The Wuhan Coronavirus has now killed 1,776 people and shows no signs of being contained.
And more than 71,000 have caught the SARS-2 infection, including 454 on a cruise ship quarantined off the coast of Japan.Ninety-five per cent of the 2,000 new cases recorded yesterday were diagnosed in Hubei, the deserted Chinese province at the centre of the crisis.
U.S. officials report that 14 American passengers evacuated from the Diamond Princess cruise ship that was quarantined in Japan had tested positive for the COVID-19, and were sent to military bases in California and Texas.
The State Department chartered the flights to transport more than 300 U.S. citizens from the ship, which had been docked off Yokohama since Feb. 3. The passengers landed Monday at Travis Air Force Base in Solano County, although some will continue on to Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland. All will face a 14-day quarantine on the bases.The 14 infected passengers had been tested two to three days before the evacuation but officials received notice of the positive results after they had left the ship for the airport, the U.S. Departments of State and Health and Human Services said in a joint statement.The passengers did not display symptoms, the statement added. They were isolated in a specialized containment area on the aircraft. All passengers were to be closely monitored by medical personnel during the flights and moved to the containment area if they showed symptoms, officials said.
As the medical community scrambles to find effective treatments for the coronavirus, Chinese physicians are treating coronavirus patients with plasma from people who have recovered.
Chinese health officials Monday urged patients who have recovered from the coronavirus to donate blood so that plasma can be extracted to treat others who are critically ill….Plasma from patients who have recovered from a spell of pneumonia triggered by COVID-19 contains antibodies that can help reduce the virus load in critically ill patients, an official from China’s National Health Commission told a press briefing Monday.At least one of the 11 patients who received infusions of plasma from recovered patients has already been discharged, officials said.
Delta Air Lines and Hawaiian Airlines have both confirmed that a couple diagnosed with the coronavirus traveled on their flights in and around Hawaii earlier this month.
On Feb. 6, the couple, a husband and wife from Japan who are reportedly in their 60s, departed from Honolulu for Nagoya, Japan, on Delta flight 611, KHON2 reports. The State Department of Health [DOH] said that the couple previously arrived in the Aloha State on Jan. 28 and spent time in Maui until Feb. 3. That day, the couple traveled from Kahului to Honolulu on the island of Oahu on Hawaiian Airlines flight HA265, the airline confirmed.In Oahu, the husband and wife stayed at the Grand Waikikian by Hilton Grand Vacations. It remains unclear at this time on which airline they traveled to Hawaii on and where they stayed while in Maui.
On January 20, Chinese President Xi Jinping commented publicly for the first time on the Wuhan coronavirus outbreak, and ordered “resolute efforts” to contain it. However, it seems like China’s leader knew about the situation far earlier than initially indicated.
…[A] transcript of an internal Communist Party speech appeared to throw doubt on this narrative, revealing Xi knew about and was directing the response to the virus on January 7 — almost two weeks before he commented on it publicly.The revelation raises major questions about whether it was the central government, not authorities in Hubei, who dithered on their response, allowing the virus to spread through the country and eventually the world.It also underlines the difficulty in maintaining Xi’s image — carefully cultivated by state media — as an almost omniscient ruler who oversees, and is aware of everything that is happening in the country. With criticism growing of the failure to contain the coronavirus, both at home and abroad, Beijing was faced with either choosing to admit that Xi was ignorant of the true nature of the crisis until almost a month into it, or that he was aware of it and involved in the response.
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