The US advises against travel to Italy, cases soar in Iran and South Korea
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The US has urged its citizens to avoid non-essential travel to Italy. The European nation has become a hotbed for the infection and has reported at least 21 deaths.
The announcement came as the World Health Organisation Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said Friday “since yesterday we have had the first cases of (coronavirus) infection in Denmark, Estonia, Lithuania, Netherlands, and Nigeria. All these cases have links with Italy”.
He said “24 cases have been exported by Italy to 14 countries, 97 cases have been exported by Iran to 11 countries.”
The World Health Organization (WHO) has upgraded the global risk of the coronavirus outbreak to “very high” – its top level of risk assessment.
But the UN body said there was still a chance of containing the virus if its chain of transmission were broken.
Medical staff members measure the body temperature of participants to the Intel Extreme Masters (IEM) Katowice 2020 international esports tournament, in Katowice, Poland. EPA-EFE/ANDRZEJ GRYGIEL
Iceland, Mexico, New Zealand and Belarus all also reported their first cases.
The US has postponed the ASEAN summit that was scheduled for March 14 due to worries over coronavirus. President Trump was supposed to meet the members of ASEAN in Las Vegas, after he failed to attend a summit in Bangkok last November.
In both Italy and Iran, with two of the biggest outbreaks, the number of reported infections more than doubled in just two days, approaching 900 combined, and people who had recently been to those countries continued to seed new outbreaks elsewhere. Kuwait reported 43 new cases, all of them tied to Iran.
Sources within Iran’s healthcare system told the BBC that, as of Thursday evening, at least 210 people had died from the virus. This is more than six times higher than the official government figure.
South Korea, with the largest outbreak outside of China, reported 256 new cases Friday, bringing its total to 2,022, and officials made plans to test an estimated 200,000 members of a church that has become one of the epidemic’s hot zones.
Globally, more than 80,000 people have been infected. About 2,800 have died – the vast majority in China’s Hubei province. China confirmed another 327 cases – the lowest daily increase for a month – along with 44 deaths
A view of an information panel at the AEX stock exchange in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, 28 February 2020. The AEX has seen substantial losses in its worst week of trading since the fall of 2008. The spread of the the COVID-19 disease caused by the novel SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus has prompted stock markets to plummet across the world. EPA-EFE/RAMON VAN FLYMEN
