Fifth Bangladeshi infected in S’pore

One more Bangladeshi in Singapore has been infected with the novel coronavirus, Singapore's Ministry of Health said yesterday.

This is the fifth Bangladesh to be infected and all five are linked to the cluster at Seletar Aerospace Heights construction site.

The latest case is that of a 26-year-old, who is a Singapore Work Pass holder, and has no recent travel history to China, the ministry said in the statement.

Seventy-two people have been diagnosed with the coronavirus infection and 18 patients have been discharged after recovery as of 12:00pm yesterday local time, the Singapore MoH said.

On February 13, two Bangladesh nationals aged 30 and 37 were diagnosed with coronavirus.

Earlier, two Bangladeshis aged 35 and 39 were reported to be infected on February 9 and 11.

They are all currently isolated at the National Centre for Infectious Diseases.

Meanwhile, an 80-year-old Chinese tourist infected with the coronavirus has died in Paris yesterday, becoming the first fatality in Europe and the fourth outside mainland China from an epidemic that has rattled the world.

Thought to have come from a wildlife market in the central Chinese province of Hubei, the outbreak has presented the ruling Communist Party with a huge challenge in curbing its spread while minimising damage to the world's second-largest economy.

Beijing's latest figures showed 66,492 cases and 1,523 deaths, mostly in Hubei. Outside mainland China there have been more than 500 cases in some two dozen countries and territories, with four deaths - in Japan, Chinese-ruled Hong Kong, the Philippines and France.

Egypt reported its first case on Friday, the first in Africa.

In the French case, the Chinese man died at the Bichat hospital in Paris of a lung infection due to the flu-like virus, authorities said.

"We have to get our health system ready to face a possible pandemic propagation of the virus, and therefore the spreading of the virus across France," said Health Minister Agnes Buzyn.

Robin Thompson, an expert in mathematical epidemiology at Britain's University of Oxford, said that with nearly 50 cases in Europe, a death was not surprising. "The most important thing to point out, however, is that there still hasn't been sustained person-to-person transmission in Europe," he added.

After an extended Lunar New Year holiday, China urgently needs to get back to work. But some cities remain in lockdown, streets are deserted, employees are nervous, and travel bans and quarantine orders are in place around the country.

Those returning to Beijing from the holiday have been ordered to undergo a 14-day self-quarantine to prevent the virus' spread. Many factories are yet to re-open, disrupting global supply chains for everyone from smartphone makers to car manufacturers.

While there has been some hope expressed this week that the disease may be peaking in China, numbers keep rising and a trend has been hard to discern, especially after a reclassification that widened the definition of cases.

The biggest cluster outside China has been on a cruise ship, the Diamond Princess, quarantined off Japan's Yokohama. Out of about 3,700 passengers and crew on board, 285 people have tested positive and been sent to hospital.

The United States said on Saturday it plans to send an aircraft to pick up American passengers and take them back home where they face another two weeks of isolation "out of an abundance of caution".

Passengers on another cruise ship, which finally docked in Cambodia after being rejected by five other countries, were taking their saga in good heart.

"Everyone says 'poor you'. But there was no poor you. We had free internet and free wine. We had three-course meals. There was so much choice," said Zahra Jennings, a retired staff nurse from Britain who had been on the MS Westerdam with more than 2,300 passengers and crew.

The United States has imposed some of the toughest curbs on travellers from China, going beyond World Health Organization (WHO) recommendations and offending Beijing.

WHO on Friday defended China following US claims of a lack of transparency in Beijing's response to the outbreak.

Larry Kudlow, head of the US National Economic Council, had said on Thursday: "We're a little disappointed in the lack of transparency coming from the Chinese".

Kudlow also said that Chinese President Xi Jinping had assured US President Donald Trump that Beijing would accept US help, but "they won't let us".

But Michael Ryan, head of WHO's health emergencies programme, listed various ways in which he said China had collaborated with the international community.

"From our perspective, we have a government that's cooperating with us... I'm finding it hard to square that with Kudlow's comments," Ryan told reporters in Geneva.

In Hong Kong, which has seen months of anti-Beijing protests, hundreds marched yesterday to demand full closure of the border with mainland China and to oppose plans to turn some buildings into quarantine hubs.

The sickness, now officially labelled Covid-19, has killed around 2% of those infected. Cases have spread faster than other respiratory viruses this century.

A senior Chinese official sought to project optimism.

"The impact of the epidemic on the Chinese economy will be short term and temporary," foreign affairs vice minister Qin Gang said at the Munich Security Conference.

"When the epidemic is over, the subdued consumer demand will be released rapidly and the economy will rebound strongly."