Coronavirus: Asia worries and shivers

Text by: RFI Follow

The coronavirus epidemic brings its share of new victims and contaminations every day. China, where the disease originated, and neighboring countries are trying to contain the damage to public health as well as to social and economic life, as best they can. Overview.

Publicity

In China, there are now nearly 1,400 deaths, and nearly 64,000 cases of contamination have now been recorded in the country including at least 1,716 among doctors and nurses working in contact with the sick, according to the National Health Commission. We also learned this Friday of the death of six members of the nursing staff working with the infected.

Coronavirus epidemic: small businesses are suffering from the economic downturn. Listen to the testimonies collected by our correspondent in Beijing, Stéphane Lagardea

Despite the continuous increase in the number of victims, the Chinese president wanted to be reassuring. " The Chinese nation can limit the impact of the epidemic on the economy, " Xi Jinping repeated Thursday evening during a telephone conversation with Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad. But the activity of small businesses is affected by the health situation.

Pakistani students in Wuhan worried

Still in China, stranded foreigners are expressing their concern, like these Pakistani students whom RFI contacted by phone on Friday. Hundreds of Pakistani students are stranded in Wuhan, the epicenter of the epidemic. They have been confined to a hotel for three weeks and are asking their government to evacuate them so that they can find their loved ones. Imran Khan, Pakistani Prime Minister, tweeted that the authorities would do anything for the stranded students , but so far no one has been repatriated.

He does not face the problem, and always looks for excuses not to evacuate us. My family is worried, she calls me every day, she gives me at least 5 calls a day!

Pakistani student Rehan Rasheed stuck in Wuhan: "My country expresses itself but does not act!" at the microphone of Juliette Pietraszeski

“ Since January 23, the city has been completely closed. So we're all stuck in Wuhan. There is no way out. Really none. No plane, no bus… And we are asked to stay confined in the hotel. But I am not sick, I am psychologically exhausted! “, Rehan Rasheed, a medical student, told us by phone.

In Japan too the concern is growing

Thursday, February 13, the Japanese Ministry of Health confirmed the death of an octogenarian living near Kanagawa. She said she had never traveled abroad. Several cases of Japanese contamination have been reported, particularly in people who had neither gone to China nor had contact with people from Wuhan, reports our correspondent in Tokyo, Bruno Duval .

The octogenarian lived not far from Tokyo, where his son-in-law is a taxi driver: he too has just been tested positive for coronavirus. However, contrary to what the Japanese media had assured, it has not transported any passenger of foreign origin, lately. A second taxi driver, in the suburbs of the capital, also contracted the virus. Just like two people living in western Japan: a surgeon and a patient from the hospital where the former practiced.

This black series of contaminations worries the media and public opinion. Rightly so, according to specialists in infectious diseases, for whom Japan has indeed just crossed a new worrying health stage. The government denies that the coronavirus is now in the epidemic stage in the archipelago. It earned him to be accused on social networks of minimizing the severity of the crisis ... As in March 2011, in the first days after the Fukushima nuclear accident.

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• Japan
• China
• coronavirus
• Health and Medicine
• Pakistan

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