Cruise ship accounts for more than half of virus cases outside China – as it happened

The World Health Organization is coordinating with the African Union to prepare the continent’s countries for potential arrivals of people infected with coronavirus.

Last week, the first case of coronavirus in Africa was confirmed when a case emerged in Egypt.

The World Health Organization has issued a plea to a dozen manufacturers of personal protective equipment to help in a bid to protect health workers from the spread of coronavirus.

“I’ve written to 12 chief executives of manufacturers of personal protective equipment to seek their cooperation to ensure supply to protect health workers,” said the WHO director general, Tedros Adhanom.

Here’s the latest country-by-country breakdown of the coronavirus outbreak, as the number of those infected worldwide hits nearly 75,000.

According to Associated Press, the latest figures provided by each government’s health authority as of Thursday are:

Mainland China: 2,118 deaths among 74,576 cases, mostly in the central province of Hubei
Hong Kong: 65 cases, 2 deaths
Macau: 10
Japan: 727 cases, including 634 from a cruise ship docked in Yokohama, 3 deaths
Singapore: 84
South Korea: 51, 1 death (the number of cases has since risen after reports of new cases at a ‘cult’ church have taken the total number to 82)
Thailand: 35
Taiwan: 24 cases, 1 death
Malaysia: 22
Vietnam: 16
Germany: 16
United States: 15 cases; separately, 1 US citizen died in China
Australia: 14
France: 12 cases, 1 death
United Kingdom: 9
United Arab Emirates: 9
Canada: 8
Iran: 5 cases, 2 deaths
Philippines: 3 cases, 1 death
India: 3
Italy: 3
Russia: 2
Spain: 2
Belgium: 1
Nepal: 1
Sri Lanka: 1
Sweden: 1
Cambodia: 1
Finland: 1
Egypt: 1

UK companies have begun to flag up the economic impact of the coronavirus. Aveva, which is one of Britain’s biggest tech groups and earns 5% of its revenues from China, said Chinese sales had been knocked by the disruption. Shares in the FTSE 100-listed firm dropped 4% after its update.

Shares in the kitchen and bathroom supplier Norcros plummeted 13% when it alerted over profits because of the impact of the disease on Chinese-based suppliers.

And the recruitment group Hays says its business in China has slowed. Its chief executive, Alistair Cox, told PA Media that recruitment in China had been “very subdued”. “Everyone has been concerned about their own health and safety and that of their families – it has to be everyone’s priority.”

US military forces in South Korea have just issued a statement about their response to the situation in Daegu.

The measures are intended to restrict unnecessary travel, and schools and children’s centres used by military staff have been closed.

Daegu, which is two hours south of the capital, Seoul, accounts for nearly half the confirmed cases of coronavirus in the country. Infections have centred on a controversial “cult” church. A 61-year-old woman who worships there has been linked to the 37 other members of the Shincheonji Church of Jesus who have been confirmed as infected.

Daegu’s mayor, Kwon Young-jin, has said the city faces “an unprecedented crisis”.

While, naturally, people’s health is the primary concern with the coronavirus outbreak, it is also undoubtedly having a global economic impact as well.

Air France-KLM, Qantas, and the global container shipping giant Maersk have become the latest businesses to warn about the financial impact from the continued spread of the coronavirus.

My colleague Joanna Partridge has the full story.

There is some more detail from Iran of the coronavirus cases there. Three cases have been confirmed today, in addition to the two people who were known to have died from it.

The cases have all been in Qom, which is around 140km (86 miles) south of the capital, Tehran. According to the official IRNA news agency all schools and universities, including religious Shia seminaries, were shut down in the city.

Mohammad Mahdi Gouya, Iran’s deputy health minister, said the three people with the coronavirus did not appear to have had any contact with Chinese nationals. Authorities were now investigating the origin of the disease, and its possible link with religious pilgrims from Pakistan or other countries.

British Airways have announced a further round of flight cancellations. A spokesperson for the airline said: “In line with the Foreign and Commonwealth Office’s continued advice against all but essential travel to mainland China, we are cancelling flights to and from Beijing and Shanghai until April 17 2020. We continue to fly to and from Hong Kong. We will keep the situation under review.”

The company said it would be contacting customers on cancelled flights to discuss their travel options, which includes the possibility of rebooking on to other carriers, refunds, or flying on a later date.

PA is reporting that the plane carrying British passengers from the Diamond Princess cruise ship will land at the MoD base Boscombe Down in Wiltshire. Around 70 Britons will be on the repatriation flight, which is expected to leave Tokyo late tomorrow night.

Sources have told the PA news agency that the Britons in Cambodia who left the Westerdam cruise ship are being assisted by the Foreign Office to make their way home. They are being quite coy about it though – refusing to disclose how many Britons are involved, or indeed whether they may have already arrived back in the country.

The group, who have all tested negative for coronavirus while in Cambodia, are receiving health advice and being helped with commercial flight bookings.

Public Health England said airport health teams would meet the flights and speak to Westerdam passengers about any symptoms, and they would be asked to self-isolate at home for 14 days.

Hong Kong’s Information Services Department has issued some photos of passengers arriving at Hong Kong international airport on a flight from Tokyo. A total of 106 Hong Kong residents, who were quarantined on the Diamond Princess cruise liner in Yokohama, were permitted to leave Japan and have flown back to Hong Kong. Upon arrival they were taken straight to a designated quarantine site.

Australia may have extended its ban on foreign travellers from China for another week until 29 February, but Melbourne is trying to do something to make the Chinese population currently there feel more welcome. The Victoria state government has decided to light up a series of landmarks including the Arts Centre, the National Gallery Victoria and Melbourne town hall in red and gold as a show of solidarity with China over the coronavirus outbreak.

Perhaps more practically, it has proposed that as soon as it is safe to visit China again, the city will send a 100-strong trade delegation.

The premier, Daniel Andrews, has also urged people to support Chinese businesses. “Go and visit a Chinese restaurant, go to a precinct which is dominated by Asian businesses, go and show your support for them, because a lot of them are having it very, very tough at the moment as people stay away.”

A British couple who published video diaries from a cruise ship quarantined off the coast of Japan have confirmed that they have the coronvirus as they posted Facebook updates from hospital.

Sally and David Abel, who were among thousands of passengers on board the Diamond Princess cruise ship, said that Japanese doctors had told them that vaccinations which they had in the past for the flu had stopped the virus from spreading further.

The were not displaying any symptoms and were in good spirits, their son Steve added in a live post on Facebook as they awoke on Thursday morning to see photos of his smiling parents in two beds in the same hospital room.

David Abel posted: “Outside the hospital I came over a bit weird and nearly passed out. Every pore on my body opened and i was wheelchaired to our room.”

“Full health inspection and now we know what’s going on. We both contracted a cold (unaware of) and it has not yet turned into pneumonia. (we do have corona virus).

“Tomorrow the big tests commence. chest x-rays, ECG, chest scan, urine + more.”

Three Iranian patients have tested positive for the new coronavirus disease, according to the state’s semi-official ISNA news agency.

The latest development in Iran comes after its health ministry said on Wednesday that two people had died after preliminary tests came back as positive for Covid-19.

ISNA reports that five hospitals have been designated for the treatment of cases.

A Japanese government official has described coronavirus as the biggest risk to the economy in a country which has already been heavily criticised by others, including US authorities for its handling of quarantined cruise ship passengers.

His comments came monthly report said that the Japanese labour market remained solid, but warned about risks to the outlook from the coronavirus epidemic.

Japan’s financial watchdog has begun conducting an emergency survey on domestic financial institutions with business operations in China to gauge how the coronavirus outbreak could affect credit costs.

The Wall Street Journal (WSJ)is continuing to cover the crisis in China after the state expelled three of its reporters from the country, a move which the news outlet criticised in an editorial on Wednesday night.

The WSJ’s latest report (paywall) reports that overburdened hospitals are struggling to provide care to other patients in Hubei, the province at the centre of the outbreak, with some facilities turning away pregnant women with complications.

The editorial said: “The truth is that Beijing’s rulers are punishing our reporters so they can change the subject from the Chinese public’s anger about the government’s management of the coronavirus scourge.”

Two more Russians aboard the Diamond Princess cruise ship quarantined in Japan have been diagnosed with the virus, the Russian Embassy in Japan has said.

The two will be transferred to a hospital in Japan for treatment, according to the embassy statement published on Facebook.

The Diamond Princess has been docked in the Yokohama port near Tokyo since Feb. 4, when 10 people on board tested positive for the virus. So far 621 cases of the virus, which has been named COVID-19, have been confirmed among the the Diamond Princess’s original 3,711 people on board.

An evacuation flight for Britons stuck on a cruise ship docked off the coast of Japan over coronavirus fears will leave Tokyo on Friday, the UK’s foreign secretary has said.

Dominic Raab said information had been provided to those registered for the flight, but he urged other British nationals still seeking to leave to contact the Foreign Office. He added: “We will continue to support British nationals who wish to stay in Japan.”

Those repatriated from the Diamond Princess will be quarantined at Arrowe Park hospital in Wirral on their return, a Department of Health and Social Care spokesman said.

There were 78 British passengers on the cruise liner when cases of the coronavirus strain known as Covid-19 started to emerge. Four British cases have since been confirmed by the Foreign Office.

This is Ben Quinn picking up the blog now in London

The mayor of a South Korean city of Daegu has ordered the shutdown of all kindergartens and public libraries, as a surge in confirmed Covid-19 cases linked to a local church raised the prospect of wider transmission.

Reuters reported that malls in Daegu, the country’s fourth largest city (population of 2.5 million), were largely empty.

“We are in an unprecedented crisis,” the city’s mayor, Kwon Young-jin, said.

Korea’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (KCDC) reported 31 new cases of the virus on Thursday, following 20 a day earlier, taking the total across the country to 82.

Of that national tally, 49 patients are from Daegu or nearby and have been traced to an infected person who attended a local church, a scenario that KCDC described as a “super-spreading event”.

You can read our full story here.

The Global Times is reporting that Beijing has postponed some student exams that were due to be held in March.

China’s state-run media says small- and medium-sized enterprises may lay off 30% of staff because of the coronavirus.

Indonesia currently has no reported cases of coronavirus, but the idyllic holiday island of Bali has been hit by the ripple effect of the crisis, with tourism plummeting. At least one expert says Bali “does not have the capacity” to treat patients if they become sick.

You can read our full story on it below.

The director of disaster response who has been out at the facility housing the new arrivals near Darwin said she is awaiting final number of arrivals but believes it’s 170.

Six New Zealanders also arrived on the flight carrying Australians from Japan and were transferred to New Zealand.

On Wednesday, a video by Prof Kentaro Iwata, a specialist in infectious diseases at Kobe University Hospital, was circulated widely on social media.

In it he criticised quarantine measures on the cruise liner, including that there were no designated “green” or “red” zones on the ship that indicated areas that were clear of the virus, or ones where it was present.

He subsequently took the clip down, saying he was informed conditions on the ship had improved.

But on Wednesday he had told BBC radio:

I felt much safer when I was in Africa [during the Ebola crisis] because you know where the virus exists and you know where the patient is. But inside the Diamond Princess you have no idea where the virus is.

Over the past few days there has been increasing criticism of the Japanese authorities’ handling of the infection on the cruise line, as infections continued to mount, despite infection control measures being in place.

Japan’s health minister, Katsunobu Kato, on Thursday defended Japan’s response to the outbreak in parliament, telling lawmakers that officials had taken expert advice and responded to issues on a daily basis.

In a move to reassure the public, the health ministry also issued a statement in both English and Japanese that said all passengers had been required to stay in their cabins since 5 February to contain the virus.

The Guardian’s Tokyo correspondent, Justin McCurry, reports that Kentaro Iwata, a specialist in infectious diseases at Kobe University hospital, said he was not surprised to hear reports that two passengers on the Diamond Princess had died.

“Cruise ships have a lot of elderly passengers, many of whom have chronic diseases and are on medication, so I am not surprised to hear that people have died,” Iwata told reporters by video conference from Yokohama on Thursday.

“They are high risk, and we don’t have a specific treatment for the virus.”

Hello and welcome to the Guardian’s live coverage of the coronavirus outbreak.

Here’s an update of what we know so far.

• Two people infected with Covid-19 on the Diamond Princess cruise liner, have died, reports say.
• Hong Kong citizens evacuated from the Diamond princess have begun arriving home.
• New cases in China have fallen to 394 according to the daily national update, taking cases across the country to 74,576.
• Total deaths have risen by 114 to 2,118.
• Figures across China for new cases have dropped significantly after Hubei province changed the way it counted cases again, to remove the clinically diagnosed cases who have since tested negative to the virus on the test kit.

You can get up to date on our latest coverage below, including:

• Coronavirus ‘could cost global economy $1.1tn in lost income’
• China to expel WSJ journalists over ‘malicious’ coronavirus column
• Cruise passengers relieved to be ashore but stranded in Cambodia