A 78-year-old man died in a Perth hospital yesterday, marking Australia’s first COVID-19 fatality, after returning from the Diamond Princess cruise ship off the coast of Japan last month, while a 35-year-old Thai man who also had dengue fever died in Thailand on Saturday.
The Australian man was initially sent to the Howard Springs facility in northern Australia after becoming ill on the flight back from Japan and was then moved to the Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital in Perth, where he died yesterday morning.
His 79-year-old wife, who also tested positive for the virus, remains isolated in the hospital in a stable condition and there is no risk to the community, said Andrew Robertson, Western Australia’s chief health officer.
Photo: AFP
Elsewhere in the country, two new cases emerged in the past few days in Sydney and the Gold Coast after a man and a woman returned from trips to Iran.
Australia over the weekend banned incoming travel from Iran for non-nationals, and Australian Minister of Health Greg Hunt said he has asked the deputy chief medical officer, Paul Kelly, to consider the appropriate level of travel advice for Italy.
Restrictions on travel from China were extended last week.
“Right from the outset, we’ve made it clear that we will take strong action, but that Australia is not immune,” Hunt said in Melbourne yesterday.
There are now 27 confirmed cases in Australia, he said.
The death came just days after the Australian government activated an emergency plan to deal with the outbreak, when Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison said the risk of a global pandemic is “very much upon us.”
Thailand has recorded 42 cases since January, with 30 of those recovering and 11 still being treated in hospitals, the Thai Department of Disease Control said.
Thai health officials said the dead man had worked in the retail sector, where he had come into contact with many tourists during the early stages of the outbreak.
“This was a case of local transmission, and he was at risk, because he had exposure to Chinese tourists,” department Director-General Suwanchai Wattanayingcharoen told a news conference.
The patient was first admitted to a private hospital for dengue fever on Jan. 27. He was later diagnosed with COVID-19 and on Feb. 5 transferred to the government’s main treatment center, Suwanchai said.
He died from multiple-organ failure late on Saturday.
New measures to deal with the spread of the disease — earlier introduced by Thailand’s National Committee on Communicable Diseases — came into effect yesterday.
Health officials can now order those suspected of being infected to be quarantined and to undergo treatment. Officials can also order the closure of venues and public areas to contain the virus.
China yesterday reported 35 more deaths from COVID-19, taking the toll in the country to 2,870.
The number was lower than the 47 fatalities reported by Chinese authorities on Saturday.
The Chinese National Health Commission also reported 573 new infections, bringing the total number of cases in mainland China to 79,824.
Armenia yesterday confirmed its first case of COVID-19, an Armenian citizen who recently returned from Iran and who was in a stable condition in hospital.
The British government said there were 12 new confirmed cases yesterday, increasing the total to 35.
AGING: As of last month, people aged 65 or older accounted for 20.06 percent of the total population and the number of couples who got married fell by 18,685 from 2024 Taiwan has surpassed South Korea as the country least willing to have children, with an annual crude birthrate of 4.62 per 1,000 people, Ministry of the Interior data showed yesterday. The nation was previously ranked the second-lowest country in terms of total fertility rate, or the average number of children a woman has in her lifetime. However, South Korea’s fertility rate began to recover from 2023, with total fertility rate rising from 0.72 and estimated to reach 0.82 to 0.85 by last year, and the crude birthrate projected at 6.7 per 1,000 people. Japan’s crude birthrate was projected to fall below six,
US President Donald Trump in an interview with the New York Times published on Thursday said that “it’s up to” Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) what China does on Taiwan, but that he would be “very unhappy” with a change in the “status quo.” “He [Xi] considers it to be a part of China, and that’s up to him what he’s going to be doing, but I’ve expressed to him that I would be very unhappy if he did that, and I don’t think he’ll do that. I hope he doesn’t do that,” Trump said. Trump made the comments in the context
SELF-DEFENSE: Tokyo has accelerated its spending goal and its defense minister said the nation needs to discuss whether it should develop nuclear-powered submarines China is ramping up objections to what it sees as Japan’s desire to acquire nuclear weapons, despite Tokyo’s longstanding renunciation of such arms, deepening another fissure in the two neighbors’ increasingly tense ties. In what appears to be a concerted effort, China’s foreign and defense ministries issued statements on Thursday condemning alleged remilitarism efforts by Tokyo. The remarks came as two of the country’s top think tanks jointly issued a 29-page report framing actions by “right-wing forces” in Japan as posing a “serious threat” to world peace. While that report did not define “right-wing forces,” the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs was
PREPAREDNESS: Given the difficulty of importing ammunition during wartime, the Ministry of National Defense said it would prioritize ‘coproduction’ partnerships A newly formed unit of the Marine Corps tasked with land-based security operations has recently replaced its aging, domestically produced rifles with more advanced, US-made M4A1 rifles, a source said yesterday. The unnamed source familiar with the matter said the First Security Battalion of the Marine Corps’ Air Defense and Base Guard Group has replaced its older T65K2 rifles, which have been in service since the late 1980s, with the newly received M4A1s. The source did not say exactly when the upgrade took place or how many M4A1s were issued to the battalion. The confirmation came after Chinese-language media reported
RSS