Tag Archives: China

‘Every scenario on the table’ in China virus outbreak: WHO’s Tedros

By Stephanie Nebehay

GENEVA (Reuters) – The latest data provided by China on people infected with coronavirus indicates a decline in new cases but “every scenario is still on the table” in terms of the epidemic’s evolution, the World Health Organization said on Monday.

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO director-general, said that a published Chinese paper on more than 44,000 confirmed cases provided insight into the age range of infected people, disease severity and mortality rates.

“The data also appear to show a decline in new cases,” he told reporters. “This trend must be interpreted very cautiously. Trends can change as new populations are affected.

“It’s too early to tell if this reported decline will continue. Every scenario is still on the table,” he said.

China had reported 70,635 cases of COVID-19, including 1,772 deaths, Tedros said. In the past 24 hours, China had reported 2,051 new cases, including both lab-confirmed results and cases based on clinical observation, usually a chest scan.

Fewer than 700 cases had been reported by 25 other countries, he said.

People wear face masks as a protection from coronavirus in the main shopping area, in downtown Shanghai, China February 17, 2020. REUTERS/Aly Song

Dr. Mike Ryan, head of WHO’s emergencies program, said: “The real issue is whether we are seeing efficient community transmission outside of China and at the present time we are not observing that.”

Referring to China, he said the virus was attacking about out four of every 100,000 people, even within its epicenter in Wuhan city and surrounding Hubei province.

“This is a very serious outbreak and it has the potential to grow. But we need to balance that in terms of the number of people affected. Outside Hubei, this epidemic is affecting a very tiny, tiny, tiny proportion of people,” Ryan said.

“So if we are going to disrupt every cruise ship in the world on the off-chance that there may be some potential contact with some potential pathogen, then where do we stop? We shut down the buses around the world?”

There was no such thing as zero risk, Ryan said, calling for basing decisions on cruise ships and meetings on solid evidence.

Tedros added: “Measures should be taken proportionate to the situation, based on public health science and evidence. And blanket measures may not help.”

The quarantined cruise ship Diamond Princess, with 3,700 passengers total, held by far the largest cluster of cases outside China with more than 400 people testing positive.

Dr. Sylvie Briand, WHO director of global infectious hazard preparedness, said the agency was working closely with Japanese authorities and the chief medical officer on the vessel docked off Yokohama on infections and evacuations.

“Our focus is on our public health objective that we contain the virus and not contain the people,” she said.

(Reporting by Stephanie Nebehay; Editing by Mark Heinrich and Nick Macfie)

Fast-food companies in China step up ‘contactless’ pickup, delivery as coronavirus rages

By Hilary Russ and Sophie Yu

NEW YORK/BEIJING (Reuters) – With the coronavirus outbreak in China continuing to spread, McDonald’s Corp, Starbucks Corp and other fast-food companies are ramping up “contactless” pickup and delivery services to keep their workers and customers safe, the companies said.

McDonald’s has implemented contactless pickup and delivery of Big Macs, fries and other menu items across the China as the outbreak has unfolded.

Customers order remotely – on mobile phones or by computers in store – and employees seal the meals in bags and put them in a special spot for pickup without human contact, McDonald’s says on its website.

For delivery orders, drivers drop McDonald’s packages at building entrances, disinfect their delivery bags and wash their hands more frequently. Drivers carry ID cards showing that they – and the people who made and packaged their food – had their body temperature scanned to prove they do not have a fever.

“While we look at how to further improve the process, the stepped-up preventive measures apply to all of our servicing channels,” McDonald’s said in a statement to Reuters.

The flu-like virus has infected more than 68,500 people globally and killed 1,665 as of Sunday, mostly in the central Chinese province of Hubei. Some major Chinese cities still resemble ghost towns as China struggles to get its economy back on track after a prolonged Lunar New Year holiday.

In early February, 83% of all stores on the Meituan-Dianping delivery platform – one of the largest in the country – were closed, according to Beijing-based data firm BigOne Lab.

Earlier this month, China’s National Health Commission recommended that deliveries limit contact.

Starbucks suggests customers order coffee via its app and then wait outside its cafés until they get a pick-up notice. Orders are placed on tables just inside café entrances.

If they do enter Starbucks locations, customers have their temperature taken at the door, as fever is one of the main symptoms of infection, and baristas wear masks.

For delivery, Starbucks said it regularly sterilizes containers and that its delivery people have their temperature taken daily. Indoors staff must wash hands every 30 minutes, and public areas are sterilized every 2 hours.

Starbucks delivery is provided by ele.me, owned by ecommerce giant Alibaba Group Holding Ltd.

The measures illustrate how companies are quickly adapting in order to sell prepared food while keeping people safe.

Yum China Holdings Inc rolled out contactless delivery on Jan. 30, with contactless pickup coming two days later at its KFC and Pizza Hut locations, the company said.

CHANGING HUMAN TRANSACTIONS

There had been contactless delivery in China prior to the crisis, when couriers would drop packages at a consumer’s door or lobby or place parcels in lockers for later pickup.

But since the outbreak, many residential compounds are limiting access for drivers and asking customers to pick up their own packages.

In transactions that previously would have involved one person handing a package to the other, the driver now puts the food down – on the back of a moped, for instance – and then steps back and waits for the customer to take it and leave.

One customer, for example, asked a delivery person to put a parcel in the elevator and press the button for the designated floor. The customer grabbed the package when the doors opened – unaccompanied by the courier, according to a post on CCTV News’ social media account on Weibo, said Allison Malmsten, a marketing strategy analyst at Daxue Consulting in Shanghai.

The outbreak “redefines contactless food delivery,” Malmsten said via email.

Since the start of the outbreak, Yum China has closed more than 30% of its locations. There have been “significant interruptions,” with sales off as much as 50% in those that remained open since the Lunar New Year holiday, versus the same time last year, Chief Financial Officer Ka Wai Yeung said in a Feb. 5 earnings call.

The crisis has accelerated the rollout of Yum China’s contactless services in China, it said in a statement.

“These services have been well-received by customers and are playing an important role in ensuring that our delivery business continues to hold up during this period of significantly reduced dine-in traffic,” it said.

Early during the epidemic, meal delivery took a hit because customers feared contact with drivers would put them at risk of infection, according to news reports.

Cases of couriers being diagnosed with the virus after working for days arose in Shenzhen and Qingdao cities.

The companies’ reliance on pickup and delivery to offset some losses does, however, have limitations.

Malmsten said many drivers cannot return to work due to travel restrictions, and those who can return face long hours and physical and mental fatigue. As a result, SF Express, the second-largest courier in China, has ramped up hiring, she said.

(Reporting by Hilary Russ in New York and Sophie Yu in Beijing; Editing by Bill Berkrot and Dan Grebler)

China approves imports of live poultry from U.S.

By Dominique Patton

BEIJING (Reuters) – China has approved the import of all poultry products from the United States, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs said on its website on Monday, including breeding birds in addition to poultry meat approved late last year.

Beijing had banned all trade in poultry products from the United States since 2015 due to outbreaks of avian influenza there.

But it lifted the ban on poultry meat imports in November 2019 as a concession to the United States ahead of finalizing a limited trade deal.

The new announcement would also allow for the import of live birds, said Li Jinghui of the China Poultry Association, benefiting companies including Aviagen and Cobb-Vantress Inc, both based in the United States and among the world’s biggest poultry breeding companies.

Nobody at the China offices of Aviagen or Cobb could immediately be reached by phone.

Imports of live poultry from the U.S. were worth $38.7 million in 2013, dwarfed by other poultry products such as chicken feet.

However, the U.S. ban had a significant impact on China’s poultry producers, who needed the breeders to replenish their stock.

Opening up imports of live birds again is part of the trade deal, said Li, although he added that it may not have a major impact.

Both Aviagen and Cobb have increased production of their birds, known as ‘grandparent stock’, in other locations such as New Zealand to meet demand from China.

Two of China’s leading poultry firms, Shandong Yisheng Livestock and Poultry Breeding Co Ltd and Fujian Sunner Development Co Ltd., have also begun their own breeding programs to reduce their reliance on imports.

China is the world’s second-largest poultry producer and has been ramping up output to fill a huge meat shortage after a disease epidemic decimated its pig herd.

But prices have plunged in recent weeks because of measures taken by Beijing to tackle a coronavirus outbreak that has killed more than 1,700 people.

Restrictions on moving livestock and extended holidays in many areas have paralyzed the supply chain, leaving farmers stuck with large inventories of birds and eggs and slashing demand as restaurants and canteens stay shut.

Containers of frozen chicken feet from the U.S. have also been caught up in the logistics logjam, with many diverted away from China because of a lack of capacity to store additional cargoes.

(Reporting by Dominique Patton; Editing by Kim Coghill and Christian Schmollinger)

 

Hundreds of Americans flown home from cruise ship, 14 with coronavirus

By David Stanway and Stephen Lam

SHANGHAI/TRAVIS AIR FORCE BASE, Calif. (Reuters) – More than 300 American cruise liner passengers, including 14 who tested positive for coronavirus, were flown home to military bases in the United States, after two weeks under quarantine off Japan.

The cruise ship Diamond Princess, with more than 400 cases by far the largest cluster outside China, has become the biggest test so far of other countries’ ability to contain an outbreak that has killed 1,770 people in China and five elsewhere.

Ground crew in anti-contamination suits met a chartered jet that touched down at Joint Base San Antonio in Texas, and passengers could be seen climbing down the stairs wearing face masks in the pre-dawn mist. Another flight landed at Travis Air Force Base in California hours earlier. Those arriving were taken into a two-week quarantine.

Although U.S. officials said passengers with coronavirus symptoms would not be taken, 14 passengers found at the last minute to have tested positive were permitted to board the planes. The U.S. State Department said the infected passengers were kept in isolation on the flights.

Across mainland China, officials said the total number of coronavirus cases rose by 2,048 to 70,548. That was slightly more new cases than were reported on Sunday, but hundreds fewer than reported on Saturday.

Chinese authorities say the stabilization in the number of new cases is a sign that measures they have taken to halt the spread of the disease are having an effect.

However, epidemiologists say it is probably still too early to say how well the outbreak is being contained within China and its central Hubei province, where the virus first appeared. Official figures of new cases have leveled off in the past, only to jump suddenly after changes in methodology.

China has responded to the COVID-19 virus by locking down Hubei’s provincial capital Wuhan, a megacity of 11 million people, and imposing restrictions in a number of other cities.

But the ruling Communist Party is also under pressure to prevent the economy from crashing and get people back to work.

China’s central bank cut the interest rate on its medium-term lending, a move that is expected to pave the way for a reduction in the benchmark loan prime rate on Thursday. Beijing has also announced plans for cuts in taxes and fees.

Even so, economists expect China’s economic growth to slow. Ratings agency Moody’s on Monday lowered its 2020 GDP growth forecast to 5.2%, making it likely China would miss a goal to double GDP over the decade to 2020.

CRUISE SHIPS

Around half of all known cases of the virus outside China have been found aboard the Diamond Princess, where around 400 people have tested positive since the cruise liner was ordered to stay under quarantine off Japan on Feb. 3.

Several other countries have announced plans to follow the United States in bringing passengers home. Around half of the 3,700 passengers and crew are Japanese.

Matthew Smith, an American passenger who remained on the ship after refusing to board the voluntary repatriation flights, tweeted that staying behind was the “best decision ever”.

“US Gov’t said they would not put anyone on the planes who was symptomatic, and they ended up knowingly and intentionally putting on 14 people who actually have the virus,” he wrote.

Authorities around the world were also trying to track down passengers from another cruise liner, the Westerdam, which was turned away from ports across Southeast Asia for two weeks before docking in Cambodia on Thursday.

One American passenger who disembarked in Cambodia tested positive for the virus in Malaysia on Saturday.

Carnival Corp., which operates both cruise liners, said it was cooperating with authorities in trying to trace other passengers from the Westerdam. None of the other 1,454 passengers and 802 crew had reported any symptoms, it said.

“Guests who have already returned home will be contacted by their local health department and be provided further information,” a statement from the company’s Holland America Line unit said. Hundreds of passengers are still in Cambodia, either on the ship or in hotels.

“We will all be tested for the coronavirus today and tomorrow by the Cambodian Ministry of Health,” said passenger Holley Rauen, a public health nurse and midwife from Fort Myers, Florida. “We have no idea when we get to get home.”

CHINA BACK TO WORK?

After an extended Lunar New Year holiday, China needs to get back to work or suffer severe economic consequences. There is a proposal to delay the opening of the annual session of parliament, due on Feb. 24.

Some cities remain in lockdown, streets are deserted, employees are nervous, and travel bans and quarantine orders are in place around the country. Many factories have yet to re-open, disrupting supply chains in China and beyond.

In Japan, where data showed on Monday that the economy had already shrunk last quarter at the fastest pace in almost six years, the impact of the virus is expected to show up in the current quarter, stoking fears of recession.

Trade-dependent Singapore downgraded its 2020 economic growth forecast and has said recession is possible. It is set to unveil measures to cushion the blow on Tuesday.

Organizers of the Tokyo Marathon have decided to limit the March 1 race to top-level athletes, banning 38,000 general participants, a person with knowledge of the issue told Reuters.

Japan’s Imperial Household Agency said it would cancel Emperor Naruhito’s public birthday address on Feb. 23, his first since his coronation last year. The event regularly attracts tens of thousands of people to the inner grounds of the Imperial Palace in the heart of Tokyo.

(Reporting by David Stanway in Shanghai; Claire Baldwin in Sihanoukville; John Geddie and Aradhana Aravindan in Singapore; Additional reporting by Farah Master in Hong Kong, Sophie Yu in Beijing, Hilary Russ in New York and Daniel Trotta; Writing by Peter Graff; Editing by Mike Collett-White and Nick Macfie)

Solo lunches and masks: Chinese returning to work grapple with coronavirus

By Sophie Yu, Yilei Sun and Brenda Goh

BEIJING/SHANGHAI (Reuters) – Chinese government employee Jin Yang returned to work in Beijing this week to find his usual workplace rules upended as China battles a coronavirus epidemic.

His office has banned the practice of eating lunch in its canteen with colleagues, in favor of boxed meals, packaged in house and eaten at desks, he said.

“It’s anything but normal,” the 28-year-old told Reuters.

Meetings are held online, instead of in person. Employees must wear masks all day and report their temperatures twice a day.

Jin is one of millions of workers who began streaming back this week from Lunar New Year holidays extended by 10 days in China’s struggle to rein in the virus, which has killed 1,380 people and infected nearly 64,000.

But streets and subways are largely deserted in major cities such as Beijing, the capital, and the business hub of Shanghai, with many shops and restaurants empty or shut, while lots of office employees work from home.As many places still enforce containment measures, companies are adopting rules to prevent infection and banish employees’ fears of catching it, such as keeping them as widely separated as possible.

Not all companies have resumed work. Many that have are asking employees returning from trips overseas or other provinces to quarantine themselves at home for up to 14 days.

A manager at one foreign multinational said staff were concerned, particularly after China’s tough step in locking down Wuhan, the central city of 11 million people where the outbreak began.

“They want no contact,” said the manager, who sought anonymity as she was not authorized to speak to media.

“Some want people to sit with empty chairs between them at meetings, toilet visits to be assigned at staggered times, and no sharing of the water dispenser,” she added, listing the precautions staff want followed.

Chinese media have posted photographs of office canteens where plastic sheets and wooden boards divide up tables to form segregated dining cubicles.

An industrial zone in the central city of Changsha has started using unmanned robots to deliver meals, the state-run People’s Daily newspaper said.

Automaker GAC, which has joint ventures with Toyota and Honda, said no more than half its employees are allowed to work each day at its headquarters in the southern city of Guangzhou, with lunchtimes divided into four slots of 15 minutes each.

It also rearranged its canteen, and shifted tables to an outdoor terrace, with each spaced 2 meters (7 ft) apart. It has also swapped its previous buffet service for a menu of pre-arranged options.

E-commerce firm Pinduoduo said its employees must complete a daily health-check form. It disinfects offices at least twice a day, and provides meals for everyone to minimize exposure.

On the Weibo messaging app, the term “hardcore armor for returning to work” has drawn 140 million views, with users sharing safety tips, using videos and pictures.

Some images showed people wearing motorcycle helmets at their desks with others in costumes similar to space suits traveling on public transport and some in homemade protective gear fashioned from plastic bottles.

(Reporting by Sophie Yu, Yilei Sun, and Brenda Goh; Additional reporting by Beijing and Shanghai Newsrooms; Editing by Tony Munroe)

Fake news makes disease outbreaks worse, study finds

By Kate Kelland

LONDON (Reuters) – The rise of “fake news” – including misinformation and inaccurate advice on social media – could make disease outbreaks such as the COVID-19 coronavirus epidemic currently spreading in China worse, according to research published on Friday.

In an analysis of how the spread of misinformation affects the spread of disease, scientists at Britain’s East Anglia University (UEA) said any successful efforts to stop people sharing fake news could help save lives.

“When it comes to COVID-19, there has been a lot of speculation, misinformation and fake news circulating on the internet – about how the virus originated, what causes it and how it is spread,” said Paul Hunter, a UEA professor of medicine who co-led the study.

“Misinformation means that bad advice can circulate very quickly – and it can change human behavior to take greater risks,” he added.

In their research, Hunter’s team focused on three other infectious diseases – flu, monkeypox and norovirus – but said their findings could also be useful for dealing with the COVID-19 coronavirus outbreak.

“Fake news is manufactured with no respect for accuracy, and is often based on conspiracy theories,” Hunter said.

For the studies – published on Friday in separate peer-reviewed journals – the researchers created theoretical simulations of outbreaks of norovirus, flu and monkeypox.

Their models took into account studies of real behavior, how different diseases are spread, incubation periods and recovery times, and the speed and frequency of social media posting and real-life information sharing.

They also took into account how lower trust in authorities is linked to tendency to believe conspiracies, how people interact in “information bubbles” online, and the fact that “worryingly, people are more likely to share bad advice on social media than good advice from trusted sources,” Hunter said.

The researchers found that a 10% reduction in the amount of harmful advice being circulated has a mitigating impact on the severity of an outbreak, while making 20% of a population unable to share harmful advice has the same positive effect.

(Reporting by Kate Kelland; Editing by Frances Kerry)

Dying a desperate death: A Wuhan family’s coronavirus ordeal

By Yawen Chen and Tony Munroe

BEIJING (Reuters) – There were no doctors, nurses or medical equipment at the Wuhan hotel converted into a temporary quarantine facility for suspected coronavirus patients when brothers Wang Xiangkai and Wang Xiangyou arrived two weeks ago.

The next day, Xiangkai, 61, woke to find that Xiangyou, 62, had died.

The Wangs are among tens of thousands of families devastated by the coronavirus in Wuhan, where the medical system has been overwhelmed by the outbreak, despite massive reinforcements and two speedily built new hospitals.

“What did we do to deserve such punishment?” Wang Wenjun, Xiangkai’s daughter, said over the phone to Reuters.

A crematorium sent a car to pick up Xiangyou’s body, but the family was told no mourning ceremony would be allowed. They could only collect his ashes after 15 days.

Two days before Xiangyou died, doctors at the 4th Hospital of Wuhan had written in a diagnosis that both brothers were likely infected by the coronavirus which has now killed over 1,350 people in China. CT scans showed their lungs had turned “white” with patterns resembling cracked glass, symptomatic of severe viral infections.

But the hospital did not have any RNA test kits to confirm their cases, and thus could not admit them for treatment, according to the doctors. They were told to contact their community government, which on Jan. 30 offered to house the brothers at the hotel.

Hubei province on Thursday reported a sharp rise in the number of deaths and cases after changing its methodology to include those diagnosed through CT scans like Xiangyou. More than 63,000 people have now been infected nationwide and 1,380 have died.

Xiangkai, a retired cab driver, refused to remain at the Echarm hotel after his brother died, instead staying alone at a relative’s home. His wife visited daily, bringing food and Chinese medicine, until she too fell ill with what doctors suspect is the coronavirus.

Wenjun lives on the other side of Wuhan. Closed transportation lines means she is unable to visit her parents.

Desperate for treatment for her father, she issued a plea for help on the Twitter-like Weibo. The community government responded, saying the decision was up to the virus taskface.

At around midnight on Monday, the family received a call saying a hospital bed was available. With no public transport, Wang’s 58-year-old wife pushed him in a wheelchair for the 10-minute trip to the hospital.

A new CT scan showed Xiangkai’s lung infection had worsened. He now has trouble walking to the toilet on his own and is awaiting the results of an RNA test.

“On Jan. 22, our entire family had a Lunar New Year dinner, and we even took a photo together. It has been bad news every day since then,” Wenjun said.

(Reporting by Yawen Chen; Editing by Karishma Singh and Kim Coghill)

Experts fear China reluctant to accept WHO ground mission

By Stephanie Nebehay

GENEVA (Reuters) – China is dragging its heels in accepting help on the ground from international health specialists, diplomats and experts said on Thursday, noting four days after a World Health Organization (WHO) advance team arrived in Beijing no details have been released on how and when the full mission will deploy.

China has recorded 48,206 cases of a new coronavirus, now known as SARS-CoV-2, which emerged in a seafood market in the central city of Wuhan in December. The virus has spread to 24 countries infecting more than 440 people, the WHO says.

Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO director-general, won a pledge from Chinese President Xi Jinping during his trip there two weeks ago that an international team would be able to help investigate the virus’ origin and spread.

An “advance team” of three experts, led by Dr. Bruce Aylward, a WHO official and public health emergency expert from Canada, as well as WHO’s Dr. Maria van Kerkhove, arrived in Beijing on Monday.

“Our advance team in China has made good progress in working out the composition of the team and the scope of its work. We hope to have more news to announce soon,” Tedros told reporters on Wednesday night.

He has said the full mission would include 10-15 experts, but has given no details of who they would be or when they would go to China.

The death toll in Hubei province, which includes Wuhan, leapt by a record 242 on Thursday to 1,310, with a sharp rise in confirmed cases after the adoption of new methodology for diagnosis, health officials said.

“It would obviously have been better if the (mission) team had arrived without delay,” a senior Western diplomat in Geneva told Reuters, though he added they could still do effective work with Chinese colleagues when they arrive.

“It’s just been very worrying and troubling and we are not seeing as much of a substantive and independent role that we would expect at this point,” he added.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said on Wednesday it had not yet been invited to send experts to China to assist with the WHO investigation.

“Not only was China very late in inviting international partners to help with the response, but we still only have a skeletal advance team in Beijing, and not Hubei province,” Lawrence Gostin, professor of global health law at Georgetown Law, told Reuters.

Gostin questioned whether Chinese authorities would accept experienced personnel from CDC – thereby setting aside “political and trade differences”.

“It appears that China has not accepted the U.S. offer of on the ground CDC experts, which is unfortunate. CDC has among the most experienced first responders,” he added.

Gostin voiced doubts that China would allow WHO experts to verify independently crucial information about the epidemic’s trajectory.

“Will they have complete access to epidemiologic, virologic real time data? Will they have the freedom to go into homes and communities…? Will they be full partners in surveillance and public health response?,” he said.

Xi said on Tuesday that China’s prevention and control work on the new coronavirus is having positive results, and the country will win the battle against the virus, state media reported.

WHO officials have said that Chinese authorities have been open and cooperative, sharing data throughout the outbreak.

(reporting by Stephanie Nebehay; editing by Alexandra Hudson)

Coronavirus deaths, cases leap in China; markets shiver

By Winni Zhou and Dominique Patton

BEIJING (Reuters) – The Chinese province at the epicentre of the coronavirus outbreak reported a record rise in deaths and thousands more cases on Thursday under a new diagnostic method, raising fresh questions about the scale of the crisis.

The sharp rise in the headline number of deaths and infections unnerved world markets, as traders halted a recent rally in stocks and retreated back to the safety of government bonds and gold.

Health officials in China’s central province of Hubei said 242 people had died from the flu-like virus on Wednesday, the fastest rise in the daily count since the pathogen was identified in December.

That took total deaths in China from the newly discovered virus to 1,367, up 254 from the previous day, the National Health Commission said.

For all related coverage on the outbreak, click: https://www.reuters.com/live-events/coronavirus-6-id2921484

For related Reuters graphics on the new coronavirus, click: https://tmsnrt.rs/2GVwIyw

The spike in numbers came a day after markets were cheered when China reported its lowest number of new cases in two weeks, bolstering a forecast by the country’s senior medical adviser that the epidemic could end by April.

Hubei had previously only allowed infections to be confirmed by RNA tests, which can take days to process. RNA, or ribonucleic acid, carries genetic information allowing for identification of organisms like viruses.

But it has begun using quicker computerised tomography (CT) scans, which reveal lung infections, the Hubei health commission said, to confirm virus cases and isolate them faster.

As a result, another new 14,840 cases were reported in the central province on Thursday, from 2,015 new cases nationwide a day earlier. But excluding cases confirmed using the new methods, the number of new cases rose by only 1,508.

About 60,000 people have now been confirmed to have the virus, the vast majority of them in China.

The new diagnostic procedure could explain the spike in deaths, said Raina McIntyre, head of biosecurity research at the Kirby Institute at the University of New South Wales.

“Presumably, there are deaths which occurred in people who did not have a lab diagnosis but did have a CT,” she told Reuters. “It is important that these also be counted.”

The new testing is only being used in Hubei, officials said.

TENTATIVE SLOWING?

Under the new system, suspected cases were being confirmed, and if the number of deaths did not rise as fast, that would mean the disease was less deadly than thought, said Dr Eyal Leshem of the Tel Aviv University School of Medicine.

“The real mortality rate of the disease may be lower,” Leshem said.

Consultancy Capital Economics said the surge did not necessarily point to an acceleration in the spread of the virus but rather that official figures had been understating its prevalence.

“For now, the latest figures don’t appear to undermine the recent tentative signs that the spread of the virus may be slowing,” it said.

Frank Benzimara, head of Asia Equity Strategy, at Society Generale in Hong Kong, said the new figures had not sparked panic in financial markets: “It can be seen as an exercise of transparency.”

The outbreak, which is believed to have emerged late last year from a market in Wuhan where wildlife was traded illegally, is one of the biggest tests facing the Chinese government in years and blame has fallen on provincial leaders.

State media said provincial Communist Party boss Jiang Chaoliang had been sacked as secretary of the Hubei Provincial Committee, and Ma Guoqiang had been removed as party chief in the provincial capital Wuhan.

CRUISE TO CAMBODIA

Media did not give a reason for the dismissals, but the two are the most high-profile officials to be removed from duty since the outbreak began.

The World Health Organization (WHO) said on Wednesday the number of infections in China had stabilised but it was too early to say the epidemic was slowing.

Chinese scientists are testing two antiviral drugs and preliminary clinical trial results are weeks away, but a vaccine could take 18 months to develop.

Hundreds of infections have been reported in more than two dozen other countries and territories, but only two people have died from the virus outside mainland China – one in Hong Kong and one in the Philippines.

The biggest cluster of cases outside China is on a cruise ship quarantined off the Japanese port of Yokohama, where a further 44 cases were reported on Thursday. In all, 219 of about 3,700 people on board have tested positive.

There was a happy ending for another cruise ship, the MS Westerdam, which docked in Cambodia after being denied docking rights in Guam, Japan, the Philippines, Taiwan and Thailand over fears that one of its 1,455 passengers and 802 crew might have the virus, even though none had tested positive.

Wuhan, a city of 11 million people, remains under virtual lockdown, and other major Chinese cities face severe restrictions.

(Reporting by Winnie Zhou Yawen Chen and Dominique Patton in Beijing; Brenda Goh, Josh Horwitz and David Stanway in Shanghai; Keith Zhai, d John Geddie, tom Westbrook in Singapore; James Pearson in Hanoi, Stephanie Nebehay in Geneva; Writing by Stephen Coates and Robert Birsel; Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan and Clarence Fernandez)

U.S. CDC says not yet invited to assist with coronavirus investigation in China

(Reuters) – The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said on Wednesday it had not yet been invited to send in experts to assist with the investigation of the coronavirus outbreak that has killed over 1,000 people.

An advance team of World Health Organization medical experts arrived in China on Monday to help investigate the outbreak, and the United States has been waiting for approval to send its experts as part of the WHO team.

(Reporting by Saumya Sibi Joseph in Bengaluru; Editing by Shinjini Ganguli)