The largest coronavirus outbreak outside China is on a cruise ship - BBC News

Another 97 people in China have died from the

coronavirus

. We know that more than 44,000 people have been infected in China and the death toll exceeds 1,100. He is the director general of the World Health Organization, the number of newly confirmed cases reported in China has stabilized. over the past week, but to me that should be interpreted with extreme caution, this

outbreak

could still go in any direction outside of China. Another 25 countries, all marked in red here, have confirmed cases and there have been 2 confirmed deaths, although you'll notice. no cases in South America no cases in Africa it's also worth noting that the daily infection rate is falling almost 50 percent since last week on that topic here's the BBC Steven McDonald in Beijing we don't want to get ahead of ourselves because I mean, if people suddenly became complacent it could take off again, but at least for the moment there is some kind of suggestion that we could be turning the road, but until we see, for example, tens of thousands of people in the reclaimed area .

Well then people will start to feel a little better after the development of the Mobile World Congress event in Barcelona, ​​​​a major industry event has been canceled due to the corona virus, also the Chinese Grand Prix that was supposed to take place in Shanghai in April. Well, that's It has been postponed Formula One says decisions have been made to ensure the health and safety of drivers, staff and fans. Also in Geneva scientists have been meeting at the World Health Organization to discuss ways to combat this virus. Here is the analysis of one of them, the measures that China has taken to actually contain the

outbreak

could work and therefore could end up being an outbreak that of course has unfortunately killed more than a thousand people but can still control and contain oneself;

On the other hand, we do not know if it may have already spread. in many countries, so this can become a global outbreak or even a pandemic. What are you bringing? The BBC's Imogen Fuchs has been covering these discussions in Switzerland and Imogen. What are the objectives of these conversations? What is the hope of the WHO in bringing all these sciences? together they came these two days saying that they wanted to draft some sort of master plan aimed at containing and ultimately stopping this virus in its winter act, but at the same time preparing countries for its arrival and at the end of those two days they simply In fact, this afternoon they highlighted several things they want to do.

Now almost the first thing on the list is to bring easy-to-use diagnostic kits to countries with weaker health infrastructure, which the video you just watched demonstrates that there are no recorded cases. cases in Africa, but as the WHO experts there said, it could be that there are cases but there hasn't been a chance to actually diagnose them, so that's one of the things you want to do and also look at treatments, there is no treatment specific for this virus yet and in a long-term look at the vaccines, so they have a plan for all of that and I think driven a little bit by this

news

that their daily cases, new cases in China are falling, an indication of stabilization, but nobody really nobody is getting it. accommodating to the w-h-o in Geneva, but Imogen, what is the relation

ship

between the w-h-o and the individual countries caught up in this because presumably the w-h-o cannot demand a particular response from a particular country?

No, it can't, but you know World Health. The organization is a UN body and it has over 190 member states, so every country on the planet, these member states have signed this body of regulations called international health regulations, which means that they are obliged, for example, to report when they encounter a W-h-o is not an agency and I think they understand that maybe it doesn't work, it's not money to go out there brandishing a big stick and saying: "you should do this because the last thing anyone wants is for a country to feel scared or intimidated even and therefore hiding cases, one of the things that we know that was very concerning to China was that revealing these cases and the effect that they could have on their economy has gone ahead and is cooperating, from what we heard in Geneva, is in an extremely transparent way with the World Health Organization is still a big blow to their economy and again, this is something that countries have to deal with and it's a very, very difficult balancing act, dojin.

We appreciate the update. Thank you so much. In fact, the

largest

coronavirus

outbreak outside mainland China is. not in the country as such, it is on a

cruise

ship

that is near Yokohama in Japan, here it is called the diamond princess. One hundred and seventy-five people on board have the virus and this includes a health official who boarded to hand out questionnaires and then became infected and in total there are more than three and a half thousand passengers and crew on the ship, none of them are allowed to get off and Japan says it doesn't even have the capacity to treat them all well, the BBC has been talking. an American passenger who is trapped on board we are good little prisoners we stay in our rooms and just go out to the balcony we take out the trash the proper way we pick up our messages outside the door we wear our masks when we open the door our trays of food we certainly wait for the food like any prisoner and this is the fanciest penitentiary there is the food has improved significantly it is very healthy we now have three options for our meals at lunch and dinner someone told me we are the worst disease group outside of

china

and no I want to be part of any disease group.

I'm sure she isn't, but unfortunately she is. It is the worst cluster of corona virus outside mainland China. For more information on the situation with this ship here is the BBC's Tokyo correspondent Rupert Wingfield says the numbers on board that ship continued to rise quite rapidly 39 new cases today and there are around three thousand seven hundred people in quarantine on board the ship that they will have to stay on board we understand at least and for another week and you know they are stuck in their cabins, there is concern about the condition of many elderly people on board that ship and some people have called to examine everyone on that ship or remove them from the ship and move them somewhere else, but the Japanese government so far flatly refuses to do so.

Now another

cruise

ship is also involved in this story, this one is in Hong Kong and also has more than three thousand five hundred passengers in total. who were quarantined even though none of them had been diagnosed, you can see a photo here. The difference with Japan is that all passengers on this ship were screened and then allowed to disembark. Then there is a third cruise ship that is also part of this. crisis has been rejected in several ports in Asia now we were hoping to dock in Cambodia here is what we talked about yesterday it is called the dam Wester was due to arrive with around 1500 passengers sometime on Thursday we will see if that happens The owner of the ship says there is no nothing to suggest anyone on board has the virus, but that didn't stop Thailand and others from rejecting it, which begs the question: is anything in particular happening on cruise ships if there is a virus and the BBC has done everything it can? analysis of this, the headline says that our cruise ships are really floating in petri dishes and you can find the full analysis on BBC comm slash

news

, from Cambodia to Singapore, around 300 employees had to be evacuated from the country's

largest

bank, which Then a person got sick with the virus;

You can see an image here from the 43rd floor of DBS Bank, which is the floor from which the staff were evacuated. Let's get more of chiron GAO in Singapore, the bank issued a statement saying it would provide the employee who fell ill and with all its support and guidance, a course Singapore raised the status of its disease outbreak response system to Orange last week , which essentially means that the disease is serious and spreads easily from person to person and the city's Ministry of Health has just confirmed this as well. today three more cases, which brings the total to 50, most of them I should add in stable condition.

Another 15, in fact, have recovered and been discharged, although we're told eight are still in critical condition. Then there will be Hong Kong on Tuesday, health officials, you can see. Some of them here were partially evacuating the tower that extends from this point due to fears that the virus was spreading through the building's pipes. That's great, the reason they are so concerned about this particular tower was the experience they had. We had 17 years ago with the SARS virus, which was able to spread very, very quickly through one particular location where over 300 people were infected, the latest we have received is that maybe it was more of a precaution and actually five people who appeared to have some type of flu had a fever tested negative for the corona virus and concern is growing about the virus a video game that teaches players how diseases spread has become very popular in China the company that makes the Plague Inc game now warns people to look for information about the disease in official sources instead of trusting its game.

This clip gives you an idea of ​​what it looks like. Alarmingly enough, his goal is to infect everyone with his disease and then eventually wipe out the entire world, which he clearly isn't. In the approach we are looking at for this crisis, there was also a surge in sales during the 2014 Ebola outbreak and players around the world can donate to charities that actually help combat the spread of infectious diseases. Now, here in the UK, another case. It has been confirmed to be a woman who flew to London from China, bringing the total number of cases in the UK to nine and efforts continue to trace 12 patients who were treated by two British doctors who have since been diagnosed. with the corona virus one of them works here in a hospital in Worthing and the south of England the others in Brighton on the south coast of England both are now being treated in isolation this is the experts' opinion on what could happen after the virus in the UK Our best estimates are that transmission will begin in the UK in the next few weeks, unless we are very lucky it will probably peak two or three months later.

You have to keep in mind that the epidemic in Wuhan is peaking right now, but it's been like this for three months since the beginning of December and we have no real idea of ​​what's going on in the rest of China. Well, for the latest on the situation in the UK, here's our health correspondent, Catherine Burns. We know that when most people get this, they don't get very sick, their symptoms tend to be very mild in terms of stopping the virus. Experts say we could be looking at the end of the year before we get any kind of vaccine, but they believe this virus has a weakness that it likes us to give it. be together so we can take precautions and they really are the kind of things that you would do to avoid contracting any type of bug wash your hands try not to touch your face too often if you cough or sneeze make sure you cover your mouth it really is a case of Using our common sense this is only the fifth time the World Health Organization has declared a public health emergency of international concern, but it's still not exactly clear how contagious or how deadly the definition of this particular corona virus is. .

A public health emergency is an extraordinary event that has implications for public health beyond the national borders of the affected states, so in this case China, the corona virus is also defined as an epidemic that occurs when a disease affects a specific region, health experts say. It could become a pandemic that would be the global spread of a disease. So far a corona of our cases has been confirmed in 26 countries, but of the 195 covered by the World Health Organization, we must also keep in mind that the virus is not spreading much in In countries outside China, most of the global cases are people who have been infected in China and we really know how deadly this virus is.

The mortality rate is estimated at 2%, but this is likely an overestimate because it is certain that many people have been infected but have not suffered symptoms severe enough to go to hospitals to treat their cases and are not recorded. and, just for comparison, the seasonal flu generally has a one percent mortality rate. SARS, which was a similar viral outbreak in 2003, had a mortality rate of more than 10 percent and about 35 percent of reported patients had Middle East respiratory syndrome known as MERS, while thirty-five percent cent died during an outbreak in 2012. Well, here is the latest update on what we call kovat 19 of the WH er.I think we have We have to be very cautious, the stabilization of cases and in recent days is very reassuring, as the Director General has said, and it is largely the result of the enormous public health operation in China, although it is very difficult to predict definitively. "We see that the behavior of the virus outside of us, in the rest of China and outside of China, does not seem at this moment as aggressive as the accelerators and that is a good sign and it gives us the opportunity to prepare and react and it still gives us the opportunity to contain and retain the interruption of the transmission of the virus, but that is no guarantee This is an interesting study in the Journal of the American Medical Association that we discovered that looks at a hospital in Wuhan which, of course. the city at the center of this outbreak, this study found that just over half of all people affected by the virus were adults between 40 and 59 years old, only 10% were patients under 39 years old and continues to conclude and only mention quote here.

Cases in children have been rare, the same pattern was seen in the Tsar and MERS virus outbreaks. Now there is a possible explanation. Natalie Mederma, a clinical professor at University College London, says that children. over five years old and adolescents tend to have fairly prepared immune systems. to fight viruses, Natalie continues, they may still be infected, but they could have a much milder illness or show no symptoms of infection, so that's something we know and don't know about. Here's the World Health Organization on the importance of disseminating accurate information. The public since the outbreak began covered 19, we are also facing infidels, as you said, an overflow of information that is sometimes trusted, but sometimes it is also misinformation, so people find it difficult to understand who they should trust and where they can find reliable information.

That is why here at the WTO we are trying to maximize the power of digital communications and in particular social media to ensure that as many people as possible around the world and in China receive reliable information on how to protect themselves from getting sick and also about how the outbreak is evolving and how the response is going, there is a lot of fear, so it's not always necessarily misinformation, but also misunderstandings and rumors that are spreading, so we are also trying to address those and periodically update everything what we see in the media or social media we use those evidence based answers and we post them on our website and on social media just to give you an idea of ​​some, there were some rumors if I sprayed alcohol on my body and my protection against virus, the answers no and the explanation. occurs or if I do, if I use a hand dryer, does that mean the virus will disappear from my hands?

The answers know that we need to wash our hands regularly with soap and water, etc., so this misinformation issue is crucial as part of this. crisis here is the WHO the director general on these outbreaks can bring out the best and the worst in people stigmatizing individuals or entire nations only harms the response instead of directing all our energy against the outbreak stigma diverts our attention and It turns people against each other. I'll say it again, this is a time for solidarity, not stigma, and there is plenty more information about the virus on the BBC news website.