February 6 coronavirus news

Our live coverage of the coronavirus outbreak has moved here.

An evacuee from Wuhan, China who arrived at Marine Corps Air Station Miramar in Southern California was transported to a local hospital after developing a fever or a cough, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said in a statement Thursday.

The adult was sent to UC San Diego Health, according to the statement.

So far, a total of five evacuees from the base have been transported for further evaluation.

Medical staff at the National Centre for Infectious Diseases building at Tan Tock Seng Hospital in Singapore on January 31.

Singapore and Taiwan confirmed new cases of coronavirus on Thursday.

Three new coronavirus cases were reported in Taiwan, bringing the total to 16, according to a statement from the Ministry of Health and Welfare. In Singapore, two additional coronavirus cases were confirmed, increasing the total number in the country to 30, according to a statement from the Ministry of Health.

About the new cases in Taiwan:

About the new cases in Singapore:

A military coach transporting Italian citizens repatriated from Wuhan leaves the Mario De Bernardi military airport in Pratica di Mare en route to the nearby Cecchignola center on February 3.

Italy has confirmed its third case of coronavirus after an Italian national tested positive for the infection, the country’s health ministry said Thursday.

The patient is the first Italian to have the virus after its first two cases were from Chinese tourists. According to the statement, the patient was quarantined in the city of Cecchignola, a historically known military district on the outskirts of Rome, after being repatriated from Wuhan last week.

The patient is currently being treated at Lazzaro Spallanzani Institute, an infectious disease hospital in Rome, where they have a slight “temperature and conjunctival hyperemia,” the statement said.

Medical staff members work at a quarantine zone in Wuhan on February 3.

The death toll in China’s Hubei province now stands at 618, and the total number of confirmed cases has increased to 22,112, the health authority in Hubei province announced Thursday.

The health authority reported that 15,804 patients remain hospitalized, of which 841 are in critical condition.    

Wuhan doctor Li Wenliang.

Li Wenliang, the Chinese whistleblower doctor who was reprimanded by Wuhan Police after warning the public of a potential “SARS-like” disease in December 2019, died of coronavirus in Wuhan in the early hours of Friday morning (local time), according to a statement from Wuhan Central Hospital.

“Our hospital’s ophthalmologist Li Wenliang was unfortunately infected with coronavirus during his work in the fight against the coronavirus epidemic,” the statement read. “He died at 2:58 a.m. on Feb 7 after attempts to resuscitate were unsuccessful.”

The statement came after hours of confusion over Li’s status.

Earlier on Thursday, several state media outlets reported Li’s death, following Chinese social media erupting into profound grief and anger. A short time later, Wuhan Central Hospital released a statement saying Li was still alive and in critical condition, adding that they were “making attempts to resuscitate him.” State media subsequently deleted their previous tweets.

About Li: After he alerted colleagues in December, Li was questioned by local health authorities and was later summoned by Wuhan police to sign a reprimand letter in which he was accused of “spreading rumors online” and “severely disrupting social order.”

Li was one of several medics targeted by police for trying to blow the whistle on the deadly virus in the early weeks of the outbreak, which has sickened more than 28,000 people and killed more than 560. He later contracted the virus himself.

Li was hospitalized on Jan. 12 and tested positive for the coronavirus on Feb. 1.

CNN gives an update from Beijing:

The Defense Department expects to announce today that 11 additional military housing locations have been approved to accept people for quarantine if public health authorities believe there are coronavirus concerns, according to two US officials.

The request for the additional military housing has come from the Department of Health and Human Services and has been preliminarily approved by the Pentagon.

The list of housing sites has not yet been made public but they are located near 11 designated commercial airports where planes carrying US citizens who have recently been in China must land, the officials said.

Those airports are: John F. Kennedy in New York, Los Angeles, Seattle, San Francisco, Chicago, Atlanta, Honolulu, Dallas, Detroit, Newark and Washington’s Dulles.

The expectation is relatively small numbers of people will have to be housed as they come off those commercial flights, officials said. Health authorities will be in charge of making those decisions. The request estimates about 20 beds per site may be needed. The officials said these will be sites used after other military sites and public health sites are full.                        

This is different than the initial charter flights flying from mainland China directly to military facilities where the Pentagon was told to be ready for approximately 1,000 people, the officials said.

A man walks past ambulances parked outside the Royal Sussex County Hospital where a third person has tested positive for coronavirus in the UK on February 6.

The United Kingdom’s chief medical officer urged anyone who has traveled to countries affected by the coronavirus in the last 14 days to stay indoors, “even if symptoms are mild.”

The UK updated its public health advice for anyone who is returning to the UK from Thailand, Japan, the Republic of Korea, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia and Macao or mainland China and is experiencing cough or fever or shortness of breath.

“These areas have been identified because of the volume of air travel from affected areas, understanding of other travel routes and number of reported cases. This list will be kept under review. Our advice for travellers from Wuhan and Hubei Province remains unchanged,” the Department of Health’s website said in the statement.

The advisory was updated on Thursday — the same day that a third case of coronavirus was confirmed in the UK.

The World Health Organization aims to speed up research and innovation on the novel coronavirus through a global forum to be held on Feb. 11 and 12 in Geneva, the organization announced Thursday.

Leading researchers and public health agencies will attend the forum, including those involved in developing vaccines, honing diagnostic tools and tracing the virus back to its source.

The forum aims to create a “global research agenda for the new coronavirus, setting priorities and frameworks that can guide which projects are undertaken first,” the organization said.

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention began shipping coronavirus test kits to state labs this week on Wednesday, the agency announced.

The tests, which can produce results in as little as four hours, will allow states to confirm their own cases of the novel coronavirus, rather than waiting for confirmation from the CDC. Previously, the CDC was the only lab in the United States able to test for the novel coronavirus.

The CDC says will distribute about 200 test kits to domestic labs and another 200 to international labs. Each test kit can perform 700 to 800 patient samples. 

The diagnostic is authorized to be used for patients who meet CDC criteria for testing, and by qualified labs designated by the CDC or certified to perform high-complexity tests. These include 115 US labs such as state and local public health labs and Department of Defense labs, as well as 191 international labs.

About the test: It’s known as a reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction test (RT-PCR) and can detect the virus from nasal or oral swabs when used with an existing RT-PCR instrument — the same one often used to test for seasonal influenza, the agency says. 

Negative results do not preclude infection with the virus, the FDA noted in a press release, adding that negative results must be combined with clinical observations, patient history and epidemiological information. The FDA issued an emergency use authorization on Tuesday for the test, though it is not technically FDA-approved.

As of Wednesday, the CDC has listed a total of 293 people under investigation for the novel coronavirus in 36 states since January 21, according to an update posted to the agency’s website.

There are 12 confirmed cases of the novel coronavirus in the United States. Six cases have been confirmed in California, one in Massachusetts, one in Washington state, one in Arizona, one in Wisconsin and two in Illinois. This includes two instances of known person-to-person transmission, one in Illinois and one in California.

An aerial photo shows the final stages of construction for the Leishenshan Hospital in Wuhan on Wednesday.

Another medical facility designed to treat coronavirus patients has been built in Wuhan, the epicenter of the outbreak. The facility will open today, according to Chinese state-media.

One new hospital, Huoshenshan Hospital, was handed over to the military to begin operations on Monday. Both that hospital and this second new one were built in a matter of days. 

Editor’s note:This story has been updated to reflect further reporting from Chinese state media and an official statement from the hospital.

The Chinese doctor who sounded early warnings about the Wuhan coronavirus is in a critical condition, according to the hospital treating him and several state media outlets. Hours earlier the same state media organizations reported that he had died.

Wuhan Central Hospital said on its official Weibo account that Li Wenliang, 34, had become seriously ill. “In the fight against the pneumonia epidemic of the new coronavirus infection, our hospital’s ophthalmologist Li Wenliang was unfortunately infected. He is currently in critical condition and we are trying our best to resuscitate him,” the statement read.

Multiple state media outlets including Global Times and People’s Daily, the ruling Communist Party’s official newspaper, had earlier said Li had died, but later deleted their reports.

Following the initial reports that stated he had died, Chinese social media erupted with a mix of a profound grief and anger.

Li raised the alarm about the novel coronavirus in December, posting in his medical school alumni group on the Chinese messaging app WeChat that seven patients from a local seafood market had been diagnosed with a SARS-like illness and were quarantined in his hospital in Wuhan. Soon after he posted the message, Li was accused of rumor-mongering by the Wuhan police.

He was one of several medics targeted by police for trying to blow the whistle on the deadly virus in the early weeks of the outbreak, which has sickened more than 28,000 people and killed more than 560. He later contracted the virus himself.

The Global Times announced Li had died in a tweet at around 10:40 p.m. local time Thursday, linking to a report that cited friends and doctors at Wuhan Central Hospital. It deleted the post several hours later. Other Chinese media outlets also deleted their reports of his death, without explanation. The World Health Organization released a message of condolence following the initial reports that Li was dead but later updated their statement to say they did not have any information about the doctor’s status.

The death toll and number of people infected by the Wuhan coronavirus continues to grow, with no signs of slowing despite severe quarantine and population control methods put in place in central China.

The number of confirmed cases globally stood at 28,275 as of Thursday, with more than 28,000 of those in China. The number of cases in China grew by 3,694, or 15%, on the previous day. There have been 565 deaths so far, all but two of which were in China, with one in the Philippines and one in Hong Kong.

An employee inspects a disposable face mask at a factory in Nagoya, Japan on Thursday.

In late 2019, reports emerged of a mysterious illness in China. It was later identified as a new type of coronavirus — and now, weeks later, authorities are still trying to stop the virus from spreading further.

Here’s where things stand this morning:

Medical workers enter an isolation area to visit coronavirus patients in Cho Ray hospital in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, on January 23.

Vietnam has confirmed two additional cases of the Wuhan coronavirus, bringing the country’s total confirmed cases to 12.

According to Vietnamese state media, the two latest cases – a 16-year-old and a 49-year-old – are family members of a worker who recently tested positive for the virus after returning from Wuhan. Both patients are in a stable condition and in quarantine.

Three out of the 12 patients in Vietnam have been cleared and discharged from the hospital, according to state media. 

Local authorities across all 63 cities and provinces in Vietnam announced that schools will continue to stay shut to allow schools to have time to disinfect classrooms.

A handout photo made available by the Taiwan Presidential Office shows Taiwan's President Tsai Ing-wen, center, during an inspection at a face masks factory in New Taipei, Taiwan on February 5.

The US ambassador to the UN in Geneva has urged the World Health Organization (WHO) to “engage directly with Taiwan public health authorities” in the fight against the coronavirus.

There are at least 13 confirmed cases of the virus in Taiwan, which is not a member of the UN or the WHO.

“For the rapidly evolving coronavirus, it is a technical imperative that WHO present visible public health data on Taiwan as an affected area and engage directly with Taiwan public health authorities on actions,” Andrew Bremberg told the WHO’s Executive Board on Thursday.

The WHO responded that it is “collaborating closely with Taiwanese authorities through the International Health Regulations mechanism in response to the 2019-nCoV outbreak.”

A spokesperson for the organization told CNN that the WHO “has received vital information from Taiwanese authorities and will be reporting back through established channels.”

The Chinese Grand Prix is in jeopardy amid growing fears over the spread of the coronavirus across China.

Race organizers are closely monitoring the situation and a final decision will be made by the Fédération Internationale de l’Automobile (FIA) and Shanghai Grand Prix organization.

A number of sporting events in China have already been postponed, canceled or under threat due to the threat of the coronavirus.

The Grand Prix is due to take place on April 19.

Read the full story here.

A third person has tested positive for coronavirus in Britain, the UK’s Department of Health and Social Care said on Twitter. The patient did not contract the virus in the UK, Chief Medical Officer, Professor Chris Witty, said in a statement.

Elsewhere in Europe, one more person has tested positive for coronavirus in the German state of Bavaria, the region’s health ministry has said, bringing the total of cases in Germany to 13.

Passengers look out from balconies aboard the World Dream cruise liner docked at the Kai Tak Cruise Terminal in Hong Kong on Wednesday.

The 3,600 passengers and crew members currently on the cruise ship World Dream, docked at Hong Kong’s Kai Tak Cruise Terminal will continue to be held on board, health officials said Thursday.

“Before we complete the quarantine work all staff and passengers will have to remain on board,” Chuang Shuk-kwan of the Department of Health said.

Chaung said 33 crew members have shown symptoms of illness at varying degrees and three crew members had to be evacuated off the ship to receive treatment in hospital. All test results for crew members have so far come back negative for the novel coronavirus.

World Dream had docked at various different ports across China and Vietnam before arriving in Hong Kong. Dream Cruises has said it is attempting to contact passengers who had previously been on board the World Dream “to inform them of the situation and seek professional health assistance.”

An ambulance waits for patients who tested positive for the coronavirus aboard the Diamond Princess cruise ship, docked at the Daikoku Pier Cruise Terminal in Yokohama, Japan on Thursday.

Three people from the United States are among 20 cases of the Wuhan coronavirus that have been confirmed in passengers on the Diamond Princess cruise ship quarantined off Japan, according to statements by the cruise company.

Their cases were identified through health screenings of all guests and crew by the Japanese Ministry of Health. They have been taken off the vessel and transported to local hospitals.

The Diamond Princess is anchored at Yokohama, near Tokyo, with 1,045 crew and 2,666 passengers on board – including 428 Americans.

Officials are still waiting for the results of 171 tests.

China’s ambassador to the UK has called the global reaction to the coronavirus epidemic an “overreaction” and criticized the media for a “bias” against China. 

Speaking in London, Liu Xiaoming called for a “reasonable response” and accused people of “discrimination” in targeting the Chinese community.

He praised China’s response to the epidemic which he said went above and beyond World Health Organization regulations. Liu called for respect for the country and its response to the epidemic.

Liu downplayed the outbreak by comparing it to the flu in the US, and said China is ”fully confident” in beating the virus, dismissing its negative effects on the country’s economy as “temporary.”