US, Japan evacuate their citizens
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Arab Emirates (UAE) diagnosed four members of a Chinese family who arrived from Wuhan with the coronavirus.
In many Chinese cities, streets were largely deserted with the few who ventured out wearing masks. Starbucks stores in Beijing required people to have temperatures taken and posted notices saying it was a state requirement to wear masks inside.
“It’s my first time here in Asia, I feel very unlucky,” said Brazilian tourist Amanda Lee, 23, reluctantly cutting short a trip. “I couldn’t even see the places I wanted, like the Great Wall.”
There was relief, however, among those evacuated from Hubei province, home to about 60 million people and under virtual lockdown. “I was extremely worried that I was stuck there,” said Takeo Aoyama, who arrived in Tokyo on a chartered plane carrying 206 Japanese out of Wuhan, with more flights planned.
Two of the Japanese evacuated had symptoms of pneumonia but coronavirus had not been confirmed, medics said.
The virus is weighing heavily on the world’s second-biggest economy. Companies are curbing travel to China, and airlines are cutting flights, with British Airways one of the biggest names in aviation to do so.
Indonesia’s Lion Air Group, Southeast Asia’s biggest carrier by fleet size, said it would halt services to and from China from Saturday “until further notice”.
Meanwhile Kazakhstan, an important China trade partner, announced it would halt cross-border passenger train traffic, suspend regular flights between the neighbours, and stop issuing visas to Chinese citizens over the coming days.
Airlines from Myanmar and Nepal also announced suspensions of all China routes. Cathay Pacific has reduced flights, citing low demand and the Hong Kong government’s response plan against the virus, reports AFP.
In one of the most dramatic measures, the tiny Pacific nation of Papua New Guinea announced no travellers from Asia would be allowed in.
The gambling hub of Macau was virtually a ghost town, while malls and shopping centres in Asian capitals were bare.
Sectors from mining to luxury goods have been shaken. A Chinese government economist said growth may slow to 5% or even lower in the first quarter of 2020 as the crisis hits more sectors, which could impel policymakers to unveil more stimulus measures.
The outbreak could cut first quarter gross domestic product growth by about 1 percentage point, Zhang Ming, an economist at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences - a top government think tank - said in a report published in Caijing magazine.
GAME CHANGER
But in what could be a major step towards taming the disease, scientists in Australia said they had developed a lab-grown version of the coronavirus, the first to be recreated outside China.
“It will be a game changer for diagnosis,” said Julian Druce, laboratory head of The Doherty Institute in Melbourne.
The new finding meant scientists could now create an antibody test that would allow the coronavirus to be detected in patients who had not displayed any symptoms.
The United States has said it is working on a vaccine, but that would take months to develop. Russia is also working to develop a vaccine against the coronavirus.
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said about 210 Americans had been flown out of Wuhan. Those on board the aircraft would be screened several times and evaluated on arrival in California, it said in a statement released via the US embassy in Beijing.
A US government official told Reuters 50 diplomats and contractors were among the passengers.
Australia said it would help some citizens leave and then quarantine them on Christmas Island in the Indian Ocean, best known for housing asylum seekers.
US officials said the White House was weighing whether to suspend flights to China. It was holding daily meetings on the outbreak and monitoring China-US flights as a likely source of infection, sources briefed on the matter said, though it had decided against suspending air traffic for the time being.
The number of cases in China now exceeds its tally of 5,327 infected with the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) coronavirus that killed about 800 people globally in 2002 and 2003.
While some experts believe the new strain, known as “2019-nCoV”, is not as deadly as SARS, alarm has grown over its rapid spread and many unknown attributes, such as how lethal it is.
Like other respiratory infections, it is spread by droplets from coughs and sneezes, with an incubation time between one and 14 days. There are signs it may spread before symptoms show.