A woman wearing a face mask speaks to hospital personnel wearing protective medical gowns at No.5 Hospital in Wuhan, China, on Friday. (Chris Buckley/The New York Times)
WUHAN, China: The Lunar New Year festivities were just hours away, but instead of helping to prepare a joyous family banquet, Chen Yanming stood anxiously outside a hospital where her father was being tested for a dangerous new virus.
“Today should be the Chinese people’s happiest day,” Chen, 47, said here in Wuhan, the riverside city of 11 million in central China where the outbreak began. “But this sickness has destroyed that feeling. It came suddenly and unexpectedly. We should have been better prepared.”
The emergence of the mysterious coronavirus could hardly come at a worse time for China, turning its biggest holiday into a time of deepening fear, restrictions and frustration.
The pneumonia-like illness linked to the virus has, by official count, stricken nearly 1,300 people in mainland China. At least 41 people have been killed, including 15 new deaths in Wuhan reported by officials on Saturday morning alone. More than 20 other cases have been confirmed elsewhere, including five in Hong Kong, two in the United States, three in France and, on Saturday, one in Australia.
Hundreds of millions of people in China travel during the holiday, increasing the risk of spreading the virus. For many migrant workers from the countryside, the Lunar New Year break is the only opportunity to spend extended time with their children. For growing numbers of Chinese people, it is a time for tourism to Beijing and other cities, or to foreign destinations.
But this year, desperate to contain the disease, Chinese authorities have shut down transport or imposed travel restrictions in 13 cities in Hubei, the province at the center of the outbreak, hemming in 35 million people. Business closures are spreading in other cities.
The streets across Wuhan were eerily empty Friday, except near hospitals. The city has been largely shut down: Departures are mostly barred, and subways, buses and ferries within Wuhan are suspended. Many residents lined up at hospitals to check for the illness or stayed indoors rather than reuniting with family.
At the entrance to the hospital where Chen waited, cars and bicycles arrived with frail older people to be checked. Residents said it had become nearly impossible to find taxis following the ban on public transportation. Doctors and medical workers struggled to cope with the surge of people worried that they had symptoms of the virus.
At another hospital taking in possible cases of infection, an old man sat in a wheelchair outside the building. It was too crowded and unhealthy inside, he said. Another patient shuffled across the street holding a drip in his arm and its stand so he could stay away from the crowd inside the hospital.
“We won’t have a New Year celebration tonight. There’s no mood for it,” said Wu Qiang, a middle-aged Wuhan resident waiting outside a hospital for word about his son, who had a fever. “I think he’s OK, but now even an ordinary sneeze makes you worry. You start to think every cough or sneeze might be the virus.”
For many families in Wuhan, the Lunar New Year holiday now promises to be a week of anxious waiting — for medical resources and clarity about when they will be free of the virus and able to travel.
“The government announced there were thousands of beds, but everywhere is crammed with people,” said Xiao Hongxia, a Wuhan resident who said that her father, Xiao Shibing, was not getting full care for what might be illness from the virus. At one hospital, she said, “the doctors were crying that they were helpless to do anything.”
Twenty-nine of China’s 31 provinces and regions have confirmed cases, and two deaths have occurred far from the outbreak’s epicentre, one of them nearly 1,500 miles away. Cases have also been detected in Thailand, Vietnam, Singapore, Japan, South Korea, Nepal and Taiwan.
Officials at Shanghai Disneyland, one of the biggest tourist attractions in China, and at the Badaling section of the Great Wall of China, a popular tourist destination north of Beijing, said they would temporarily close beginning Saturday.
Beijing cancelled public events, including two popular temple fairs, and closed the Forbidden City, the capital’s most famous tourist attraction, until further notice. Many cities shuttered movie theaters, bars and cafes in an effort to limit the spread of the virus.
Gauden Galea, the representative of the World Health Organization in Beijing, said Friday that thousands of people would likely be infected and that the outbreak could be long.
“My own office is gearing up for a number of months,” Dr Galea said. “We do not expect it to disappear in a number of days.”
A passenger walks on Thursday through the railway station in Wuhan, China, where only a few passengers were debarking trains and residents were told that they could not board any. (Chris Buckley/The New York Times)
Here in Wuhan, supermarkets seemed well stocked, but some residents said that prices had gone up or that fresh vegetables and fruit had become harder to buy because so many local markets had closed.
More pressing are shortages of protective gowns, masks, gloves and other equipment to keep medical workers as safe as possible. Supplies have grown scarce in Wuhan under the weight of the epidemic, hospital employees in Wuhan said.
Outside the No.4 Hospital in Wuhan, two medical workers taking boxes of protective gowns from a truck said the gowns did not give maximum protection from the virus but would have to do because better supplies were lacking. Some doctors and medical workers have bought their own maximum-protection masks because hospitals were running short, one of them said.
“Shortage of medical supplies, request help!!!” the Wuhan Children’s Hospital said Thursday in a post on Weibo, a Chinese social network.
The Wuhan government Friday ordered that a new hospital be constructed in a matter of days to treat victims.
The hospital, modelled on one constructed in Beijing for the Sars epidemic in 2003, will have room for 1,000 beds and is expected to be finished by Feb. 3, according to a local media report posted to the Wuhan government’s website.
Dr Galea, who visited Wuhan this week before the lockdown, defended how Chinese officials had handled the outbreak, saying they had been transparent in sharing data.
“With the number of cases,” he said, “one would expect health systems to be stretched.”
But online and in interviews, people around China have been unusually critical of their government, arguing that officials are reluctant to disclose bad news that might sully the Communist Party’s image of triumphant progress.
In posts on Chinese social media platforms, some users called for Wuhan leaders to be dismissed. Others mocked the failure of the Communist Party’s flagship media to treat the epidemic with front-page urgency. Most of those posts were quickly removed.
In a sign of how far the outbreak has scrambled the Communist Party’s messages, the annual Lunar New Year variety show on the main national broadcaster — which usually gives a cheerful face to the party’s themes — made nods to the crisis.
The show broadcast images of doctors and nurses treating patients, of trucks of supplies festooned with banners that said, roughly translated, “Go Wuhan!” The presenters declared that the fight against the coronavirus was open, transparent and a testament to the abilities of the Chinese government.
“For Wuhan people, tonight the table should be filled with dishes of fish and meat,” said Chen. “But with my father sick, we’ll have a few simple dishes.”
The Canadian government says it will donate up to 200,000 vaccine doses to fight the mpox outbreak in Congo and other African countries.
It says the donated doses of Imvamune will come from Canada’s existing supply and will not affect the country’s preparedness for mpox cases in this country.
Minister of Health Mark Holland says the donation “will help to protect those in the most affected regions of Africa and will help prevent further spread of the virus.”
Dr. Madhukar Pai, Canada research chair in epidemiology and global health, says although the donation is welcome, it is a very small portion of the estimated 10 million vaccine doses needed to control the outbreak.
Vaccine donations from wealthier countries have only recently started arriving in Africa, almost a month after the World Health Organization declared the mpox outbreak a public health emergency of international concern.
A few days after the declaration in August, Global Affairs Canada announced a contribution of $1 million for mpox surveillance, diagnostic tools, research and community awareness in Africa.
On Thursday, the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention said mpox is still on the rise and that testing rates are “insufficient” across the continent.
Jason Kindrachuk, Canada research chair in emerging viruses at the University of Manitoba, said donating vaccines, in addition to supporting surveillance and diagnostic tests, is “massively important.”
But Kindrachuk, who has worked on the ground in Congo during the epidemic, also said that the international response to the mpox outbreak is “better late than never (but) better never late.”
“It would have been fantastic for us globally to not be in this position by having provided doses a much, much longer time prior than when we are,” he said, noting that the outbreak of clade I mpox in Congo started in early 2023.
Clade II mpox, endemic in regions of West Africa, came to the world’s attention even earlier — in 2022 — as that strain of virus spread to other countries, including Canada.
Two doses are recommended for mpox vaccination, so the donation may only benefit 100,000 people, Pai said.
Pai questioned whether Canada is contributing enough, as the federal government hasn’t said what percentage of its mpox vaccine stockpile it is donating.
“Small donations are simply not going to help end this crisis. We need to show greater solidarity and support,” he said in an email.
“That is the biggest lesson from the COVID-19 pandemic — our collective safety is tied with that of other nations.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 13, 2024.
Canadian Press health coverage receives support through a partnership with the Canadian Medical Association. CP is solely responsible for this content.
HALIFAX – The Nova Scotia government says it could be months before it reveals how many people are on the wait-list for a family doctor.
The head of the province’s health authority told reporters Wednesday that the government won’t release updated data until the 160,000 people who were on the wait-list in June are contacted to verify whether they still need primary care.
Karen Oldfield said Nova Scotia Health is working on validating the primary care wait-list data before posting new numbers, and that work may take a matter of months. The most recent public wait-list figures are from June 1, when 160,234 people, or about 16 per cent of the population, were on it.
“It’s going to take time to make 160,000 calls,” Oldfield said. “We are not talking weeks, we are talking months.”
The interim CEO and president of Nova Scotia Health said people on the list are being asked where they live, whether they still need a family doctor, and to give an update on their health.
A spokesperson with the province’s Health Department says the government and its health authority are “working hard” to turn the wait-list registry into a useful tool, adding that the data will be shared once it is validated.
Nova Scotia’s NDP are calling on Premier Tim Houston to immediately release statistics on how many people are looking for a family doctor. On Tuesday, the NDP introduced a bill that would require the health minister to make the number public every month.
“It is unacceptable for the list to be more than three months out of date,” NDP Leader Claudia Chender said Tuesday.
Chender said releasing this data regularly is vital so Nova Scotians can track the government’s progress on its main 2021 campaign promise: fixing health care.
The number of people in need of a family doctor has more than doubled between the 2021 summer election campaign and June 2024. Since September 2021 about 300 doctors have been added to the provincial health system, the Health Department said.
“We’ll know if Tim Houston is keeping his 2021 election promise to fix health care when Nova Scotians are attached to primary care,” Chender said.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 11, 2024.
ST. JOHN’S, N.L. – Newfoundland and Labrador‘s chief medical officer is monitoring the rise of whooping cough infections across the province as cases of the highly contagious disease continue to grow across Canada.
Dr. Janice Fitzgerald says that so far this year, the province has recorded 230 confirmed cases of the vaccine-preventable respiratory tract infection, also known as pertussis.
Late last month, Quebec reported more than 11,000 cases during the same time period, while Ontario counted 470 cases, well above the five-year average of 98. In Quebec, the majority of patients are between the ages of 10 and 14.
Meanwhile, New Brunswick has declared a whooping cough outbreak across the province. A total of 141 cases were reported by last month, exceeding the five-year average of 34.
The disease can lead to severe complications among vulnerable populations including infants, who are at the highest risk of suffering from complications like pneumonia and seizures. Symptoms may start with a runny nose, mild fever and cough, then progress to severe coughing accompanied by a distinctive “whooping” sound during inhalation.
“The public, especially pregnant people and those in close contact with infants, are encouraged to be aware of symptoms related to pertussis and to ensure vaccinations are up to date,” Newfoundland and Labrador’s Health Department said in a statement.
Whooping cough can be treated with antibiotics, but vaccination is the most effective way to control the spread of the disease. As a result, the province has expanded immunization efforts this school year. While booster doses are already offered in Grade 9, the vaccine is now being offered to Grade 8 students as well.
Public health officials say whooping cough is a cyclical disease that increases every two to five or six years.
Meanwhile, New Brunswick’s acting chief medical officer of health expects the current case count to get worse before tapering off.
A rise in whooping cough cases has also been reported in the United States and elsewhere. The Pan American Health Organization issued an alert in July encouraging countries to ramp up their surveillance and vaccination coverage.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 10, 2024.
