Tag: COVID-19

New Chinese coronavirus cases show slight fall; Chinese tourist dies in France

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

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The number of new cases of a coronavirus in China fell slightly on Sunday, more than three weeks after the outbreak’s epicentre was locked down, and a Chinese tourist died from the virus in France, the first fatality in Europe.

The coronavirus, thought to have emerged at a wildlife market in the central Chinese province of Hubei, has presented the ruling Communist Party with the huge challenge of halting its spread while at the same time minimising damage to the world’s second-largest economy.

Beijing’s latest figures showed 68,500 cases of the illness and 1,665 deaths, most of them in Hubei.

The National Health Commission on Sunday reported 2,009 new cases, down from 2,641 the previous day, and 142 new deaths, just one lower than the 143 the previous day. All but four of the new deaths were in Hubei.

The province and its capital, Wuhan, have been virtually sealed off and locked down since January 23, with schools, offices and factories shut and most travel suspended.

The virus is believed to have an incubation period of 14 days which would appear to indicate it has been spreading since the lockdown was imposed.

“China should strengthen the unified leadership of efforts to control the epidemic,” President Xi Jinping said in comments reported by the Xinhua news agency.

Outside mainland China, there have been about 500 cases in some two dozen countries and territories, with four deaths — in Japan, Chinese-ruled Hong Kong, the Philippines and now France.

In the French case, an 80-year-old Chinese man died at a Paris hospital of a lung infection due to the flu-like virus, authorities said on Saturday.

“We have to get our health system ready to face a possible pandemic propagation of the virus, and therefore the spreading of the virus across France,” said health minister Agnes Buzyn.

Robin Thompson, an expert in mathematical epidemiology at Britain’s University of Oxford, said that with nearly 50 cases in Europe, a death was not surprising.

“The most important thing to point out, however, is that there still hasn’t been sustained person-to-person transmission in Europe,” he said.

‘Lack old urgency’

After an extended Lunar New Year holiday, China urgently needs to get back to work. But some cities remain in lockdown, streets are deserted, employees are nervous, and travel bans and quarantine orders are in place around the country.

Those returning to Beijing from the holiday have been ordered to undergo a 14-day self-quarantine to prevent the spread of the virus.

Many factories are yet to re-open, disrupting supply chains in China and beyond for everyone from smartphone makers to car manufacturers.

While there has been some hope expressed this week that the disease may be peaking in China, numbers keep rising and a trend has been hard to discern, especially after a reclassification that widened the definition of cases.

World Health Organization (WHO) chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said it was impossible to tell where the epidemic will spread.

“We are concerned by the continued increase in the number of cases in China,” Tedros told the Munich Security Conference in Germany. “We are concerned by the lack of urgency in funding the response from the international community.

“Most of all, we are concerned about the potential havoc this virus could wreak in countries with weaker health systems.”

Knocking growth

The biggest cluster outside China has been on a cruise ship, the Diamond Princess, quarantined off Japan’s Yokohama, with 70 more cases reported on Sunday. That took the total out of about 3,700 passengers and crew on board to 355.

Those testing positive are sent to hospital.

The United States said on Saturday it plans to send an aircraft to pick up American passengers and take them back home where they face another two weeks of isolation “out of an abundance of caution”.

Hong Kong said it planned to do the same for some 330 of its residents, while Canada said it too would send a plane for its citizens on the vessel.

Another cruise ship, the MS Westerdam, finally docked in Cambodia on Thursday after being rejected by ports in several other countries and territories.

The ship was believed to be free of the virus but an 83-year-old American woman from it tested positive on landing in Malaysia, health authorities there said.

The sickness, now officially labelled Covid-19, has killed about 2 percent of those infected. Cases have spread faster than other respiratory viruses this century.

The economic ripple effects go far beyond China.

White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow said the coronavirus might knock two- to three-tenths of a percent off US growth in the first quarter.

The sporting world has suffered too. In the latest disruption, Chinese gymnasts were forced to cancel attendance at next week’s World Cup in Melbourne because of Australian travel curbs.

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KV Prasad Journo follow politics, process in Parliament and US Congress. Former Congressional APSA-Fulbright Fellow

Number of new virus cases fall in China

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

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China reported Sunday a drop in new virus cases for the third straight day, as it became apparent that the country’s leadership was aware of the potential gravity of the situation well before the alarm was sounded.

In the early days of the epidemic, which has been one of the biggest political challenges of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s tenure, Xi played a muted role. But state media published Saturday evening a speech Xi delivered February 3 in which he said he gave instructions on fighting the virus as early as January 7.

The disclosure indicates top leaders knew about the outbreak’s potential severity weeks before such dangers were made known to the public. It was not until late January that officials said the virus can spread between humans and a public alarm began to rise.

There are 2,009 new cases in mainland China, bringing its total number of confirmed cases to 68,500, according to the country’s National Health Commission.

The fatality rate remained stable with 142 new deaths, the commission said. The death toll in mainland China from COVID-19, a disease stemming from a new form of coronavirus, now stands at 1,665. In all, 9,419 people have recovered and been discharged from hospital.

China’s fall in new cases follows a spike of more than 15,000 on Thursday when the central province of Hubei adopted a new diagnostic method that includes clinical diagnoses in its official account. Overwhelmed by suspected cases, the province has not able to test every person exhibiting symptoms. The clinical diagnosis is based on doctors’ analysis and lung imaging and is intended to allow probable cases to be treated as confirmed ones without the need to wait for a lab result.

The outbreak began in December in Wuhan, capital of Hubei, which has the bulk of infections.

It has since spread to more than 24 countries and prompted sweeping prevention measures from the Chinese government, including a lockdown of cities with a combined population of more than 60 million.

In his speech, Xi revealed that he ordered the shutdowns at the epicentre: “On January 22, in light of the epidemic’s rapid spread and the challenges of prevention and control, I made a clear request that Hubei province implements comprehensive and stringent controls over the outflow of people.”

On January 23, Wuhan became the first city to impose an unprecedented halt on outbound transportation.

Xi was previously seen as taking a backseat in the crisis while authorities in Hubei and Wuhan faced public fury over their initial handling of the epidemic. The anger reached a peak earlier this month following the death of Li Wenliang, a young doctor who was reprimanded by local police for trying to spread a warning about the virus. He ended up dying of the disease himself.

In an apparent response to the outrage, the ruling Communist Party’s top officials in Hubei and Wuhan were axed and replaced last week.

The publication of Xi’s speech suggests the party hopes to demonstrate it acted decisively from the beginning. But it also opens Xi up to criticism over why the general population was not alerted sooner. Trust in the government’s approach to outbreaks remains fractured after the SARS epidemic of 2002 and 2003, which was covered up for months.

Even as authorities have pledged transparency through the current outbreak, they have labelled people like Li as “rumour-mongers.” Citizen journalists who challenged the official narrative have disappeared and are believed to be detained.

The virus has prompted many countries to place travel restrictions on recent visitors to China.

In Japan, Health Minister Katsunobu Kato said that an additional 70 cases were found on the quarantined Diamond Princess cruise ship for a total of 355.

Some 400 Americans aboard the ship docked at Yokohama were told to decide by Sunday morning whether they will stay or take chartered aircraft arranged by the U.S. government to fly them back home. Those with symptoms won’t be allowed on the planes.

The flights are expected Sunday evening. Canada and Hong Kong also were arranging flights to take their residents back home. There are 255 Canadians and 330 Hong Kong residents on board or undergoing treatment in Japanese hospitals. They too would face a second quarantine.

American Matthew Smith The Associated Press that he had already decided he and his wife are not taking the flights, because the 14-day quarantine for the ship is set to end on Wednesday. Those taking the chartered planes will be taken to Travis Air Force Base in California, with some continuing to Lackland Air Force Base in Texas, where they will have to undergo another 14-day quarantine.

In Malaysia, an 83-year-old American woman who was a passenger on another cruise ship that was allowed to disembark in Cambodia tested positive for the virus. The Malaysian Health Ministry said 145 passengers from the MS Westerdam flew to Malaysia on Friday.

The woman and her 85-year-old husband were found to have symptoms upon arrival at the Kuala Lumpur airport and were taken to a hospital for further tests. The woman was diagnosed with the virus Saturday and her husband tested negative but was still under observation.

Cambodia said earlier that all the 1,455 passengers had tested negative for the virus. Many have already made onward flight connections. The Cambodian Health Ministry and the ship’s operator, Holland America, both asked Malaysia to do secondary testing to confirm the diagnosis.

The Malaysian Health Ministry was planning a news briefing later Sunday.

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KV Prasad Journo follow politics, process in Parliament and US Congress. Former Congressional APSA-Fulbright Fellow

Businesses struggle to fix supply chains disrupted by virus

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

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Chinese authorities are struggling to strike a delicate balance between containing a viral outbreak and restarting the world’s second-biggest economy after weeks of paralysis.

As the death toll from the newly named COVID-19 illness topped 1,000, global supply chains remain widely disrupted for businesses across the world that have built deep connections to China.

Mail service has been delayed after airlines suspended flights between China and the rest of the world. US chipmaker Intel and Chinese smartphone maker Vivo joined other tech giants in withdrawing from a major European technology fair over virus concerns.

Prices for oil, copper and other basic building-block commodities have tumbled on dwindling demand from China, often called the world’s factory. China alone accounted for half the growth in the world’s oil demand last year, according to IHS Markit. It buys more than 40 percent of the world’s iron ore, coal, nickel, aluminium, copper and finished steel, UBS says.

Shuttered factories and travel restrictions in China have contributed to a 20% drop in oil prices since January 7, when Chinese authorities identified the new virus. Prices for copper, soybeans and even lean hogs have all fallen more than 6% over the same time.

Much of China remains on lockdown. Even factories that are open must contend with logistical bottlenecks and labour shortages as travel restrictions prevent employees from returning to work after the Lunar New Year. That’s all worrisome news for multinational companies that have grown to depend on China for everything from auto parts to toys.

“This is the worst supply chain problem I’ve seen in 40 years,’’ said Isaac Larian, CEO and founder of toymaker MGA Entertainment, which produces the popular LOL dolls. “There is no contingency plan.’’

Retailers are increasingly concerned that shipments will not arrive in time for Easter and Mother’s Day, which would force them to mark down the price of merchandise that missed its sell-by date.

“No one wants women’s bonnets after Easter Sunday,’’ said consultant Rick Helfenbein, former president and CEO of the American Apparel & Footwear Association.

Executives at athletic gear maker Under Armour warned that the outbreak is delaying shipments of fabric, packaging and other raw materials from China and will reduce first-quarter revenue by up to $60 million.

The consequences are severe in part because so many companies depend on “just-in-time’’ deliveries to limit the cost of stockpiling supplies. David Closs, an auto industry expert at Michigan State University, noted that many auto parts coming out of China – especially electronics — are flown to the United States. And American plants don’t have inventory on hand.

“It’s much cheaper to air freight them than it is to have two months of inventory sitting in a container (on a cargo ship) on the water, so there’s not much in the pipeline,” Closs said. “Once they shut the factories (in China) down, the US industry starts feeling it pretty quickly.”

Still, some shut-down companies with operations in China are showing tentative signs that they are beginning to stir back to life.

Toyota spokesman Eric Booth said the company’s plants there are preparing to resume operations as early as next week. And General Motors said its joint-venture partners in China plan to restart production February 15.

“Things are at least stabilizing,” GM spokesman Jim Cain said.

Beijing is trying to limit the economic damage from the coronavirus, which is expected to savage economic growth in the January-March quarter and leave 2020 growth well below the 6 percent — already the lowest figure since 1990 — that economists had expected.

Chinese authorities face “a difficult balancing act between containing the virus and resuming business,’’ Kaho Yu, a senior Asia analyst at the consulting firm Verisk Maplecroft, said in a research report. “The return of workers to crowded environments, such as mines and factories, could push the outbreak to another peak, resulting in rising discontent and political pressure for failing to control the crisis.’’

China’s economy, hobbled by a 19-month trade war with the United States and a deliberate government campaign to rein in runaway debts, was decelerating well before the viral outbreak.

The health crisis is giving multinational companies another reason to rethink their dependence on China, which has been at the centre of repeated outbreaks — bird flu in 1997, SARS in 2003 and now the coronavirus.

Koray Köse, senior director of supply chain research at the Gartner consultancy, said companies need to better assess the risks involved in manufacturing in China and other developing countries.

“It’s a wake-up call,’’ he said. “Companies will have to think about their manufacturing footprint and their appetite for risk.’’

Those companies already had reason to consider moving some production out of China. Costs there are rising. And robotics and other technologies are reducing labour costs and making it more feasible to manufacture in high-wage locations such as the United States and Europe.

Many analysts expect trade tensions between the United States and China — now marked by US tariffs on $360 billion in Chinese imports — to continue even after the protectionist President Donald Trump has left office. Companies have reason to diversify out of China to limit the impact of US tariffs.

But leaving China can be arduous and complicated. Over the past three decades, global companies have come to rely on Chinese manufacturing centres, where specialized suppliers cluster and make it convenient for factories to obtain parts when they need them. China accounts for more than 80 percent of smartphone and notebook production, 55% of global exports of handsets and computers and more than half of global TV and server production, according to estimates by UBS.

It also accounts for 27 percent of global auto production, up from 7 percent in 2003, according to UBS, which said China’s share of global exports of auto parts is about 8 percent, up from 1 percent in 2003.

“It’s all part of a big puzzle,’’ said Barbara Hoopes, associate professor of business information technology at Virginia Tech. “It’s more complex than most consumers realize. You get 87 types of toothpaste on the shelf, and you don’t think of what it takes to get them there.’’

Without China, she said, it is “hard to imagine how anything would get done.’’

Mike Wall, an auto industry analyst for the research firm IHS Markit, was encouraged that some companies are preparing to restart production.

“It will take time to build back up,” Wall said. “As we see these plants come back on … that will help, but we’re not out of the woods.”

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Thursday’s filing dispelled some doubts, though Musk still has work to do. He and his advisers will spend the coming days vetting potential investors for the equity portion of his offer, according to people familiar with the matter

KV Prasad Journo follow politics, process in Parliament and US Congress. Former Congressional APSA-Fulbright Fellow

Finally, coronavirus has a name from WHO: “COVID-19”

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

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The new coronavirus that has killed over 1,000 people in China and sickened more than 43,000 others globally has been named ‘COVID-19’, the World Health Organisation said on Tuesday.

“We had to find a name that did not refer to a geographical location, an animal, an individual or group of people, and which is also pronounceable and related to the disease,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus was quoted by the official Chinese media as saying at a media conference in Geneva on Tuesday.

The CO stands for corona, the VI for virus and the D for disease, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of WHO, announced Tuesday at a news conference at the agency’s headquarters in Geneva.

The death toll from the virus in China on Monday rose to 1,017 with confirmed cases totalling to 42,708, Chinese health officials said on Monday. The confirmed cases abroad have gone up to 390.

“Having a name matters to prevent the use of other names that can be inaccurate or stigmatising. It also gives us a standard format to use for any future coronavirus outbreaks,” state-run People’s Daily quoted Dr Tedros as saying. The virus was first identified in Wuhan, China, in late December.

Elon Musk forms several ‘X Holdings’ companies to fund potential Twitter buyout

3 Mins Read

Thursday’s filing dispelled some doubts, though Musk still has work to do. He and his advisers will spend the coming days vetting potential investors for the equity portion of his offer, according to people familiar with the matter

KV Prasad Journo follow politics, process in Parliament and US Congress. Former Congressional APSA-Fulbright Fellow