Our live coverage of the coronavirus outbreak has moved here.
Fifty-nine Hong Kong police officers will be quarantined after a 40-year-old male officer tested positive for novel coronavirus on Thursday, according to a statement released by Hong Kong police.
There are 34 people who have tested positive for coronavirus in the United States, according to an announcement Friday by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
This includes 21 cases among repatriated individuals, as well as 13 US cases.
“We are keeping track of cases resulting from repatriation efforts separately because we don’t believe those numbers accurately represent the picture of what is happening in the community in the United States at this time,” Dr. Nancy Messonnier, director of the CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, told reporters Friday.
About the cases: The 21 repatriated include 18 former passengers of the Diamond Princess cruise ship that docked in Japan, plus three who had been previously evacuated from China. There are 10 additional passengers among the Diamond Princess evacuees who tested positive for the virus in Japan, and who Messonnier said will likely be added to the official US count once the Japanese test results have been adjudicated.
The 13 US cases include seven in California, one in Massachusetts, one in Washington state, one in Arizona, two in Illinois and one in Wisconsin. Among these cases, there are two instances of person-to-person transmission, one in Illinois and one in California.
The 13th US case was confirmed overnight in Humboldt County, California. County officials offered few details but said a close contact with symptoms was also undergoing testing, and both are self-isolating at home.
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will now track confirmed cases of novel coronavirus in the United States in two separate and distinct groups: those repatriated by the US Department of State and those identified by the US public health network.
What this means: By these new metrics, there are now 21 confirmed cases among repatriated Americans and 13 confirmed cases among Americans first identified on US soil, said Dr. Nancy Messonnier, director of the CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Disease.
Eighteen cases have been confirmed among passengers from the Diamond Princess cruise ship now back in the United States. Three cases have been confirmed among passengers from the Wuhan repatriation flights now back in the United States.
Up until yesterday, the CDC was reporting 15 confirmed cases in the United States. The reason that number has dropped to 13 is because two cases have moved into the case count of repatriated individuals.
The change in the counting system starts today.
Today, 253 people who tested negative for coronavirus after 14 days of quarantine disembarked from Diamond Princess cruise ship, according to the press release from the Japanese Ministry of Health.
The disembarkation of passengers from the ship will continue at least through Saturday, a spokesperson for Princess Cruises told CNN.
Nine new cases of the novel coronavirus have been confirmed in Japan, bringing the countrywide total to 726, according to the press release by the Japan Ministry of Health.
The total number of confirmed cases from the Diamond Princess cruise ship stands at 639 and the number of land-based cases in Japan stands at 87.
China has changed how it counts coronavirus cases in Hubei province three times now — but a World Health Organization official told reporters during a media briefing on Friday that is normal during an active outbreak.
“It’s really numbers for action and not numbers for numbers,” she said. “As long as we understand how things are counted and what the numbers include then it helps us to make the best possible decision to protect the health of people.”
Last week, China announced it would count “clinically diagnosed” cases in its tally for Hubei province, the epicenter of the outbreak. Then yesterday, the government changed its approach and “clinically confirmed” were excluded from the tally of confirmed cases.
There’s great concern about the spread of the novel coronavirus in countries outside China and among people with no connection to China or Wuhan, World Health Orginization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said Friday.
There’s still a window of opportunity to contain the virus, Tedros said, “but the window of opportunity is narrowing.”
WHO is calling on countries to continue containment measures while preparing for community transmission, he said. He said China’s containment measures in Wuhan and elsewhere are “hammering” the virus and can help contain it.
The outbreak can still go any direction, Tedros said, and countries need to prepare for any eventuality.
Dr. Sylvie Briand, director of the World Health Organization’s Infectious Hazards Management Department, said the agency is working to prepare countries’ health care workers with training and making sure they know how to protect themselves, and to make sure countries have enough workers to handle a number of cases.
The World Health Organization-led joint mission working on coronavirus in China will travel tomorrow to Wuhan, the epicenter of the outbreak, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said today during a press briefing. It’s up to the team what it wants to focus on there, Tedros said.
So far, the team has been working Beijing, Sichuan and Guangdong, he said.
Tedros said previously the team includes experts from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the US National Institutes of Health, as well as experts from Singapore, South Korea, Japan, Nigeria, Germany and Russia. The team includes experts in epidemiology, virology, clinical management, outbreak control and public health.
The novel coronavirus has spread to several Iranian cities, Minnou Mohraz, a member of the National Committee for Infectious Diseases at the Ministry of Health said today.
Mohraz said that the source of virus in Iran could be a Chinese worker who works in the city of Qom and had traveled to China. “It’s clear that new coronavirus has circulated in the country and probably the source of this illness was Chinese workers who work in the city of Qom and had traveled to China.”
Singapore reported one new case of the novel coronavirus today, taking the national total of confirmed cases to 86, according to a press release by the country’s Ministry of Health.
The new confirmed case is a 24 year-old Singapore national. He has no recent travel history. He was confirmed to have COVID-19 infection yesterday and is currently in isolation.
Top Trump economic adviser Larry Kudlow downplayed the prospect of a significant impact to the US economy from coronavirus today.
Asked by reporters about the potential impact of the coronavirus on the economy and whether he anticipates it being similar to the effect of SARS, Kudlow said, “I understand the risks, and I understand these things could change quickly, but right now what we know is there’s barely any impact here at home.”
Nissan factories in China’s Hubei province will not restart production until Monday at the earliest due to the novel coronavirus, a Nissan spokesperson told CNN.
The company is complying with Chinese government instructions and does not rule out that restart at the plants could be further delayed.
The World Health Organization said China is making “intensive efforts” to contain the novel coronavirus in response to an inquiry from CNN about conditions in a field hospital and reports that healthy people who had tested negative were being quarantined there.
The WHO stated that the Chinese government’s efforts were in response to an “unprecedented crisis.” They also credited the containment effort for keeping the number of cases outside of mainland China “relatively low”.
Some people quarantined in Wuhan field hospitals told CNN’s David Culver that they had previously tested negative for the virus and were afraid they would contract it inside the facility. Images from inside the hospitals show close living quarters.
Here’s the statement from the WHO:
The University of Hong Kong’s LKS Faculty of Medicine has released a new image of the virus. In the micrograph, the orange dots are viral particles, and the blue is the surface of a cell.
Here’s what it looks like:
Lebanon announced its first confirmed coronavirus case in the country, Lebanese Health Minister Hammad Hassan said during a news conference today.
Hassan said that the patient is a 45-year-old female who returned yesterday from the city of Qom in Iran. There are two more suspected cases but they are yet to be confirmed as positive, Hassan added.
Hassan announced that all travelers returning from Iran will now be held under home quarantine for 14 days.
Earlier today, Iran announced there are a total of 18 coronavirus cases in the country. At least four people have died from the virus.
Israel’s Ministry of Health announced the first case of coronavirus in the country after a woman who was evacuated from the Diamond Princess in Japan was diagnosed with the disease, the Ministry said in a statement Friday morning.
The woman was one of eleven passengers aboard the Diamond Princess flown back to Israel from Japan. The ten other passengers tested negative for the virus.
All of the passengers are being held in isolation at Sheba Medical Center near Tel Aviv. They will remain in the hospital for 14 days.
Four other Israeli citizens who were on board the ship and have been diagnosed with coronavirus remain in Japan.
A second coronavirus patient has died in South Korea, according to South Korea’s Centers for Disease Control & Prevention
The victim was identified as a woman born in 1965. She was confirmed to have the virus Friday.
The first patient in South Korea to die from the novel coronavirus had a chronic lung disease and had been hospitalized for a long period of time, according to Jung Eun-Kyeong, the center’s.
CORRECTION: South Korea’s Centers for Disease Control & Prevention reported the death. A previous version of this post misattributed the source of this information.
Nissan has delayed the reopening of plants close to the epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak in China.
The Japanese carmaker said in a statement that it had been hoping to restart production at plants in Hubei and the neighboring province of Henan on February 24, but it would keep the factories closed for longer to comply with local government directives.
Nissan plants in Guangdong and Liaoning, which are located many hundreds of miles from the epicenter of the outbreak in Wuhan, have already reopened.
“We continue to prioritize the safety and well-being of our employees in China,” Nissan said in its statement.
There have been two more coronavirus deaths in Iran, and 13 new cases of the virus, according to the country’s health ministry.
Confirmed cases in Iran: There are now 18 confirmed cases of coronavirus in Iran, with four deaths.
Elections looming: These cases come as the country heads to the polls in parliamentary elections Friday. Some voters are wearing protective masks and several polling stations are not requiring fingerprinting in an effort to prevent the spread of the deadly virus.
