With the first death in Hong Kong from the new coronavirus, the Chinese authorities have decided to introduce new containment measures.
New containment measures were taken Tuesday 4th February 2020 in China, not far from Shanghai, the economic capital, a sign of the authorities’ concern over the spread of the new coronavirus which killed Hong Kong for the first time.
He is a 39-year-old man, already weakened by other health problems and who had gone to Wuhan, the Chinese metropolis where the virus appeared in December, at the end of January.
To limit the risks, the Chinese autonomous territory of Hong Kong had announced on Monday the closure of all land crossing points, with the exception of two bridges, with the rest of China, where more than 20,400 people have already been contaminated.
In mainland China alone (excluding Hong Kong and Macao), 425 people died, most of them in Wuhan and in central Hubei province, of which it is the capital. This is much more than in 2002-2003 during the SARS crisis (349 dead).
Limited outings
China continues to take very strict measures to try to stem the spread of the virus.
After notably the de facto quarantine of a large part of Hubei and its more than 50 million inhabitants, three agglomerations in the eastern province of Zhejiang, several hundred kilometers from Wuhan, have thus made public new provisions. to limit movement.
At the forefront of these agglomerations is Hangzhou (132 cases), located about 150 kilometers from Shanghai (219 cases, 1 death) and the seat of the Chinese online commerce giant Alibaba. In three of its districts, with a total population of three million, only one person per household is now allowed to go out once every two days to do the shopping.
Similar decisions came into effect in Taizhou and three districts of Ningbo, impacting nine million people.
On Sunday, Wenzhou had imposed confinement on its more than nine million inhabitants.
Zhejiang Province has 829 people who contracted this viral pneumonia, the highest number behind Hubei, where the new coronavirus appeared on a market in Wuhan that sold wild animals, before spreading quickly on occasion long lunar New Year holidays in late January.
Red Cross criticized
Japanese authorities on Tuesday blocked more than 3,700 people travelling on a cruise ship due to a confirmed case of viral pneumonia on board.
A first patient was also reported in Brussels among the passengers of the plane who repatriated Sunday from Wuhan some 250 people mainly European and several cases of human to human contamination have been detected in Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand.
And, for the first time, the Chinese government admitted failures in its reaction to the health crisis earlier this week.
The Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party indeed asked for an improvement of the device of reaction to emergency situations following “insufficiencies and difficulties appeared in the response brought to the epidemic”.
The vice president of the Hubei Red Cross has also been dismissed for his mismanagement of donations of money and medical supplies, announced Tuesday the Provincial Disciplinary Commission.
The Chinese Foreign Ministry acknowledged on Monday that the country was in “urgent need” of masks, suits and goggles.
Faced with an overwhelmed health system, Wuhan welcomed his first patients in a new hospital built in 10 days and which has 1,000 beds. A second of this type should open in the coming days.
