Iran Reports 9 Coronavirus-Linked Deaths As WHO Warns Number Of Cases Outside China ‘Won’t Stay Low For Very Long’

Thursday, February 20, 2020
By Paul Martin

by Tyler Durden
ZeroHedge.com
Thu, 02/20/2020

Update (1010ET): Talk about a spike in deaths: Iran is now reporting 9 deaths after shocking the world by revealing that two Chinese nationals infected with the virus had died in the city of Qoms earlier this week.

The Iranian regime has reportedly imposed a China-style crackdown on Qoms, deploying military and crowd-control police across the city.

It’s just the latest sign that the cases and deaths ex-China are accelerating.

CNBC’s Eunice Yoon reports that Beijing has warned Hubei not to allow people back to work before March 10.

Local leaders said yesterday that they would launch a special financing vehicle to help struggling companies in the province survive the outbreak.

Following the WHO’s daily press conference, Director General Dr. Tedros said the WHO had confirmed 1,000 cases outside mainland China (with more than half of them infected aboard the ‘Diamond Princess’), and 7 deaths, likely excludes some of the deaths announced over the past 12 hours. Though he added that the data coming out of China “appeared to show a decline in new cases.”

“Outside China, we have seen a steady drip of new cases, but we have not yet seen sustained local transmission, except in specific circumstances like the Diamond Princess cruise ship,” he added.

More ominously, Dr. Tedros exclaimed that the outbreak is far from over, and if governments don’t take adequate steps to fight the virus, the number of cases outside China “won’t stay low for very long.”

Worried about more shortages of personal protective equipment like facemasks, Dr. Tedros pleaded with a dozen different manufacturers to do whatever they can to keep up appropriate global supplies.

The director said the WHO expects to have more data from two clinical trials for treatments in roughly 3 weeks.

Since we haven’t posted a breakdown of new cases yet today, we figured we’d share this list of countries, cases and deaths courtesy of the Associated Press:

According to the Associated Press, the latest figures provided by each government’s health authority as of Thursday in Beijing are:

Mainland China: 2,118 deaths among 74,576 cases, mostly in the central province of Hubei
Hong Kong: 65 cases, 2 deaths
Macao: 10
Japan: 727 cases, including 634 from a cruise ship docked in Yokohama, 3 deaths
Singapore: 84
South Korea: 51, 1 death
Thailand: 35
Taiwan: 24 cases, 1 death
Malaysia: 22
Vietnam: 16
Germany: 16
United States: 15 cases; separately, 1 U.S. citizen died in China
Australia: 14
France: 12 cases, 1 death
United Kingdom: 9
United Arab Emirates: 9
Canada: 8
Iran: 5 cases, 2 deaths
Philippines: 3 cases, 1 death
India: 3
Italy: 3
Russia: 2
Spain: 2
Belgium: 1
Nepal: 1
Sri Lanka: 1
Sweden: 1
Cambodia: 1
Finland: 1
Egypt: 1
In other news, UK passengers aboard the ‘Diamond Princess’ will be evacuated by their government on Friday. The chartered evacuation flights (following the standard template) will land at Boscombe Down airbase in Wiltshire. Elsewhere in the anglosphere, Australia has extended its travel ban for arrivals from China into a fourth week. It will last until Feb. 29, the Guardian reported.

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