China isolates more than 40 million people to fight the Corona virus

China has intensified its efforts to contain the spread of the emerging corona virus, isolating more than 40 million people, and closing a large number of highly popular sites, including sections of the famous Great Wall of China.

The number of deaths due to the viral epidemic in China has risen to 26 out of 830, while the World Health Organization has refrained from declaring an international health emergency.

This mysterious disease appeared last December in a wholesale market of seafood in Wuhan, central China.

Of the 830 cases, 177 are considered serious, according to the latest toll, while 34 people have recovered and have been discharged from hospital, and more than a thousand people are suspected of being examined.

Two deaths were reported for the first time away from the epidemic center, the first in Hubei, the region surrounding Beijing, and the second in Heilongjiang Province, which borders Russia.

Quarantine
Wuhan (11 million people) has been quarantined since Thursday, its streets remain deserted, shops are closed, and traffic is limited to a minimum. The wearing of protective masks became obligatory, on the authority of an underlining of an arrest report against the offending person.

Celebrations are being further canceled and sites closed to prevent the spread of the virus, and the long holidays for the Chinese New Year began Friday, on the eve of the start of the Mouse Year on January 25. This vacation leads to hundreds of millions of movements, which exacerbates the infection.

In a sign of concern throughout China, the authorities announced the closure of sections of the Great Wall of China and symbolic sites such as the Ming Tombs. The Beijing National Stadium, built for the 2008 Olympic Games, will remain closed until the end of this month.

In Beijing, the "Forbidden City" - the old imperial palace - closed its doors from Thursday until further notice, and New Year's celebrations that usually gathered hundreds of millions of people in parks were canceled to celebrate, metro staff wore uniforms to protect themselves, and measured the heat of passenger bodies at the entrance The station.

In Shanghai, the theme park, "Disneyland" announced the closure of its doors. From Montreal, the Canadian "Circus Dosolay" canceled an offer that was scheduled in Beijing at the request of the authorities.

In the face of the crisis, the Communist regime on Thursday made an unprecedented decision to prevent all trains and planes from leaving Wuhan and to close highways.

A few planes went to the city during the day. Buses and ships in the Yangtze River - the longest river in China and Wuhan on its banks - were ordered to stop in both directions.

With hospitals overcrowded, authorities have begun building a hospital designated to receive 1,000 people infected with the virus within ten days, and it is expected to open its doors on February 3, according to official media outlets.

Health organization
In the same context, the World Health Organization recognized the existence of a "state of emergency in China", but considered, after a two-day meeting in Geneva, that it was "too early to talk about a global health emergency."

The organization has not yet used the term global emergency except in rare epidemic situations that require a firm international response, such as the swine flu "H1N1" in 2009, the "Zika" virus in 2016, and "Ebola", which swept a part of West Africa between 2014 and 2016 and the Republic Democratic Republic of the Congo 2018.

And she stresses that there is no evidence so far of the transmission of infection from one person to another outside China, adding that the matter "so far is limited to family groups and health care workers."

The organization does not require travel restrictions, but rather checks for passengers at airports. It also calls on "all countries" to put in place measures to detect HIV cases for which there is currently no treatment or vaccine to prevent it.

In Davos, where the World Economic Forum is being held, the "Alliance for Epidemiological Innovations" announced Thursday that medical trials related to preparing the first vaccine could take place "starting in the summer".

Injuries were reported in Asian countries (Hong Kong, Macao, Taiwan, South Korea, Japan, Thailand, Singapore, and Vietnam) as well as in the United States.

The disease raises fears of a recurrence of the SARS virus similar to Corona, which killed 650 people in China and Hong Kong between 2002 and 2003.