China records most deaths from the virus in a single day.
Ninety-seven people died from the coronavirus on Sunday, a new daily record since the new coronavirus was first detected in December, as the death toll rose to 908, China’s National Health Commission said on Monday.
That new total surpasses the toll from the SARS epidemic of 2002-3, according to official data.
The number of confirmed infections in the country rose to 40,171 and 3,062 new cases were recorded in the preceding 24 hours, most of them in Hubei Province, the heart of the outbreak. A United States citizen died from the coronavirus in Wuhan, the provincial capital, American officials said on Saturday.
The SARS epidemic, which also began in China, killed 774 people worldwide. There have been only two confirmed deaths from the new coronavirus outside mainland China: one in Hong Kong and one in the Philippines.
Many doctors believe that deaths and infections from the current epidemic are undercounted in China because testing facilities are under severe strain.
After a long break, China slowly returns to work.
Some Chinese businesses resumed work on Monday, the end of an extended Lunar New Year holiday intended to slow the spread of the virus.
But in many large cities, the outbreak continues to disrupt daily life. Across the country, teeming cities are effectively locked down, schools have been closed for weeks, trains and flights canceled.
The Hong Kong International Airport, one of the world’s busiest, was eerily empty on Sunday. Cathay Pacific, the city’s flag carrier, said last week that it would force employees to take three-week unpaid furloughs.
Parents in the territory and elsewhere across China, including Shanghai and Guangdong, scrambled to find child care after schools announced they would continue to remain closed for the month of February even as many workers were told to return to their jobs on Monday.
In Beijing, the city’s typically teeming subway, had far fewer riders on Monday and train cars were largely empty.
Prices jump in China as the virus disrupts supplies.
The coronavirus has helped push inflation to an eight-year high, the Chinese government said on Monday, adding to Beijing’s problems.
Consumer price inflation rose to 5.4 percent year on year in January, compared to a 4.5 percent rise in December. That signified the highest level since November 2011, according to China’s statistics bureau. The outbreak has disrupted China’s supply chains, making it difficult in many places to get products to market.
While nonfood related prices, including energy, rose slightly, it was food prices that pushed inflation up. The price of pork, which has surged for months, has now more than doubled over the past year after an outbreak of African swine fever led to a shortage of pigs.
The latest inflation figures mark a new challenge for China’s central bank. The People’s Bank of China has opened the spigots to provide money to local governments that are trying to contain a vicious outbreak. Last week it announced it had pumped $175 billion into the financial system.
The government has told banks to extend favorable terms to companies that have been closed by efforts to contain the outbreak, which include means to keep people at home. In many cases, employers have been responsible for employee wages after closing factories or other operations.
But printing money to inject into the economy also helps push prices up, creating a double-edged sword for China’s authorities.
Inflation typically rises slightly during the holiday, when families buy presents and food to feed large family gatherings. Economists say they rose faster than usual and stayed higher for a longer period of time.
Nine family members infected after hot-pot meal.
Nine members of a Hong Kong family were found to be infected with the new coronavirus after sharing a hot-pot meal in late January, officials said on Sunday. Two members of the family — a 24-year-old man and his 91-year-old grandmother — were confirmed first, followed by the man’s parents, aunts and cousins.
Officials said that the family was part of a gathering of 19 who had shared a hot-pot meal, in which diners add meat and vegetables to a communal vat of boiling broth. Chuang Shuk-kwan, a health official, said on Sunday that most of those who had attended had shown either no symptoms, or minor ones not immediately distinguishable from the flu. The 24-year-old had consulted a private doctor several times before being admitted to a hospital with a fever that would not subside.
Two relatives at the meal on Jan. 26 had traveled from the neighboring mainland province of Guangdong, Hong Kong health officials said. The nine cases, who were being isolated at two hospitals, were among 10 new cases reported in Hong Kong on Sunday, bringing the territory’s total to 36.
The W.H.O. may soon be able to help in China.
Cui Tiankai, the Chinese ambassador to the United States, said Sunday that experts from the World Health Organization would be allowed into China “very soon” to assist with the coronavirus outbreak, and the agency’s chief announced hours later that an advance team was on its way.
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the W.H.O.’s director general, posted a message on Twitter from Geneva saying that he had “just been at the airport seeing off members of an advance team” of experts led by Dr. Bruce Aylward.
Dr. Aylward, a W.H.O. assistant director general, was the organization’s special representative for the 2014 Ebola outbreak.
Offers of assistance from the W.H.O. and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had been ignored for weeks, The Times reported Friday, but the moves on Sunday appeared to signal that Beijing would at least partly reverse course.
“We are coordinating with the World Health Organization,” Mr. Cui said on CBS’s “Face the Nation.” “I’m sure that they will be going to China very soon.”
He declined to say if a team of experts from the C.D.C. would also be allowed into China, suggesting instead that American experts could be admitted as part of the W.H.O. or as individuals.
“American experts are on the list recommended by the W.H.O.,” Mr. Cui said. “Even beyond that, some American experts have come to China already on their own individual basis.”
Source : Nytimes
