China virus deaths rise past 900, overtaking SARS toll
BEIJING, China — The death toll from the novel coronavirus surged past 900 in mainland China on Monday, overtaking global fatalities in the 2002-03 SARS epidemic, even as the World Health Organization said the outbreak appeared to be stabilising.
With 91 more people dying in Hubei, the province at the centre of the outbreak, the toll is now higher than the 774 killed worldwide by Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS).
The latest data came after the WHO said the last four days had seen "some stabilising" in Hubei, but warned the figures could still "shoot up".
At least 39,800 people in China have now
The epidemic has prompted the government to lock down whole cities as anger mounts over its handling of the crisis
With much of the country still not back at work after an extended Lunar New Year holiday, cities including financial hub Shanghai ordered residents to wear masks in public.
Michael Ryan, head of the WHO's Health Emergencies Programme, said the "stable period" of the outbreak "may reflect the impact of the control measures".
A WHO "international expert mission" left late Sunday for China, the agency's director general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on Twitter. The mission
While the death toll has climbed steadily, new cases have declined since Wednesday's single-day peak of nearly 3,900 people nationwide.
Public anger
Millions of people are under lockdown in Hubei
"The local government asked people to stay at home as much as possible, but there are not enough goods in shops each time we get there, so we have to go out frequently," a woman in Wuhan, surnamed Wei, told AFP.
China's central bank said from Monday it would make 300 billion yuan ($43 billion) available in special loans to banks to help businesses involved in fighting the epidemic.
China drew international condemnation for covering up cases during the SARS outbreak, whereas the WHO has praised measures it has taken this time.
But anger erupted after the death of a Wuhan doctor who police silenced when he flagged the emerging virus in December.
The doctor, 34, died early Friday, after contracting the virus from a patient.
Chinese academics were among those angered by his death, with at least two open letters posted on social media demanding more freedoms.
"Put an end to the restrictions on freedom of speech," one letter demanded.
'Percolating along'
Beijing responded by sending its anti-graft body to launch an investigation, attempting to ease the anger.
But Ian Lipkin
"This virus was percolating along
If the quarantine measures have been effective, the epidemic should peak within the next fortnight, Lipkin added
Wuhan has converted public buildings into makeshift medical
But Wuhan resident
The only fatalities outside the mainland have been a Chinese man in the Philippines and a 39-year-old man in Hong Kong.
Seventy people on board the Diamond Princess cruise ship off Japan's coast have tested positive, with all passengers told to stay inside their cabins to prevent further infection.
Several countries have banned arrivals from China while major airlines have suspended flights.
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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