Coronavirus: First victim dies outside China

The newly identified coronavirus has claimed its first victim outside China, a 44-year-old Chinese man in The Philippines.

Medical staff members attend to a patient infected with coronavirus in an isolation ward at a hospital in Zouping, China. Picture: AFP

The latest coronavirus has claimed its first victim outside China, a 44-year-old Chinese man in The Philippines, as the death toll surpassed 300 and the number of people sickened by it approached 14,500 globally.

The man, from the central city of Wuhan where the outbreak began last year, died on Saturday, The Philippines Department of Health said.

The man was one of two confirmed cases in The Philippines, the other being his 38-year-old ­female companion. Both had arrived in the country on January 21 after travelling through Hong Kong.

Although hundreds of people have died from the coronavirus since the outbreak began in central China, all deaths had, until now, been inside China.

As of the end of Saturday, the number of confirmed infections across China had reached 14,380, with 2110 severe cases and 304 deaths, with authorities reporting 45 new deaths from the previous day. There were 150 people in 24 countries outside China sickened by the virus.

Both patients in The Philippines were being treated in isolation at a hospital in the capital, Manila. The man developed a ­severe case of pneumonia because of a viral and bacterial infection, and although he had shown signs of improvement in recent days, his condition deteriorated rapidly in his final 24 hours.

Philippines health authorities urged calm. “I would like to emphasise that this is an imported case with no evidence of local transmission,” Health Secretary Francisco Duque said.

Mr Duque said the government had implemented a temporary travel ban for people coming from the Chinese mainland, Macau and Hong Kong.

Countries and airlines around the world have limited their contact with China after the World Health Organisation last week designated the virus outbreak a “public health emergency of international concern”.

Australia and the US have both raised their travel alerts for all of China to their highest levels.

New Zealand on Sunday also raised its travel advice to “Do Not Travel” and placed temporary entry restrictions on all foreign ­nationals travelling from, or transiting through, mainland China.

The entry restrictions would take effect on Monday and would be in place for up to 14 days, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said.

New Zealand hasn’t yet had a confirmed case of the virus

Australia, New Zealand, the US and Israel banned foreign nationals from visiting if they had been in China recently, and warned their own citizens not to travel there.  Mongolia, Russia and Nepal closed their land borders with China, while Papua New Guinea has banned anyone arriving from ports or airports across Asia.

China has locked down Wuhan and surrounding cities in a bid to contain the virus, but it has continued to spread, prompting a hard-hit eastern city far from the epicentre to impose similar draconian measures on Sunday.

Wenzhou, a city of nine million people 800km east of Wuhan, was virtually shut down on Sunday. Only one resident per household is allowed to go out every two days to buy necessities, while 46 highway toll stations were closed.

The city had previously closed public places such as cinemas and museums and suspended public transport.

China was also on the last day of an extended Lunar New Year holiday, meaning people were starting to return home on planes and trains, even though many businesses would remain closed for at least another week.

Britain, Russia and Sweden have also confirmed their first infections. The number of confirmed infections in China is far higher than the severe acute respiratory syndrome outbreak of 2002-03.

SARS, which is caused by a pathogen similar to the corona­virus and also originated in China, killed 774 people worldwide.

The Wall Street Journal, AFP