belief that wearing one in public will protect an individual from exposure to droplets sneezed or coughed out by someone infected with the Wuhan virus.
But there's little evidence to suggest that the face masks worn by members of the public prevent people from being infected by breathing in the virus, says William Schaffner, a professor in the division of infectious diseases at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. "There really are no good, solid, reliable data."
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the kind of flimsy masks that people often buy in pharmacies may not tightly fit the face, so the wearer can still breathe in air — and infected droplets.
Stanley Perlman, a professor at the University of Iowa who studies coronaviruses, agrees that the mask won't necessarily prevent infection. But they do have some value, he says: Wearing a mask may stop an individual from directly touching their mouth and nose, which is a common way that viruses and germs enter the body. Masks provide some protection this way, he adds. "But what we teach is that they're not very good."
To protect themselves from infection, health care workers don't wear the kind of thin, over-the-mouth masks you see in operating rooms, which are designed to keep germs from leaving the mouths and noses of medical staff in the room. When it comes to preventing infection from their surroundings, health-care workers wear N95 respirators, which fit much more tightly, says Schaffner. These respirators haven't been tested for effectiveness when worn by the general public, so there's no evidence to support a general recommendation, he adds.
But there is one thing that experts endorse as a preventive: "Hand hygiene is the answer," Schaffner says, suggesting soap and water, since the abrasiveness of soap helps remove infectious particles from the hands. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends scrubbing your hands for at least 20 seconds. Make sure to clean the backs of your hands, between your fingers and under your nails, advises the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. And scrub for 20 seconds — about as long as it takes to sing, at a moderate pace, the alphabet song.
Is this virus mysterious?
Judging by headlines, it is. Many media outlets refer to the Wuhan virus as "China's mystery virus."
"It was mysterious when we didn't know what it was," says Stanley Perlman, a professor at the University of Iowa, who studies coronaviruses. But once it was identified as a member of the family of coronaviruses, it was no longer so mysterious, he adds.
Indeed, the Wuhan coronavirus appears to behave in ways that are similar to other coronaviruses like SARS and MERS. Health officials believe that like these two well-known coronaviruses, the Wuhan virus can be passed from person to person via exchange of fluids from the respiratory tract, although they still don't know precisely how.
While it's no longer such a mystery, there are still open questions about the Wuhan virus. We don't know how long it takes after exposure to get sick or which animal was the original source of the virus. "Each one of the rogue viruses that jumped species from animals to humans has its own characteristics," says William Schaffner, a professor in the division of infectious diseases at Vanderbilt University Medical Center.
If you cook an infected animal, does it kill the coronavirus?
Cooking an infected animal until the meat reaches about 150 degrees Fahrenheit inactivates the coronavirus, says Stanley Perlman, a professor at the University of Iowa who studies coronaviruses.
Any method of cooking will work, says William Schaffner, a professor in the division of infectious diseases at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. "It's heat. The mode of delivering the heat doesn't matter," he adds.
So how are people infected by an animal that harbors the virus? "It's in the preparation that there might be some risk," says Schaffner. Handling raw before cooking presents a risk.
And at the market in Wuhan, where some people seemed to become infected, live animals are sold and slaughtered. It isn't clear exactly how the virus spread from animals to people, but when an infected animal is killed and then skinned, small pieces of tissue or droplets of blood could spread into the air and transmit the virus, Schaffner says.
How worried should people outside of China be?
The general public should not worry at this time, says William Schaffner, a professor in the division of infectious diseases at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. "There's an outbreak of coronavirus anxiety. I think we all ought to take a deep breath and step back," he adds. Compared coronavirus to the flu cases seen each winter, he predicts that the Wuhan virus will be "a tiny little blip on the horizon."
"In terms of mortality rate, we're on the lower spectrum, which gives me some room for optimism," says Kevin Olival, vice president for research at the EcoHealth Alliance, who specializes in emerging infectious diseases
As doctors and officials learn more about the spread and scale of the virus, it will become more clear if the virus poses any significant concern to Americans.
Do you have any questions about the Wuhan coronavirus outbreak? Email them to us with the subject line "Wuhan coronavirus FAQ" to goatsandsoda@npr.org and we may answer them in a story for NPR next week.
In an interview aired on NPR's "All Things Considered" on Friday, Pompeo instead replied to NPR's Mary Louise Kelly question by saying, "You know, I agreed to come on your show today to talk about Iran. That's what I intend to do. I know what our Ukraine policy has been now for the three years of this administration."
He then repeatedly tried to end the interview as Kelly continued to press him on the matter. To her last question on whether Ukraine policy had been hijacked, Pompeo replied, "I've been clear about that. I know exactly what we were doing. I know precisely what the direction the State Department gave to our officials around the world about how to manage our Ukraine policy."
Speaking after the interview aired, Kelly described how she was called back into Pompeo's living room at the State Department after the interview, where the outburst then unfolded.
"What is happening (at the end) there is an aide has stopped the interview, said, 'We're done, thank you,' and you heard me thank the secretary," Kelly said on air after the fact. "He did not reply -- he leaned in, glared at me, and then turned and with his aides left the room."
Kelly said that moments later, "That same staffer who stopped the interview reappeared, asked me to come with her -- just me, no recorder -- though she did not say we were off the record, nor would I have agreed."
Kelly was brought to Pompeo's private living room, she continued, "where he was waiting and where he shouted at me for about (the) same amount of time as the interview itself had lasted."
Pompeo was displeased about the Ukraine questioning, and asked her, "Do you think Americans care about Ukraine?" Kelly said, adding that "he used the F-word in that sentence and many others."
Pompeo then asked Kelly if she could find Ukraine on a map, she recounted, and when she said that she could, "He called out for aides to bring us a map of the world with no writing."
"I pointed to Ukraine. He put the map away. He said, 'People will hear about this,'" Kelly said. "And then he turned, said he had things to do and I thanked him again for his time and left."
CNN has reached out to the State Department for comment on the exchange.
Kelly said that NPR had reached out to the State Department to inform them that the outlet would be reporting on the interview's aftermath, but had not heard back. The news comes in light of Pompeo's impending trip to Ukraine next week -- the country at the heart of the currently ongoing impeachment trial.
CNN's Jennifer Hansler contributed to this report.
