A 44-year-old man from Wuhan died in a Philippine hospital on Sunday, the first death from the new coronavirus recorded outside China.
The Philippine Health Department said he had been admitted on January 25 with a fever, cough and sore throat. Severe pneumonia followed. His 38-year-old female companion, also from Wuhan, tested positive too. She remained in isolation in a Manila hospital.
President Rodrigo Duterte responded by approving a ban on the entry of all non-citizens from China. The United States, Japan, Singapore and Australia have set similar limits, even though China has objected and the World Health Organization has judged that such measures needlessly hurt trade and travel. New Zealand announced its own 14-day ban on foreigners leaving China, and raised its advice for China to “Do not travel.”
Counting the sick
China’s National Health Commission raised the toll inside the country by 45 in a day, to 304. Cases worldwide passed 14,550. Roughly 150 of those were spread over two dozen other countries.
The United States reported its ninth case on Sunday, a woman in Santa Clara County, California, who had come to visit family after traveling to Wuhan. Vietnam counted a seventh case, a Vietnamese-American man who had a two-hour layover in Wuhan. Europe had 25 infections. Germany’s Red Cross reported two more, both citizens flown out of Wuhan the day before, and the eight earlier German cases were tied to an auto parts factory.
WHO’s representative in Beijing, Gauden Galea, said confirmed numbers would keep rising because thousands of specimens from suspected cases had not been tested yet.
Evacuations, closures and a new hospital
Governments kept pulling citizens out. South Korea and India flew hundreds home over the weekend. France sent a chartered plane carrying 300 evacuees, and Morocco brought back 167 people, mostly students. Indonesia flew back 241 citizens and put them in quarantine on the remote Natuna Islands for two weeks, a decision that several hundred residents protested.
Qatar Airways, Saudia, and carriers in Indonesia and Oman suspended flights to mainland China.
Inside China, a 1,000-bed hospital built in 10 days was expected to open in Wuhan on Monday, with a second to follow. Six officials in Huanggang, next to Wuhan, were fired over “poor performance,” Xinhua reported, citing the mayor’s admission that the city could not treat its patients adequately and was severely short of protective suits and medical masks.
Wenzhou, a city of nearly 10 million, let one family member leave home every other day for supplies. Huanggang, with 7 million people, set similar rules. Hubei’s schools postponed the new semester indefinitely.
