China clamps down on negative news

Chinese authorities have started clamping down on news coverage of the outbreak.

In the early days of the new coronavirus, the Chinese public’s frustrations over the how the communist government was handling the problem were left largely uncensored online, and news outlets reported rigorously on the outbreak.

Those days may now be over. There is a new crackdown on the media and on the internet, and it signals an effort to control the narrative about a crisis that has become a once-in-a-generation challenge for leaders in Beijing.

Nearly 500 people in China have died from the virus, health officials said Wednesday, and thousands more are being infected every day, fuelling fears that the virus’s spread is not being adequately controlled.

In the early days of the crisis, online vitriol was directed largely at the local authorities, said King-wa Fu, an associate professor at the Journalism and Media Studies Centre at the University of Hong Kong.

But now, he said, more of the anger is being aimed at higher-level leadership — and there seems to be more of it overall. So the Chinese government has shifted its strategy for information control.

State-run news media and more commercially minded outlets have lately been told to focus on positive stories about virus relief efforts, according to three people at Chinese news organisations who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal directives.

And internet platforms have removed several articles that suggest shortcomings in the Chinese government’s response or are otherwise negative about the outbreak. Local officials have also cracked down on what they call online “rumours” about the virus.

More American evacuees arrived home, and were quarantined.

Hundreds of Americans who had been in Wuhan as the outbreak worsened arrived in California on Wednesday on two evacuation flights arranged by the US government.

It was a second wave of American evacuations; an earlier flight arrived last week. The passengers were expected to spend days in quarantine on military bases under a strict and highly unusual protocol federal officials have put in place to slow the spread of the outbreak.

The evacuees were expected to be accommodated at Travis Air Force Base in Fairfield, California, and at Marine Corps Air Station Miramar in San Diego.

The State Department said that it would stage one or two more evacuation flights from Wuhan on Thursday, but that it had no additional flights planned after that time.

Wisconsin has the 12th confirmed case of coronavirus in the United States.

Officials in Wisconsin confirmed that state’s first case of coronavirus on Wednesday. The patient, an adult who had recently returned from China, was said to be doing well and was being isolated at home.

After returning to the United States, the patient sought treatment in the emergency department of a hospital in Madison, but was not admitted. Hospital workers who came into contact with the patient were being monitored for potential symptoms.

There are now 12 confirmed coronavirus cases in the United States. The Wisconsin case is the first new confirmation reported since Sunday, when three new cases were announced in California.

“At this time, the risk of getting sick from 2019 novel coronavirus in Wisconsin is very low,” said Jeanne Ayers, the state health officer. “We are responding aggressively to the situation.”

Lawmakers question US response after briefing.

Administration and health officials came to Capitol Hill on Wednesday to brief lawmakers about how the government is responding to the coronavirus outbreak.

“I think they were appropriately observant of what the challenge is without being fear-mongering,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said as she left the briefing.

House members pressed the briefers on what the government was doing to contain the outbreak, asking whether additional funding was needed.

The Department of Health and Human Services has notified lawmakers that it may need to transfer up to $136 million to help support the response, but it remains unclear how the money will be used and where the money would be transferred from.

Cruise ships in Japan and Hong Kong are being scrutinised after infections.

Nine passengers and one crew member on a cruise ship quarantined in Yokohama, Japan, have tested positive for the coronavirus, the cruise line, Princess Cruises, said Wednesday.

The ship, carrying 2,666 passengers and 1,045 crew members, arrived in Yokohama on Tuesday, but the authorities did not allow anyone off.

In all, 273 passengers were tested for the virus after everyone on board underwent an initial health screening. Twenty-one people were cleared, and officials were awaiting the other results.

Princess Cruises said the infected passengers were from Australia, Japan, Hong Kong and the United States, in addition to one crew member from the Philippines.

The passengers who tested positive were being transported by a Japanese Coast Guard ship to a hospital. The other passengers are to remain quarantined on board the ship, the Diamond Princess, for two weeks.

Separately, a cruise ship that left Hong Kong on Sunday was turned around by authorities in Kaohsiung, Taiwan, on Wednesday, after three passengers on a previous trip were confirmed to be infected with the coronavirus.

The World Dream left the mainland Chinese city of Guangzhou on Jan 19. Hong Kong’s Department of Health has begun checking temperatures and taking health declaration forms from 1,800 passengers and 1,800 crew members now on the ship. Passengers will not be allowed to disembark without approval from the department.

At least 30 crew members reported having symptoms of illness, Dr Leung Yiu-hong, the chief port health officer of the Department of Health, said Wednesday.

As deaths near 500 in China, there is no sign of a slowdown.

The death toll from the monthlong coronavirus outbreak has continued to climb in China, rising to 490. New cases have surged by double-digit percentages in the past 11 days.

The new figures from China’s Health Commission on Wednesday showed that 65 people died Tuesday and that 3,887 more people had been infected. So far, 24,324 people are known to have been infected.

Health experts say the death toll is likely to rise because of the large number of infections. The mortality rate of the coronavirus, about 2% so far, appears to be far lower than that of the SARS virus, which had a mortality rate of about 10% when it hit China in 2002-03.

Experts warn they still lack enough data to say definitively how deadly the new coronavirus is. Many residents in Wuhan, the epicentre of the outbreak, believe the real death toll is much higher than the official tally. The health care system in Wuhan is so overwhelmed that many cases have not been diagnosed because of a shortage of testing kits.

On Tuesday, health officials released details of the deaths so far, saying that two-thirds of them were of men. More than 80% were over 60 years old, and they typically had pre-existing health conditions such as cardiovascular diseases or diabetes.

Hong Kong imposed 14-day quarantines on people arriving from the mainland.

Hong Kong said that it will begin requiring people who arrive from mainland China to undergo a mandatory 14-day quarantine.

Carrie Lam, Hong Kong’s top official, has resisted demands from some lawmakers and medical workers to completely close off the border, calling it discriminatory and not in line with World Health Organisation guidelines.

But Hong Kong has taken a series of measures, including closing all but three border crossings, that have resulted in a sharp drop in entries from the mainland.

Lam said that Hong Kong now had 21 confirmed cases of the coronavirus, including three that were transmitted locally.

Separately, Taiwan said that beginning Thursday it would temporarily suspend entry by Chinese citizens who live on the mainland. It previously announced that foreigners who had been to mainland China over the previous 14 days would not be allowed to enter Taiwan.

HIV and flu drugs show promise in treating the coronavirus, China says.

Chinese scientists are reporting preliminary success with a new approach for treating patients with the coronavirus: an antiviral drug used for treating influenza and an anti-HIV drug.

The researchers found that Arbidol, an antiviral drug used in Russia and China for treating influenza, could be combined with Darunavir, the anti-HIV drug, for treating patients with the coronavirus, according to ChangJiang News, a state-backed newspaper in Wuhan.

The researchers did not say how many patients they had treated with the combination therapy, and it could be too soon to assess its effectiveness. The findings also have not been reviewed by outside experts.

Chinese authorities have turned to other types of treatments as well. In its treatment plan for the coronavirus released last week, the National Health Commission of China listed traditional Chinese medicine remedies to be used in conjunction with antiviral HIV drugs.

Cathay Pacific asks its workers to take unpaid leave.

Cathay Pacific is asking its 27,000 employees to take three weeks of unpaid leave in an emergency move as Hong Kong’s flagship carrier struggles with a financial blow from the coronavirus outbreak in China.

In recent days, the airline has cut nearly all flights to and from mainland China and has said it will pare back flights across its network as it faces its biggest emergency since the depths of the financial crisis in 2009.

“The situation now is just as grave,” Augustus Tang Kin-wing, chief executive of the airline, said in a taped video recording.

The outbreak of the coronavirus has decimated large parts of the global travel network. Health experts have warned that the fast-moving virus could become a pandemic, and multinational companies have banned nonessential travel to China.

Cathay was already fighting for survival before the outbreak, besieged by the political turmoil that has gripped Hong Kong.

c.2020 The New York Times Company