24 Hours In The Coronavirus Outbreak: How Global Concern Has Surged In A Day
It’s been more than a month since Chinese state media reported a new viral outbreak had been detected in the country in what became the first in a steady stream of coronavirus headlines.
But, in the last 24 hours, there has been a shift in tone, with growing concern about the Covid-19 illness heightening fears the disease will become a pandemic.
On Tuesday, the World Health Organisation (WHO) warned countries that the virus is “literally knocking at the door”, a worry borne out by a ballooning number of cases and increased preventative action, from manned checkpoints in quarantined towns and governments issuing travel warnings.
Sports events, including the Olympics in Japan, have been put in jeopardy with the Six Nations rugby match between Ireland and Italy in Dublin cancelled over coronavirus fears.
The crisis is engulfing parts of the world well beyond mainland China, with areas seen as among the worst-equipped to deal with an outbreak and some of the world’s richest nations taking action. The apprehension was reflected in sagging financial markets across the world.
Deaths continue in China
In China, the total number of infections grows. In the last day, there have been 508 reported new cases and another 71 deaths, 68 of them in the central city of Wuhan. The updates bring mainland China’s totals to 77,658 cases and 2,663 deaths.
The number of new cases reported daily has, however, slowed from a peak of more than 4,000 earlier in the month.
But while China remains home to the vast majority of the world’s cases, attention has increasingly moved to where the outbreak would spread next.
South Korea appears to be an emerging hotspot after its caseload grew by 144 to a total of 977 people now recorded as having the illness. The country reported its 11th fatality from Covid-19 amid signs that the problem magnified nearly 15-fold in a week. In the country’s south-eastern city of Daegu and surrounding areas, panic over the virus has brought towns...
