Coronavirus: China reports 105 more deaths, taking global toll to 1,775, as some cases throw 14-day incubation into doubt

Mainland China’s health authority on Monday reported 2,048 new coronavirus cases and 105 deaths, taking its totals to 70,548 and 1,770 respectively as of midnight on Sunday.

Hubei province, the epicentre of the outbreak, accounted for 100 of the new deaths and 1,933 of the newly confirmed cases – of which 1,690 were in the provincial capital of Wuhan. The figures took the totals announced by the province’s health commission to 1,696 and 58,182 respectively, while the global death toll stood at 1,775.

New infections for the province and the country were up on the previous day, when China had reported 2,009 newly confirmed cases and 142 fatalities. The number of new cases had previously dropped three days in a row after a near-10-fold increase in confirmed cases on Thursday when the diagnostic criteria were widened.

Longer incubation periods?

Henan province in central China has reported two coronavirus cases that took much longer to confirm than the previously estimated incubation period of up to 14 days. Incubation is the time between exposure to the virus and beginning to show symptoms.

The government of Xinxian county, in the city of Xinyang, on Sunday reported that one of its new cases had been confirmed 34 days after the patient returned from a mid-January visit to Wuhan. He had been sent to hospital with suspected symptoms on January 28, but twice tested negative before testing positive on February 16. A further two people who attended family gatherings with the man in Xinxian were reported as infected, while three were suspected cases or under hospital quarantine.

The county government announced it would extend the home quarantine period from 14 to 21 days for residents who had been to Hubei or had contact with people who had been there.

It also reported a case that was confirmed 94 days after the patient’s contact with a relative from Hubei. The patient had taken care of his father-in-law, who arrived from Wuhan on November 13 and died days later. The son-in-law continued to stay in the father-in-law’s house until January 31. However, the government statement said the origin of the son-in-law’s infection had yet to be identified.

Zhuhai, in the southern Guangdong province, last week reported two cases with incubation periods longer than 14 days. Similar cases have also been reported in Anhui and Shandong provinces.

Annual political gathering postponed

China’s annual parliamentary meeting scheduled for early March has been postponed because of the outbreak.

State news agency Xinhua reported that the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress (NPC) would discuss the delay later this month – effectively indicating that it would be put back.

Meanwhile, leaders of the political advisory body, the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), also met on Monday and discussed postponing its March full meeting.

The twin parliamentary gatherings, commonly known as the “two sessions”, were originally scheduled to open on March 3 (CPPCC) and March 5 (NPC). The meetings bring together more than 5,000 members of the country’s political elite to discuss government annual reports and budgets.

New mask factory for Beijing

Beijing will set up a new mask factory within just six days to meet soaring demand for protective gear in the wake of the coronavirus outbreak, the official Xinhua news agency said on Monday.

The factory, to be converted from an industrial building by China Construction First Group, would be able to turn out 250,000 masks each day, it said, adding that work began on Monday and was set to be completed by Saturday.

The rapid pace and makeshift nature of the plant mirror measures taken in Wuhan, where buildings have been converted to treat infected patients, and hospitals built from scratch, in days.

Producers of masks and other protective equipment around the world have been unable to meet demand in the wake of the outbreak, which has killed more than 1,700 people in China.

Last month, CMmask, a Chinese mask maker that supplies 30 per cent of the domestic market, said daily orders for 5 million masks were more than 10 times its usual level.

Hubei party chief sets priorities

Ying Yong, the new Communist Party chief of Hubei, presided over a meeting of leaders of the province’s Prevention and Control Command on Sunday afternoon, The Beijing News reported.

In his first public actions since becoming the province’s party chief, Ying stressed the need for less bureaucracy to ensure the command could act quickly and decisively, and said it was crucial to improve distribution of medical resources and education on disease prevention and control.

The former Shanghai mayor replaced Jiang Chaoliang – the most high-profile official to be dismissed during the outbreak – as Hubei party secretary on Thursday. The move suggested that the country’s top leadership was dissatisfied with the province’s response to the crisis and was holding Hubei officials accountable.

‘Impossible to predict’

Global concern remained high about the outbreak’s spread, emphasised by the United States’ announcement that more than three dozen Americans from a cruise ship quarantined off Japan were infected.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) said late on Sunday that the future path of the outbreak was “impossible” to predict, as international experts began meeting their counterparts in China.

As the Chinese government scrambles to contain the outbreak, restrictions have been tightened further in Hubei. Vehicles excluding those for essential services have been banned from the roads in the province, and companies have been told to stay shut until further notice. Xiaogan, a city neighbouring Wuhan, has banned all of its citizens from leaving their homes, effective from Sunday.

Mi Feng, a spokesman for the National Health Commission, said on Sunday that the proportion of people confirmed to be infected who were critically ill had fallen to 22 per cent on Saturday, from 32 per cent on January 27, which he said showed that “the effect of the coronavirus controls is appearing”.
The contagion has spread to at least 25 other countries, sickening nearly 700 and killing five outside mainland China.

Fresh military support

About 1,200 military medical specialists were sent to Wuhan on Monday by military aircraft and railway to help combat the outbreak.

It is the second phase of the military deployment of 2,600 medical staff announced by China’s People’s Liberation Army on Thursday. The latest arrivals will work at a new hospital that was due to open in May but has been refurbished with 700 beds to treat coronavirus patients, state broadcaster CCTV said.

The first batch of 1,400 are working in another hospital, which is able to treat 860 patients.

Wuhan nurse mourned

Another health care worker, a 59-year-old male nurse named Liu Fan, died as a result of the coronavirus on Friday evening, Wuhan Wuchang Hospital said in a post on Weibo on Saturday.

The National Health Commission had said on Friday that 1,716 medical workers, including 1,502 from Hubei, had been infected with the coronavirus – 3.8 per cent of mainland China’s total – and six had died.

“We are deeply saddened by the loss of such a good nurse,” the hospital said in response to Liu’s death. “We sincerely hope that all of our medical staff will be safe and healthy and return safely after the battle [against the virus].”

Help for Chinese businesses

China’s central bank cut the interest rate on its medium-term lending on Monday as policymakers sought to ease the effect on businesses from the severe disruption caused by the coronavirus outbreak.

The move is expected to pave the way for further measures, set to be announced on Thursday, to lower borrowing costs and reduce the financial strains on companies.

Cissy Zhou , Gigi Choy and Wendy Wu

Additional reporting by Agence France-Presse and Reuters

• South China Morning Post. Published: 7:27am, 17 Feb, 2020:
https://www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/3050893/coronavirus-death-toll-rises-1770-china-reports-100-new

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 State-backed charity in Wuhan under fire over coronavirus donations

• Local branch of the Charity General Association funnelled more than US$387 million to the city government

• Critics say it should have done its job and distributed the money itself

A state-backed charity in the coronavirus epicentre Wuhan is under fire for handing over donations for the outbreak to the city government instead of managing the funds itself.

Donors and academics have questioned the Wuhan Charity General Association’s handling of the money after it was revealed that it gave over 2.7 billion yuan (US$387.3 million) in donations to the local authorities. The charity is under the city’s Civil Affairs Bureau.

It is not the first charity to face criticism over its management of public donations during the coronavirus crisis. The Red Cross Society of Hubei province has been widely criticised in recent weeks for its botched handling of medical supplies distribution to frontline doctors and nurses, as well as the collection of donations. Zhang Qin, a deputy director of the society, was fired on Tuesday and given a warning for “dereliction of duty” by the ruling Communist Party.

The controversies highlight a long-standing problem that has plagued social welfare organisations in China for decades – how to manage public donations in a transparent and accountable way.

An administrative change in 2018 further complicated the situation by reducing the government’s role in managing such donations, especially during a public health crisis.

The Charity General Association and Red Cross Society of China are two of the country’s biggest charities and both are government-backed, with local branches around the country.

The outbreak of the virus, which causes a disease officially known as Covid-19, is believed to have started at a live animal and seafood market in Wuhan in December. The pneumonia-like illness has so far killed more than 1,300 people and infected over 59,000, and it has plunged China into its most serious domestic crisis for decades.

In late January, the Ministry of Civil Affairs appointed five charitable organisations, including the Red Cross and the association, to collect public donations and supplies to help tackle the outbreak.

But it was reported on Wednesday that the association, instead of directly providing funds to patients and those in need, had been transferring the donations to the Wuhan government’s finance department since late January – with more than 2.7 billion yuan passed on as of early February.

It prompted tens of thousands of people to express their anger and frustration online. The association responded in a statement, saying it had transferred the donations to centralise their management and promising that the money would only be used to tackle the outbreak.

Zoe Tang, a writer in Beijing who donated 5,000 yuan, was upset that her money had been transferred to the government. “[So doesn’t it mean that] I have paid more taxes to the government? This is a joke,” she said. “So now all [donation] channels will go to the government – I have no choice then.”

Jia Xijin, an associate professor at Tsinghua University with a focus on the charity sector in China, said the association should have done its job and distributed the donations instead of handing them over to the government.

“The association is one of the 2,000 social organisations that are authorised to collect donations and it should follow the Charity Law and take responsibility for managing these donations,” Jia said.

“[Its statement] said the money is now being spent on building [new] hospitals, but [that’s] not enough – 2.7 billion yuan deserves much better reporting.”

Jia said it was like the association was “purchasing services” from the government.

“Normally, the government buys services from social organisations, not the other way round,” she said. “This is not the correct way for a social organisation to do its job.”

She said the situation “essentially makes them tax collectors [for the government]”.

“I have seen some elderly people donating their life savings [during the current crisis] and people have the right to know where their money is going when they make these decisions,” she said.

China disinfects entire cities to fight coronavirus outbreak, some twice a day
Lu Xuan, chairman of the Legal Centre for NGO, a Shanghai-based NGO support group, said while it may be justifiable for the government to take over management of the donations given the gravity of the outbreak, its role should be better defined.

“Generally speaking, the government, which already collects taxes from taxpayers, should not be collecting donations,” he said. “In this case, it becomes both the player and the referee.”

Zhou Jian, founder of Beijing Thanksgiving Public Welfare Foundation, said the incident showed the government treated social organisations “more like a cash machine”.

“The donations raised by charities should supplement public services, not become part of the public services,” Zhou said. “And if the charity funds were mixed with the government funds, auditing [of the donations] will become difficult. It may not be easy to track and audit the money,” he added.

Guo Rui

• South China Morning Post. Published: 8:30am, 14 Feb, 2020:
https://www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/3050545/state-backed-charity-wuhan-under-fire-over-coronavirus-donations

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 Coronavirus infects 1,716 medical staff as China reports 5,090 new cases

• Antibodies in the blood of recovered patients can kill the virus, Chinese researchers say

• Coronavirus infects 1,716 medical staff as China reports 5,090 new cases
SCMP

China reported 5,090 new cases of coronavirus infections on Thursday, bringing the total number in mainland China to 63,851.

The National Health Commission said 121 new deaths were reported, making the death toll on the mainland 1,380. The commission removed 108 deaths from the Hubei numbers because they had been counted twice.

Hubei province, the epicentre of the outbreak, reported a further 4,823 cases of the diseases. It was the 10^th straight day that the number of daily new confirmed cases in the country fell, excluding Hubei.

The figures were the second daily batch to be released since the roll-out of expanded diagnostic criteria, under which a diagnosis based on an analysis of symptoms is considered a confirmed case. The new diagnostic criteria are only being used in Hubei.

Zeng Yixin, deputy director of the commission, said it would not rule out using the new diagnosis metric in other provinces. Asymptomatic people who showed symptoms such as fever and cough during quarantine would be reported as confirmed cases, he said.

More than 1,700 medical staff infected in China

At a press conference on Friday, Zeng revealed for the first time revealed that 1,716 medical workers were infected with the coronavirus.

Zeng said the number of medical workers infected as of Tuesday was 3.8 per cent of the total infections on mainland China. Of those, 1,502 are from Hubei province, and 1,102 from Wuhan.

Six medical workers had died from the coronavirus as of Tuesday, he said.

Plasma from recovered patients used in virus fight

China National Biotec Group announced on Thursday evening that virus-neutralising antibodies had been detected in the plasma of patients who have recovered from Covid-19, and experiments have proven they can effectively kill the virus, according to a Beijing News report on Friday.

The company said it had successfully prepared the plasma for clinical treatment after strict blood biological safety testing, virus inactivation and antiviral activity testing. The plasma had been used to treat 11 patients in critical condition, with significant results, it said.

The first phase of the treatment was carried out on three critically ill patients in Wuhan on February 8 and the plasma is currently being used to treat more than 10 critically ill patients.

Clinical tests showed that, after 12 to 24 hours of treatment, the main inflammatory indicators in the laboratory decreased significantly, the proportion of lymphocytes increased, key indicators such as blood oxygen saturation and viral load improved, and clinical signs and symptoms improved significantly.

“The plasma product to treat the novel coronavirus is made from plasma loaded with antibodies donated by recovered patients. It went through virus inactivation and was tested against virus-neutralising antibodies and multiple pathogenic microorganisms,” the company said, according to the report.
Doubling down in Wuhan

Hubei’s new Communist Party boss, Ying Yong, has ordered officials to reinforce quarantine controls in communities and neighbourhoods in Hubei.
Heading his first meeting in Wuhan on the outbreak, Ying asked officials to organise quarantine controls around every residential estate, and redouble efforts to ensure that all confirmed and suspected cases were treated and properly quarantined, the official Hubei Daily reported on Friday.

At the meeting convened Thursday afternoon, the new party boss also said the province should help local factories to expand their capacity to manufacture medical supplies.

Boosting confidence overseas

China’s foreign minister Wang Yi said China’s economy would rebound strongly once the Covid-19 outbreak was controlled and consumption resumed.

Wang said at a press conference in Berlin with his German counterpart Heiko Maas on Thursday that the virus’ effect on China’s economy was temporary and the country would strive to minimise its impact.

“I believe, once the epidemic is over, the depressed consumption demand will be unleased quickly, and the economic momentum will have a resilient rebound,” he said.

He also called for worldwide joint efforts to contain the virus, adding that China had effectively prevented the virus from spreading to other countries.
White House official: US ‘disappointed’

The United States feels let down by a lack of transparency from China over the crisis, a senior White House official said on Thursday, contradicting President Donald Trump’s confidence in Beijing.

“We are a little disappointed that we haven’t been invited in and we’re a little disappointed in the lack of transparency coming from the Chinese,” Larry Kudlow, director of the National Economic Council, told reporters.

Trump on Thursday again praised his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping for his government’s response to the outbreak but Kudlow said unanswered questions were mounting and there was no sign of the promised cooperation.
“President Xi assured President Trump that China was on it and there would be openness, they would accept our help,” he added.

“We’re more than willing to work with the UN (and) WHO on this and they won’t let us. I don’t know what their motives are. I do know that apparently more and more people are suffering over there.”

“Is the Politburo really being honest with us?” he asked, referring to communist China’s top leadership body.

The United States Centres for Diseases Control said on Thursday it expected more coronavirus cases in the country in the days ahead as health officials announced a 15^th confirmed infection – this one in an evacuee from China under quarantine in Texas.

Saturday flights arranged from Vietnam for Chinese citizens

Vietnam will organise six flights for Chinese citizens to fly home, China’s embassy in Hanoi said in a statement on its official social media platform on Friday afternoon.

The flights will all leave on Saturday afternoon. There will be one flight from Hanoi to Guangzhou, two from Ho Chi Minh City to Guangzhou, one from Da Nang to Guangzhou, and two flights from Nha Trang – one to Guangzhou and another to Chengdu.

Chinese citizens have until 6pm on Friday to buy tickets for the Vietnam Airlines flights, which are available on the company’s website. These flights, which can also be taken by foreigners holding valid visas, may be changed if too few passengers bought tickets, the embassy said. No meals will be served and each passenger will be given just one bottle of water.
The statement also said people would not be able to join the flights if they had a fever or cough, or had in the past 14 days stayed in areas where infections had occurred.

Change in protocol leads to dramatic numbers spike

The inclusion of clinical diagnoses in the official count led to a dramatic spike in confirmed cases and deaths, appearing to confirm suspicions that the true number of cases far eclipsed the official figures of the past few weeks. The official data had been constrained by the availability of diagnostic tests.
Around two thirds of the new cases reported on Friday were clinically diagnosed.

The new monitoring protocol coincides with a purge of top party officials in Hubei, where local authorities have become a target of nationwide public fury over the government’s response to the outbreak.

Wuhan, Hubei’s capital and the site of the seafood and meat market where the contagion is thought to have broken out, reported more than 3,900 new cases and 88 more deaths on Friday.

The coronavirus has infected more than 65,200 people worldwide and spread to two dozen countries. To date, three people outside mainland China have died from the disease, in Hong Kong, the Philippines and Japan.

Owen Churchill, Wendy Wu, Gigi Choy

Additional reporting by Agence France-Presse

• South China Morning Post. Published: 7:58am, 14 Feb, 2020:
https://www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/3050570/coronavirus-hubei-province-reports-4823-new-cases-and-116-more

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