Coronavirus outbreak: woman tests positive after disembarking Diamond Princess – live news | World news

As dozens of evacuees from a the coronavirus-hit Diamond Princess cruise ship begin their two-week quarantine in the UK, more than 100 others rescued from China are due to be released from isolation.

Thirty-two people, who spent more than two weeks on the cruise ship off the coast of Japan, are settling in at an accommodation block at Arrowe Park hospital on the Wirral – their home for the next 14 days.

The group, reportedly made up of 30 Britons and two Irish nationals, will undergo regular health checks while in quarantine. Some made gestures from their coaches as they arrived at the Merseyside facility on Saturday evening – one forming a heart symbol with her hands and another an OK signal.

Meanwhile, a group who have spent the past two weeks holed up in a centre in Milton Keynes are due to be allowed home on Sunday.

Around 150 people, who arrived in the UK on February 9 on an evacuation flight from the virus-hit Chinese city of Wuhan, have been staying at the Kents Hill Park training and conference centre.

They too will have been regularly tested and as of Saturday afternoon the Department of Health said no new cases of coronavirus had been detected in the UK.

Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has accused foreign media of trying to use a deadly outbreak of coronavirus in Iran to “discourage” people from voting in a general election.

This negative propaganda began a few months ago and grew larger approaching the election and in the past two days, under the pretext of an illness and a virus, their media did not miss the slightest opportunity to discourage people from voting,” said Khamenei on his official website. (Our enemies) are even opposed to any election by the Iranian people”.

Iran shut schools, universities and cultural centres across 14 provinces from Sunday following five deaths in the Islamic Republic, the first in the Middle East.

Iran’s outbreak surfaced Wednesday and quickly grew to 28 confirmed infections.

“The concern is … that we have seen … a very rapid increase (in Iran) in a matter of a few days,” said Sylvie Briand, director of the WHO’s global infectious hazard preparedness department.

Iraq on Thursday clamped down on travel to and from Iran, and flag carrier Kuwait Airways has suspended flights to the country.

Although Egypt is the only African country with a confirmed case, the World Health Organisation warned that the continent was vulnerable, urging more African Union cooperation.

WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said necessary treatment tools such as respiratory support machines were “in short supply in many African countries and that’s a cause for concern”.

The Chinese authorities are encouraging citizens to return to work, a month after announcing the unprecedented quarantine of millions of people.

Authorities are caught between urgent need to restart economy and efforts to contain virus.

Wuhan and surrounding Hubei province, the centre of the outbreak, have been the focus of disease prevention efforts. But the disease had spread far across the country, and some of the worst-affected places are the manufacturing and economic centres that power China’s economy.

Read more here.

French Health Minister Olivier Veran said new cases of coronavirus were “very likely” in France and health authorities were ready in case of an epidemic.

“Today, there is only one infected patent in France, who is hospitalised in Lyon. His health condition is not worrying. All the others, apart from an 80-year old man who died, were released cured and are not contagious,” Veran said in an interview with Le Parisien/Aujourdhui en France-Dimanche newspaper.

“Other cases, it is very likely. An epidemic? We are getting ready for it,” Veran added.

Veran said the number of laboratories in France equipped with diagnostic tests would be increased to reach a capacity of “several thousands” of tests a day, against 400 now.

The number of cases of the new coronavirus in Italy’s Lombardy region has risen to 89, the governor of the Lombardy Region Attilio Fontana said on Sunday. That brings the total number of cases in the country to more than 100, Fontana said, speaking on Sky TV

Asked on Friday if the new cases put the crisis at a tipping point, the World Health Organization director general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said the “window of opportunity is narrowing, so we need to act quickly before it closes completely”.

My colleagues Sarah Boseley, Hannah Devlin and Martin Belam have answered questions on the virus. Here are a selection of them, including whether we should panic:

What is Covid-19 – the illness that started in Wuhan?

It is caused by a member of the coronavirus family that has never been encountered before. Like other coronaviruses, it has come from animals. Many of those initially infected either worked or frequently shopped in the Huanan seafood wholesale market in the centre of the Chinese city.

What are the symptoms this coronavirus causes?

The virus can cause pneumonia. Those who have fallen ill are reported to suffer coughs, fever and breathing difficulties. In severe cases there can be organ failure. As this is viral pneumonia, antibiotics are of no use. The antiviral drugs we have against flu will not work. Recovery depends on the strength of the immune system. Many of those who have died were already in poor health.

Should I go to the doctor if I have a cough?

UK Chief Medical Officers are advising anyone who has travelled to the UK from mainland China, Thailand, Japan, Republic of Korea, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia or Macau in the last 14 days and who is experiencing a cough or fever or shortness of breath to stay indoors and call NHS 111, even if symptoms are mild.

Is the outbreak a pandemic?

A pandemic, in WHO terms, is “the worldwide spread of a disease”. Coronavirus cases have been confirmed outside China, but by no means in all 195 countries on the WHO’s list. It is also not spreading within those countries at the moment, except in a very few cases. By far the majority of cases are travellers who picked up the virus in China.

Should we panic?

No. The spread of the virus outside China is worrying but not an unexpected development. The WHO has declared the outbreak to be a public health emergency of international concern. The key issues are how transmissible this new coronavirus is between people, and what proportion become severely ill and end up in hospital. Often viruses that spread easily tend to have a milder impact. Generally, the coronavirus appears to be hitting older people hardest, with few cases in children.

In South Korea’s fourth-biggest city, Daegu, 90 new cases were confirmed on Sunday, bringing the city’s total to 247.

More than half of the people confirmed to have been infected are either members of – or connected to – the Shincheonji Church of Jesus, a secretive religious sect with a strong presence in Daegu.

The mayor asked all Shincheonji members with symptoms to come forward and be tested, with hundreds yet to be reached by authorities.

Moon described the situation in Daegu and Cheongdo – the birthplace of Shincheonji’s founder Lee Man-hee – as a “national crisis”, adding the cities will receive “full support” for any lacking medical supplies and personnel.

Shincheonji, accused of being a cult by mainstream Christian groups, claims its founder has donned the mantle of Jesus Christ and will take 144,000 people with him to heaven on judgement day.

But with more church members than available places in heaven, they are said to have to compete for slots and pursue converts.

In a video statement read out by its spokesman, Shincheonji apologised for “causing concern”, but insisted it was cooperating with health authorities for the “early cessation” of the situation.

The spokesman refuted public criticism blaming his church over the spike in the number of infections, noting the virus had broken out in China. “Please be aware that the Shincheonji Church of Jesus and its members are the biggest victims of the COVID-19,” he said.

President Moon Jae-in said South Korea was raising its alert level on the new coronavirus to the “highest” in the face of a sudden spike in the number of infections.

“The Covid-19 incident faces a grave turning point. The next few days will be crucial,” Moon said following a government meeting.

“The government will raise the alert level to the highest level according to experts’ recommendations,” he added.

South Korea has seen a rapid surge in the number of coronavirus cases in recent days after a cluster of infections emerged from a religious sect in the southern city of Daegu last week.

The national toll of 556 cases is now the highest outside China, apart from the Diamond Princess cruise ship in Japan.

A dozen towns in northern Italy in effect went into lockdown on Saturday after the deaths of two people infected with the coronavirus from China.

In some Lombardy and Veneto towns, schools, businesses and restaurants have closed. The mayor of Milan, Italy’s business capital and the regional capital of Lombardy, shuttered public offices.

A 78-year-old man infected with the coronavirus died in Veneto, and a postmortem performed on a 77-year-old woman in Lombardy came back positive, although it wasn’t clear if illness from the virus caused her death.

Late on Saturday, civil protection officials said 79 people had contracted the virus, including the two who died, and one who recovered. Of the remaining 76 people infected, 54 were in Lombardy, 17 in Veneto, two in Emilia-Romagna, two – a Chinese couple from Wuhan – in Lazio, and one in Piedmont.

It comes amid a growing cluster of cases in the country with no direct links to the origin of the outbreak abroad.

Lombardy government authorities said the region’s cases were traceable to a 38-year-old Italian who had not travelled to China, but it remained unclear how this man had been infected. Ten towns in Lombardy received orders to suspend nonessential activities and services.

Luca Zaia, the Veneto regional president, said on Saturday that the contagion showed that the virus was transmitted like flu, and that trying to pinpoint a single source for the cases or to establish a link to China were no longer effective containment measures.