As of Friday morning, the world has over 31,481 cases of the Wuhan coronavirus reported from 28 countries and administrative states, with 638 deaths.
Reports say 4,824 of those patients are in critical condition and 1,563 confirmed recoveries.
***We will update this post with new information.
The Chinese doctor who was silenced by police for sounding the alarm about the new coronavirus long before Chinese health authorities disclosed its full threat died this week from the disease.
Li Wenliang, an ophthalmologist at Wuhan Central Hospital, became a national hero and a symbol of the Chinese government’s systemic failings last month.Li had tried to warn his medical school classmates on December 30 about the existence of a contagious new virus that resembled the deadly severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS).The Wuhan Central Hospital said on its social media account that Dr Li was “unfortunately infected during the fight against the pneumonia epidemic of the new coronavirus infection.””We deeply regret and mourn this,” it added.Word of the coronavirus outbreak began to spread in China thanks to Li, but his posts were censored and he was detained on January 1 for “rumour-mongering.”
Legal Insurrection’s first post on the Wuhan coronavirus was on Jan. 10th.
As the outbreaks continue, it is becoming clear that China’s government is likely censoring negative information online and in the news.
…[The] Chinese government has started to pressure state-run news media to report positive stories about relief efforts, three people at Chinese news operations told The New York Times.Internet platforms have also taken down posts that are critical of the government’s handling of the outbreak, which was first detected in Wuhan, the capital of China’s Hubei Province, the report said.China has defended its efforts to control the virus and urged other countries to “support” their measures, according to foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chenying.
It turns out the rapid construction of hospitals in Wuhan may have been more a “grand gesture” by Beijing to visually show an uneasy public that the situation was being handled.
It doesn’t appear to have worked.
President Xi Jinping, meanwhile, has been mysteriously absent from the front lines of the battle against the coronavirus.The crisis has been a “blow to public confidence” in the Communist Party,[Kacie Miura, a research fellow at Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs] said.”Several county-level officials have already been removed from their posts,” she said. “But whether scapegoating local officials will be enough to preserve the CCP’s legitimacy is an open question.
A case of the Wuhan coronavirus was confirmed in Wisconsin, which brings the number of people infected with the potentially deadly disease in the US to 12.
The adult patient traveled to Beijing before falling ill, and was exposed to people with the virus while traveling in China, officials with the Wisconsin Department of Health Services said.The unidentified person’s condition is reported to be mild, and did not require hospitalization, officials said. They are in self-quarantine at home.“The risk of getting sick from 2019 novel coronavirus in Wisconsin is very low,” said State Health Officer Jeanne Ayers. “We are responding aggressively to the situation and monitoring all developments.”
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is in the process of testing 76 people for the infection within the country.
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said that Japan has decided to refuse entry to noncitizen passengers on board a luxury cruise ship that is set to arrive in the country later this week as passengers are reported to be infected with the virus.
The 82,000-ton ship in question is the Westerdam, which departed Hong Hong earlier this month and expected to arrive at a port in Okinawa on Saturday.The cruise ship carries several Japanese nationals, government sources said.The decision came as concern grew earlier in the day over the plight of over 3,700 people on board the Diamond Princess quarantined off Yokohama as 10 more cases of the new coronavirus were detected, raising the possibility of a nightmare scenario of a mass infection of people in a confined space.The latest figure brings the total number of confirmed infections in Japan to 45, including the 20 people who have now tested positive on the cruise ship.
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