As economic fallout from the epidemic continues, more than 150 million people in China are largely confined to their homes.
American passengers from a quarantined cruise ship in Japan can’t return home for at least two more weeks, the C.D.C. says.
More than 100 Americans cannot return home for at least two more weeks, after having been on a cruise ship in Japan that is a hot spot for the coronavirus, the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Tuesday.
That decision followed a steady, steep increase in the number of infections in people who have been aboard the Diamond Princess, indicating that efforts to control the spread there might have been ineffective.
By Tuesday, 542 cases from the ship had been confirmed, Japan’s health ministry said . That is more than half of all reported infections outside China.
Earlier this week, the United States repatriated more than 300 passengers from the Diamond Princess and placed them in a 14-day quarantine at military bases.
On Tuesday, some of those passengers said American authorities had notified them that others in their group who had appeared to be disease-free in Japan tested positive for the virus after arriving in the United States.
Passengers on board the Diamond Princess have been kept in quarantine, but it is not clear how well they have been kept apart from one another, or whether the virus could somehow have spread on its own from room to room.
“It may not have been sufficient to prevent transmission,” the disease centers said in a statement Tuesday. “C.D.C. believes the rate of new infections on board, especially among those without symptoms, represents an ongoing risk.”
Passengers will not be allowed to return to the United States until they have been off the ship for 14 days, without any symptoms or a positive test for the virus, the agency said.
The decision applies to people who have tested positive and are hospitalized in Japan, and others who are still aboard the ship.
Economic fallout from the epidemic continued to spread on Tuesday, with new evidence emerging in manufacturing, financial markets, commodities, banking and other sectors.
HSBC, one of the most important banks in Hong Kong, said it planned to cut 35,000 jobs and $4.5 billion in costs as it faces headwinds that include the outbreak and months of political strife in Hong Kong. The bank, based in London, has come to depend increasingly on China for growth.
Jaguar Land Rover warned that the coronavirus could soon begin to create production problems at its assembly plants in Britain. Like many carmakers, Jaguar Land Rover uses parts made in China, where many factories have shut down or slowed production; Fiat Chrysler, Renault and Hyundai have already reported interruptions as a result.
U.S. stocks declined on Tuesday, a day after Apple warned that it would miss its sales forecasts because of the disruption in China.Stocks tied to the near-term ups and downs of the economy slumped, with financials, energy and industrial shares the leading losers.
The S&P 500 index fell 0.3 percent. Bond yields declined, with the 10-year Treasury note yielding 1.56 percent, suggesting that investors are lowering their expectations for economic growth and inflation.
With much of the Chinese economy stalled, demand for oil has fallen and prices were down on Tuesday, with a barrel of West Texas Intermediate selling for roughly $52.
In Germany, where the economy depends heavily on global demand for machinery and automobiles, a key indicator showed economic sentiment has tumbled this month, as the economic outlook has weakened.
At least 150 million people in China — over 10 percent of the country’s population — are living under government restrictions on how often they can leave their homes, The New York Times has found in examining dozens of local government announcements and reports from state-run news outlets.
More than 760 million Chinese people live in communities that have imposed strictures of some sort on residents’ comings and goings, as officials try to contain the new coronavirus epidemic. That larger figure represents more than half of the country’s population, and roughly one in 10 people on the planet.
China’s restrictions vary widely in their strictness. Neighborhoods in some places require residents only to show ID, sign in and have their temperature checked when they enter. Others prohibit residents from bringing guests.
But in places with more stringent policies, only one person from each household is allowed to leave home at a time, and not necessarily every day. Many neighborhoods have issued paper passes to ensure that residents comply.
In one district in the city of Xi’an, the authorities have stipulated that residents may leave their homes only once every three days to shop for food and other essentials. They also specify that the shopping may not take longer than two hours.
Tens of millions of other people are living in places where local officials have “encouraged” but not ordered neighborhoods to restrict people’s ability to leave their homes.
And with many places deciding their own policies on residents’ movements, it is possible that the total number of affected people is even higher still.
About 500 people will be released on Wednesday from a quarantined cruise ship that has been a hot spot of the outbreak, Japan’s health ministry said on Tuesday, but confusion about the release was widespread.
The ministry said 2,404 people on the ship had been tested for the virus. It said only those who had tested negative and were asymptomatic would be allowed to leave on Wednesday. The ship, the Diamond Princess, has been moored off Yokohama since Feb. 4.
Earlier in the day, the ministry announced that 88 additional cases of coronavirus were confirmed on the ship, bringing the total to 542.
Australia plans to repatriate about 200 of its citizens aboard the ship on Wednesday, and other countries have similar plans, but Japanese officials did not say whether any of those people were among the 500 who would be allowed to disembark.
The release coincides with the expiration of a two-week quarantine imposed on the ship, but it was not clear if that was the reason for letting people go. More than 300 Americans were released this week before that period was completed.
Some public health experts say that the 14-day isolation period makes sense only if it begins with the most recent infection a person might have been exposed to — in other words, new cases mean a continuing risk of exposure and should restart the quarantine clock.
In addition, many infected people have tested negative initially, only to test positive days later, after becoming sick. The Japanese announcement suggested that Japanese people who are released will not be isolated, a decision officials did not explain.
The British government is taking steps to evacuate its citizens who have been on the Diamond Princess.
Seventy-four British citizens are on the ship, according to the BBC, which said that they are expected to be flown home in the next two or three days. A statement from the Foreign Office on Tuesday suggested that those who have been infected will remain in Japan for treatment.
“Given the conditions on board, we are working to organize a flight back to the U.K. for British nationals on the Diamond Princess as soon as possible,” the Foreign Office said in a statement. “Our staff are contacting British nationals on board to make the necessary arrangements. We urge all those who have not yet responded to get in touch immediately.”
One Briton in particular has been the subject of more attention than most: David Abel, who has been posting updates on Facebook and YouTube while waiting things out in isolation with his wife, Sally.
They both tested positive for the virus and would be taken to the hospital, he has said. But his most recent Facebook post suggested that all was not as it seemed.
“Frankly I think this is a setup! We are NOT being taken to a hospital but a hostel,” He wrote. “No phone, no Wi-Fi and no medical facilities. I really am smelling a very big rat here!”
An analysis of 44,672 coronavirus patients in China whose diagnoses were confirmed by laboratory testing has found that 1,023 had died by Feb. 11, which suggests a fatality rate of 2.3 percent.
Collection and reporting of patient data in China have been inconsistent, experts have said, and the fatality rate could change as additional cases or deaths are discovered.
But the mortality rate in the new analysis is far higher than that of the seasonal flu, with which the new coronavirus has sometimes been compared. In the United States, seasonal flu fatality rates hover around 0.1 percent.
The analysis was posted online by researchers at the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention.
If many mild cases are not coming to health officials’ attention, the death rate of those infected may be lower than the study indicates. But if deaths have gone uncounted because China’s health system is overwhelmed, the rate could be higher.
Over all, about 81 percent of patients with confirmed diagnoses experienced mild illness, the researchers found. Nearly 14 percent had severe cases of COVID-19, the disease caused by the new coronavirus, and about 5 percent had critical illnesses.
Thirty percent of those who died were in their 60s, 30 percent were in their 70s and 20 percent were age 80 or older. Though men and women were roughly equally represented among the confirmed cases, men made up nearly 64 percent of the deaths. Patients with underlying medical conditions, like cardiovascular disease or diabetes, died at higher rates.
The fatality rate among patients in Hubei Province, the center of China’s outbreak, was more than seven times higher than that of other provinces.
China on Tuesday announced new figures for the outbreak. The number of cases was put at 72,436 — up 1,888 from the day before — and the death toll now stands at 1,868, up 98, the authorities said.
Xi Jinping, China’s leader, told Prime Minister Boris Johnson of Britain in a phone call on Tuesday that China was making “visible progress” in containing the epidemic, according to Chinese state media.
The director of a hospital in Wuhan, the Chinese city at the center of the epidemic, died on Tuesday after contracting the new coronavirus, the latest in a series of medical professionals to be killed in the epidemic.
Liu Zhiming, 51, a neurosurgeon and the director of the Wuchang Hospital in Wuhan, died shortly before 11 a.m. on Tuesday, the Wuhan health commission said.
“From the start of the outbreak, Comrade Liu Zhiming, without regard to his personal safety, led the medical staff of Wuchang Hospital at the front lines of the fight against the epidemic,” the commission said. Dr. Liu “made significant contributions to our city’s fight to prevent and control the novel coronavirus.”
Chinese medical workers at the forefront of the fight against the virus are often becoming its victims, partly because of government missteps and logistical hurdles. After the virus emerged in Wuhan late last year, city leaders played down its risks, and doctors did not take the strongest precautions.
Last week the Chinese government said that more than 1,700 medical workers had contracted the virus, and six had died.
The death nearly two weeks ago of Li Wenliang, an ophthalmologist who was initially reprimanded for warning medical school classmates about the virus, stirred an outpouring of grief and anger. Dr. Li, 34, has emerged as a symbol of how the authorities controlled information and have moved to stifle online criticism and aggressive reporting on the outbreak.
With just 42 cases of the coronavirus confirmed in Europe, the continent faces a far less serious outbreak than China, where tens of thousands have contracted the virus. But the people and places associated with the illness have faced a stigma as a result, and fear of the virus is, itself, proving contagious.
A British man who tested positive for coronavirus was branded a “super spreader,” his every movement detailed by the local media.
Business plummeted at a French ski resort identified as the scene of several transmissions of the virus.
And after some employees of a German car company were diagnosed with the virus, the children of other workers were turned away from schools, despite negative test results.
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the director general of the World Health Organization, warned last weekend of the dangers of letting fear outpace facts.
“We must be guided by solidarity, not stigma,” Dr. Tedros said in a speech at the Munich Security Conference, adding that fear could hamper global efforts to combat the virus. “The greatest enemy we face is not the virus itself; it’s the stigma that turns us against each other.”
The Philippines has lifted its travel ban on citizens employed as domestic workers in Hong Kong and Macau, officials said Tuesday.
The nation had enacted a ban on Feb. 2 on travel to and from mainland China, Hong Kong and Macau, preventing workers from traveling to jobs in those places.
Hong Kong alone is home to about 390,000 migrant domestic workers, many of them from the Philippines. The travel ban had left many anxious about the sudden loss of income, along with the risk of infection.
Also on Tuesday, the authorities in Hong Kong announced that a 32-year-old Filipino woman was the latest person in Hong Kong to have contracted the virus, bringing the number of confirmed cases there to 61.
A spokeswoman for the Department of Health said the woman was a domestic worker who was believed to have been infected at home. The government said that she was working in the home of an older person who was among the previously confirmed cases.
Salvador Panelo, a spokesman for President Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines, said that workers returning to Hong Kong and Macau would have to “make a written declaration that they know the risk.”
President Moon Jae-in of South Korea warned on Tuesday that the outbreak of the coronavirus in China, his country’s biggest trading partner, is creating an “emergency economic situation,” and ordered his government to take actions to limit the fallout.
“The current situation is much worse than we had thought,” Mr. Moon said during a Cabinet meeting on Tuesday. “If the Chinese economic situation aggravates, we will be one of the hardest-hit countries.”
Mr. Moon cited difficulties for South Korean companies in getting components from China, as well as sharp drops in exports to China, the destination for about a quarter of all South Korean exports. He also said travel restrictions hurt the South Korean tourism industry, which relies heavily on Chinese visitors.
“The government needs to take all special measures it can,” Mr. Moon said, ordering the allocation of financial aid and tax breaks to help shore up businesses hurt the most by the virus scare.
Also on Tuesday, a South Korean Air Force plane flew to Japan to evacuate four South Korean citizens stranded on the Diamond Princess, the quarantined cruise ship in Yokohama.
Passengers from a cruise ship were turned away at an airport as they tried to leave Cambodia on Tuesday, amid fears that the country had been too lax in containing the new coronavirus.
The ship, the Westerdam, was turned away from five other ports over virus fears, but Cambodia allowed it to dock last Thursday. Prime Minister Hun Sen and other officials greeted and embraced passengers without wearing protective gear.
More than 1,000 people were allowed to disembark without wearing masks or being tested for the virus. Other countries have been far more cautious; it is not clear how long after infection people develop symptoms, and some people at first test negative for the virus, even after becoming sick.
Hundreds of passengers left Cambodia and others traveled to Phnom Penh, the capital, to wait for flights home.
But on Saturday, an American who left the ship tested positive on arrival in Malaysia. Health experts warned that others could have carried the virus from the ship, and passengers were barred from flights out of Cambodia.
On Monday, Cambodian officials said tests had cleared 406 passengers, and they looked forward to heading home to the United States, Europe and elsewhere.
On Tuesday morning, Mr. Hun Sen announced that passengers who were waiting in a hotel would be allowed home on flights through Dubai and Japan.
Orlando Ashford, the president of the cruise operator Holland America, who had traveled to Phnom Penh, told anxious passengers to keep their bags packed.
“Fingers crossed,” said Christina Kerby, an American who had boarded the ship in Hong Kong on Feb. 1 and was awaiting approval to depart. “We’ve been cheering as individuals begin to head to the airport.”
But a cohort of passengers who went to the airport later returned to their hotel. It was not clear if any passengers had been able to fly out.
“New fly in the ointment, the countries that the flights have to go through are not allowing us to fly,” Pad Rao, a retired American surgeon, wrote in a message sent from the Westerdam, where about 1,000 crew and passengers remain.
Reporting and research were contributed by Austin Ramzy, Isabella Kwai, Alexandra Stevenson, Hannah Beech, Choe Sang-Hun, Raymond Zhong, Lin Qiqing, Wang Yiwei, Elaine Yu, Roni Caryn Rabin, Richard C. Paddock, Motoko Rich, Daisuke Wakabayashi, Megan Specia, Michael Wolgelenter, Richard Pérez-Peña and Michael Corkery.
Post time: Feb-19-2020