Here’s what you need to know:
- Coronavirus pushes across Europe and Middle East, while U.S. prepares for outbreak.
- Brazil confirms coronavirus infection, the first in Latin America.
- Iran downplays outbreak spreading quickly there and in neighboring countries.
- As new cases soar in South Korea, a U.S. soldier there tests positive.
- Some dos and don’ts to avoid the virus.
- In suburban New York, 83 people agree to be isolated after potential exposure.
Read updates in Chinese: 新冠病毒疫情最新消息汇总
Coronavirus pushes across Europe and Middle East, while U.S. prepares for outbreak.
New coronavirus clusters across Europe and the Middle East. More infections in Iran stoking fears about an uncontrolled spread. Global market jitters and warnings that the epidemic will reach the United States. A toxic political climate in Washington complicating the public health challenge.
That worrying drumbeat frayed nerves across the world on Wednesday even as the pace of the outbreak seemed to be slowing in China, where most cases have been.
For the first time, more new cases were reported outside China than inside, according to the World Health Organization. Chinese officials on Tuesday reported 411 new infections; in the rest of the world, the number was 427. The total number of cases globally has now reached 80,980 and nearly 3,000 have died.
South Korea, with the largest outbreak outside China, saw a nearly 30 percent jump in cases, to more than 1,200, and an American soldier there tested positive.
In China, the authorities cautioned that the falling infection rate might be only a temporary reprieve, and the government is struggling to restore its reputation, battered by the epidemic.
In the European Union, new cases were recorded in Austria, Croatia, France, Germany, Greece and Spain. Most were tied to Italy, where the authorities have been struggling to contain an outbreak that has infected at least 400 people, most of them in the north near Milan.
Hotels in Austria, France and the Canary Islands of Spain were locked down this week after guests tested positive for the virus or were suspected of having it. The steps to limit contagion differed from place to place, but large group gatherings were often the first things to be canceled where the virus had been detected.
As the American health authorities braced for an outbreak in the United States, the Trump administration came under criticism from both Democratic and Republican lawmakers for contradictory statements on the severity of the crisis, a lack of transparency and seemingly lax preparations.
Brazil confirms coronavirus infection, the first in Latin America.
Brazil’s health ministry said on Wednesday that a 61-year-old man who recently traveled to São Paulo from Italy had contracted the coronavirus.
The first known case in Latin America, it comes as Brazil is in the midst of Carnival, a hugely popular festival that draws large crowds into close quarters for raucous street celebrations.
Officials were scrambling to track down other passengers on the flight the man took to Brazil and to find others who had come into contact with him in recent days.
The patient, who lives in São Paulo, had recently traveled for work to northern Italy, where an outbreak has infected at least 325 people. He sought medical help after experiencing a fever, cough and sore throat, according to health officials.
Brazil’s health minister, Luiz Henrique Mandetta, told the G1 news site that officials were hopeful that the virus would not spread briskly in Brazil, given the warmer time of year.
“The virus behaves differently in the Northern Hemisphere and the Southern Hemisphere,” he said. “Brazil is a country of younger people, and we’re in summertime. This is a period that is not conducive for a respiratory virus.”
Iran downplays outbreak spreading quickly there and in neighboring countries.
Iran’s leaders continued to downplay the seriousness of the outbreak there on Wednesday, even as the number of cases in Iran or linked to it kept climbing quickly.
The health ministry reported 139 cases and 19 deaths, up from 95 and 15 on Tuesday, and the government ordered a weeklong closure of schools and cultural sites in 10 provinces. Experts say Iran’s high apparent death rate suggests that it has far more infections than it has discovered or acknowledged.
But President Hassan Rouhani said that the virus was coming under control, and he predicted that things would return to normal by Saturday, Iranian state media reported. He added that Iran’s enemies were using the epidemic to further isolate the country.
Iran has not closed pilgrimage sites that draw millions of Shiite Muslims to the city of Qom, the center of the country’s outbreak. On Wednesday, the cleric in charge of one of the most important sites there, the Fatima Masumeh shrine, said people should keep visiting.
Bahrain on Wednesday raised its case total to 26, and said all three new patients had just arrived from Iran — as had some of the previous ones. Bahrain is one of several countries reporting infections in people who had recently traveled to Iran.
Pakistan’s health minister, Dr. Zafar Mirza, on Wednesday confirmed the first two cases of the coronavirus in that country, and said that one of them was a 22-year-old student who had recently returned from Iran. Pakistan closed its border with Iran on Sunday.
Georgia reported its first case on Wednesday, also a traveler returning from Iran, who had entered the country through Azerbaijan.
Citizens of Qatar and Kuwait who are in Iran will be evacuated, the Qatar News Agency reported.
And in Iraq, movie theaters, coffee shops and other public gathering places were ordered to close until March 7. The Education Ministry said that schools and universities, which have been on a winter break, would also remain closed until then. In addition, Iraqi citizens will be forbidden to travel to China, Iran, South Korea and a half dozen other countries, in the hope of preventing the spread of the virus.
As new cases soar in South Korea, a U.S. soldier there tests positive.
As the number of new coronavirus infections in South Korea soared on Wednesday, the U.S. military ordered all people who had come into contact with an American soldier who tested positive for the virus to isolate themselves in their homes.
The 23-year-old soldier, one of nearly 30,000 U.S. troops based in the country and the first of them to be infected, is stationed at Camp Carrol in Waegwan, 12 miles from Daegu, the city at the center of South Korea’s outbreak.
South Korea reported 284 new cases on Wednesday, the largest single-day jump so far, as the authorities complete the testing hundreds of members of a secretive church in Daegu that has been hit hard by the virus.
South Korea now has 1,261 cases, the largest outbreak outside China.
The government says it is still unsure how the virus got to South Korea, but suspicions have been raised about the Shincheonji church, which has members in Wuhan, China, which has the world’s largest concentration of infections.
In response to the growing crisis, the U.S. military in South Korea elevated its risk level to “high” on Monday, advising all troops to “limit non-mission-essential” meetings and “off-installation travel.” At gates of American bases, assessment stations have been set up, with soldiers lining up for temperature checks and screening questionnaires.
Col. Edward Ballanco, the Army garrison commander for the affected area, said the military was arranging grocery deliveries to those quarantined.
On Tuesday, the United States and South Korea said they would consider scaling back joint military exercises after at least 13 South Korean soldiers were infected.
The U.S. military in Japan sent out a notice on Wednesday telling all personnel there to avoid nonessential travel to South Korea.
Some dos and don’ts to avoid the virus.
If the coronavirus appears in communities in the United States, as federal officials anticipate, what can you do to protect yourself and your family?
Much of the advice from experts involves common sense, not very different from what you would do to dodge the flu or any other respiratory virus.
Because Americans often disregard colds and flus, continuing about their ordinary business, there are people with symptoms in public places. Without apology, you should put distance between you and them. Six feet would be good, but even a little distancing is helpful.
And do your colleagues a favor if you aren’t feeling well: Stay home from work.
Another obvious way to reduce the odds of infection: wash your hands often. “It’s not super sexy, but it works,” said Dr. Trish Perl, an infectious disease specialist at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center.
During the SARS epidemic — also caused by a coronavirus, but one that was much deadlier — hand-washing reduced the risk of transmission by 30 to 50 percent, she said.
If it is not feasible to wash your hands with water, you can use a hand sanitizer, but check the label to be sure it contains at least 60 percent alcohol.
The trademark of coronavirus outbreaks abroad are those ubiquitous face masks. But if you are healthy, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and infectious disease specialists do not recommend face masks. Most surgical masks are too loose to prevent inhalation of the virus.
If you are infected, however, a mask can help prevent the spread of a virus.
Health care workers and people caring for sick people should wear masks. The most effective are so-called N95 masks, which block 95 percent of very small particles.
In suburban New York, 83 people agree to be isolated after potential exposure.
Health officials in Nassau County, N.Y., said on Wednesday that they were monitoring 83 people in voluntary isolation for potential coronavirus exposure, but that there were no confirmed cases in the county or the state.
Many of the people had recently been in China, while others had been in contact with such people, the county health commissioner, Dr. Lawrence Eisenstein, said in a news conference.
About 175 people in Nassau County, which borders New York City, have been asked to self-quarantine for some period of time since the authorities started taking that precaution several weeks ago, he said.
People in other parts of the country have also agreed to isolate themselves after traveling from places with coronavirus outbreaks.
“As of today, there are 83 people who are on our list of being removed from contacting other people,” Dr. Eisenstein said. Officials are in communication with them every day, he said, and all have complied with the quarantine request.
Five of the people have tested negative for the virus, and a sixth person’s test results are pending.
The people being monitored are asked to remove themselves from other people, including family members, and are checked every day for a fever or other symptoms.
Andy Simone, the county’s director for emergency preparedness, said that hospitals were prepared in the event that someone tests positive. But she added, “There is no fear right now, we do not have a case in Nassau County.”
President Trump plans to hold a news conference with health officials.
President Trump said he would hold a news conference with officials from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention at the White House on Wednesday, a day after conflicting assessments of the epidemic from him and his administration.
The news conference, to be held at 6:30 p.m. Eastern, will also include other officials, he wrote in a Twitter post. The president also attacked the news media for “doing everything possible” to make the situation look dire, “including panicking markets.”
Mr. Trump has repeatedly tried to minimize fears about the coronavirus, saying on Tuesday that it was “very much under control” in the United States, and his top economic adviser, Larry Kudlow, said, “we have contained this.”
But on the same day, C.D.C. officials said U.S. institutions needed to prepare for an outbreak, which they described as inevitable. Alex M. Azar II, the secretary of health and human services, said, “we cannot hermetically seal off the United States to a virus.”
Mr. Trump lashed out on Wednesday at what he called “Do Nothing Democrat comrades,” even as his administration has come under fire from both Republicans and Democrats for not doing enough to prepare for the coronavirus in the United States.
His administration has asked Congress to allocate $1.25 billion in new emergency funds to bolster its coronavirus response.
Germany’s health minister says source of some new infections cannot be traced.
A coronavirus epidemic has broken out in Germany, Health Minister Jens Spahn said Wednesday, after new cases were confirmed that cannot be traced to the virus’s original source in China.
The disease is moving to a new phase in Germany, Mr. Spahn said at a news conference.
“The infection chains are partially no longer trackable,” he said.
About 20 cases of the coronavirus have been identified in the country, he said, but until now health officials had been able to trace those who became infected back to the virus’s origins in central China or to hot spots in Italy.
Mr. Spahn said people should not panic, because “not every cough is a case of coronavirus.”
The authorities in Germany’s most populous state, North Rhine-Westphalia, were trying on Wednesday to retrace the steps of a couple who contracted the coronavirus from a source they could not immediately identify. This raised the troubling prospect that it might have been transmitted within the country itself.
The couple had spent the previous two weeks — the estimated incubation period for the virus — “taking part in normal, public life,” said Karl-Josef Laumann, the state health minister.
That included attending a large carnival party and taking a brief trip to the Netherlands, he said. Dutch authorities and the hotel where the couple stayed have been informed.
The authorities in the southwestern German state of Baden-Württemberg confirmed another new case, a 25-year-old man thought to have contracted the virus during a trip to Milan. On his return, he contacted local health officials and was placed in isolation.
As global markets continue to slide, Wall Street shows some signs of stabilizing.
Nervousness about the spread of the coronavirus gripped Wall Street again on Wednesday, with an early rise in stock prices giving way to a third day of selling. The S & P 500 was down 0.4 percent at the end of trading, bringing its losses for the week to more than 6 percent.
The day began with the S & P 500 increasing by more than 1.5 percent before giving up those gains. Market observers attributed the change in sentiment to comments from Germany’s health minister that the country was at the beginning of a coronavirus epidemic.
Bonds rallied, pushing the yield on the 10-year Treasury note to a record low for a second day. The price of oil also fell.
Major markets around the world continued to drop, with investors reacting to reports of the coronavirus spreading across the globe. European markets fell more by than 1 percent on Wednesday, and Asian markets ended the trading day lower.
Investors have been dumping stocks all week, seeking safer investments like government bonds, as the outbreak spreads beyond Asia.
A potential casualty of the virus is Europe’s open borders.
The coronavirus epidemic poses a new and serious threat to Europe’s already diminished system of free movement across borders.
For generations, Europe Union leaders have pursued — and, to a great degree, realized — a vision of a continent where not only would trade be seamless, so would travel.
Eventually, 26 European countries — including four that are not in the bloc — signed on, allowing people to travel from country to country in what is known as the Schengen area without showing passports, or even being stopped at border crossings.
But the idea has never been universally loved; right-wing and nationalist politicians in particular have opposed it. Ireland joined the European Union in 1973, but has never joined Schengen; neither did Britain, a member of the bloc for 47 years until it left in January.
Opposition to free movement surged with the migrant crisis of 2015. Many countries erected what were supposed to be temporary border controls, but five years later, some are still in place.
As coronavirus outbreaks grow and multiply, calls for closing borders have grown louder. So far no country has taken that drastic step, but privately European officials have warned that could change quickly.
On Wednesday, the European Union’s top official for communicable diseases said that Europe needed to prepare more broadly for the kind of crisis that has hit northern Italy.
“Our current assessment is that we will likely see a similar situation in other countries in Europe, and that the picture may vary from country to country,” said the official, Andrea Ammon, director of the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control.
Two European hotels remain locked down as new cases spread across the Continent.
Two European hotels were on lockdown on Wednesday as coronavirus infections spread on the Continent, and a third was quarantined for several hours.
The authorities in Innsbruck, an Austrian ski town in the Alps, sealed off the 108-room Grand Hotel after an Italian employee there tested positive for the virus. The cordon was the second at a European hotel in two days, after Spain on Tuesday cordoned off the H10 Costa Adeje Palace on the resort island of Tenerife after a guest, also from Italy, tested positive.
Each of the infected Italians had recently visited the Lombardy region of the country.
Though the virus originated in China, an outbreak in Italy has given it a foothold in Europe from which it has spread to at least five countries.
Spain, Austria, Croatia, Switzerland and France all reported cases linked to Lombardy on Tuesday.
In central France, the Ibis Center hotel in Beaune was closed after a client from Hong Kong died during the night. The health authorities ordered that all 30 members of the guest’s group remain in isolation while tests were conducted.
But the tests results on Wednesday afternoon did not show coronavirus, and the lockdown was lifted.
Cuomo to set aside $40 million to prepare for possible infections.
Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York said Wednesday that the state would set aside $40 million in the expectation that the coronavirus would eventually spread to New York. He also said the state had begun planning for possible quarantines at homes, hotels and hospitals.
While there have been no confirmed cases of the virus in New York, the governor and the state health commissioner, Dr. Howard Zucker, warned that its spread to the state was inevitable.
“It is highly probable that we will have people in New York State who test positive,” said Mr. Cuomo, noting that New York City is “the front door internationally” for many travelers. “No one should be surprised when we have positive cases.”
The governor also said he would ask federal health authorities for permission to test patient samples in a laboratory in New York, rather than waiting several days for results from the C.D.C. in Atlanta.
State officials have already been taking precautions against the disease, asking about 700 recent visitors to China to voluntarily quarantine themselves, even as Customs and Border Protection agents continue to screen passengers at area airports.
Individuals who have visited mainland China are judged to be of “medium risk,” according to the State Health Department, though it said none of those self-isolating individuals had exhibited symptoms of coronavirus.
Reporting was contributed by Russell Goldman, Choe Sang-Hun, Keith Bradsher, Austin Ramzy, Elaine Yu, Ben Dooley, Alexandra Stevenson, Kevin Granville, Marc Santora, Melissa Eddy, Christopher F. Schuetze, Matina Stevis-Gridneff, Alan Yuhas, Andrew Kramer, Anton Troianovski, Richard Pérez-Peña, Alan Finder, Gina Kolata, Ernesto Londoño, Noah Weiland, Maggie Haberman Emily Cochrane, Alissa J. Rubin and Falih Hassan.
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