Coronavirus: Senior Chinese officials 'removed' as death toll rises- BBC News

Well, the statistics on the

coronavirus

have been revised upwards. There have been 250 more

death

s, almost all of them are in Hubei province, where this outbreak started, and as you can see in this graph, there has been a huge increase in the number of cases - there are now over 48,000 in Hubei, which That represents an increase of 15,000 and the upward change is due in part to a broader definition of the virus and how it is diagnosed. Here's the World Health Organization on that which is crucial we understand most of these cases relate to a period going back days and weeks and our retrospective reports as cases as sometimes going back to the beginning from the outbreak itself well here is the number of cases in china going up and up now we are close to 60,000 the

death

toll

in china is over 1350 but actually that number is higher those who die at home they are not counted in the official figures and the BBC knows from speaking to people in Wuhan that this is what people are choosing. g to do here is a quote from an article on the BBC

news

website, we would rather die at home than go into quarantine and as this crisis escalates there is increasing pressure on the authorities to make

senior

officials

in Hubei have now been laid off. this from Steven MacDonald in Beijing now about whether the firing of those two

senior

Communist Party

officials

on this very day is a coincidence no I'm not sure but it doesn't look good for them I mean Party Secretary Bahia . and the party secretary also for the city of Wuhan have been

removed

, but someone had to go down for this.

I mean there's a lot of public anger. A lot could have been done to control this before millions of people left Wuhan and in fact there is a lot of evidence to show that in those early days they tried to prevent information from getting out and here is Celia Hatton on who could replace those officials there two new men in the place and in Hebei and in Wuhan both are loyal to see Jin ping, especially the man in charge of the province genome, he comes from Shanghai, now he is a man known for his tight security, but also last year he implemented a city wide recycling program in shanghai now i know it probably doesn't sound that impressive but in a city of 23 million almost overnight for all those people to suddenly follow new rules he managed achieve that that program is still in place and it's going on all over china so here's a man who is known for security and real project implementation big minds overnight while all those skills will be needed because scientists and officials are trying to work together to factor in an effective and fashionable response.

We don't know so far what is happening and what we can see, but what we don't know is the real potential of this virus, whether or not this will eventually become the end of a disease. emic in humans like TB influenza or others because influenza also comes from animals to humans and sometimes becomes a permanent resident another important detail is that we know that this virus is not spreading particularly fast outside of China here is David Heyman from new certainly spread everywhere china and china are making every effort to stop the disease which is important however it's those 24 sites outside of china and also the cruise ships that's where the information about the severity of the disease because the patients here are being monitored very closely as are their contacts and we are learning a lot as we see what happens in these situations that will hopefully lock down the disease in these countries and not allow it to spread more.

Well, let's shift our focus from China. further south of vietnam because a city in the far north of vietnam of about 10,000 people is now in quarantine after five cases of the virus this is a picture we have of the checkpoints that have been set up on the outskirts of the city of Vietnam which we later changed to Cambodia because the US cruise ship which had been turned away by five countries was finally able to dock here. She spent two weeks at sea looking for a place to stop even though there are no confirmed cases on board and it's a picture we saw online. of passengers cheering and clinking glasses as they finally reached port and though they might celebrate, but for the engine, they will still have to stay on board as a precaution.

Next we need to talk about perhaps the cruise ship that has been getting the most attention, the Diamond Princess currently stuck in Yokohama, Japan, has over three and a half thousand people on board and no one gets off, that's because all those people at least 200 passengers and crew are infected, Wingfield Hays is right next door. so the number of infections aboard the Diamond Princess behind me here in Yokohama has risen again today 44 new confirmed cases today which followed 39 cases yesterday and that brings the ship's total number of infections to 218 and that means that As we now know this is the largest outbreak of the Cova 19 virus anywhere outside of mainland China, the Japanese government has made a small concession to the criticism that has been mounting. who is handling this outbreak, they have said that very elderly people over the age of 80 will be able to disembark if they have underlying health conditions or if they are in one of those inside cabins that don't have windows or outside balconies, so expect to see that start to happen maybe tonight or Friday but there are a lot of questions that remain first of all obviously if our infection is still taking place if the virus is still circulating around the ship no one really knows and the other big question is why still has the Japanese government failed to test all passengers and crew on board now.

Two weeks ago a group of British nationals were evacuated from Wuhan and China and spent two weeks in a hospital in the North West of England, well now all 83 have been discharged, you can see one of them celebrating there, everyone they've been given the go ahead, fiona trot was there when they left, something strange to eat, it's being evacuated from china for them. coming here we are all signing a form agreeing to be in quarantine wondering if i have the virus and then getting used to the lockdown itself a man here Leah yelling i am free so there is relief here this afternoon but also what is very very clear is that 83 people here are very very grateful to the NHS staff for the care they have received well the man celebrating his release here is Matt Raw and he has been giving his reaction to the BBC it is lovely absolutely lovely to be out there and without I'm definitely going out for a pint a bit later and well, who would blame him?

Not that Matt is complaining about his ordeal. I have to say I would say 99.9% of us if not 100% of us are really happy to have been here we are so grateful so great to have been here you know the last thing any of us would have wanted is to have passed on that virus yeah we were infected to pass it on to someone else you know you have to live with it you know if someone gets sick from it and and and and dies we would have to live with it to gain knowledge for the rest of our lives and of course you know that's not it's who we are most of us travel a lot we travel a lot and you know there are risks associated with that so we take ourselves seriously as expats and of course we want to be as responsible as possible and if that means staying in quarantine for a couple of weeks, so be it.