Coronavirus Live Updates: Death Toll Reaches 56 as U.S. Finds Third Case

Coronavirus Live Updates: Death Toll Reaches 56 as U.S. Finds Third Case.

Like many of you, I am highly concerned with this Wuhan Coronavirus. It makes me very nervous. I live in a small town in Alberta of just over 3000 people. I know that being in a smaller town, we won't get the resources big cities will get. I am hoping that the virus would miss us all together but, I know that probably wouldn't happen. Being in a small town also means we travel a lot to the larger cities such as Calgary, Edmonton, Red Deer, Lethbridge, Okotokes, so on...

Because we travel, that means we cold potentially get the virus and bring it back.

It takes two weeks for this virus to start to show signs so, we could go to the city, get the virus, come home and not even know we're infected for 2 weeks. That in itself is terrifying. I have 3 young sons ages 14, 12 and 11; I don't want them getting infected and dying! I also have a daughter who has two very young children of her own ages 3 and 4 months. I'd be heart broken if they got infected and died.

I am going to be smart, stock up on Lysol, hand sanitizers, rubber gloves and face masks. If this virus gets any closer, my kids won't be going outside too far and we'll be using all of the above listed.

I don't normally get nervous like this. When the H1N1 virus went around a few years ago, I kept my kids home, did NOT vaccinate them (because many were dying of the vaccinations) and used sanitizers, Lysol and we were fine. This however, seems a lot worse. It's air born, so anyone who goes near someone infected can get it too.

The 50 year old man who was infected that flew from China to Toronto, he could have potentially spread the virus to everyone on that flight. That means, everyone on that flight that left the plane and was in the air port could have infected those people and anyone they were in contact with, and those people infect anyone they're in contact with and so on. I mean, this could potentially be, the new plague that wipes out a large part of humanity. Natural selection; right?

Hundreds of medical personnel are being deployed to Wuhan, China, and affected areas to treat the ill and stem the outbreak.

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A third infection has been confirmed in the United States, in Orange County, Calif., and Ivory Coast announced a suspected case.

Here’s what you need to know:

The death toll rises to 56, with one fatality in Shanghai.

China announced 15 more deaths from the new coronavirus on Sunday morning, including one in Shanghai, the first reported in the metropolis.

Thirteen deaths were also announced in Hubei Province, where the outbreak began, and one was announced in Henan Province. That brought the toll in China to 56.

Across the country, 688 new cases were diagnosed on Saturday, the government said early Sunday, bringing the total number of confirmed cases to 1,975.

Wuhan Coronavirus Map: Tracking the Spread of the Outbreak

The virus has sickened more than 1,900 people in China and a handful in other countries.

Deaths from the coronavirus had previously been reported outside of Hubei. But the death in Shanghai, which is among China’s most populous cities and a major commercial hub, is likely to fuel anxieties about the disease’s spread.

Shanghai’s municipal health commission said on Sunday that the patient who died was an 88-year-old man.

A third U.S. case is confirmed in California.

A person in Orange County, Calif., has tested positive for the novel coronavirus. The Orange County Health Care Agency, which received confirmation from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said the person had been sent to a hospital and was in “good condition.”

The patient is a traveler from Wuhan, China, and “there is no evidence that person-to-person transmission has occurred in Orange County,” according to the agency. “The current risk of local transmission remains low,” it said in a statement.

It is the third confirmed case in the United States. The others involved a woman in her 60s in Chicago and a man in his 30s in Washington State.

China halts the trade in wildlife across the country.

A vendor selling fish at a wet market in Langfang, 35 miles south of Beijing, last week. — Credit...Giulia Marchi for The New York Times

China has banned the wildlife trade nationwide until the epidemic passes, three government departments said on Sunday.

The outbreak has drawn fresh attention to China’s animal markets, where the sale of exotic wildlife has been linked to epidemiological risks. The Wuhan virus is believed to have spread from one such market in the city. The SARS outbreak nearly two decades ago was also traced back to the wildlife trade.

A statement issued by China’s markets regulator, agriculture ministry and forestry bureau said that all transactions of wildlife would be forbidden immediately in wholesale markets, supermarkets, restaurants and e-commerce platforms. It also encouraged consumers to understand the health risks of eating wild animals.

The consumption of exotic creatures has been driven partly by beliefs about their supposed health benefits, although such ideas are starting to lose their grip, particularly on younger people.

A popular travel blogger, Wang Mengyun, apologized recently for eating bat soup in a video from a few years ago. Ms. Wang, who has more than two million followers on the social platform Weibo, said that she had been unaware of the health risks of eating bats when she made the video in the Pacific island nation of Palau. She said she had been trying to highlight the local cuisine.

In her post, Ms. Wang emphasized that the bat had been locally raised and was not wild. “Many countries around the world eat these,” she wrote.

Her post has since been deleted.

Americans in Wuhan are being evacuated to San Francisco.

Medical staff in protective clothing at the Wuhan Red Cross Hospital on Saturday. — Credit...Hector Retamal/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

The United States government offered details on its plan to evacuate American diplomats and other citizens from Wuhan, saying on Sunday that it was arranging a flight that would leave on Tuesday and travel to San Francisco.

The State Department has ordered all American employees at the United States Consulate in Wuhan to leave the city. In an email sent on Sunday to Americans living in China, the department asked all other citizens who wanted a spot on the plane to contact the embassy. Capacity would be “extremely limited,” the message said, and priority would be given to people at greater risk from the virus.

It is unclear who will fall into that category.

Jonny Dangerfield, 30, an American who came to Wuhan to celebrate the Lunar New Year with his wife and children, said he hoped his family might be given priority because his three children are all under 5.

“If it weren’t for them, we maybe would not have much worry at all,” Mr. Dangerfield, who works in finance in Phoenix, said in a telephone interview.

He and his family are staying with his in-laws in Wuhan. With rising food prices in the city less of a burden on him than for the city’s poorer residents, he said he felt like one of the lucky ones in the situation. “Just to keep ourselves sane,” he said, “we have low expectations about getting on that plane.”

The authorities in France have said that they plan to provide a bus service for French nationals and their families who want to leave Wuhan. The Russian Embassy is also working with the Chinese authorities to evacuate Russian citizens from the area.

Global concern grows as the outbreak spreads.

Public health officials in Toronto on Saturday night announced test results showing that Canada had its first “presumptive” case of coronavirus.

Dr. Barbara Yaffe, Ontario’s associate chief medical officer of health, said the patient was a man in his 50s who returned to Toronto on Jan. 22 after visiting Wuhan, China. The next day, he was admitted to a Toronto hospital with a respiratory infection. He is now in stable condition.

Dr. David Williams, Ontario’s chief medical officer of health, said that while they were convinced that they have a positive case, a government laboratory in Winnipeg, Manitoba, would run additional tests for confirmation.

On Saturday, Portugal’s health ministry said that doctors were monitoring and treating a patient in the Curry Cabral hospital in Lisbon who is believed to have contracted the virus during a recent stay in Wuhan. The patient was described as being in a stable condition. The Portuguese ministry is awaiting the results of hospital tests to confirm the virus.

In a sign of the growing global dread about the disease, Taiwan said on Sunday it would bar all visitors from China’s Hubei Province to the self-governing island, where a few cases have been confirmed. Taiwan’s government also said it would suspend applications from Chinese citizens for travel permits except in special cases, such as disease control or humanitarian medical assistance.

Macau also announced that starting from Monday, it would restrict travelers from Wuhan.

The Ivory Coast said on Sunday that an Ivorian woman who had recently returned from China was suspected of being infected with the coronavirus, although tests have not yet fully confirmed it.

Dr. Eugène Aka Aouele, the Ivorian health minister, said in a statement that on Saturday the authorities had been alerted by the airport in Abidjan, the capital, that the woman, a 34-year-old student, had been living in Beijing for the past five years. She arrived on a Turkish Airlines flight to Abidjan and was exhibiting flulike symptoms, including coughing and respiratory difficulties, that had appeared earlier in the week.

The woman was taken to a special facility at the airport for a medical examination and testing, the statement said.

“Her general state is satisfactory,” the ministry said. “There are, at this stage, suspicions of a case of pneumonia tied to the coronavirus. The final diagnosis will be established after the results of analysis from the samples that were taken.”

Japan will help all of its citizens wishing to travel back to the country from Wuhan amid the deadly outbreak, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said on Sunday.

Mr. Abe told reporters that the government would arrange a charter flight or other means to bring them back from the city, where the new virus was first identified.

“As soon as our arrangements with the Chinese government are set, we have decided to bring back all Japanese citizens who wish to return, by charter planes and all other means,” Mr. Abe said at his official residence.

Public health experts warn against mass anxiety.

Medical staff members transporting a patient to the Red Cross Hospital in Wuhan. — Credit...Hector Retamal/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Despite the rising number of coronavirus cases, public health expects say there is no cause for panic. The common flu, after all, kills roughly 35,000 people a year and hospitalizes about 200,000 in the United States alone.

Yet the unknowns are causing worry. And there are signs that this outbreak could be more serious than the common flu. Other coronaviruses have far higher mortality rates than the common flu, and have also led to global outbreaks.

In addition, conclusive evidence about how this outbreak started is lacking. Although officials in Wuhan first traced it to a seafood market, some people who have fallen ill never visited the market. Researchers have also offered disparate explanations about which animals may have transmitted the virus to humans.

China’s record doesn’t help. During the SARS epidemic in 2002 and 2003, officials covered up the extent of the crisis, delaying the response.

The Chinese government has promised far more transparency this time around, and the World Health Organization has praised its cooperation with the scientific community. But mistrust of the local and national authorities, compounded by missteps and mistakes in handling the illness, runs deep.