The World Health Organization is declaring the outbreak of a new coronavirus a global emergency after the number of cases spiked more than 10-times in a week. Since China first informed the WHO about cases of the new virus in late December, it has reported more than 7,800 cases including 170 deaths.
More people have now been infected by this coronavirus in China than were sickened there during the 2002-2003 SARS epidemic. Sports, transport and cultural events have been cancelled across the country, and over 50 million people are under a government lockdown in central China.
Eighteen other countries have since reported cases, including Canada, which has three.
Experts say there is significant evidence the virus is spreading among people in China.
They are concerned about cases in other countries such as Canada, where there have been isolated reports of human-to-human transmission.
Canadians in Wuhan
The federal government now says 196 Canadians have asked for help getting out of Wuhan, China and Ottawa is preparing to fly a plane there, but is waiting for Chinese approval.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says the government is continuing to do everything it can to support Canadians in Wuhan and fly them here in a way that is safe and doesn’t enable or allow for even greater propagation of the new coronavirus.
Trudeau says Canada is looking at World Health Organization guidelines and what other countries are doing as it determines whether and how Canadians returning from China might be quarantined.
Europe
European countries on Thursday stepped up efforts to contain the virus infecting central China, sending a plane to evacuate hundreds of Europeans from the country and halting even more flights to China.
An A380 plane took off from a former military airport at Beja, 200 kilometres (120 miles) southeast of Lisbon carrying just its pilots and crew.
Captain Antonios Efthymiou said the flight was going first to Paris, to pick up a team of doctors and extra crew, before heading to Hanoi and then China. He told Portuguese media it would bring back about 350 Europeans. He said the crew would take special medical precautions but did not elaborate on them.
Portuguese Foreign Minister Augusto Santos Silva said the flight was co-ordinated between European Union countries and Chinese authorities.
In Europe, there have been 10 confirmed cases of the virus: five in France, four in Germany and one in Finland.
Italian health authorities, meanwhile, were screening 6,000 passengers and 1,000 crew aboard a cruise ship docked north of Rome after a passenger from Macao came down with flu-like symptoms. (see following story)
The Czech Republic announced it was stopping issuing visas to Chinese citizens due to the outbreak. More than 600,000 Chinese tourists are estimated to have visited the Czech Republic last year, especially its old-world capital city of Prague.
On the retail front, Swedish furniture and home goods retailer IKEA announced all its stores in mainland China would remain closed to protect its customers and staff from the outbreak. The stores are a favourite haunt of Chinese city dwellers both for shopping and for hanging out.
Scandinavian Airlines announced it was halting all its flights to Beijing and Shanghai due to the virus beginning Friday until Feb. 9th. SAS, which has 12 regular weekly flights from Scandinavia to China, said Thursday that “the safety of our passengers and employees is our highest priority.”
Spain’s Iberia national airline halted the three return flights a week it runs between Madrid and Shanghai because of the virus, a move it said would continue through the month of February.
Those announcements followed earlier moves to halt or reduce flights to China by other European airlines, including British Airways, Lufthansa, Austrian Airlines, Swiss, Air France and KLM.