Only essential services will be allowed to operate in area home to 500,000 people
Saudi Arabia has cordoned off an oil-rich Shia region, suspended air and sea travel to nine countries and closed schools and universities, in a series of measures to contain the fast-spreading coronavirus.
Related: Saudi Arabia releases images of King Salman after purge of royals
Continue reading...Italy announced a sweeping quarantine on Sunday for its northern regions, igniting travel chaos as it restricted the movement of a quarter of the countries population in an effort to halt the relentless march of the coronavirus
Continue reading...What are the symptoms caused by the virus from Wuhan in China, how does it spread, and should you call a doctor?
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.
Continue reading...The truth about how easy it is to catch Covid-19, who is vulnerable and what you can do to avoid infection
Wearing a face mask is certainly not an iron-clad guarantee that you won’t get sick – viruses can also transmit through the eyes and tiny viral particles, known as aerosols, can penetrate masks. However, masks are effective at capturing droplets, which is a main transmission route of coronavirus, and some studies have estimated a roughly fivefold protection versus no barrier alone (although others have found lower levels of effectiveness).
Continue reading...Tech company will temporarily ban ads for medical face masks on the social network and Facebook marketplace
Facebook is temporarily banning advertisements for medical face masks as part of an effort to prevent use of its social media platform to exploit people’s concerns about the coronavirus outbreak.
Related: Coronavirus: US deaths rise to 19 as New York declares state of emergency
Continue reading...Prime minister claims ‘Egypt is safe and the situation is under control’, though 45 of the ship’s passengers are now infected
Egypt has announced 33 new cases of Covid-19 as the Arab world’s most populous nation works to contain both the virus and public concern.
Thirty-three additional infected passengers were found onboard a cruise ship that had travelled between the southern Egyptian cities of Aswan and Luxor. Twelve cases on the same ship were announced yesterday, bringing the number of infections onboard so far to 45.
Continue reading...Government’s draft decree would impose fines on anyone caught entering or leaving northern region
The Italian government is to lockdown the northern region of Lombardy, as it battles to contain the spread of the coronavirus. A draft decree would extend the quarantined areas, so-called “red-zones”, ordering people not to enter or leave the region.
The country is grappling to contain Europe’s worst outbreak of Covid-19, which has claimed 233 lives and infected a total of 5,883 people.
Continue reading...Two victims were in their 70s and had travelled overseas, say state authorities, as cruise ship off San Francisco reports 21 cases and Hong Kong advises against non-urgent travel
An Iranian MP has died from coronavirus, the semi-official Tasnim news agency reported on Saturday, in an another sign the disease is spreading within state institutions.
Iran is one of the countries outside China most affected by the epidemic. As of Friday, the country had reported 4,747 infections.
The MP who died on Friday is Fatemeh Rahbar, a conservative lawmaker from Tehran, according to Tasnim. It did not say if she was included in the country’s official toll of 124 deaths from the virus, given on Friday.
On 2 March, Tasnim reported the death of Mohammad Mirmohammadi, a member of the Expediency Council, intended to resolve disputes between parliament and the Guardian Council, a governmental body that vets electoral candidates, among other duties.
Iran’s deputy health minister, Iraj Harirchi, and another member of parliament, Mahmoud Sadeghi, have also said they have contracted the virus.
Government ministers are expected to advise elderly people in the UK next week to visit relatives now before “social distancing” policies are introduced.
British pensioners could be warned to stay at home and will likely be told to avoid crowded areas, the Daily Telegraph reported.
Yes, Covid-19 is serious, but context is key and the world is well placed to deal with it
The coronavirus epidemic plainly poses an exceptionally serious global problem: in a few short weeks, it has spread from China to more than 80 countries, infecting more than 100,000 people so far and causing more than 3,400 deaths.
But as we are hit with minute-by-minute updates from around the world, experiencing the advance of Covid-19 in real time – news alerts, huge headlines, social media hysteria – there’s a risk that we might lose some essential context.
Continue reading...Working in the poorest countries in the world, I saw firsthand that dysfunctional health systems can’t contain an epidemic
The world is on the brink of a global pandemic, and it’s the poorest countries with the weakest health systems that will likely be hit the worst.
I was part of the Ebola response in West Africa. We learned important lessons during that crisis that can help us fight the spread of coronavirus here and overseas.
Continue reading...British man Connor Reed caught Covid-19 while working in the Chinese city of Wuhan, the centre of the coronavirus outbreak. The 25-year-old said the disease started with a common cold before progressing to pneumonia, where it got so bad he was waking up at night unable to breathe. He warned people living in the UK who might have symptoms to get checked out and to try to stay at home as much as possible
A top Chinese official has been heckled by residents as she inspected the work of a neighbourhood committee tasked with taking care of quarantined residents. Vice-premier Sun Chunlan toured a residential community in the Qingshan district of Wuhan on Thursday while residents appeared to shout 'fake, fake' as well as 'it's all fake' and 'we protest' from their apartment windows. Since 12 February, all residential compounds in Wuhan have been put under lockdown, barring most residents from leaving their homes.
Continue reading...Aerial images reveal impact of outbreak on famous holy sites and capital cities
Empty public squares, a highway with no cars on it and deserted holy sites – a series of striking satellite images have revealed the impact of the coronavirus epidemic on some of the world’s busiest spaces.
The aerial photographs, released by Colorado-based space technology firm Maxar, show normally bustling spots from Mecca to Beijing thinned of people.
Continue reading...As contagion swept through the Diamond Princess, its crew had to carry on working. Here, they recall the climate of chaos and fear that prevailed during the ship’s two-week quarantine
Christian Santos* remembers staying awake at night, anxiously listening to the sound of his colleague coughing. They were sleeping below deck, in one of the small rooms shared by workers on board the stricken Diamond Princess cruise ship.
He had spent the previous two weeks serving guests who were confined to their rooms, and watching the miserable failure of disease-control measures on the vessel. Now he knew the coronavirus, which had already transmitted to hundreds of people onboard, had almost certainly entered his own cabin.
Continue reading...First cases reported in Vatican City, Peru and Serbia, while France has further 190 patients, bringing total number to 613
If you’d like to read a summary of the day’s events, here’s our coronavirus at-a-glance article from earlier this evening:
Related: Coronavirus latest: at a glance
A 15th person has died in the USA, according to a hospital in Washington state – the worst-hit in the union. EvergreenHealth Medical Center in the Seattle suburb of Kirkland has reported the state’s 12 death.
Kirkland is the site of an outbreak at a nursing facility, where at least six people have died.
Continue reading...Teacher was given 20 minutes to pack and must remain in hotel room for two weeks
Jo Davison and her partner were relaxing in their flat in Shenzhen, China, when the phone rang. She was told by the Chinese authorities that they had been exposed to the coronavirus at close proximity and that officials were on their way.
“It was terrifying. Five people in hazmats turned up at our apartment, they looked like ghostbusters,” she said. “They took swabs from our nose and throat and said they’d return in the morning so we should start packing.”
Continue reading...The truth about the protective value of face masks and whether it’s easy to catch Covid-19
All viruses accumulate mutations over time and the virus that causes Covid-19 is no different. How widespread different strains of a virus become depends on natural selection – the versions that can propagate quickest and replicate effectively in the body will be the most “successful”. This doesn’t necessarily mean most dangerous for people though, as viruses that kill people rapidly or make them so sick that they are incapacitated may be less likely to be transmitted.
Continue reading...What are the symptoms caused by the virus from Wuhan in China, how does it spread, and should you call a doctor?
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.
Continue reading...California declares state of emergency; Italian doctors say German man may have been first European with virus and Scotland registers three more cases
The UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) issued a statement warning businesses to not exploit the coronavirus outbreak and take advantage of people. The CMA said it will take enforcement action against companies that are charging excessive prices or making misleading claims about the efficacy of protective equipment.
CMA chairman Lord Tyrie said: “We will do whatever we can to act against rip-offs and misleading claims, using any or all of our tools; and where we can’t act, we’ll advise government on further steps they could take, if necessary.”
Here’s the latest summary of today’s events.
Continue reading...Announcing a plan to offer less data on the UK spread of the virus was probably not smart
In South Korea, those worried about new coronavirus cases can trace the commute and daily movements of infected people before their diagnosis by logging on to an app. In China too, you can track new cases as they are confirmed in real time and find out whether you have been on a flight or in a train with somebody who was later diagnosed.
In the UK, however, as confirmed cases jumped by 36 – the biggest surge so far – the Department of Health and Social Care announced on Twitter that it would no longer be tweeting their general locations, let alone their travelling habits, “due to the number of new cases”. Instead, it planned to put out a regional breakdown once a week, it said.
Continue reading...