Coronavirus: 99 more cases confirmed on cruise ship – live news
Japan braces for hundreds of fresh cases and restricts access to Tokyo Marathon. Follow live news and latest updates
- Share your experiences
Here’s some more information on the possible delay of China’s annual meetings set for March.
The meetings of the parliament, or National People’s Congress (NPC), and the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) were both due to begin early next month. But both China’s parliament and its top political consultative body are both considering delaying annual meetings set for March, state media said on Monday.
The gatherings see more than 5,000 delegates descend on Beijing, the capital, from all over China, for at least 10 days, to pass legislation and unveil the year’s key economic targets.
A postponement would be the first since China adopted the current March schedule in 1995 for the meeting of parliament.
Japan is bracing for the possibility of hundreds of additional cases of the coronavirus onboard the stricken Princess Diamond, after health officials said on Monday that a further 99 people on the ship had tested positive.
The passengers already evacuated from the ship face further uncertainty too, with the US and Australian citizens set for a further two weeks of quarantine after arriving home. Hundreds of American passengers have flown back to the US and Australia said it would follow suit on Wednesday.
The US state department announced later that 14 of the 340 American evacuees were confirmed to have the virus in tests given before they boarded the planes. They were taken to the US because they did not have symptoms and were being isolated from other passengers on the planes, it said. It was not immediately clear whether the 14 were among the 99 new cases.
Onboard the Diamond Princess, 454 people have been diagnosed with Covid-19 out of an original total of about 3,600 passengers and crew. Japan’s health ministry said it had tested 1,723 people on the vessel.
Forty American passengers who were diagnosed with the virus on Sunday have been transferred to hospitals in Japan. Most of the people on the ship, which has the largest number of cases outside China, have yet to be tested.
The health ministry will continue to test passengers and crew on the Diamond Princess, whose 14-day quarantine was due to end on Wednesday.
Japanese public health experts advising the government defended the decision to isolate passengers and crew on the ship, even as the number of cases increased again on Monday.
“Many people are testing positive on the ship, but that is because we are testing everyone onboard, regardless of their medical condition,” said Shigeru Omi, the chief director of the Japan Community Health Care Organisation. “And 70% of those testing positive are not showing any symptoms at all.”
Omi said any disruption to this summer’s Tokyo Olympics – including the Games’ cancellation – would depend on how and if the virus mutates in the coming months, as well as the effectiveness of the international community’s attempts to contain the outbreak.
“Whether the virus is under control by the time of the Olympics is anyone’s guess,” he said at a media briefing in Tokyo.
Omi conceded that tracing the chain of domestic transmissions not related to the Diamond Princes was proving difficult, but denied Japan, which has confirmed 65 cases on land, was becoming a second major infection cluster.
“Our focus now is on community-based preventative action to lower the speed of the transmission of the virus,” he said. “It is true that there have been silent transmissions, but Japan is certainly not in a state of pandemic.”
Continue reading…