Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) yesterday said that China was in a struggle against a “demon” epidemic, as the death toll from the new SARS-like virus soared to 106, including the first in Beijing, and the first cases of human-to-human contagion were detected abroad.
Xi made his remarks during talks with WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus in Beijing, as a host of nations prepared to airlift their citizens from Wuhan, the epicenter of the outbreak.
“Chinese people are currently engaged in a serious struggle against an epidemic of a new type of coronavirus infection,” Xi said.
Photo: Reuters
“The epidemic is a demon, and we cannot let this demon hide,” he said, pledging that the government would be transparent and release information on the virus in a “timely” manner.
His comments came after anger simmered on Chinese social media over the handling of the health emergency by local officials in Hubei Province, where the disease first emerged last month.
Some experts have praised Beijing for being more reactive and open about this virus compared with its handling of the SARS epidemic of 2002-2003.
Photo: AFP
However, others say local cadres had earlier been more focused on projecting stability than responding to the outbreak when it began to spread earlier this month.
Since then, the number of cases has soared — doubling to more than 4,500 in the past 24 hours.
Tedros praised China’s response to the crisis during a meeting with Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅), Xinhua news agency reported.
The WHO last week stopped short of declaring the outbreak a global emergency, which could have prompted a more aggressive international response such as travel restrictions.
However, global concern has been growing, with Japan and Germany yesterday reporting the first human-to-human infections outside China.
Until now, all cases in more than a dozen countries involved people who had been in or around Wuhan.
In Japan, a man in his 60s contracted the virus apparently after driving two groups of tourists from the city earlier this month, the Japanese Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare said.
He was hospitalized with flu-like symptoms on Saturday.
On the other side of the world, a 33-year-old German man caught the disease off a Chinese colleague from Shanghai who visited Germany last week, health officials said.
The development came after countries — including Sri Lanka, Malaysia and the Philippines — announced tighter visa restrictions for people coming from China.
Hong Kong yesterday said it would cut all rail links to mainland China.
Wearing a green mask, Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam (林鄭月娥) told a news conference that train service would stop at midnight on Thursday and that the two stations connecting to the mainland would be closed.
She stopped short of a total closing of the border, as North Korea and Mongolia have done, but said that flights from the mainland would be reduced.
Experts believe the virus came from a wild animal market in Wuhan and then jumped to humans, with Chinese health officials saying that people infect each other through sneezing or coughing, and possibly through contact.
Additional reporting by AP
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