“I’ve just been at the airport seeing off members of an advance team for the @WHO-led #2019nCoV international expert mission to #China, led by Dr Bruce Aylward, veteran of past public health emergencies.” World Health Organization director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus posted that from Geneva on Sunday. By Monday, China’s National Health Commission had put the mainland death toll at 908.
The team’s departure ended a long wait. Tedros had flown to Beijing in late January and met President Xi Jinping and Chinese ministers, coming home with an agreement to send an international mission. Then came nearly two weeks of waiting for the government to approve who would be on it. The line-up was never announced, apart from Aylward, a Canadian epidemiologist and emergencies expert, who is leading it.
Another record day
The 97 deaths added to the toll as of the end of Sunday were the most in a single day so far. The commission also counted 3,062 new confirmed infections that day, taking the mainland total to 40,171. The outbreak has now killed more people than the SARS epidemic did worldwide in 2002 and 2003.
Over the weekend an American hospitalized in Wuhan became the first confirmed non-Chinese victim of the disease. A Japanese man who also died there was another suspected victim.
Cities gone quiet
For two weeks, ordinarily crowded Chinese cities have looked like ghost towns. Party rulers ordered virtual lockdowns, canceled flights, closed factories and shut schools. The WHO declared a global emergency on Jan. 30, days after the central government locked down 60 million people in Hubei province and its capital Wuhan, where the virus emerged in December from a seafood market.
Authorities told businesses to add up to 10 extra days to holidays that were due to end in late January. Even on Monday many workplaces stayed shut, and many white-collar staff worked from home.
Abroad, a Reuters count based on official reports showed the virus in at least 27 countries and territories, with more than 330 people infected. Two deaths have been reported outside the mainland, both Chinese nationals. French health officials said the newest patients outside China included a group of British nationals staying in a mountain village in Haute-Savoie in the Alps, which raised fears of further infections in Europe.
