US warns against China travel, as virus death toll hits 213
BEIJING, China — The United States told its citizens to avoid China after the World Health Organization declared a global coronavirus emergency, as the Chinese death toll rose Friday to 213 and total infections surpassed the SARS epidemic of two decades ago.
The State Department raised it warning alert to the highest level, telling Americans "do not travel" to China and urged those already there to leave.
Hours earlier, the WHO, which
"Our greatest concern is the potential for the virus to spread to countries with weaker health systems," WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus as
"We must all act together now to limit further spread... We can only stop it together."
Taking action
Tedros said travel and trade restrictions involving China were unnecessary.
But, with the disease spreading to
Japan on Friday urged its citizens to avoid non-essential travel to China, following similar warnings by Germany, Britain and other nations in recent days.
Those warnings are not as definitive as the US directive against all travel to China.
Among the array of other extraordinary containment efforts, many major airlines this week suspended or reduced flights to China.
Mongolia also halted cross-border traffic with its huge neighbour and Russia sealed its remote far-eastern frontier.
Some countries banned entry for travellers from Wuhan, the city in central Hubei province where the virus first surfaced.
Italy and Israel on Thursday barred all flight connections with China.
Impoverished Papua New Guinea
Growing panic
China said Friday it planned to send charter planes to bring back Hubei residents who are now abroad, citing the "practical difficulties" that they have encountered overseas.
The US reported its first case of person-to-person transmission of the virus on American soil
In a sign of growing global fears,
And a pilot union in the United States sued American Airlines to demand it halt all flights to China.
Death toll grows
China has taken extreme steps to stop the spread of the virus, including
But the number of new deaths and cases continues to swell.
China's National Health Commission also said Friday that 1,982 new cases had
That exceeds the 8,096 cases from SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) a similar pathogen that spread to
Another 102,000 people are under medical observation in China with
The new virus
China has suspended school nationwide and extended the Lunar New Year holiday
Airlifts continue
France on Friday airlifted around 200 of its citizens from the city.
Britain followed suit within hours, extracting 110 British and foreign nationals.
"It's sad to leave a country which you're attached to," Adrien, a 26-year-old French auto industry employee, told AFP before the flight. "We're also relieved because we don't know how things will turn out in China."
Japan and the United States were the first to fly citizens out on Wednesday.
Others that have done so include South Korea and India.
Three people aboard Japan's first evacuation flight tested positive after landing back home, two of whom showed no symptoms, underscoring the difficulty detecting the coronavirus.
Japan has drawn criticism by allowing its evacuees to "self-quarantine".
Economic worries
The WHO has declared a global health emergency five times since the practice began in 2007
It allows the UN health body to issue recommendations that the international community
Global stock markets have
But investors took some heart Friday after the WHO recommended against trade and travel restrictions for now, with Asian markets opening higher.
Throughout China, evidence of fear multiplied, with makeshift barriers going up in some residential neighbourhoods.
Follow this page for updates on a mysterious pneumonia outbreak that has struck dozens of people in China.
New Zealand Prime Minister Chris Hipkins says on Sunday that he had contracted COVID-19, testing positive at a key point in his flailing campaign for re-election.
Hipkins saYS on his official social media feed that he would need to isolate for up to five days -- less than two weeks before his country's general election.
The leader of the centre-left Labour Party said he started to experience cold symptoms on Saturday and had cancelled most of his weekend engagements. — AFP
The World Health Organization and US health authorities say Friday they are closely monitoring a new variant of COVID-19, although the potential impact of BA.2.86 is currently unknown.
The WHO classified the new variant as one under surveillance "due to the large number (more than 30) of spike gene mutations it carries", it wrote in a bulletin about the pandemic late Thursday.
So far, the variant has only been detected in Israel, Denmark and the United States. — AFP
The World Health Organization says on Friday that the number of new COVID-19 cases reported worldwide rose by 80% in the last month, days after designating a new "variant of interest".
The WHO declared in May that Covid is no longer a global health emergency, but has warned that the virus will continue to circulate and mutate, causing occasional spikes in infections, hospitalisations and deaths.
In its weekly update, the UN agency said that nations reported nearly 1.5 million new cases from July 10 to August 6, an 80% increase compared to the previous 28 days. — AFP
The head of US intelligence says that there was no evidence that the COVID-19 virus was created in the Chinese government's Wuhan research lab.
In a declassified report, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) says they had no information backing recent claims that three scientists at the lab were some of the very first infected with COVID-19 and may have created the virus themselves.
Drawing on intelligence collected by various member agencies of the US intelligence community (IC), the ODNI report says some scientists at the Wuhan lab had done genetic engineering of coronaviruses similar to COVID-19. — AFP
Boris Johnson deliberately misled MPs over Covid lockdown-breaking parties in Downing Street when he was prime minister, a UK parliament committee ruled on Thursday.
The cross-party Privileges Committee said Johnson, 58, would have been suspended as an MP for 90 days for "repeated contempts (of parliament) and for seeking to undermine the parliamentary process".
But he avoided any formal sanction by his peers in the House of Commons by resigning as an MP last week.
In his resignation statement last Friday, Johnson pre-empted publication of the committee's conclusions, claiming a political stitch-up, even though the body has a majority from his own party.
He was unrepentant again on Thursday, accusing the committee of being "anti-democratic... to bring about what is intended to be the final knife-thrust in a protracted political assassination".
Calling it "beneath contempt", he said it was "for the people of this to decide who sits in parliament, not Harriet Harman", the veteran opposition Labour MP who chaired the seven-person committee. — AFP
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