Coronavirus outbreak updates: Hubei deaths rise by 93 amid Cambodia ship concerns – latest

New French health minister Olivier Veran said on Tuesday there is a “credible risk” the coronavirus outbreak could turn unto a pandemic, Reuters reports.

“This is both a working assumption and a credible risk,” Veran told France Info radio, when asked about the possibility of the coronavirus becoming a pandemic.

He added France was ready to deal with all the possibilities and its health system was sufficiently robust and well-equipped.

I want to hear your news, experiences and questions about the coronavirus outbreak. You can email me at aamna.mohdin@theguardian.com or tweet me at @aamnamohdin

I’m particularly interested in hearing from travellers who have booked flights to China and are currently in limbo.

Taiwan urged the World Health Organisation on Tuesday not to be “kidnapped” by China, as the self-ruled island fights its label as an infected area.

Taiwan has reported just 22 cases, versus China’s figure of more than 72,400, but the island shares the agency’s classification of China as “very high risk” since the WHO considers Taiwan as part of China.

“Taiwan is not ruled by China and certainly should not be labelled as an infected area,” Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Joanne Ou told a news conference, according to a report by Reuters. “We urge the WHO to be professional and neutral: Break away from China’s unreasonable claim. Don’t be kidnapped by China.”

Taipei is already in a war of words with Beijing over its exclusion from the WHO, because of objections by China, which considers Taiwan its own territory and has blocked the island’s membership in many international bodies.

Countries including El Salvador, Mongolia, Solomon Islands and Vanuatu have adopted travel curbs for arrivals who have visited Taiwan, while the island’s largest airline is covered by an Italian ban on flights from China.

Ou said WHO should immediately correct its “inappropriate label” for the island as the self-ruled island continued to press Italy to resume flights.

Morning, I’m Aamna Mohdin taking over the liveblog from Martin Farrer.

Britons David Abel and his wife Sally who are on the Diamond Princess cruise ship have tested positive for COVID-19 Coronavirus. Abel, who was been posting regular video updates from the quarantined ship, said on Facebook: “There is going to be a time of quiet. We have been proved positive and leaving for hospital soon. Blessings all”.

The Foreign and Commonwealth Office is “working to organise” a flight back to the UK for British nationals on board a cruise ship.

The department has under increasing pressure to fly home the 74 Britons on the Diamond Princess after the US repatriated 340 of its citizens.

The department said in a statement:

Given the conditions on board, we are working to organise a flight back to the UK for British nationals on the Diamond Princess as soon as possible.

Our staff are contacting British nationals on board to make the necessary arrangements. We urge all those who have not yet responded to get in touch immediately.

On Monday, a Number 10 spokesman said those on board the ship docked near Yokohama, Japan, were being contacted about the possibility of a repatriation flight.

Shanghai’s government says the city’s schools, which have been closed for three weeks, will remain closed and will begin teaching primary and secondary school students online from 2 March.

Lu Jing, head of the Shanghai education committee, revealed the decision at a briefing on Tuesday, according to reports.

No date has been given for the proper reopening of schools.

I’m about to hand over to my colleagues in London so here are the main developments of the last eight hours or so:

• China has recorded 98 more deaths from the Covid-19 outbreak, taking the number of victims to 1,868.
• Health officials confirmed another 1,886 new confirmed infections , bringing the total on the mainland to 72,436. More than 12,000 have recovered.
• A senior hospital doctor in Wuhan has died from the virus.
• A “dragnet-style” operation has been launched in Wuhan to roundup all people infected with the virus.
• The UK government is evacuating its citizens from the stricken Diamond Princess cruise ship in Japan. South Korea, Canada and Australia gave more details of similar operations.
• Japan, which has 454 cases of the virus, is to trial HIV retroviral drugs on infected people.
• Hong Kong is to boost its Covid-19 emergency fund from HK$28bn (US$3.60bn) from HK$25bn.
• Singapore Airlines is cutting flights to major cities such as London, Frankfurt and Los Angeles as the virus continues to impact international travel.
• Asian stock markets have suffered losses after Apple said the factory shutdowns in China was causing a shortage of iPhones.

Apple’s announcement on Monday night that the Covid-19 outbreak was causing a shortage of iPhones has hit tech stocks in Asia.

The Nikkei in Tokyo closed 1.4% for the day on Tuesday and Seoul finished down by a chunky 1.5%. The South Korean president Moon Jae-in said earlier that the economy faced an “emergency” situation because of the virus and the government would be making an all-out effort to boost growth.

They’re still trading in China where the Shanghai Composite is off 0.14% while the Hang Seng has fallen 1.35%.

The FTSE100 is expected to shed 0.6% at the opening this morning and on Wall Street the Dow Jones is looking at a similar fall after having Monday off for President’s Day.

“Apple is saying its recovery could be delayed, which could mean the impact of the virus may go beyond the current quarter,” Norihiro Fujito, chief investment strategist at Mitsubishi UFJ Morgan Stanley Securities in Tokyo, told Reuters.

“If Apple shares were traded cheaply, that might not matter much. But when they are trading at a record high, investors will be surely tempted to sell.”

HSBC, the international bank based in Hong Kong and London, has reported a fall 30% fall in profits for the last financial year.

HSBC said its 2019 pre-tax profits fell by a third on year to $13.3 billion as interim chief Noel Quinn warned that the global banking giant was “not delivering acceptable returns”. Most of the loss was a “goodwill impairment” on its business in Europe.

In his comments, chairman Mark Tucker said the “macroeconomic environment” was uncertain and that the bank had lowered its growth forecast for Asia because of the Covid-19 outbreak.

As a result of the impact of the coronavirus outbreak, we have lowered our expectations for growth in the Asian economy in 2020. The main impact will be in the first quarter, but we expect some improvement as the virus becomes contained

A senior doctor treating patients in Wuhan has died from the coronavirus outbreak.

“Liu Zhiming, the director of Wuhan Wuchang hospital, died at 10.30am this morning after resuscitation efforts failed,” reported the China Central Television’s microblog.

A hospital director in Hubei province has also died of the virus, it was confirmed, as the authorities in the city step up their attempts to roundup everyone infected.

My colleague Verna Yu has the full story here:

Singapore Airlines is following Cathay Pacific and other airlines by temporarily cutting flights across its global network in the three months until May, it said on Tuesday, blaming the Covid-19 outbreak.

The main affected destinations include Frankfurt, Jakarta, London, Los Angeles, Mumbai, Paris, Seoul, Sydney and Tokyo.

“Singapore Airlines and SilkAir will temporarily reduce services across our network due to weak demand as a result of the Covid-19 outbreak,” it said. “We will continue to monitor the situation and make further adjustments as necessary.”

Earlier I posted on the development of what appears to be an app-based health checking system in China.

A reader has been in touch to tell me that such a system has been in place in the southern city of Shenzhen for a couple of weeks.

It has worked like this.

QR codes were put up on the bulletin boards of residential communities with people advised to scan the codes and then visit a website and enter their phone numbers, after which they would receive a text message confirming their movements. Once they’d done this, residents could then register with the local administration and be allowed a transit pass to get back into their own communities.

Since 1 February, movement has been greatly restricted in Guangdong. On Saturday the province introduced “real name” verification just to ride the metro.

More from the Australian minister’s press call.

He was asked if those passengers on the ship were angry at having to be placed in quarantine despite already having been isolated on the ship for two weeks.

Health minister Greg Hunt says he understands their frustration and a mental health hotline and counselling service has been set up for them. But because of ongoing infections on the ship where 454 people have been infected, “there was no choice”.

Hunt says:

The medical advice from theAustralian Health Protection Principals Committee was clear and categorical, that an additional period of 14 days would be required. They have our deep sympathy. It must have been a very, very difficult time. And for many it would be frustrating. But we need to protect and support those Australians who have been on the ship, whilst protecting and supporting the entire containment arrangement in Australia.

Australia’s chief medical officer, Prof Brendan Murphy, is also at the briefing and he’s asked if it’s possible that the passengers – because of the growing number of cases on the ship – are more contagious than the Wuhan evacuees.

Prof Murphy says it’s “possible” but adds that all the evacuees have tested negative and have also had a “proper throat swab sent to the lab and they’ll all have a health screen.

We suspect that the risk for most of them is very low. But because some of them may have been exposed, we’re doing this quarantine. So, potentially there might be a slightly higher risk, but if that’s the case, we’re absolutely well-prepared for it.

Australia health minister, Greg Hunt, is giving details about how its citizens are going to be evacuated from the Diamond Princess.

Speaking in Darwin in the Northern territory, Hunt says the government is “talking to all of the Australian passengers on the Diamond Princess today” and it expects to have about 200 people on board an evacuation flight.

“It could be less. It could be a few more. But at this stage foreign affairs is going through the process of contacting everybody. And once we have final numbers, we’ll provide them immediately.”

Once they arrive back in Australia, Hunt says, they will be quarantined at Howard Springs for 14 days.

The last 36 people quarantined on Christmas Island – people who were evacuated from Wuhan two weeks ago – will be moved tomorrow, Hunt says, after 242 were repatriated on Monday.

“It was a really great example of the Australian spirit. Those who were quarantined, those who were taking care of them. And I understand it was a very emotional time at the departure, and they bonded and went very well. The remaining 36 are due to leave tomorrow. Then it takes some time to prepare the facility in case more – there are more people required to fill the spaces.”

Alibaba, the huge Chinese technology company, appears to be rolling out a health check app which will help authorities keep track of the virus as people return to work.

Beginning in Alibaba’s base city of Hangzhou near Shanghai, its subsidiary Alipay – China’s Paypal – will “provide development support for a national health code system” which will track people’s self-quarantine based on basic health information and travel history, according to the website Technode.

People will be required to self-report their health and travel history over the past few weeks into the app. So as people return to work, companies will be asked to keep track of their employees’ health and allow the government to monitor people who they think could be at risk of being infected, perhaps from knowledge of proximity with an infected person.

Once registered – it’s not clear if the system is mandatory or not – a resident would receive a coloured code. Residents with a green code means they are allowed to move around the city freely. Yellow means a seven-day quarantine, and red requires a 14-day quarantine.

This tweet suggests what it looks like:

I’m indebted to a reader, Drew Gough, for spotting this. Drew lived in Hangzhou for two years while working for Alibaba. He says that a friend in Shanghai has received a text message – along with all other residents of the city – saying that it is mandatory to wear a face mask at all times while outside, and failure to do so was breaking the law and punishable by up to 10 days being detained.

The Alipay health code is also being rolled out in Shanghai, according to Technode.

South Korea is sending the presidential jet to evacuate its citizens from the Diamond Princess cruise ship in Japan, according to the Yonhap news agency.

Speaking in Seoul on Tuesday, president Moon Jae-in said the economy faced an “emergency” situation because of the virus and the government would be making an all-out effort to boost growth.

“(The government) shouldn’t quibble over whether anything is unprecedented or not, rather, we should take every possible measure we can think of on the table to deploy them,” Moon said in a cabinet meeting, Reuters reports.

Last week, the governor of the Bank of Korea said the central bank was working on financial aid packages for those sectors directly affected by the spreading coronavirus. The carmakers Hyundai and Kia were forced to suspend production at their plants because of a lack of components from China although output has been resumed after parts were sourced from elsewhere in Asia and some Chinese factories reopened.

The local Kospi stock market index has taken a decent hit today. It is down 1.35%.