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Primeiro caso na
Península Ibérica surge em Barcelona
A Espanha
anunciou o primeiro caso de infeção pelo novo coronavírus na Catalunha, subindo
assim para cinco o número de infetados em território espanhol.
DN/Lusa
25 Fevereiro 2020
— 16:00
A doente infetada
em Barcelona trata-se da primeira na Península Ibérica, já que os três casos
positivos anteriores em território espanhol tinham sido registados nas ilhas
Baleares e Canárias - entretanto, a mulher do médico italiano infetado em
Tenerife também deu positivo.
Neste caso, as
análises deram positivo em relação a uma mulher italiana de 36 anos residente
em Barcelona e regressada recentemente do norte de Itália, onde se concentra atualmente
o maior surto de coronavírus na Europa, segundo os media espanhóis.
O secretário de
saúde pública do executivo catalão, Joan Guix, explicou que a paciente estava
na área de Bergamo e Milão entre os dias 12 e 22 de fevereiro e que agora está
internada no Hospital Clínic de Barcelona. "A sua situação é leve, com
sintomatologia semelhante à da gripe, mas ela está bem", disse Guix,
adiantando que a mulher não sofre de outras doenças anteriores.
Guix pediu calma
à população e lembrou que 80% dos casos de coronavírus são leves. Por outro
lado, Assumpta Ricard, gerente de processos integrais do Serviço Catalão de
Saúde, garantiu que "o sistema está preparado" para lidar com casos
que possam aparecer, como foi demonstrado em outros surtos epidemiológicos.
Esta notícia é
conhecida no mesmo dia em que cerca de mil turistas se encontram retidos num
hotel em Adeje, no sul de Tenerife, depois de se saber que um turista italiano
hospedado naquele estabelecimento foi hospitalizado, após teste positivo o novo
coronavírus.
Após conhecer-se
o caso da mulher de Barcelona, o primeiro-ministro espanhol Pedro Sánchez pediu
"tranquilidade" e "confiança no sistema de saúde pública".
O balanço
provisório da epidemia do coronavírus Covid-19 é de 2.707 mortos e cerca de
80.300 pessoas infetadas, de acordo com dados reportados até hoje, por cerca de
30 países.
Além de 2.665
mortos na China, onde o surto começou no final do ano, há registo de vítimas
mortais no Irão, Coreia do Sul, Itália, Japão, Filipinas, França e Taiwan.
A Organização
Mundial de Saúde declarou o surto do Covid-19 como uma emergência internacional
e alertou para uma eventual pandemia, após um aumento repentino de casos em
Itália, Coreia do Sul e Irão nos últimos dias.
O único caso
conhecido de um português infetado pelo novo vírus é o de um tripulante de um
navio de cruzeiros que está hospitalizado no Japão.
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Plans to shut schools and curb travel in UK if
coronavirus spreads
Virus appears in new cases across Europe as UK
prepares contingency plans
Coronavirus
– live updates
Denis
Campbell, Helen Pidd and Sam Jones
Tue 25 Feb
2020 21.20 GMTLast modified on Wed 26 Feb 2020 01.10 GMT
Schools
could close and travel around the UK could be restricted under stepped-up
government plans to deal with the coronavirus as its spread accelerates across
Europe.
Four
countries registered new cases on Tuesday, while the death toll rose in Italy,
which is struggling to contain the outbreak.
England’s
chief medical officer, Prof Chris Whitty, said: “There’s a variety of things
you need to look at, you look at things like school closures, you look at
things like reducing transport.
“The
expectation is not that we will do all these things, the expectation is we will
be looking systematically, using the science, at all the building blocks and
balancing the effects against costs to society.”
Contingency
planning may request that whole families self-isolate if one of them shows
symptoms and, in a further expansion of British efforts to detect and contain
the virus, patients who have flu and other breathing conditions will be tested.
Health officials plan to start with patients in eight hospitals in England,
including some in intensive care, and also at 100 primary care centres,
including GP surgeries.
Experts
said the move would help show if the virus was spreading, although officials
stressed there was no evidence that it was circulating in the community at the
moment. So far, 13 people have tested positive for coronavirus in the UK but
have not suffered any major setback to their health as a result of Covid-19,
the illness the virus can trigger.
Nevertheless,
concern about the proliferation of cases in northern Italy prompted a dozen UK
schools to send home pupils and the teachers who accompanied them on half-term
skiing trips in the Italian Alps, telling them to self-isolate for 14 days
after their return.
The schools
include ones in County Antrim in Northern Ireland, Pembrokeshire in Wales,
Guernsey in the Channel Islands and others in Cheshire, Liverpool, Yorkshire, Berkshire,
Teesside and Cornwall.
Despite
advice from Public Health England and the Department for Education that schools
should stay open, two closed completely to all pupils for deep-cleaning.
Trinity
Catholic college in Middlesbrough said it would reopen on 3 March, while
Cransley school in Northwich, Cheshire is shut until 2 March after the
headteacher said a number of pupils were showing “flu-like symptoms”.
The
schools’ response came amid growing confusion over the government’s advice on
whether it is safe to travel to northern Italy, with the health secretary and
chief medical officer expressing conflicting views.
Whitty
initially said advising people to avoid travel to the area was “not a
reasonable thing to do”.
Matt
Hancock, the health secretary, contradicted that, signalling that he thought it
best to avoid northern Italy, where the bulk of the country’s 320 positive
cases have emerged.
Asked on
Sky News if he would fly to Italy, he replied: “Certainly southern Italy is
perfectly reasonable to travel to.” But when asked if he would travel to the
north, he said: “I’m not planning on [it], put it that way.”
On Tuesday
evening, official Foreign Office guidance clarified the situation, advising
against all but essential travel to 11 towns in northern Italy.
All 11
deaths in Italy so far have occurred in elderly people who were suffering from
underlying health conditions, the youngest of whom was 62. However, the virus
is spreading there, with new cases detected in Tuscany, Liguria and Sicily,
well south of the centre in Lombardy.
Public
Health England said that anyone who has been to a large area of the region
above but not including Pisa, Florence and Rimini should self-isolate for a
fortnight if they develop flu-like symptoms on returning to the UK. The advice
came as:
The virus appeared in more European countries, with
confirmed cases reported in Spain, Austria, Switzerland and Croatia.
Nearly £100bn was wiped off the value of Britain’s
biggest companies in 48 hours, with the FTSE 100 index closing at its lowest
level in a year, reducing the value of Britain’s blue-chip companies by about
£35bn.
British tourists were among 1,000 holidaymakers and
workers quarantined in a hotel in Tenerife after an Italian doctor and his wife
tested positive for coronavirus. Austria also placed an Innsbruck hotel under
lockdown when an Italian receptionist was found to have contracted the virus.
The Irish Rugby Football Union called for an urgent
meeting with the country’s health minister after he called for the Six Nations
rugby match between Ireland and Italy to be postponed because of the risk posed
by Covid-19.
The government banned the “parallel export” of two
drugs – one for treating HIV, the other a malaria medication – that are being
tested as potential treatments for the virus. Parallel exporting is when firms
buy medicines for the UK and resell them for a higher price abroad.
The number of confirmed cases in Spain rose to seven
on Tuesday after an Italian woman living in Barcelona tested positive following
a recent trip to northern Italy.
Spanish
health authorities had already identified two confirmed cases, one on the
remote Canary island of La Gomera and another on the Balearic island of
Mallorca. The Catalan case is the first detected in mainland Spain.
About 1,000
holidaymakers at the H10 Costa Adeje Palace hotel in south Tenerife have been
told to stay in their rooms and were set to be tested for the virus, according
to a guest. Police officers have been stationed around the building, which has
been locked down.
Speaking as
the 108-room Grand Hotel Europa in Innsbruck was locked down, the Austrian
interior minister, Karl Nehammer, urged people not to panic. “No one can get in
and out of the hotel to make sure that if other infected people are staying in
the hotel, the virus won’t be spread. All these measures have one purpose – to
stop the virus and its spread,” he said.
In updated
advice, the Department of Health and Social Care said people who have returned
since 19 February from Iran, lockdown areas of northern Italy, special care
zones in South Korea and Hubei province in China should call NHS 111 and
self-isolate even if they have no symptoms. Anyone who develops symptoms after
coming back since that date from the defined area in northern Italy, Vietnam,
Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar should do the same, even if their symptoms are mild.
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