Here’s a summary of what’s happened so far on Friday.
450 more passengers disembarked from the Diamond Princess.
Two Australians passengers who were repatriated from Japan tested positive for the virus after arriving home.
Another doctor in Wuhan died from the virus. He was 29.
South Korea reported a big jump in confirmed cases, to 156, as it added 52 new cases on Friday. The vast majority of new cases were in the city of Daegu, where special measures were put in place to control the virus’s spread.
New cases in China reported on Friday totalled 1,109, up from 394 reported on Thursday. The total numbers of infections stands at 75,685.
China reported 118 deaths nationally, taking total deaths from the outbreak to 2,236.
500 Chinese prisoners are infected with Covid-19, across three provinces. This includes 230 inmates at Wuhan’s Women’s Prison, where the director was sacked.
The director of Wuhan Women’s Prison has been removed from her position, according to the Hubei Daily, where it’s believed 230 inmates have tested positive for Covid-19.
Another 41 prisoners in Shayang Hanjin prison, also tested positive, according to reports in the Hubei Daily.
Hubei Daily: 271 prisoners in Hubei are infected with #covid19 among which 230 are in Wuhan Women’s Prison and 41 are in Shayang Hanjin Prison. Head of the women’s prison has already been sacked and an officer in Hanjin was given serious warning for omitting contact history. pic.twitter.com/bs1BuVQ7uE
Agence France-Presse has conducted interviews with some of the crew members of the Diamond Princess, who were not subject to the same quarantine restrictions on the ship.
They (the crew) were preparing food and delivering meals to cabins, leading some critics to charge they were inadvertently spreading the virus throughout the ship, which has seen more than 600 cases of the potentially deadly COVID-19 disease.
As they have been in close contact with possibly infected passengers, the crew is expected to undergo a 14-day quarantine starting when the last passenger leaves the ship.
Crew have generally been reticent to speak to media, apparently concerned for their jobs, but some have broken their silence to describe difficult conditions and fear on board.
Sonali Thakkar, a 24-year-old security officer on board, told AFP in an interview crews were sleeping two to a cabin, sharing washrooms and eating together, “so the disease can spread very easily.”
“We do have a lot of fear, me and my colleagues, more than 1000 crew. We’ve been working since the quarantine started. As the days pass and the number of patients increase, the crew is feeling more afraid,” she said.
“They are scared that it can spread really fast and all we want is tests to be done and to be separated from those who are positive. We don’t want to stay on board.”
Her father Dinesh said: “Sonali is stuck in a small windowless room on the cruise and is very scared... We speak to her every day trying to calm her.”
“Why did the government wait for so long as more and more people got infected? She should have been rescued with other Indians from the cruise long ago. This is very wrong,” he told AFP.
Hubei adds 220 cases to daily total to account for prisoner infections
Hubei province has revised its new cases for Friday up from 411 to 631, which pushes the day’s total across china above 1,100. New deaths in Hubei remained unchanged at 115.
“The prison system has increased by a total of 220 cases,” the bulletin from the Hubei health commission says.
A note at the top of the commission’s revised figures says: “currently, there is no access to the province prison network reporting system of infectious diseases”.
It also says 271 cases were reported by the prison department, of which 51 seem to have been counted previously, and the remaining 220 were added to the daily total of new cases today.
In case you missed this, the BBC’s Stephen McDonell has made a video about the empty streets of Beijing and how its citizens are coping with the virus lockdown.
China’s Global Television Network is reporting that 200 prisoners in a facility in the eastern province of Shandong are infected with Covid-19. The sources of the infection is reported to be an affected prison guard.
East China's Shandong Province reported 200 #COVID19 cases from the Rencheng Prison on Thu., bringing the total to 207 in the facility
- Virus brought in by affected prison guard - Treatments underway - Provincial justice chief among eight officials removed from office pic.twitter.com/yyMWa21a86
Car sales plummeted in China in February, state media is reporting.
Retail of domestic passenger #vehicles in China plummeted 92% y-o-y in the first half of Feb, a record decline, due to #COVID19: industrial report pic.twitter.com/SkLUjtOdqA
Another doctor in Wuhan has died from the virus. According to health authorities, 29 year old Peng Yinhua, working in respiratory and critical care at Wuhan’s Jiangxia district’s First People’s Hospital, died at 9:50pm on Thursday.
Peng had contracted the virus and was admitted to hospital on 25 January, where his condition worsened by the 30th. He was sent to Jinyin Tan hospital in Wuhan for emergency treatment and died at the hospital. The Jiangxia health commission said it expressed its “deepest condolences” to Peng’s family.
Jiangxia district had previously held Peng up as an example of the many doctors fighting on the frontline of the outbreak, featuring an article about Peng delaying his wedding in order to work. On Weibo, news of his death has travelled quickly, with more than 190 million views. “The bride will never get her bridegroom back home again,” one user wrote.
Third group of Diamond Princess passengers disembark
The Japanese media outlet, NHK, says a third group of passengers has left the stricken cruise ship in Yokohama. Some 700 people have disembarked since Wednesday and another 450 are expected to get off on Friday, NHK says. Only those who have tested negative are being allowed to leave, but “anyone who shared a cabin with an infected passenger is being asked to stay onboard for another 14 days after they separated – even if they have tested negative”, the report says.
Passengers disembark from the quarantined Diamond Princess cruise ship. Photograph: Tomohiro Ohsumi/Getty Images
80% of new South Korean virus cases are in city of Daegu
We’re getting some more detail on the 52 new cases of Covid-19 in South Korea.
Yonhap news agency is reporting that 41 are in the city of Daegu, 300km southeast of Seoul, and the neighbouring North Gyeongsang Province. Another three were reported in Seoul, the Korea Centre for Disease Control and Prevention said in a statement. Of the 52 new cases, 39 are linked to the Shincheonji Church of Jesus in Daegu. Around 1,000 members of the church have been asked to self isolate.
Yonhap also reported that military personnel have been confirmed as having Covid-19. Three cases were confirmed, one each in the army, the navy and the air force, it said.
All three are believed to have visited or contacted people from Daegu.
Meanwhile, in the capital, Seoul, authorities are taking measures to curtail the virus, including banning rallies and closing down Shincheonji church services, Yonhap said.
Prison officials removed from posts in China after inmates test positive to Covid-19
Two Chinese officials have been removed from their posts at prisons, after both centres recorded confirmed cases of Covid-19, the state-owned Global Times is reporting.
Just doubling back on those figures for the virus in China ... there were 889 new confirmed cases reported in Friday’s national briefing from the country’s health commission, which is a jump up from the 394 reported the previous day. The total number of infections stands at 75,465.
You may recall that the way China reports cases changed again yesterday, to remove patients who had been clinically diagnosed (by a doctor/scan) who had subsequently tested negative for the virus. This appeared to influence the trend down on Thursday, compared to Wednesday.
Trying to establish trends on a day-to-day basis is difficult, but generally, it would seem new cases are trending down, as you can see in the Johns Hopkins University graph of confirmed cases below.
Coronavirus outbreak trends as per Johns Hopkins University CSSE, correct as of Friday 21 February, 0230GMT. Photograph: Johns Hopkins University CSSE
On Friday China reported 118 deaths (on Thursday it was 114), taking the total number of fatalities to 2,236.
South Korea has seen a significant rise in Covid-19 cases – from 104 to 156 – prompting the PM to declare “strong and swift” measures will be taken to tackle the outbreak.
“Special care zones” have been designated in Daegu and Cheongdo. The latter recorded the country’s first death from the virus on Thursday, according to Yonhap news agency.
Seventy cases have been reported in Daegu (population 2.4 million) this week, many linked to a controversial “cult” church. The city’s mayor said residents faced an “unprecedented crisis” from the virus outbreak.
As of Friday more than 400 members of the church were showing symptoms of the disease, Reuters reports, though tests were still ongoing, Daegu mayor, Kwon Young-jin, said at a briefing.
After several military members tested positive for the virus on Thursday, South Korea’s defence minister banned all soldiers from taking leave, leaving their barracks, and receiving guests.
Two Australian passengers from Diamond Princess test positive after being repatriated
Two Australians who were repatriated from the stricken Diamond Princess cruise ship in Japan have tested positive for Covid-19 after returning home.
More than 160 Australians onboard the cruise liner were flown to the Howard Springs camp outside the northern city of Darwin on Wednesday.
At news conference on Thursday local medical authorities said six passengers had cold-like symptoms on arrival and would be tested the virus. They were quarantined from the other passengers, and from other residents at the camp who were evacuated previously from the city of Wuhan.
Health authorities say it is possible other Australian passengers from the Diamond Princess may test positive.
On Thursday Australia extended its travel ban for people coming from China into a fourth week. It will stay in place until 29 February, despite please from the tertiary education sector, who want their international students to be able to return for the start of the academic year.
Australian evacuees from the quarantined cruise ship Diamond Princess in Japan arrived at the Howard Springs complex, 30km southeast of Darwin, on Wednesday. Photograph: Helen Orr/EPA
Hello and welcome to the Guardian’s live coverage of the coronavirus outbreak.
China has recorded 889 new cases, up from 394 recorded on Thursday. There were also 118 new deaths, compared to 114 the day before.
In other news:
The South Korean city of Daegu and the surrounding region was declared a special management zone after a surge in virus cases.
Two Australian passengers on the Diamond Princess have tested positive after being flown home to Australia on Thursday.
British passengers on the Diamond Princess cruise ship have been told they can leave if they have tested negative. A UK flight is due to leave Tokyo on Friday.
Kuwait and Iraq have restricted travel with Iran due to the coronavirus.
