Beijing (AFP)
New containment measures were taken Tuesday in China, not far from Shanghai, the economic capital, a sign of the authorities' concern at the spread of the new coronavirus which killed Hong Kong for the first time.
He is a 39-year-old man who went to Wuhan, the Chinese metropolis where the virus appeared in December, at the end of January.
To limit the risks, Hong Kong announced Monday the closure of all land crossings, with the exception of two bridges, with mainland China, where more than 20,400 people have already been contaminated.
The disease also caused a death, made public Sunday, outside of China: a Chinese arrived in the Philippines from Wuhan.
This new coronavirus, however, has a mortality rate of 9.6%, much lower than that of SARS.
- Limit travel -
China has continued to take very strict measures to try to stem the spread of the virus.
After notably the de facto quarantine of a large part of Hubei and its more than 50 million inhabitants, three agglomerations in the eastern province of Zhejiang, several hundred kilometers from Wuhan, have thus made public new provisions. to limit movement.
At the forefront of these agglomerations is Hangzhou, located about 150 kilometers from Shanghai and headquarters of the Chinese online commerce giant Alibaba. In three of its districts, with a total population of three million, only one person per household is now allowed to go out once every two days to do the shopping.
Similar decisions came into effect in Taizhou and three districts of Ningbo, impacting nine million people.
Sunday, Wenzhou had imposed confinement on its more than nine million inhabitants.
Zhejiang Province has 829 people who contracted this viral pneumonia, the highest number behind Hubei, where the new coronavirus is said to have appeared on a market in Wuhan that sold wild animals before spreading rapidly during long lunar New Year holidays, end of January.
- New hospital -
Japanese authorities on Tuesday blocked more than 3,700 people traveling on a cruise ship due to a confirmed case of viral pneumonia on board.
A first patient was also reported in Brussels among the passengers of the plane which repatriated Sunday from Wuhan some 250 people mainly European and several cases of human-to-human contamination were detected in Singapore.
And, for the first time, the Chinese government admitted failures in its reaction to the health crisis earlier this week.
The Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party indeed asked for an improvement of the device of reaction to emergency situations following "shortcomings and difficulties which appeared in the response to the epidemic".
The government has also recognized that there is an "urgent" need for masks, overalls and safety glasses.
Faced with an overwhelmed health system, Wuhan welcomed his first patients in a new hospital built in 10 days and which has 1,000 beds. A second of this type should open its doors in the coming days.
Macau for its part announced Tuesday the closure of all its famous casinos, real economic lungs of this autonomous region of China, for a period of two weeks.
More generally, the Chinese economy could be permanently weighed down. Many businesses have been forced to close, tourism activity has slowed and the production of many international firms has been affected.
The government had granted three additional days of leave in hopes of delaying the return to the cities of the hundreds of millions of migrant workers who returned to their provinces during the Lunar New Year.
Many cities, including Shanghai, have called on businesses to shutdown for another week, while schools and universities have delayed resumption of classes.
Stock markets in mainland China rebounded sharply on Tuesday, however, resuming the day after a spectacular plunge, somewhat reassured by the measures of the central bank to contain the economic impact of the epidemic.
burx-Ith / amj / juf / ehl / bds / lch
© 2020 AFP