Canadian hospitals, airports preparing for possible arrival of SARS-like coronavirus from China

[M1917 Enfield]

1323 Confirmed cases worldwide, 41 Deaths now reported worldwide, cases confirmed as of January 24, 2020, 11:30 PM EST.

France reported three cases, France became the first country in Europe to report the infections. The Health Ministry reported three confirmed cases — two in Paris and one in Bordeaux. All three people had spent time in China. In the USA a unidentified woman returned to Chicago on Jan. 13 from China, officials said. She became ill days later. As of Friday, she was still hospitalized. Australia reported its first confirmed case on Saturday: a man in his 50s visiting from China, who was being treated in a Melbourne hospital. The authorities there said he had been in Wuhan before falling ill, and that he had arrived in Melbourne on Sunday, on a flight from Guangzhou.

The Chinese authorities on Friday greatly expanded a travel lockdown in central China to now include 12 cities near the center of the outbreak, effectively a quarantine of 35 million residents — nearly the population of Canada — in an effort to contain the dangerous coronavirus.

On Chinese social media, people across the country expressed mounting mistrust and resentment of the authorities in Wuhan, whom they blamed for mishandling the outbreak.

Some users called for Wuhan leaders to be removed. Others mocked the failure of the Communist Party’s newspapers to treat the epidemic with front-page urgency. Most of those posts were quickly removed by censors.

On the Twitter-like platform Weibo, Li Haipeng, a former journalist, wrote: “What is happening in Wuhan is really outrageous. Can it be hollow to this extent, incompetent to this degree?”

His post was shared more than 41,000 times and received more than 5,000 comments. One commenter wrote, “I hope the central government can take over before dawn. It’s almost like anarchy.”

Another wrote, “Wuhan’s party secretary and governor cannot soothe the people’s anger.”

In another post, a woman whose profile said she worked at a Hubei hospital shared a photo of instant noodles, lamenting that it was the only food she was given after working late on the night before Lunar New Year — traditionally time for a large meal shared with family.

The post was shared more than 30,000 times, and received more than 25,000 comments. “The Wuhan government is not worthy of such good medical staff,” one person replied.

In Wuhan, people waited anxiously on Friday outside Hankou Hospital, one of the medical facilities designated to test for the coronavirus, as their relatives sought treatment inside.

Several said the Lunar New Year would pass without the usual celebrations or vacation travel. They and other residents said that the city was now also confronting food supply problems because so many shops and markets had closed, adding to the hardships caused by the city shutdown.

“We won’t have a new year celebration tonight. There’s no feeling for it, and no food,” Wu Qiang, a resident in his 50s who was waiting outside the hospital entrance for word about his son, told a New York Times correspondent.

Mr. Wu said he understood the need to close off the city, but added that city authorities should ensure that enough shops and markets were selling fresh food. He said his son had been sneezing, setting off alarm at home.

[M1917 Enfield]

Experts are preparing for an outbreak that could last months.

Dr. Gauden Galea, the representative of the World Health Organization in Beijing, said in an interview on Friday that while much was uncertain, health officials were preparing for an outbreak that could last for months. He said that eventually thousands of people would most likely be infected, citing models produced by public health experts.

“My own office is gearing up for a number of months,” Dr. Galea said. “We do not expect it to disappear in a number of days.”

He said much would depend on the patterns of infection over the holiday travel season. He said there was little precedent for the travel restrictions imposed by the Chinese authorities but that public health experts were hopeful that they could help contain the virus, along with efforts to expand screening, promote the use of masks and isolate sick patients.

Still, he acknowledged, health officials were being forced to improvise. “Part is science and part is hope,” he said.

Overrun hospitals turn away residents, some displaying symptoms.

As Wuhan residents waited in long lines at hospitals to be checked for possible coronavirus infections, some residents complained they were not able to get the treatment they needed.

Xiao Shibing, 51, has had a fever for 15 days and finds it difficult to breathe. When he went to a hospital, he was not tested for the coronavirus, said his daughter, Xiao Hongxia. He was told he had a viral chest infection and was sent home.

Mr. Xiao’s family has continued to seek treatment, visiting other hospitals, but has been turned away by at least three because of a shortage of beds, his wife, Feng Xiu, said. “It is like kicking a ball from here to there,” she said.

Cai Pei, 41, said his wife began coughing and developed a fever three days ago. He wrote on Weibo that hospitals would not admit her, and he had difficulty finding masks and cold medicine in pharmacies.

They still do not know if she is infected with the coronavirus or some more common ailment.

“Sometimes I can only hide and cry, but I couldn’t tell her and had to reassure her that it is not the virus,” Mr. Cai said by phone. “It is very scary. If it’s real, we have a child and elderly parents at home. What if we all get sick?”

Wuhan hospitals make urgent appeals for supplies and help.

Hospitals and medical workers at the center of the outbreak in Wuhan made urgent appeals for supplies, as stocks of surgical masks and other equipment quickly flew off shelves.

“Shortage of medical supplies, request help!!!” the Wuhan Children’s Hospital said on Thursday in a post on Weibo, the Chinese social network.

The hospital asked for donations of surgical masks, disposable garments, protective goggles and gloves.

Several others, including Hubei General Hospital, Renmin Hospital of Wuhan University and the Central Hospital of Wuhan, posted similar notices.

The central government on Thursday acknowledged the severe strain on resources, and the Ministry of Finance announced an urgent allocation of one billion renminbi, about $144 million, for epidemic prevention and control work.

The American and British governments on Friday urged travelers to avoid the city of Wuhan and the surrounding area amid growing signs that the outbreak of the coronavirus was worsening.

The American Embassy in Beijing advised travelers from the United States to avoid Hubei Province, where Wuhan is the capital. It said the State Department had already ordered nonemergency government personnel to leave the city. It further warned that the Chinese government might prevent travelers from arriving or leaving.

The State Department notice was a Level 4 advisory, the sternest warning the United States government issues regarding travel. Other Level 4 warnings issued by the State Department cover travel to Syria, North Korea, Afghanistan, Iraq, Venezuela and Yemen, among other places. The warning is a step up from Washington’s earlier cautions. Just a day before, the American government had been advising travelers to “exercise extreme caution” when traveling to the Wuhan area.

The British government, in a notice dated Thursday, similarly advised against all but essential travel to Wuhan. The warning came a day before the government’s Cobra committee was to meet in Downing Street to discuss the threat posed by coronavirus to Britain, according to local news reports.

Fourteen people in Britain were tested for the disease, and all came back negative, the chief medical officer, Chris Whitty, announced on Friday. But checks on others were continuing.

Some British universities have also warned students considering traveling home to China that they could face quarantine on their return. The University of Chester had warned its Chinese students that if they return to their homeland, they would not be readmitted without a quarantine period, The Guardian reported.

Shanghai Disneyland, one of the biggest tourist attractions in China, will shut down on Saturday as the Chinese authorities and others look for ways to reduce crowds to stop the spread of the coronavirus.

In a notice on its website on Friday, Shanghai Disney Resort, the arm of the Walt Disney Company that runs Shanghai Disneyland, blamed the outbreak for the shutdown and said it would reopen at an unspecified date.

The shutdown adds to the tourist and cultural attractions closing across China at the beginning of the Lunar New Year holiday, when many families head out of the house to spend quality time together.

The authorities operating the Badaling section of the Great Wall of China, a popular tourist destination north of Beijing, said it would temporarily close beginning on Saturday. Shanghai Huangpu River Cruise, the company that operates boat tours along Shanghai’s scenic Bund area, said the same.

Shanghai’s movie theaters will be closed throughout the Lunar New Year holidays, a state media outlet said. Film companies said this week that they would pull new releases planned for the peak film-going period.

A prolonged Shanghai Disneyland shutdown could add to the problems in the region for Disney, the American entertainment giant. Attendance at its Hong Kong Disneyland theme park has been battered by anti-Beijing protests that have swept through Hong Kong’s streets in recent months, frightening away many tourists from mainland China.

Disney owns a 43 percent stake in Shanghai Disney Resorts, while state-owned Shanghai Shendi Group holds a majority stake.

The closings at a peak spending time could come at a considerable cost to the Chinese economy, though it isn’t clear how big that toll might be.

The Economist Intelligence Unit projects that the coronavirus could reduce China’s growth by 0.5 percent to 1 percent, compared with its projected growth rate of 5.9 percent before the outbreak, if the disease worsens on the level of SARS, the outbreak that killed hundreds in 2003.

China’s propaganda machine has ramped into overdrive as the authorities fight the spread of the coronavirus, praising the sacrifices of responders and everyday people amid continued criticism online of the government’s efforts to address the disease.

Mainstream Chinese news outlets have covered the outbreak closely, though censorship prohibits them from taking a critical look, while official news media like CCTV and The People’s Daily newspaper have played it down. State news media issued herograms to the patriotic Chinese citizens who canceled their trips home to Wuhan and would spend the Lunar New Year holiday alone. It praised doctors heading off to Wuhan.

“People of Wuhan are making sacrifices,” Hu Xijin, the editor of The Global Times, a nationalist tabloid controlled by the Communist Party, wrote on Twitter. “No matter how all of this happened, I want to express my sympathy and salute to them.”

On what may be the most watched television show on earth, the Spring Festival Gala, the Chinese government on Friday cheered on Wuhan and praised the country’s leader, Xi Jinping.

Each year, on the eve of the Lunar New Year, the state broadcaster China Central Television shows the gala, a four-hour marathon of speeches, skits and song and dance, all conducted at a stately pace to accommodate a graying audience. Watching the gala while making dumplings — or falling asleep in front of it — is a tradition for many families across the country.

On Friday night’s broadcast, China’s propaganda minders addressed the coronavirus outbreak head on. During the first half of the broadcast, six prominent CCTV anchors stood onstage and praised the instructions of Mr. Xi and the Communist Party.

They showed images of doctors and nurses treating patients, of trucks of supplies festooned with banners that said, roughly translated, “Go, Wuhan!”

[Caralho]

President Xi Warns Coronavirus Outbreak Is "Accelerating" As Canada Confirms First Case

http://https://www.zerohedge.com/pol...ralia-malaysia

[Suputin]

Its coming.

[M1917 Enfield]

Coronavirus outbreak: death toll rises to 56 as inter-city buses banned from Beijing.

Authorities in China say infections have risen to more than 1,600 while the US and Australia are pulling people out of stricken city of Wuhan.

People, cars and ships will all be banned from entering Shantou from first thing Monday, and this afternoon all buses, taxis and ferries were suspended in the city. There are now 15 partially or fully locked down cities but Shantou is the first outside Hubei province to be placed under restrictions. This contradicts earlier statements by the local government, which have now been removed from Shantou city’s website. In a bid to contain the spread of the virus, China has banned long distance buses between several major cities, including Beijing.

The eastern Shandong province, with a population of 100 million people, will suspend long-distance buses entering the province, state broadcaster CCTV reported, following the announcement of similar measures in the cities of Tianjin, Beijing and the historic Xi’an.

[shortandlong]

Strange day put out an interesting tweet and it looks valid

Looks like we ( canada ) gave it to them the stupidity is almost poetic

[RangeBob]

Strange day put out an interesting tweet and it looks valid

Looks like we ( canada ) gave it to them the stupidity is almost poetic

First Patient With Wuhan Coronavirus Is Identified in the U.S.
Jan 21 2020
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/21/h...ronavirus.html

Chinese researcher escorted from infectious disease lab amid RCMP investigation
Jul 14, 2019
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manit...tion-1.5211567

kicked out of Canada for sending corona virus samples and data to the Wuhan facility?
-- Derrick Snowdy, Jan 25 2020, https://twitter.com/jdsnowdy/status/1221079527373197312

[Doug_M]

Strange day put out an interesting tweet and it looks valid

Looks like we ( canada ) gave it to them the stupidity is almost poetic

Good article here (too long to post on a tablet and deserves its own thread anyway) : https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitic...d-weaponize-it

[Zinilin]

Have all the party members (and the like minded world leader, and their cronies) already been vaccinated or did it get out early by accident?

[SteelCap]

The numbers are likely higher than reported in China....why lock down with 56 deaths....so there's more to this for sure.

The case in Seattle and Thailand if I am not mistaken are worrying. The Seattle case was a person just passing by Wuhan and still contracted it with no symptoms until days after arrival. The Thailand example was coming from adjoining province and showed symptoms days after as well. It points to an idea that the person is infected before symptom. So while a thermal or temperature device is being used in places like airports it will only identify those that are already sick.