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進入《TAIPEI TIMES》Chinese premier asks EU for swift medical supplies
Concorde Hospital staff unload medical supplies from a helicopter in Wuhan, China, yesterday. Photo: EPA-EFE
‘REMORSE’: The WHO’s representative in Beijing urged other governments to prepare for domestic outbreak control in case the disease spreads in their countries
/ Reuters and AFP, BEIJING
Chinese Premier Li Keqiang （李克強） has asked the EU to facilitate China’s urgent procurement of medical supplies from member countries, the Chinese government said yesterday, amid a coronavirus outbreak that has killed 259 people and infected nearly 12,000.
China is facing deepening isolation over the outbreak as the death toll soars, with the US and Australia leading a growing list of nations to impose extraordinary travel bans.
With the UK, Russia and Sweden among the countries confirming their first infections, the virus has now spread to more than two dozen nations, sending governments scurrying to limit their exposure.
Other governments need to prepare for “domestic outbreak control” if the disease spreads in their countries, WHO representative in Beijing Gauden Galea said.
The US toughened its stance on Friday by declaring a national emergency, temporarily barring entry to foreigners who had been in China within the past two weeks.
“Foreign nationals, other than immediate family of US citizens and permanent residents, who have traveled in China within the last 14 days will be denied entry into the United States,” US Secretary of Health Alex Azar said.
Australia said it was barring entry to non-citizens arriving from China, while Australian citizens who had traveled there would be required to go into “self-isolation” for two weeks.
Vietnam yesterday suspended all flights from China and Hong Kong.
Similar expansive restrictions have been announced by countries including Italy, Singapore and Mongolia.
The US, Japan, the UK, Germany and other nations had already advised their citizens not to travel to China.
Beijing has said it can contain the virus and called Washington’s advice against travel to China “unkind.”
“Certainly it is not a gesture of goodwill,” Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokeswoman Hua Chunying （華春瑩） said.
The US emergency declaration also requires Americans returning from the Chinese province of Hubei, where the outbreak started, to be placed in mandatory 14-day quarantine, and health screening for American citizens coming from other parts of China.
In a bid to stop the contagion, the Chinese government has extended the Lunar New Year holiday through this weekend and urged people to avoid public gatherings.
Many provinces and cities have called on companies to remain closed for another week after the holiday ends tomorrow.
The economic fallout continued yesterday as Apple Inc announced that its China stores would be closed until Sunday next week “out of an abundance of caution and based on the latest advice from leading health experts.”
With public anger mounting in China, Wuhan’s top official late on Friday said that authorities there had acted too slowly, expressing “remorse and self-reproach.”
“If strict control measures had been taken earlier, the result would have been better than now,” Chinese Communist Party Secretary of Wuhan Ma Guoqiang （馬國強） told state media.
Wuhan officials have been criticized online for withholding information about the outbreak until late December, despite knowing of it weeks earlier.
China finally lurched into action last week, effectively quarantining whole cities in Hubei and tens of millions of people.
However, the toll keeps mounting at an ever-increasing pace, with health authorities yesterday saying 46 more people had died in the preceding 24 hours, all but one in Hubei.
Another 2,102 new infections were also confirmed, bringing the total to nearly 12,000 — far higher than the SARS outbreak of 2002-2003.
The WHO on Friday, said that closing borders was probably ineffective in halting transmission and could accelerate the virus’ spread.
However, authorities around the world pressed ahead with preventive measures.
Thai health officials on Friday said a taxi driver became the kingdom’s first case of human-to-human transmission.
Thailand joined China, Germany, Japan, France and the US with confirmed domestic infections.
More than 40,000 workers at a vast Chinese-controlled industrial park in Indonesia — which also employs 5,000 staff from China — were put under quarantine, the facility said on Friday.
Countries have scrambled to evacuate their nationals from Wuhan, with hundreds of US, Japanese, British, French, South Korean, Indian and Mongolian citizens evacuated so far, and more countries planning airlifts.
Russia said it would evacuate more than 2,500 of its citizens holidaying on China’s Hainan Island, far from the epicenter.
Additional reporting by AP
新聞來源：TAIPEI TIMES
