[The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirmed Monday that the man had the coronavirus that has sickened more than 400 people in China and others in Thailand, Japan, Taiwan and South Korea.]
By Anna Fifield,
Lena H. Sun and Lenny Bernstein
 |
|
Medical
staff at the Jinyintan hospital, where patients with pneumonia caused by
the
new strain of coronavirus are being treated, in Wuhan, China,
on
Jan. 10. (Darley Shen/Reuters)
|
BEIJING
— Chinese health
authorities sought to impose a quasi-quarantine Tuesday around the hot spot
of a mystery pneumonia-like virus that has claimed at least nine lives in China
and was confirmed in the United States for the first time.
The U.S. case — a man in his 30s under
observation in Washington state — had links to the area of most concern in
China: the commercial center of Wuhan about halfway between Beijing and Hong
Kong.
In an attempt to contain the virus, Chinese
authorities advised people in the city of 11 million not to leave. But the U.S.
case showed how far the virus has moved beyond the Wuhan region.
U.S. officials said the man, a resident of
Snohomish County, Wash., returned Jan. 15 from a trip to the region around
Wuhan. Shortly after arriving at Seattle’s international airport, he began
feeling ill and got in touch with his health-care provider on Sunday.
The Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention confirmed Monday that the man had the coronavirus that has sickened
more than 400 people in China and others in Thailand, Japan, Taiwan and South
Korea.
[What we know about the coronavirus spreading
in China and elsewhere]
The man was in stable condition at Providence
Regional Medical Center in Everett, Wash. Officials said they are monitoring
him there out of an abundance of caution, not because he is seriously ill.
CDC officials said they were expanding
screenings to international airports in Atlanta and Chicago. Measures were
already in place at the international airports in Los Angeles and San
Francisco, and at New York’s John F. Kennedy International, the first such
effort since the Ebola outbreak in 2014.
Federal officials will also direct travelers
arriving in the United States on direct and indirect flights from Wuhan to
those five airports for screening. That process is being worked out in the
coming days. For example, if a passenger was originally to fly from Wuhan to
Shanghai and then Boston, that flight would most likely be rerouted to JFK for
screening, and then proceed to Boston, CDC officials said.
But the Washington state man arrived before
the airport screenings began.
“This is an evolving situation, and again, we
do expect additional cases in the United States and globally,” said Nancy
Messonnier, the director of CDC’s National Center for Immunization and
Respiratory Diseases.
In China — with hundreds of millions of
people packing onto public transport to make their annual visits home for the
Lunar New Year — a new sense of panic set in after confirmation that the
coronavirus could be transmitted person to person.
Long lines formed at pharmacies and convenience
stores around the country as people rushed to buy surgical masks, with unlucky
customers posting photos on social media of bare shelves. People around the
country canceled their trips home for the Spring Festival, as new year
celebrations are known, the most important holiday on the Chinese calendar.
“I don’t really dare to go to the airport
right now, or even to the movie theater,” said Xie Jing, 33, who works in
advertising in Shanghai, where two cases of the coronavirus have been
confirmed. She canceled her planned trip home to Sichuan, where two cases are
suspected.
“Everyone is being very careful at the moment
in Shanghai. Everyone is wearing masks on the streets,” Xie said.
The Geneva-based World Health Organization
said it would hold an emergency meeting Wednesday to decide whether to
designate the outbreak as an international public health emergency. Australia
and the Philippines are the latest countries with suspected cases of the
infection, and Taiwan also confirmed that one person there had it.
The virus was first detected Dec. 31 and was
linked to a dirty food market in Wuhan, not far from one of the city’s main
train stations, where wild animals including wolf pups and civet cats had been
on sale for consumption.
The Washington state man did not visit the
Wuhan market and did not know anyone who was ill, U.S. officials said. The man
was visiting relatives in the Wuhan area, U.S. officials said.
The number of people who have died of the
virus rose from six to nine and the number of confirmed cases in China stood at
440 as of Wednesday morning, an increase of more than 200 from Monday,
according to Li Bin, vice director of the National Health Commission.
The vast majority of cases are in Wuhan,
where Mayor Zhou Xianwang said six people with the virus have died.
Wuhan’s three major hospitals have 800 beds,
but authorities said they would add 1,200 beds to deal with the rising number
of pneumonia cases. They also said they would foot the hospital bills for those
infected.
Initially, doctors thought the virus was not
communicable between humans, but cases of infection across the country,
including among people who have not been to Wuhan, indicated person-to-person
infection.
Some 60 people across 15 provinces are being
monitored for possible infection, with cases found as far afield as Dalian in
the northeast and Chongqing in the southwest, as well as in the metropolises of
Beijing and Shenzhen, in addition to Shanghai.
Specialists are advising against travel in
and out of Wuhan, which is in east-central China.
“We hope people can avoid going to Wuhan if
possible and that people in Wuhan can stay there,” said Zeng Guang, the chief
epidemiologist at the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention and the
leader of a government team of experts responding to the outbreak. “This is not
a call from the officials but a suggestion from us in the expert team,” he
said.
Still, he said it was “inevitable” that the
virus would continue to spread as people moved around the country for the Lunar
New Year on Saturday.
The Ministry of Transport estimates that 400
million people will be on the move, making a total of 3 billion trips in this
period.
Health authorities added more infrared
thermometers at Wuhan airport and train stations to check passengers for fever,
and some hotels in the city also began requiring that temperatures be taken
before customers could check in. Outbound group tours have been restricted.
Traffic police began conducting random checks
on vehicles traveling in and out of the city to ensure they were not
transporting live birds or wild animals.
Some airlines and travel agencies began
offering refunds to people traveling out of Wuhan or people with the virus, and
some hotels have allowed people to cancel their reservations without penalty.
At least two airlines flying to Wuhan have stocked their planes with masks.
The measures come after criticism that Wuhan
authorities have been lax in stopping the spread of the virus.
On Saturday, as the virus exploded in Wuhan,
the city held potluck banquets to celebrate the looming holiday, with more than
40,000 families attending. News and photos of the event appeared Sunday on the
front page of the state-run newspaper in Wuhan, but they were deleted from the
Internet by Tuesday amid criticism about the lack of health precautions.
The city had still planned to go ahead with
41 large-scale events for holiday celebrations, advertising them on Monday, but
it announced Tuesday that they have been “postponed.” Schools and universities
are on break for Spring Festival, but more than 100 extracurricular “cram”
schools in Wuhan have canceled classes.
Quarantine was the most effective way to
prevent transmission of the virus, since it spreads by droplets from the nose
and mouth, said Zhong Nanshan, the leader of a group of experts at China’s
National Health Commission.
“Now our big concern is if a super spreader
emerges,” Zhong said Tuesday at a news conference in the southern province of
Guangdong, using the term for a carrier who infects a disproportionately high
number of people. A “super spreader” is thought to have passed the virus on to
15 medical workers at a Wuhan hospital.
Although some hospitals have been stockpiling
antibiotics, they are not effective against viruses. “There’s no specific drug
to treat the infection at the moment,” Zhong said.
The Chinese CDC said the latest virus is the
seventh type of coronavirus known to affect humans. The previously known six
viruses include Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) and Middle East
respiratory syndrome (MERS), which are linked to animals.
Chinese health authorities have added the new
type of pneumonia to the Class B list of infectious diseases, in the same
category as SARS and HIV. But they said they would enforce the strictest
controls, usually used for the most dangerous illnesses, Class A diseases such
as cholera and the plague, to try to contain the coronavirus.
That meant authorities could forcibly
quarantine people known to have or suspected to have the coronavirus, and would
inform the public of every new case nationwide. Immigration authorities have
also added the new pneumonia to a list of infectious diseases of interest to
them.
“The Wuhan government has already taken
measures to control the flow of people leaving Wuhan,” said Geng Shuang, a
spokesman at the Chinese Foreign ministry. “I understand when they are leaving
or when they are entering, there will be checks, but there’s not a complete ban
of all people leaving.”
The government was sharply criticized as
having played down or covered up the extent of the SARS virus, but experts say
Chinese authorities have learned many lessons in the 17 years since then.
“The new pneumonia in Wuhan reminds many
people of the SARS epidemic in 2003,” said a social media account run by the
Central Political and Legal Affairs Commission, vowing not to repeat those
mistakes.
“Self-deception will only make the epidemic
worse and turn a natural disaster that was controllable into a man-made
disaster at great cost,” said the post, which was later deleted. “Only openness
can minimize panic to the greatest extent.”
Fortuitously, Wuhan is home to the
highest-grade biosafety laboratory in China, a level-four facility that opened
two years ago and is designed for work on the most dangerous microbes, such as
Ebola and Lassa fever viruses.
When it opened, the lab was hailed as a
“significant breakthrough” in building China’s public health defense system,
with state media calling it an “aircraft carrier” for virus research and a
facility that provided “firewall virus protection” for the country of 1.4
billion people.
Sun and Bernstein
reported from Washington. Lyric Li, Liu Yang and Wang Yuan contributed to this
report.
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