Already 25 dead out of a total of 830 infected people: the results of the new coronavirus that appeared in December on a market in Wuhan (center) worsened further on Friday, January 24. Of the 830 cases, 177 are considered serious, while 34 "cured" patients have been discharged from the hospital. More than a thousand suspected cases are under investigation.

China has also confirmed a second death outside the zone at the epicenter of the epidemic. This person died in Heilongjiang (northeast), a province bordering Russia.

Cases of contamination have been announced in Asia (Hong Kong, Macao, Taiwan, South Korea, Japan, Thailand, Singapore, Vietnam) but also in the United States. Meanwhile, the BBC reported on Thursday that five people were being examined in Scotland to determine if they had contracted the coronavirus. It would be, if necessary, the first known patients in Europe.

Wuhan in quarantine

The city of Wuhan, 11 million inhabitants, has been de facto in quarantine since Thursday. The long Chinese New Year holiday starts this Friday, on the eve of the Year of the Rat which begins on January 25. The hundreds of millions of trips generated by this leave could encourage contagion.

The communist regime made an unprecedented decision on Thursday to ban all trains and planes from Wuhan and block the highways. Only a few planes were still announced during the day for the city. Buses and boats on the Yangtze, the longest river in China that waters Wuhan, have been ordered to stop in both directions.

For the second consecutive day, the streets of Wuhan were deserted, shops closed and traffic reduced to a minimum. Wearing a mask is compulsory under penalty of a fine.

Other towns near Wuhan are cut off from the world. About a hundred kilometers to the east, an agglomeration of two million inhabitants, Huangshi, announced Friday morning the suspension of public transport and the closure of a bridge over the Yangtze. In total, some 26 million people are affected by these measures in Hubei, a province of nearly 60 million inhabitants.

"Emergency in China", according to WHO

Beijing's Forbidden City, the former palace of the emperors, has announced its closure until further notice. The capital has also decreed the cancellation of New Year's festivities, which usually attract hundreds of thousands of onlookers in the parks. From Montreal, Cirque du Soleil announced that it was suspending a show in China at the request of the authorities.

At the end of a two-day meeting at its headquarters in Geneva, the World Health Organization (WHO) on Thursday acknowledged "the emergency in China" but judged that it was "too early" to speak "of 'public health emergency of international concern ".

WHO says there is currently no evidence of human-to-human transmission outside of China and that it appears to be "limited to family groups and health workers". WHO does not recommend travel restrictions but establish screening at airports. The organization also calls on "all countries" to put in place measures to detect cases of coronavirus, against which there is currently no treatment or vaccine.

In Davos, where the World Economic Forum is held, the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness (CEPI) announced Thursday that clinical trials for a first vaccine could take place "as early as the summer".

With AFP and Reuters

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