Tag Archives: Pandemic

Rome churches remain open after Catholics rail against ‘Christ in quarantine’

By Philip Pullella

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) – A cardinal on Friday modified his order to close Rome’s churches to help contain the spread of coronavirus after Pope Francis cautioned against “drastic measures” and Catholics took to social media to complain.

Cardinal Angelo De Donatis issued a new decree less than a day after his initial order. Many churches in the Italian capital will now remain open.

Some Catholics accused the cardinal of caving in to the government after his initial decree on Thursday night. Andrea Fauro said on social media the move had put “Christ in quarantine”.

Catholic bishops around the world were deciding how to deal with the pandemic in their own dioceses and what guidance they should give to the 1.3 billion-member Church in places from Little Rock to Lyon.

“Drastic measures are not always good,” the pope said on Friday in improvised remarks at the start of his morning Mass, streamed on the internet and televised live without outside participants in order to limit gatherings of people.

Francis prayed that God give pastors “the strength and even the capacity to choose the best means to help” those suffering from the pandemic “so that they can provide measures that do not leave the holy faithful people of God alone”.

Hours after the pope spoke, De Donatis modified the decree. Whereas most of Rome’s more than 750 churches were to have been closed until April 3, the new decree says all parish churches and those run by religious communities will remain open.

Those that will close number fewer than 300 and do not have a parish community or are visited mostly by tourists.

Previously, only Masses had been canceled because of the coronavirus outbreak. Individual bishops can decide whether to keep their churches open, and many are open in parts of Italy.

The pope is bishop of Rome and the cardinal is his administrative vicar.

The Italian government on Wednesday closed virtually every commercial activity in the country apart from pharmacies, food shops and other stores selling essential goods and services.

Customers must enter a few at a time, keep a safe distance from each other and wear surgical masks in some cases.

Critics said being allowed to pray in a church, albeit with precautions similar to those imposed on stores, should be seen as an essential service.

“My heart is in pieces,” Father Maurizio Mirilli, a pastor of a Rome parish said in an anguished tweet on Thursday. “I have to close everything, even the church … I feel like a father whose children have been snatched from him.”

(Reporting By Philip Pullella; Editing by Janet Lawrence)

Men’s tennis, NBA basketball, La Liga soccer: coronavirus shreds sports calendar

LONDON (Reuters) – The global sporting calendar has been shredded by the coronavirus pandemic, with men’s tennis shut down for six weeks, top European soccer leagues on hold and the NBA having announced a suspension until further notice.

Poignantly, the Olympic flame was lit in ancient Olympia but the road to the Tokyo Olympics appears, at present, a distant one with the spread of the virus impacting across all sports.

Men’s tennis’s ATP Tour announced that no tournaments would take place until after April 20 at the earliest, wiping out the prestigious Miami Open and Monte Carlo Opens as well as tournaments in Houston and Marrakech.

“This is not a decision that was taken lightly and it represents a great loss for our tournaments, players, and fans worldwide,” the ATP’s chairman Andrea Gaudenzi said.

“However we believe this is the responsible action needed at this time in order to protect the health and safety of our players, staff, the wider tennis community and general public health in the face of this global pandemic.”

Earlier this week the Indian Wells tournament was canceled, while the International Tennis Federation postponed the revamped Fed Cup Finals set for Budapest in April.

The National Basketball Association (NBA) took the decision on Wednesday to suspend the season until further notice after a Utah Jazz player tested positive for the coronavirus.

“The NBA will use this hiatus to determine next steps for moving forward in regard to the coronavirus pandemic,” a statement said.

While chaos escalated elsewhere, Formula One was apparently carrying on regardless with the Australian Grand Prix likely to go ahead despite the McLaren team withdrawing after a team member tested positive for coronavirus.

Mercedes’ six times world champion Lewis Hamilton told reporters earlier that it was “shocking” the race could go ahead and suggested organizers had put financial concerns ahead of people’s health.

Spain and the Netherlands became the latest nations to suspend all soccer leagues.

The next two rounds of La Liga fixtures were postponed. Real Madrid put its squad into quarantine after a member of the club’s basketball team tested positive on Thursday.

“Given the circumstances that are coming to light this morning, referring to the quarantine established in Real Madrid and the possible cases in players from other clubs, La Liga considers it appropriate to continue to the next phase of the protocol of action against COVID-19,” said La Liga.

Italy’s Serie A has already stopped until at least April 3 with the country in lockdown after 12,000 infections and 800 deaths. Two Serie A players, Sampdoria’s Manolo Gabbiadini and Daniele Rugani, of Juventus, have tested positive.

England’s Premier League was waiting to discover whether or not it would continue, or have matches played behind closed doors, with the government expected to move its response to the coronavirus crisis from the “contain” phase to the “delay” phase at an emergency “Cobra” committee meeting.

With many other European leagues either suspended or playing without fans in stadiums, the fate of this year’s Euro 2020 championship being played across 12 cities remains unclear.

Governing body UEFA said it will hold a meeting of all 55 football federations in Europe to discuss the impact of the coronavirus on all domestic and European competitions.

Two of Thursday’s Europa League matches have been postponed, while it looks highly unlikely that next week’s Champions League clash between Manchester City and Real Madrid will be played.

Major League Soccer (MLS) in the United States also announced that the season was suspended until further notice.

Some events were continuing though, with the first round under way at golf’s Players Championship at Sawgrass.

(Reporting by Martyn Herman; Editing by Peter Graff)

Trump stops Europe flights, China says coronavirus outbreak may end by June

Reuters
By Liangping Gao and Andrea Shalal

BEIJING/WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Travelers scrambled to rebook flights and markets reeled on Thursday after U.S. President Donald Trump imposed sweeping restrictions on travel from Europe, hitting battered airlines and heightening global alarm over the coronavirus.

But China, where the disease originated, said its epidemic had peaked and the global spread could be over by June if other nations applied similarly aggressive containment measures as Beijing’s communist government.

Trump had downplayed risks to the United States during the crisis, but with epidemics ballooning from Iran to Italy and Spain, he limited travel from continental Europe for 30 days.

“This is the most aggressive and comprehensive effort to confront a foreign virus in modern history,” he said in a prime-time televised address from the Oval Office on Wednesday.

That sent markets into a tailspin, with European shares plunging to their lowest in almost four years and oil also slumping.

It also sent stressed travelers rushing to airports to board last flights back to the United States.

“It caused a mass panic,” said 20-year-old Anna Grace, a U.S. student at Suffolk University on her first trip to Europe who rushed to Madrid’s Barajas airport at 5 a.m. to get home.

The outbreak has disrupted industry, travel, entertainment and sports worldwide, even throwing the Tokyo Summer Olympics into question. But its progress in the epicenter of China’s Hubei province has slowed markedly amid strict curbs on movement, including the lockdown of its capital Wuhan.

Hubei logged just eight new infections on Wednesday, the first time in the outbreak it has recorded a daily tally of less than 10. Beyond Hubei, mainland China had just seven new cases, six of them imported from abroad.

“The peak of the epidemic has passed for China,” said Mi Feng, a spokesman for the National Health Commission.

OVER BY JUNE?

The Chinese government’s senior medical adviser, Zhong Nanshan, an 83-year-old epidemiologist renowned for helping combat the SARS outbreak in 2003, said the crisis could be over by mid-year.

“If all countries could get mobilized, it could be over by June,” he said. “But if some countries do not treat the infectiousness and harmfulness seriously, and intervene strongly, it would last longer.”

The coronavirus has infected more than 126,000 people across the world, the vast majority in China, and killed 4,624, according to a Reuters tally.

Already annoyed at what it considered over-draconian travel restrictions by Washington early in the crisis, Beijing smarted again at latest U.S. criticism of its handling.

White House national security adviser Robert O’Brien accused China on Wednesday of initially covering up the Hubei outbreak, saying that cost the world two months in response time.

In fact, retorted Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang, China’s efforts bought the world time and “immoral and irresponsible” remarks would not help U.S. epidemic efforts.

The World Health Organization (WHO) now officially describes the crisis as a pandemic, meaning it is spreading fast across the globe.

“Describing this as a pandemic does not mean that countries should give up,” WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told diplomats in Geneva. “The idea that countries should shift from containment to mitigation is wrong and dangerous.”

Trump’s surprise travel order, which starts at midnight on Friday, does not apply to Britain or to Americans undergoing “appropriate screenings”, he said. “The restriction stops people not goods,” he tweeted after his speech.

EU DISAPPROVAL

The 27-nation European Union (EU) bloc was not impressed.

“The European Union disapproves of the fact that the U.S. decision to improve a travel ban was taken unilaterally and without consultation,” European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen and Council president Charles Michel said in a statement.

The market plunge hit airline and leisure stocks particularly hard.

“This is something that markets had not factored in … it’s a huge near-term economic cost,” Khoon Goh, head of Asia Research at ANZ in Singapore, said of the U.S. move.

Although exempt from Trump’s ban and no longer a member of the EU, Britain also expressed disappointment, saying it would have an impact on its economy.

But U.S. Vice President Mike Pence defended the new restrictions, saying the epicenter of the pandemic had shifted from Asia to Europe. “We know there will be more infections in the days ahead. We’re trying to hold that number down as much as possible,” Pence told NBC’s “Today” program.

In the United States, classes were suspended for two weeks in the greater Seattle area, which accounts for the bulk of at least 38 U.S. fatalities from the disease.

Oscar-winning American actor Tom Hanks tested positive in Australia, where he is on a film shoot.

Despite fears for the Tokyo Olympics, the torch relay got started in Greece when the flame was lit by the rays of the sun in ancient Olympia – albeit in a scaled-down ceremony and without spectators.

(Additional reporting by Ryan Woo, Stella Qui, Kevin Yao and Gabriel Crossley in Beijing; Alexandra Alper, Steve Holland, Susan Heavey, David Lawder, and Richard Cowan in Washington, Marine Strauus in Brussels, William Schomberg in London, Stephanie Nebehay in Geneva, Karolos Grohmann in Ancient Olympia; Writing by Nick Macfie; Editing by Robert Birsel and Andrew Cawthorne)

WHO calls coronavirus a pandemic as Britain, Italy shore up defenses

Reuters
By Emma Farge and William Schomberg

GENEVA/LONDON (Reuters) – The World Health Organization described the coronavirus outbreak as a pandemic for the first time on Wednesday as Britain and Italy announced multi-billion-dollar war chests to fight the disease.

The United States also said it was considering new steps to battle the virus that emerged in China in December and has spread around the world, halting industry, grounding flights, closing schools and forcing events to be postponed.

“We are deeply concerned both by the alarming levels of spread and severity and by the alarming levels of inaction,” Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told reporters in Geneva.

“We have therefore made the assessment that COVID-19 can be characterized as a pandemic,” he said, using the formal name of the coronavirus.

There are now more than 118,000 infections in 114 countries and 4,291 people have died of the virus, with the numbers expected to climb, Tedros said.

Use of the word pandemic does not change the WHO’s response, said Dr Mike Ryan, the head of the Geneva-based agency’s emergencies program.

WHO officials have signaled for weeks that they may use the word “pandemic” but said it does not carry legal significance. The WHO classified the outbreak as a “public health emergency of international concern” on Jan. 30, triggering an increase in global response coordination.

“The use of this term (pandemic) however highlights the importance of countries throughout the world working cooperatively and openly with one another and coming together as a united front in our efforts to bring this situation under control,” said Nathalie MacDermott, an expert at King’s College London.

Mark Woolhouse, professor of infectious disease epidemiology at Britain’s Edinburgh University, added: “It is now clear that COVID-19 is going to be with us for a considerable length of time and the actions that we take must be actions that we can live with for a prolonged period.”

WAR CHESTS

Before the WHO’s comments, Italy – the European country worst hit by the virus – and Britain announced they were setting aside large sums to fight the flu-like disease.

Britain launched a 30-billion-pound ($38.54 billion) economic stimulus plan as new finance minister Rishi Sunak said the economy faced a “significant impact” from the spread of the virus, even if it was likely to be temporary.

“Up to a fifth of the working-age population could need to be off work at any one time. And business supply chains are being disrupted around the globe,” Sunak said in an annual budget speech to parliament.

He announced a package of measures to help companies facing a cash-flow crunch, including a year-long suspension of a property tax paid by smaller firms. The health system and other public services would receive an extra 5 billion pounds to help counter the spread of the coronavirus.

Last week, Italy’s cabinet said it would need 7.5 billion euros ($8.46 billion) to fight the virus, but since then the emergency has escalated and the nation, already close to recession, is under lockdown, with the death toll now 827.

Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte on Wednesday earmarked $28.3 billion to ease the economic impact. He said that already tough restrictions on movement might be tightened further after the northern region of Lombardy, centered on Italy’s financial capital Milan, asked for all shops to shut and public transport to close.

The United States, where the S&P 500 stock index was down almost 4%, said its steps could include tax relief that could channel hundreds of billions of dollars into the U.S. economy.

“Bottom line, it’s going to get worse,” Anthony Fauci, head of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told Congress.

The WHO’s Ryan said the situation in Iran was “very serious” and the agency would like to see more surveillance and more care for the sick. Iran has reported 237 deaths from the virus.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel said up to 70% of the population was likely to be infected as the virus spreads around the world in the absence of a cure.

A rebound in stocks ran out of steam on Wednesday despite the Bank of England move. Money markets are fully pricing in a further 10 basis-point cut by the European Central Bank when it meets on Thursday.

As of Tuesday’s close, $8.1 trillion in value had been erased from global stock markets in the recent rout.

But not all the news was bad. Some key industries in Wuhan, the Chinese city at the epicenter of the epidemic and a hub of car manufacturing, were told they could resume work on Wednesday, a day after President Xi Jinping visited the city for the first time since the outbreak began.

Coronavirus outbreak ‘getting bigger’, WHO says

By Stephanie Nebehay and Ryan Woo

GENEVA/BEIJING (Reuters) – The rapid rise in coronavirus raised fears of a pandemic on Friday, with six countries reporting their first cases, the World Health Organization warning it could spread worldwide and Switzerland cancelling the giant Geneva car show.

World share markets crashed again, winding up their worst week since the 2008 global financial crisis and bringing the global wipeout to $6 trillion.

Hopes that the epidemic that started in China late last year would be over in months, and that economic activity would quickly return to normal, have been shattered as the number of international cases has spiralled.

“The outbreak is getting bigger,” WHO spokesman Christian Lindmeier told reporters in Geneva.

“The scenario of the coronavirus reaching multiple countries, if not all countries around the world, is something we have been looking at and warning against since quite a while.”

Switzerland joined countries banning big events to try to curb the epidemic, forcing cancellation of next week’s Geneva international car show, one of the industry’s most important gatherings.

Mainland China reported 327 new cases, the lowest since Jan. 23, taking its tally to more than 78,800 cases with almost 2,800 deaths.

China’s three biggest airlines restored some international flights and the Shanghai fashion show, initially postponed, went ahead online.

TROOPS DEPLOYED

But as the outbreak eases in China, it is surging elsewhere.

Five more countries have reported their first case, all with travel history connected to Italy. They were Nigeria, Estonia, Denmark, Netherlands and Lithuania, Lindmeier said.

Mexico also detected its first cases of infection in two men who had travelled to Italy, making the country the second in Latin America to register the virus after Brazil.

Countries other than China now account for about three-quarters of new infections.

Bulgaria said it was ready to deploy up to 1,000 troops and military equipment to the border with Turkey to prevent illegal migrant inflows as steps up measures against the coronavirus. It has not reported any cases.

Mongolia, which has yet to confirm a case, placed its president, Battulga Khaltmaa, in quarantine as a precaution after he returned from a trip to China, state media reported.

A Chinese official called the epidemic the most difficult health crisis in the country’s modern history. Another said some recovered patients had been found to be infectious, suggesting the epidemic may be even harder to eradicate than previously thought.

Lindmeier said the WHO was looking very carefully into reports of some people getting re-infected.

In addition to stockpiling medical supplies, governments ordered schools shut and cancelled big gatherings to try to halt the flu-like disease.

U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration was considering invoking special powers to expand production of protective gear.

In Europe, France’s reported cases doubled, Germany warned of an impending epidemic and Greece, a gateway for refugees from the Middle East, announced tighter border controls.

The death toll in Italy, Europe’s worst-hit country, rose to 17 and those testing positive increased by more than 200 to 655.

Germany has nearly 60 cases, France about 38 and Spain 23, according to a Reuters count.

OLYMPIC DOUBTS

South Korea has the most cases outside China. It reported 571 new infections on Friday, bringing the total to 2,337 with 13 people killed.

The head of the WHO’s emergency programme, Dr Mike Ryan, said Iran’s outbreak may be worse than realised. It has the most deaths outside China – 34 from 388 reported cases.

U.S. intelligence agencies are monitoring the spread of coronavirus in Iran and India, where only a handful of cases have been reported, sources said.

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the United States had offered to help Iran, raising doubts about its willingness to share information.

Japan is scheduled to host the 2020 Olympics in July but Ryan said discussions were being held about whether to go ahead.

Organisers will decide next week on the ceremonial torch relay, due to arrive on March 20 for a 121-day journey past landmarks including Mount Fuji and Hiroshima’s Peace Memorial Park.

A woman wearing a face mask collects food purchased through group orders at the entrance of a residential compound in Wuhan, the epicentre of the novel coronavirus outbreak, Hubei province, China February 28, 2020. REUTERS/Stringer CHINA OUT.

As of Friday, confirmed cases in Japan had risen above 200, with four deaths, excluding more than 700 cases on a quarantined cruise liner, Diamond Princess.

A British man infected on the ship had died, bringing the death toll among passenger to six, Kyodo newswire reported.

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe had called for schools to close and vowed to prevent a severe blow to an economy already teetering on the brink of recession.

In Moscow, authorities were deporting 88 foreigners who violated quarantine measures imposed on them as a precaution, the RIA news agency cited Moscow’s deputy mayor as saying.

Chinese-ruled Hong Kong, where the coronavirus has killed two and infected more than 90, quarantined a pet dog of a coronavirus patient after it tested “weak positive”, though authorities had no evidence the virus can be transmitted to pets.

 Follow this link for Interactive graphic tracking global spread of coronavirus.

(Reporting by Stephanie Nebehay in Geneva, Ryan Woo, Yingzhi Yang in Beijing, Lisa Lambert and Mark Hosenball in Washington, Sangmi Chai in Seoul, Leika Kihara in Tokyo, Kate Kelland in London, Tsvetelia Tsolova in Sofia, Michael Shields and Brenna Hughes Neghaiwi in Zurich, Daina Beth Solomon in Mexico City; Writing by Robert Birsel, Giles Elgood and Nick Macfie; Editing by Simon Cameron-Moore, Jon Boyle and Timothy Heritage)

Trump says coronavirus risk in U.S. is low; CDC confirms first case of unknown origin

By Jeff Mason and Jonathan Allen

WASHINGTON/NEW YORK (Reuters) – President Donald Trump told Americans on Wednesday that the risk from coronavirus remained “very low,” and placed Vice President Mike Pence in charge of the U.S. response to the looming global health crisis.

At a White House briefing, Trump defended his administration’s handling of the crisis and said health experts were “ready, willing and able” to move quickly if the virus spreads.

Trump made his comments as public health officials warned Americans to prepare for more coronavirus cases. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirmed an infection of the new coronavirus in California in someone who had not traveled outside the United States or been exposed to a person known to have the virus, a first for the country.

How the person was infected was not known. It brought the total number of cases in the United States to 15, according to the CDC.

New York Mayor Bill de Blasio called on the government to help the city obtain 300,000 extra protective masks. There were no confirmed cases in the city but de Blasio announced plans to provide up to 1,200 hospital beds if needed.

U.S. stock markets fell for the fifth consecutive day on investors’ alarm about the respiratory disease spreading.

At the White House, Trump said he was not ready to institute new travel restrictions for countries such as South Korea and Italy that are dealing with outbreaks – although he could not rule it out. The State Department raised its travel alert level for South Korea and urged Americans to reconsider going there.

The CDC has advised Americans to not visit China and South Korea, and on Wednesday stepped up travel warnings for Iran, Italy and Mongolia.

“The risk to the American people remains very low,” Trump said, flanked by Pence and public health officials.

He said the spread of the virus in the United States was not “inevitable” and then went on to say: “It probably will, it possibly will. It could be at a very small level, or it could be at a larger level. Whatever happens we’re totally prepared.”

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infections Diseases, said that while the virus was contained in the United States, Americans must prepare for a potential outbreak as transmissions spread outside of China.

U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said the United States has 59 coronavirus cases, including 42 American passengers repatriated from the Diamond Princess cruise ship docked in Japan.

‘POSSIBILITY OF PANDEMIC’

“We have to be alert to the possibility of a pandemic,” Peter Marks, director of the Food and Drug Administration’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, said in an interview.

House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a Democrat, said in a statement that the Trump administration “has mounted an opaque and chaotic response to this outbreak.”

She said the House would put forward a “funding package with transparency and accountability that fully addresses the scale and seriousness of this public health crisis.”

Trump is seeking $2.5 billion from Congress to boost the government’s virus response, an amount Democrats said falls far short of what is needed. Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer called for $8.5 billion to prepare.

Global stock markets have slumped in recent days due to worries over a prolonged disruption to supply chains and economies from the virus, which has infected about 80,000 people and killed nearly 3,000, mostly in China.

U.S. stocks turned lower in afternoon trading – the S&P 500 index fell for a fifth straight day and the Dow Jones Industrial Average <.DJI> ended down 123.77 points, or 0.46%. [.N]

Trump, who is running for a second term in the November election, has been increasingly alarmed by the drop in U.S. stock markets, which he considers a barometer of the health of the American economy and sees as important to his re-election.

He told reporters at the White House that fears of the coronavirus had hurt the stock markets. But he also blamed the Democratic presidential candidates for spooking investors.

“I think the financial markets are very upset when they look at the Democrat candidates standing on that stage making fools out of themselves,” Trump said in reference to debates among the Democratic contenders vying for the right to challenge him.

Earlier in the day, Trump accused two cable TV news channels, CNN and MSNBC, of presenting the danger from the virus in as bad a light as possible and upsetting financial markets.

(Reporting by Jeff Mason and Jonathan Allen; additional reporting by Steve Holland, Makini Brice, Susan Heavey and Michael Erman; Writing by John Whitesides and Alistair Bell; Editing by Jonathan Oatis, Bill Berkrot and Grant McCool)

Coronavirus increases Iran’s isolation, strains South Korea and Italy

By Parisa Hafezi and Ryan Woo

DUBAI/BEIJING (Reuters) – Iran’s coronavirus death toll rose to 16 on Tuesday, the highest outside China, increasing its international isolation as dozens of countries from South Korea to Italy accelerated emergency measures to curb the epidemic’s global spread.

Believed to come from wildlife in Wuhan city late last year, the flu-like disease has infected 80,000 people and killed 2,663 in China. But the World Health Organization (WHO) says the epidemic there has peaked and has been declining since Feb. 2.

Beyond mainland China, however, it has jumped to about 29 countries and territories, with some three dozen deaths, according to a Reuters tally. Growing outbreaks in Iran, Italy and South Korea are of particular concern.

“We are close to a pandemic but there is still hope,” said Raina MacIntyre, head of a biosecurity program at the University of New South Wales, using the term for a widespread global epidemic.

Global stocks sank to their lowest levels in over two months on Tuesday in anxiety over the coronavirus’ spread and its damage to the world economy.

Iran’s outbreak, amid mounting U.S. sanctions pressure, threatens to leave it further cut off. Several countries suspended flights due to cases in travelers from Iran to Canada, Lebanon, the United Arab Emirates and Iraq.

Some neighbors also closed borders, while Oman’s Khasab port halted imports and exports with Iran.

“It is an uninvited and inauspicious visitor. God willing we will get through … this virus,” Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said in a televised speech.

The deputy health minister was among those infected.

Iran canceled concerts and soccer matches nationwide, and schools and universities closed in many provinces. Many Iranians took to social media to accuse authorities of concealing facts.

Popular anger has been high over the handling of a Ukrainian passenger plane crash in January, which the military took three days to acknowledge was caused by an Iranian missile fired in error.

Authorities say U.S. sanctions are hampering its response to the coronavirus by preventing imports of masks and medicines.

CHURCH UNDER SCRUTINY

South Korea has the most virus cases outside China, with 977 infections and 10 deaths, the majority linked to the Shincheonji Church of Jesus in the city of Daegu, where the outbreak is believed to have begun with a 61-year-old woman.

Authorities were to test all members of the church, estimated by media at about 215,000 people. President Moon Jae-in acknowledged the situation was “very grave”.

In Europe, Italy is the front line, with more than 280 cases and seven deaths, most in the northern Lombardy and Veneto regions but one case emerging in Sicily, the first in the country south of Rome.

Italy’s tourist industry, which accounts for about 13% of the economy, fears a plunge amid restrictions on public events affecting soccer matches, cinemas and theaters.

A planned three-week shoot in Italy for Tom Cruise’s seventh outing in the “Mission: Impossible” series was also postponed, while Milan cathedral was closed and Venice carnival canceled.

Airlines began restricting flights to Italy, while prices for masks and gels skyrocketed.

Eurasia consultancy’s Scott Rosenstein said the bad news from Iran, South Korea and Italy had undercut confidence sustained human-to-human transmission can be limited to China.

“This worsening narrative around disease containment has overshadowed the cautious optimism narrative coming out of China,” he said. “Markets have responded accordingly.”

“DON’T HANG ABOUT”

Afghanistan, Bahrain, Iraq, Kuwait and Oman reported their first new coronavirus cases, all in people who had been to Iran.

With dozens of sporting events already hit, Japan, which has had four deaths and 850 cases, said it was premature to talk about cancelling the Tokyo Olympics due to start on July 24.

The United States pledged $2.5 billion to fight the disease, with more than $1 billion going towards developing a vaccine.

China reported a rise in new cases in Hubei province, the epicenter of the outbreak. But excluding those, it had just nine new infections on Monday, its fewest since Jan. 20.

With the pace of new infections slowing, Beijing said restrictions on travel and movement that have paralyzed activity in the world’s second-largest economy should begin to be lifted.

An official with the Beijing Center for Disease Prevention and Control noted that supermarkets were becoming busier – but offered some pointers for shoppers.

“Choose a supermarket with relatively low foot traffic and good ventilation, and prepare a shopping list before actually going to shop,” Liu Xiaofeng told reporters.

“Don’t hang about. Don’t chit-chat.”

(Interactive graphic tracking global spread of coronavirus https://graphics.reuters.com/CHINA-HEALTH-MAP/0100B59S39E/index.html)

(Reporting by Ryan Woo, Yilei Sun and Lusha Zhang in Beijing; Hyonhee Shin and Josh Smith in Seoul; Jeff Mason and Phil Stewart in Washington; Ritvik Carvalho in London; Writing by Andrew Cawthorne; Editing by Nick Macfie and Timothy Heritage)

World must prepare for inevitable next flu pandemic, WHO says

FILE PHOTO: A logo is pictured on the World Health Organization (WHO) headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland, November 22, 2017. REUTERS/Denis Balibouse

By Kate Kelland

LONDON (Reuters) – The world will inevitably face another pandemic of flu and needs to prepare for the potential devastation that could cause, and not underestimate the risks, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Monday.

Outlining a global plan to fight the viral disease and get ahead of a potential global outbreak, the WHO said the next influenza pandemic “is a matter of when not if”.

“The threat of pandemic influenza is ever-present,” Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the WHO’s director-general, said in a statement. “We must be vigilant and prepared; the cost of a major influenza outbreak will far outweigh the price of prevention.”

The world’s last flu pandemic was caused by the H1N1 virus, which spread around the world in 2009 and 2010. Studies of that pandemic found that at least one in five people worldwide were infected in the first year, and the death rate was 0.02 percent.

Global health experts and the WHO warn there is a risk that a more deadly flu virus will one day jump from animals to people, mutate and infect many hundreds of thousands of people.

Flu viruses are multiple and ever-changing, and they infect around a billion people every year around the world in seasonal outbreaks. Of those infections, around 3 to 5 million are severe cases, leading to between 290,000 and 650,000 seasonal flu-related respiratory deaths.

Vaccines can help prevent some cases, and the WHO recommends annual vaccination – especially for people working in health care and for vulnerable people such as the old, the very young and people with underlying illness.

The WHO plan – which it described as its most comprehensive to date – includes measures to try to protect populations as much as possible from annual outbreaks of seasonal flu, as well as prepare for a pandemic.

Its two main goals, the WHO said, are to improve worldwide capacities for surveillance and response – by urging all governments to develop a national flu plan, and to develop better tools to prevent, detect, control and treat flu, such as more effective vaccines and antiviral drugs.

(Reporting by Kate Kelland, editing by Gareth Jones)

Different Strain of Swine Flu Could Lead to New Pandemic, Study Shows

A strain of flu that has been circulating in pigs for decades is now capable of sickening humans and could cause to a pandemic similar to the one swine flu caused in 2009, a new study found.

A team of researchers from China and Japan recently found that a type of swine flu virus called EAH1N1 is now capable of sickening humans on a global scale, and published their discovery in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The researchers wrote that the virus has been found in pigs since 1979, but “long-term evolution” in the animals have changed the virus and it’s now capable of not just making humans sick, but efficiently spreading between them.

The researchers warned EAH1N1 is now able “to cause a human influenza pandemic.” Their research indicated that several countries have already reported human cases of the illness.

The study “suggests that immediate action is needed” to prevent humans from getting the EAH1N1 virus, researchers wrote in the article’s summary, because of how it can spread and the fact that none of the humans they tested had developed antibodies for one particular flu strain.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has estimated that the 2009 swine flu outbreak, caused by the different H1N1 virus, killed anywhere between 151,700 and 575,400 people.

The World Health Organization says pigs have been known to generate new flu viruses because they are capable of getting infected by several different animals and humans. The viruses blend together in pigs, creating new strains that can make humans sicker than the original viruses.

Ebola Outbreak In Africa Spreads To New Country

The outbreak of the deadly Ebola virus in Africa is growing into more of a concern for world leaders.

Mali reported their first possible cases of Ebola since the beginning of an outbreak in neighboring Guinea.  Government officials have isolated three people in Mali as they await confirmation testing from the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta.

Guinea reported their 90th death from the outbreak leading Doctors Without Borders to say this could become an unprecedented epidemic in a region that has extremely poor health care systems.

The outbreak has reached a point that foreign mining companies in Guinea have closed their operations and pulled their employees to their home nations.  French officials say they are preparing screening at the airports for travels from the former French colonies.

In addition to Guinea, confirmed cases have been found in Sierra Leone and Liberia.  Liberia confirmed three new deaths in the last 24 hours bringing their total to four.

DWB officials are concerned with the dense living conditions in cities where the virus has been found because it will be hard to stop the virus should it break out in a crowded living area.