by Helen Roxburgh
China scrambled to find bed space for thousands of newly infected patients on Thursday, as the toll from a deadly new virus jumped again.
More than 28,000 people are now known to be infected nationwide in an outbreak that has killed 563 and spiralled into a global health emergency.
Two dozen countries now have confirmed cases of the novel coronavirus that emerged from a market selling exotic animals at the end of last year.
On Thursday, 10 more people were found to have contracted the disease on a cruise ship off the Japanese coast, where 3,700 people face a two-week quarantine.
At the Chinese epicentre of the epidemic, the locked-down city of Wuhan was due to open a second field hospital, offering 1,600 beds.
The first hospital, with 1,000 beds, opened earlier this week, and authorities said they were converting public buildings into jury-rigged medical facilities to deal with the influx of sick people.
The city of 11 million is facing a “severe” lack of beds, said Hu Lishan, a senior official in Wuhan, noting that there were 8,182 patients admitted to 28 hospitals that have a total of 8,254 beds.
There is also a shortage of equipment and materials, Hu told reporters.
The central government has announced measures intended to ensure the supply of vital medical resources, with tax breaks for manufacturers of equipment needed to fight the epidemic.
“We must make all-out efforts across the country to meet the need for essential medical supplies and medical professionals in Hubei Province,” Premier Li Keqiang said, according to the official Xinhua news agency.
Cities hunker down
Tens of millions of people in Hubei and surrounding provinces are now facing swingeing restrictions on their movement as authorities try to slow the spread of the virus.
They include residents of Hangzhou, a city just 175 kilometres (110 miles) from Shanghai, where fences block streets and loudspeakers tell people: “Don’t go out!”
In some cities, even as far north of the country, inhabitants are being offered cash rewards to inform on people who come from Hubei.
In Beijing — where streets remain eerily quiet and businesses are shuttered — restaurants have been barred from accepting reservations for parties.
Cruise ship infections
While the death toll continues to rise, and now includes two people outside mainland China, health experts have stressed that at 2 percent, 2019-nCoV is far less deadly than SARS, a pathogen in the same coronavirus family that killed around 10 percent of people it infected during a 2002-3 outbreak.
But panic has risen worldwide with countries barring arrivals from China and governments warning against travel to the country, while airlines have halted flights.
Italy announced that passengers on every international flight would be scanned for fever.
The World Health Organization, which has declared a global health emergency, has called for $675 million to fight the novel coronavirus.
“Our message to the international community is invest today or pay more later,” WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said, adding that the funding appeal was “much less than the bill we will have to pay if we do not invest in preparedness now”.
– AFP