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COVID-19 -- Novel Coronavirus

"It turns out the cruise ship was completely inadequate in terms of the infection control. There was no distinction between the green zone, which is free of infection, and the red zone, which is potentially contaminated."
"There was no single professional infection control person inside the ship. The bureaucrats were in charge of everything."
Kentaro Iwata, infection control specialist, Kobe University Hospital

As the end of a quarantine allowed people to begin leaving the coronavirus-stricken Diamond Princess, Japanese health officials said two passengers hospitalized earlier had died. Photo: TAKASHI AOYAMA/GETTY IMAGES

In Iran, the holy city of Qom has been placed under lockdown conditions; no access to public areas, schools closed. In Ukraine, riots have broken out over locating people, evacuees from Wuhan, mostly Ukrainian with a sprinkling of foreigners with no symptoms of the novel coronavirus in quarantine close to local towns. In China, three journalists with the Wall Street Journal have been accused of 'racial' insults in their reportage for the Wall Street Journal and escorted out of the country.

In Ukraine, Police officers cleared the road for the buses to take the evacuees to the hospital to be quarantined  Reuters

People of Chinese descent living in North America and who have never been to Wuhan, most of them born in the cities where they live, and never having visited China at all, are being shunned as carriers of viruses, held in suspicion, while children of Chinese heritage are being harassed by other children at school. Hotels and doctors' offices are refusing to take Chinese clientele. People are being physically attacked and verbally insulted. Fear and suspicion have caused a vulnerable population to anguish over their place in society.

A restaurant in New York's Chinatown has no customers, despite zero cases of novel coronavirus in the state of New York.

Chinese establishments, particularly restaurants, are being shunned, their popularity now a thing of the past. Once-busy establishments, prepared as always to serve loyal clientele discover that suddenly there are none. "On a normal day, we'd have around 100 tables a day," said David Zheng, an employee at New Shanghai Deluxe restaurant in New York's Chinatown. Now, "for a full day of business, we'd get only 20 to 30 tables." 

There is no racial discrimination in China, but there is silence, there is desperation and fear, and lockdown. The streets are quiet in most large cities, as everyone worries about contact and authorities take steps to ensure that there is no contact. People stay inside as much as they can. The economy, already showing signs of weakness, is in real distress. China has withdrawn into itself, the country that so belligerently and self-celebratorily emphasized its status as an Asian trade behemoth, investing in its Belt-and-Road initiative now bitterly accuses the West of 'racism'.

Empty streets in Shanghai's Hong Kou district amid ongoing coronavirus prevention measures.

Thousands of passengers on a cruise in Asia on the Diamond Princess have been aboard the ship docked in Yokohama, Japan, in a state of quarantine, passengers in the limited area of their cabins being delivered food daily by the immense number of ship employees themselves under no quarantine in a situation where a virus which seems to communicate with ease spreads without distinction between passengers and crew, infecting hundreds among them.

Virologist Iwata whose experience includes working in Africa with the Ebola outbreak announced he had been ejected from the Diamond Princess having expressed his concerns as an infectious diseases expert about the 'chaotic' conditions aboard the vessel that could hasten the spread of the COVID-19 virus. Passengers, he claimed, had been given consent forms to sign that could have had the effect of passing on the infection. Now away from the ship, he has placed himself in self-quarantine in the fear he may have contracted the virus.



Ship passengers are being evacuated in an orderly fashion to be flown back to their countries of origin on planes dispatched or leased by their governments for that purpose. Those with no symptoms of the novel coronavirus will board the planes for home passage, while those in whom symptoms emerge must go into quarantine for 14 days in Japanese hospitals and find a way to make their own flight back home afterward.

The fly in that ointment is that many people infected with the virus have no symptoms; they simply are carriers, able to pass their infection along, unknowingly. Among about 250 Canadian passengers, 43 had been infected by the virus, as an example. Aboard ship new cases are being diagnosed daily, the latest, a further 79 cases on Wednesday for a total infected ship's population of 621 while hundreds of others begin to disembark having concluded the 14-day isolation period.

Dr. Iwata, familiar with the Ebola outbreak, cholera emergencies, the SARS epidemic in China in 2003, admitted to never before having felt so fearful for his own health and safety as with his experience on the Diamond Princess. He gave his support to the disembarkation process, however, with the caution that passengers must still undergo quarantine once back in their home countries.

Those who have tested negative for COVID-19 may freely depart the ship amidst concerns that some people could be asymptomatic carriers, since of the 79 people newly confirmed on Wednesday authorities admitted 78 had not demonstrated any symptoms. Forecaster Oxford Economics gave warning that the virus could end up costing the global economy a trillion dollars to manage the virus should it become a pandemic. Cases in China have now surged to 75,000, with South Korea having the most cases of coronavirus outside China.