Beijing, Jun 15: China is locking now ten more neighbourhoods in Beijing to try and contain the spread of a new coronavirus outbreak linked to a food market, authorities announced Monday.
City official Li Junjie said at a press conference that fresh cases had been found in a second wholesale market in northwestern Haidian district, and as a result, the market and nearby schools would be closed, and people living in ten communities around it placed under lockdown.
Islamabad, May 24: Pakistan recorded 32 coronavirus-related deaths during the last 24 hours, taking the total number of fatalities in the country to 1,133, the health ministry said on Sunday.
The total number of COVID-19 patients in Pakistan also jumped to 54,601, it said.
Read: Coronavirus India update: State-wise total number of confirmed cases, deaths
Sindh reported the maximum number of 21,645 coronavirus cases, followed by Punjab at 19,557, Khyber-Pakhtukhwa at 7,685, Balochistan at 3,306, Islamabad at 1,592, Gilgit-Baltistan at 619 and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK) at 197.
According to the health ministry, 17,198 coronavirus patients have recovered and 473,607 tests, including 12,915 in the last 24 hours, have been conducted so far.
The government also issued strict instructions to observe social distancing while offering Eid prayer and asked people to avoid visiting relatives and hosting parties.
Eid congregations were held at open places, mosques and Eidgahs in all major cities and towns while following strict standard operating procedures (SOPs) of social distancing and other precautionary measures.
Pakistan Prime Minister's Special Assistant on Health Zafar Mirza on Friday said the deadly infection would continue to multiply if precautions are not taken.
Earlier this month, the government had announced the lifting of the countrywide lockdown imposed to curb the spread of the virus in phases, even as infections continued to rise in the country.
Prime Minister Imran Khan had cited the economic havoc the virus restrictions had wreaked on citizens as the reason behind the decision.
The prime minister on Saturday urged Pakistanis to forgo traditional Eid festivity in view of the hundreds of fatalities caused by the coronavirus and the lives lost in Friday's plane crash in Karachi.
Ninety-seven people, including nine children, were killed and two passengers miraculously survived a fiery crash when a Pakistan International Airlines plane with 99 travellers on board plunged into a densely populated residential area near the Jinnah International Airport in Karachi. Most of the victims were travelling home to celebrate Eid.
Jakarta, Mar 15: Indonesia's transport minister is in intensive care after testing positive for the novel coronavirus, an official has said, as schools and tourist attractions were ordered to close over the health threat.
Transportation Minister Budi Karya Sumadi was receiving treatment at an army hospital in Jakarta, State Secretary Pratikno said on Saturday.
A hospital spokesman said Sumadi was encountering difficulty breathing but that his condition was improving.
Pratikno said Sumadi was involved in virus mitigation efforts, particularly the evacuation of Indonesians from epicenters of the outbreak, and that President Joko Widodo had called for tests to be carried out on other ministers.
Cases of the virus in Indonesia, the world's fourth most populous country, have jumped from zero two weeks ago to 96, with five deaths, according to government spokesperson Achmad Yurianto.
He also said the virus has spread outside Greater Jakarta to Bandung in West Java, Solo in Central Java, Manado in North Sulawesi, Pontianak in West Kalimantan, as well as holiday havens Yogyakarta and Bali.
Following the increase, the government on Saturday established a task force on COVID-19 mitigation.
Jakarta's Governor Anies Baswedan announced that schools would close for two weeks starting Monday, and ordered the closure of city-owned tourist attractions, such as Ragunan Zoo and Ancol beach.
He emphasized that Jakarta would not be locked down but urged people "to be responsible" and called for social distancing when possible.
Similarly, the administration of Solo, Central Java, Friday announced that schools and tourist attractions would close after a coronavirus patient died in the region.
The World Health Organization has said it is particularly concerned about high-risk nations with weaker health systems, which who may lack the facilities to identify cases.
A day after declaring the coronavirus outbreak to be pandemic this week, WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus called Indonesia's president Widodo and both agreed to "scale up cooperation."
Wuhan, Feb 16: The death toll from China's coronavirus epidemic has climbed to 1,665 after 142 more people died, mostly in the worst-hit Hubei Province, and the confirmed cases jumped to 68,500, officials said on Sunday, as top WHO experts scramble to assist Beijing contain the virus spread.
China's National Health Commission confirmed 2,009 new cases across the country.
Hubei and its provincial capital Wuhan, where the virus first emerged in December, reported 1,843 of the new cases. The latest report brought the total confirmed cases in Hubei to 56,249 cases.
Of the new deaths, 139 were in Hubei, two in Sichuan, and one in Hunan, the state-run Xinhua news agency reported.
The number of new cases, however, appears to have started dropping and a top Chinese health official has said efforts to control the outbreak have reached the “most crucial stage".
The report said 9,419 infected patients had been discharged from hospital after recovery so far.
The coronavirus has posed a severe threat to the medical staff as more than 1,700 Chinese health officials have been infected by the virus while treating the patients and six of them have died.
Experts from the World Health Organisation are expected in Beijing on Sunday to join Chinese health authorities in containing the virus, which has spread to several other countries forcing them to temporarily stop tourist arrivals from China.
The health commission said a joint mission with WHO experts will pay field visits to China's three provincial-level regions to learn the effectiveness of the epidemic control measures.
One task of the mission will be to come up with standard medicine to cure the disease, according to the health commission.
Several antiviral drugs are under clinical trials and Chinese researchers have narrowed down their focus to a few existing drugs, including Chloroquine Phosphate, Favipiravir and Remdesivir, said Zhang Xinmin, director of the China National Centre for Biotechnology Development.
Experts have asked people to frequently wash hands and face, and wear masks.
Authorities have begun quarantining large quantity of bank notes and coins in the affected areas and sanitising them with UV light before releasing them back into circulation to stop the virus from spreading.
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