Top China Buddhist leader quits in sex probe

Feb 2: The Philippines on Sunday reported the first death from a new virus outside of China, where authorities delayed the opening of schools in the worst-hit province and tightened quarantine measures in a city that allow only one family member to venture out to buy supplies.

The Philippine Department of Health said a 44-year-old Chinese man from Wuhan was admitted on Jan. 25 after experiencing a fever, cough, and sore throat. He developed severe pneumonia, and in his last few days, “the patient was stable and showed signs of improvement, however, the condition of the patient deteriorated within his last 24 hours resulting in his demise.”

The man’s 38-year-old female companion, also from Wuhan, also tested positive for the virus and remains in hospital isolation in Manila.

President Rodrigo Duterte approved a temporary ban on all travelers, except Filipinos, from China and its autonomous regions. The U.S., Japan, Singapore and Australia have imposed similar restrictions despite criticism from China and an assessment from the World Health Organization that they were unnecessarily hurting trade and travel.

The death toll in China climbed by 45 to 304 and the number of cases by 2,590 to 14,380, according to the National Health Commission, well above the number of those infected in in the 2002-03 outbreak of SARS, or severe acute respiratory syndrome, which broke out in southern China and spread worldwide.

Meanwhile, six officials in the city of Huanggang, neighboring the epicenter of Wuhan in Hubei province, have been fired over “poor performance” in handling the outbreak, the official Xinhua News Agency reported.

It cited the mayor as saying the city’s “capabilities to treat the patients remained inadequate and there is a severe shortage in medical supplies such as protective suits and medical masks.”

After Huanggang, the trading center of Wenzhou in coastal Zhejiang province also confined people to homes, allowing only one family member to venture out every other day to buy necessary supplies.

With the outbreak showing little sign of abating, authorities in Hubei and elsewhere have extended the Lunar New Year holiday, due to end this week, well into February. The annual travel crunch of millions of people returning from their hometowns to the cities is thought to pose a major threat of secondary infection at a time when authorities are encouraging people to avoid public gatherings.

All Hubei schools will postpone the opening of the new semester until further notice and students from elsewhere who visited over the holiday will also be excused from classes.

Far away on China’s southeast coast, the manufacturing hub of Wenzhou put off the opening of government offices until Feb. 9, private businesses until Feb. 17 and schools until March 1.

With nearly 10 million people, Wenzhou has reported 241 confirmed cases of the virus, one of the highest levels outside Hubei. Similar measures have been announced in the provinces and cities of Heilongjiang, Shandong, Guizhou, Hebei and Hunan, while the major cities of Shanghai and Beijing were on indefinite leave pending developments.

Despite imposing drastic travel restrictions at home, China has chafed at those imposed by foreign governments, criticizing Washington’s order barring entry to most non-citizens who visited China in the past two weeks. Apart from dinging China’s international reputation, such steps could worsen a domestic economy already growing at its lowest rate in decades.

The crisis is the latest to confront Chinese leader Xi Jinping, who has been beset by months of anti-government protests in the semi-autonomous Chinese city of Hong Kong, the reelection of Taiwan’s pro-independence president and criticism over human rights violations in the traditionally Muslim northwestern territory of Xinjiang. Economically, Xi faces lagging demand and dramatically slower growth at home while the tariff war with the U.S. remains largely unresolved.

Among a growing number of airlines suspending flights to mainland China was Qatar Airways. The Doha-based carrier said on its website that its flights would stop Monday. It blamed “significant operational challenges caused by entry restrictions imposed by a number of countries” for the suspension of flights.

Oman also halted flights to China, as did Saudi Arabia’s flagship national carrier, Saudia.

Saudi Arabia’s state-run TV reported that 10 Saudi students were evacuated from Wuhan on a special flight. It said the students would be screened upon arrival, but did not say whether they would be quarantined for 14 days.

This weekend, South Korea and India flew hundreds of their citizens out of Wuhan. They went into a two-week quarantine.

On Sunday, South Korea reported three more cases for a total of 15. They include an evacuee, a Chinese relative of a man who tested positive and a man who returned from Wuhan. India reported a second case, also in southern Kerala state.

South Korea also barred foreigners who have stayed or traveled to Hubei province within the last 14 days from entering the country.

Indonesia flew back 241 nationals from Wuhan on Sunday and quarantined them on the remote Natuna Islands for two weeks. Several hundred residents protested the move, with one saying, “This is not because we do not have a sense of solidarity with fellow nationals. But because we fear they could infect us with the deadly virus from China.”

A Turkish military transport plane carrying 42 people arrived in Ankara from Wutan Saturday night. The 32 Turkish, six Azerbaijani, three Georgian nationals and an Albanian will remain under observation for 14 days, together with 20 personnel who participated in the evacuation, Health Minister Fahrettin Koca said.

Vietnam counted its seventh case, a Vietnamese-American man who had a two-hour layover in Wuhan on his way from the U.S. to Ho Chi Minh City.

The virus’ rapid spread in two months prompted the WHO on Thursday to declare it a global emergency.

That declaration “flipped the switch” from a cautious attitude to recommending governments prepare for the possibility the virus might spread, said the WHO representative in Beijing, Gauden Galea. Most cases reported so far have been people who visited China or their family members.

WHO said it was especially concerned that some cases abroad involved human-to-human transmission.

“Countries need to get ready for possible importation in order to identify cases as early as possible and in order to be ready for a domestic outbreak control, if that happens,” Galea told The Associated Press.

Both the new virus and SARS are from the coronavirus family, which also includes those that cause the common cold.

The death rate in China is falling, but the number of confirmed cases will keep growing because thousands of specimens from suspected cases have yet to be tested, Galea said.

“The case fatality ratio is settling out at a much lower level than we were reporting three, now four, weeks ago,” he said.

Although scientists expect to see limited transmission of the virus between people with family or other close contact, they are concerned about cases of infection spreading to people who might have less exposure.

Beijing, Jun 16: The coronavirus situation in China's capital is "extremely severe", a city official warned Tuesday, as 27 new infections were reported from Beijing where a new cluster has sparked a huge trace-and-test programme.

The COVID-19 resurgence -- believed to have started at the sprawling Xinfadi wholesale food market in the capital -- has sparked alarm as China had largely brought its outbreak under control through mass testing and lockdowns imposed earlier in the year.

The new cases took the number of confirmed infections in Beijing over the past five days to 106, as authorities locked down almost 30 communities in the city and tested tens of thousands of people.

"The epidemic situation in the capital is extremely severe," Beijing city spokesman Xu Hejian warned at a press conference.

The World Health Organization had already expressed concern about the cluster, pointing to Beijing's size and connectivity.

Officials in the capital have said they will test stall owners and managers at all of the city's food markets, restaurants and government canteens.

Beijing's coronavirus testing capacity has been expanded to 90,000 a day, according to China's official news agency Xinhua.

On Tuesday, the capital's transport commission banned taxi- and ride-hailing services from driving out of the city, Xinhua reported, in another move to try and contain the new outbreak.

All indoor sports and entertainment venues in Beijing were ordered to shut on Monday, and some other cities across China warned they would quarantine those arriving from the capital.

The National Health Commission also reported four new domestic infections in Hebei province, which surrounds Beijing, and a case reported in southwestern Sichuan province was linked to the Beijing cluster.

Authorities were also racing to track people from Beijing who had travelled to other parts of China, and those who visited the capital have been encouraged to get tested.

Beijing spokesman Xu said: "High-risk people who have left Beijing must inform local authorities immediately."

Market inspections

Authorities shut down another market on Tuesday -- Tiantaohonglian in the central Xicheng district -- after one employee there was diagnosed with COVID-19, state broadcaster CCTV reported.

Seven residential estates surrounding that market were also locked down.

In total, Beijing officials said Tuesday they have disinfected 276 agricultural markets, closed 11 markets, and disinfected more than 33,000 food and beverage businesses in a bid to stamp out the new cluster.

Officials had warned Sunday that since May 30, 200,000 people had visited the Xinfadi market -- the original site of the new outbreak.

More than 8,000 workers from Xinfadi have been tested and sent to centralised quarantine facilities.

Until this recent outbreak, most of China's cases in recent months were nationals returning home as the pandemic spread to other countries.

China's Center for Disease Control and Prevention said Monday that the virus strain found in the Beijing outbreak was a "major epidemic strain in the European countries".

While the virus was detected on chopping boards used to handle imported salmon at Xinfadi, "it does not clearly or definitely indicate it's from imported seafood", Wu Zunyou, the body's chief epidemiologist, said in an interview with state broadcaster CCTV.

"Ever since new cases suddenly emerged in Beijing, we have tried to figure out the reasons for the outbreak since there were no COVID-19 cases found over the past two months," Wu Zunyou said.

"We came up with several possibilities, and the most likely one is that the carrier of the novel coronavirus comes from outside China or other parts of China and brought it here."

On Tuesday, another eight imported cases were reported.

Washington, Feb 5: Experts warned a US government panel last night that India's Muslims face risks of expulsion and persecution under the country’s new Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) which has triggered major protests.

The hearing held inside Congress was called by the US Commission on International Freedom, which has been denounced by the Indian government as biased.

Ashutosh Varshney, a prominent scholar of sectarian violence in India, told the panel that the law championed by prime minister Narendra Modi's government amounted to a move to narrow the democracy's historically inclusive and secular definition of citizenship.

"The threat is serious, and the implications quite horrendous," said Varshney, a professor at Brown University.

"Something deeply injurious to the Muslim minority can happen once their citizenship rights are taken away," he said.

Varshney warned that the law could ultimately lead to expulsion or detention -- but, even if not, contributes to marginalization.

"It creates an enabling atmosphere for violence once you say that a particular community is not fully Indian or its Indianness in grave doubt," he said.

India's parliament in December passed a law that fast-tracks citizenship for persecuted non-Muslim minorities from neighboring countries.

Responding to criticism at the time from the US commission, which advises but does not set policy, India's External Affairs Ministry said the law does not strip anyone's citizenship and "should be welcomed, not criticized, by those who are genuinely committed to religious freedom."

Fears are particularly acute in Assam, where a citizens' register finalized last year left 1.9 million people, many of them Muslims, facing possible statelessness.

Aman Wadud, a human rights lawyer from Assam who traveled to Washington for the hearing, said that many Indians lacked birth certificates or other documentation to prove citizenship and were only seeking "a dignified life."

The hearing did not exclusively focus on India, with commissioners and witnesses voicing grave concern over Myanmar's refusal to grant citizenship to the Rohingya, the mostly Muslim minority that has faced widespread violence.

Gayle Manchin, the vice chair of the commission, also voiced concern over Bahrain's stripping of citizenship from activists of the Shiite majority as well as a new digital ID system in Kenya that she said risks excluding minorities.

More than 40 people were killed last week in New Delhi in sectarian violence sparked by the citizenship law.

India on Tuesday lodged another protest after the UN human rights chief, Michele Bachelet, sought to join a lawsuit in India that challenges the citizenship law's constitutionality.