The top diplomats of Japan, the United States and South Korea on Saturday agreed to support China's efforts to contain
a deadly new coronavirus, as the outbreak poses increasing health risks and threatens to undermine the global economy.
ALL members of the World Health Organization (WHO) team of international experts are expected to arrive in China over the weekend to work with their Chinese colleagues against the novel coronavirus pneumonia.
A WHO advance team, which arrived in China on Tuesday, and their Chinese counterparts have finalized the scope of work and design of the mission, while the rest of the team will start arriving in China over the weekend, said Dr. Michael Ryan, executive director of the WHO Health Emergencies Program, at a briefing in Geneva, without revealing more details.
Earlier, Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the advance group was led by Bruce Aylward, a Canadian epidemiologist and a "veteran of past public health emergencies," and the whole team will probably be made of 10 experts from around the world.
As part of the international cooperation and coordination against the virus COVID-19, a WHO-led global research and innovation forum on the control of the epidemic concluded on Wednesday, which set the most urgent priorities for the global scientific effort to curb the virus.
Ryan also told the briefing that the first and foremost of the priorities are the demands of frontline clinicians and public health workers in China, including the development of better frontline diagnostics in emergency rooms, and immediate needs for clinical trials of drugs, such as the standard antivirals that were used in the past against MERS and SARS, as well as some anti- HIV drugs.
However, it could still be weeks before the trials are set up and generate some good information so as to "give us a large number of observations and a much stronger indication as to whether those drugs are working," he said.
Another urgent need has been the ability to do household studies and to develop a serology test that would "allow us to test populations to determine how many people in the population have been affected over time," he said.
Latest developments Japan, U.S., S. Korea vow to back China
The top diplomats of Japan, the United States and South Korea on Saturday agreed to support China's efforts to contain a deadly new coronavirus, as the outbreak poses increasing health risks and threatens to undermine the global economy.
Meeting on the sidelines of a security conference in Munich, Germany, Japanese Foreign Minister Toshimitsu Motegi, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and South Korean Foreign Minister Kang Kyung Wha focused on the coronavirus outbreak.
The coronavirus outbreak originating in the central Chinese city of Wuhan has rapidly spread, killing more than 1,500 and infecting over 66,000 in mainland China alone.
Hundreds more have tested positive in other countries that are scrambling to take countermeasures, and the International Monetary Fund has warned of a slowdown in the global economy as supply chains and tourism take a hit.
The U.S. Embassy in Japan said Saturday it will send chartered planes to evacuate American citizens and their families from a cruise ship that has been quarantined in Yokohama Port for nearly two weeks.
Passenger from Westerdam confirmed by Malaysia to have coronavirus
A woman from the United States who was among the nearly 1,500 passengers who disembarked on Friday from a cruise ship in Cambodia and flew to Malaysia has been confirmed as being infected with the new coronavirus, a Malaysian health official said Saturday.
The Westerdam, carrying 1,455 passengers and 802 crew, grabbed headlines after it was turned away by five ports in Asia over coronavirus fears before the Cambodian government allowed the ship to dock on Thursday on humanitarian grounds.
Noor Hisham Abdullah, the Health Ministry director general, said in a statement that the 83-year-old woman and her 85-year-old husband, also from the United States, were among 145 passengers who flew into Malaysia on Friday after disembarking.
Airport screening discovered the couple to have "symptoms," the statement said, adding they were sent to a hospital on the outskirts of Kuala Lumpur. A test for the virus now known as COVID- 19 came back positive for her on Saturday.
Her husband tested negative although he remains hospitalized for treatment of his symptoms and observation.
The couple were among the total 405 passengers who, after disembarking on Friday, boarded charter flights to either the capital Phnom Penh or to Kuala Lumpur.
U.S. to evacuate Americans
The U.S. government will send chartered aircraft to Japan to evacuate American citizens and their families from a coronavirus- hit cruise ship quarantined near Tokyo, its embassy said Saturday, amid concerns about deteriorating sanitary conditions on the vessel.
Japan confirmed more infections on the Diamond Princess as monitoring continued for itspassengers, while also announcing additional cases within the country including those at a hospital.
Facing a number of cases whose infection routes cannot be tracked, the government admitted it is "facing a different situation."
The U.S. aircraft will arrive in Japan on Sunday evening and leave Tokyo's Haneda airport the following day, the embassy said. The passengers will be transported to the airport on buses.
Man runs marathon in prevention of virus
A fanatical runner jogged the equivalent of an ultra-marathon inside his small apartment as people in virus-hit China desperately try to keep fit while cooped up indoors.
The country is at the centre of an outbreak of a new coronavirus, leaving more than 1,500 dead and sparking global alarm, but it is also in the grip of a health drive because the government is aggressively encouraging people to exercise to fight the disease.
With much of the 1.4 billion population ordered indoors and gyms closed, people are competing to outdo each other in how many bottles of water they can lift, how many push-ups they can do with their children on their backs or how many flights of stairs they can scale in their tower blocks.
But Pan Shancu has easily won the unofficial gold medal, saying he jogged 66 kilometres (41 miles) in a loop at home in six hours, 41 minutes.
REFERENCES Xinhua; AFP; Kyodo News Updates
