Coronavirus
spread accelerating in China, says Xi Jinping
President
warns of ‘grave situation’ as the country spends holiday under travel
restriction to stop the virus spreading
Rebecca
Ratcliffe and Wu Pei Lin
Sat 25 Jan
2020 16.33 GMTFirst published on Sat 25 Jan 2020 12.26 GMT
China’s
president, Xi Jinping, has called an emergency government meeting, telling
officials the country is facing a “grave situation” as the new coronavirus is
“accelerating its spread”.
More than
50 million people are spending China’s most important holiday under lockdown as
the country expands its travel restrictions in an attempt to stop the spread of
the new coronavirus.
Officials
confirmed on Saturday, the lunar new year, that the death toll from the viral
outbreak had reached 41 and that more than 1,200 further people had been
affected.
A doctor
treating people infected with the virus was among those who died. Liang Wudong,
62, died on Saturday morning, state media said, and it was also reported by the
Chinese Global Times website that another doctor who had been treating patients
in Wuhan died of a heart attack later in the day.
In Beijing,
five new cases have been confirmed, according to Chinese National Radio,
including two patients who had not recently travelled to Hubei, the centre of
the outbreak. In all previous cases in the capital, patients had reportedly
visited the province.
The virus
is now confirmed to have reached Australia and Malaysia, while France confirmed
on Friday that three people there had the virus. Both France and the US plan to
evacuate citizens trapped in Wuhan, the Hubei city where the outbreak began.
The Foreign
Office advised late on Saturday against all travel to Hubei province because of
the outbreak, adding: “If you are in this area and able to leave, you should do
so.”
Hong Kong,
which has confirmed five cases of the illness, declared the outbreak an
emergency on Saturday, and said it would keep primary and secondary schools
closed for two more weeks after the holiday.
A growing
number of airports around the world have introduced screening to identify those
affected, although the effectiveness of such measures has been questioned. An
article published in the Lancet, based on a family that had recently visited
Wuhan, the city at the centre of the outbreak, suggested it was possible to
have the disease while not experiencing any symptoms.
Across
China, the lunar new year holiday has been overshadowed by travel blocks
imposed on at least 17 cities, and the cancellation of major festive events. In
an effort to stop the disease from spreading further, part of the Great Wall
was closed, and Beijing’s temple fairs, a new year tradition, have been
cancelled. Shanghai Disneyland also announced it would close indefinitely.
It is
feared the lunar new year, when hundreds of millions of people go on holiday or
to visit relatives, could fuel the spread of the virus across China and abroad.
So far, 29
provinces and cities in China have been affected, and further cases had been
reported in South Korea, Japan, Singapore, Macao, Taiwan, Thailand and Vietnam.
The US reported its second case.
In Wuhan,
restrictions were tightened on Saturday, with officials banning most vehicles
from the roads. Train stations, airports and railway stations had all been shut
since the lockdown began on Thursday morning.
The city
was facing shortages of beds, testing kits and other supplies, and 450 military
medical staff arrived late on Friday to help treat patients, the official
Xinhua news agency reported.
The
ministry of commerce was overseeing an operation to supply more than 2m masks
and other products from elsewhere in the country, Xinhua said.
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Footage on
social media, apparently taken inside the city’s hospitals, appeared to show
staff breaking down and long queues of residents waiting to be assessed.
Patients told the Guardian that people had been turned away by hospitals and
that their relatives had been unable to get a test to find out if they had the
virus.
It was
announced on Saturday that a second hospital was to be built to treat
coronavirus patients. Work has already begun to build a 1,000-bed hospital in
10 days.
Wuhan’s
streets have been deserted for days, with residents mostly staying home. Many
were following social media, where there was a constant stream of updates,
videos and speculation, including misinformation.
“Looking
out of the window every day, I can see one or two cars and pedestrians on the
street. The streets are relatively deserted,” said Wuhan resident Mr Wang, who
was speaking before the traffic ban was implemented. “Now, at night, it is like
a dead city. I look at the neighbourhood and there are very few lights.”
Residents
who left the city before transport blocks were introduced had faced hostility
elsewhere in China, being blamed for potentially spreading the virus.
Wang said
it was understandable that people felt that way, but added that Wuhan residents
were “the biggest victims of [the] bureaucracy”.
“Information
was hidden from everyone. Most people believe that the official information is
correct, so when the sudden outbreak is announced and the city is closed, they
easily panic about the situation.”
Xi Chen, a
professor at the Yale school of public health, said: “We know very little about
the origin of this virus and we know very little about the speed of
transmission and when it starts to transmit.”
The virus
comes from a large family of coronaviruses. This includes Sars as well as
viruses that cause nothing worse than a cold.
Associated
Press contributed to this report
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