Increasingly drastic measures are being taken to deal with the epidemic of viral pneumonia which has killed more than 630 people in China, including one of the first doctors to raise the alarm about the dangers of the new coronavirus on Friday.
More than 30,000 people are now infected on Chinese territory where an increasing number of cities are forcing tens of millions of inhabitants to remain confined there.
It was in this regard at the central hospital in Wuhan, the metropolis where the new coronavirus appeared in December, that Li Wenliang, an ophthalmologist who had one of the first to give the alert, died early Friday, victim of the epidemic.
He had had trouble leaving with the authorities who accused him of “spreading rumors”.
Outside mainland China, more than 240 cases of this disease are now confirmed in around thirty countries and territories.
Thousands of travelers and crew are detained on two cruise ships in Asia.
In Japan, the Diamond Princess is kept in quarantine after the confirmation of 20 cases on board. Some 3,700 people are cloistered in their cabin.
In Hong Kong, some 3,600 people suffer a similar fate on the World Dream, including three former passengers who tested positive.
And according to a statement from the Japanese authorities, another huge boat, the Westerdam, is en route to Japan with at least one confirmed case of coronavirus on board.
Extended flight suspensions
Many countries are muscularly trying to contain the epidemic.
Vietnam has thus become the last country to date to prohibit entry to travelers arriving from China. More radical, Saudi Arabia has prohibited trips to Chinese territory to Saudis and its foreign residents, under penalty of sanctions.
Italy monitors the temperature of all passengers from abroad and Austria imposes such checks at Vienna airport on those arriving from Beijing.
Indonesia has cut its air links with China, blocking thousands of Chinese tourists on the island of Bali – whom the Chinese authorities will offer flights on Friday to repatriate them.
In this context, the airlines Air France and KLM announced the extension until March 15 of the suspension of their flights to mainland China. The British Virgin and the Spanish Iberia have made similar arrangements for serving Shanghai.
Under pressure, the Hong Kong authorities have closed almost all border posts with the rest of the country and will impose from Saturday a quarantine of two weeks on all visitors from mainland China.
Panicked by a supposed risk of shortages, the Hong Kong people rushed into the supermarkets to build up stocks of toilet paper.
While they said on Wednesday “extremely worried”, the organizers of the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games assured that the event would take place “as planned”.
The toll of the epidemic amounts to more than 630 deaths in mainland China (excluding Hong Kong and Macao), the province of Hubei having reported Friday of 69 new deaths (and 2,447 new cases). Elsewhere, two deaths have already been attributed to the disease, one in the Philippines and the other in Hong Kong.
The mortality rate of the new coronavirus, around 2%, remains for the moment much lower than that of SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) which had caused the death of 774 people worldwide in 2002-2003.
Makeshift hospitals
Two weeks after the de facto quarantine of the city of Wuhan then of a large part of its province, Hubei (center), the cradle of the epidemic, the local health system remains overwhelmed by the influx of patients .
In this metropolis, a makeshift hospital of 1,000 beds built in ten days welcomed its first patients on Tuesday. The opening of a second establishment of the same type, with a capacity of 1,600 beds, must follow.
And the authorities have announced the conversion of ten public buildings in Wuhan, including cultural centers and gymnasiums, into improvised clinics.
This agglomeration is experiencing a “serious” lack of beds, as well as “equipment” and “materials”, said Hu Lishan, a senior local official.
Meanwhile, the Chinese biotechnology group BGI announced Thursday the entry into service in Wuhan of a laboratory capable of processing more than 10,000 tests for the virus every day.
Elsewhere in China, containment measures extended to an ever-increasing number of cities.
Many localities, up to the extreme northeast regions, offer bonuses in the event of denunciation of people who have arrived from Hubei.
In Nanchang (center), pharmacies are required to report the identity of people buying cough or fever medicine to the authorities.
The Chinese economy could be permanently weighed down, because in many provinces, most companies and factories will not resume their activities before February 10 at best.
Taiwanese electronics giant Foxconn, a key supplier to American Apple, has announced that workers at one of its establishments in Henan (central China), a giant iPhones production site, will be placed in quarantine for at less a week.
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