Coronavirus death toll in China rises to 425

BEIJING: The death toll from the new coronavirus outbreak in China spiked to 425 on Tuesday, according to international media reports.

Chinese authorities said that 64 new fatalities were reported in the hard-hit Hubei province. On Sunday, China’s Health Commission reported that 361 people had died from the disease — surpassing the country’s 2002 to 2003 SARS outbreak death toll of 349.

Cases of the flu-like illness also increased, with 2,345 new patients across China, bringing the total to 19,550. There has also beenone death outside China, in the Philippines.

The virus, which originated in late December in the city of Wuhan, has now spread to more than 20 countries, including the US, where 11 cases have been reported.

The new figures come after the country opened a new hospital built in 10 days, infused cash into tumbling financial markets and further restricted people’s movement in hopes of containing the rapidly spreading virus and its escalating impact.

Japanese officials were deciding whether to quarantine more than 3,000 people on a cruise ship that carried a passenger who tested positive for the virus.

Other countries are continuing evacuations and restricting the entry of Chinese or people who have recently travelled in the country. In the province at the epicentre of the outbreak, a specialised 1,000-bed hospital started treating patients and a second hospital with 1,500 beds is to open within days. The new hospital has been built from scratch in less than two weeks.

Other countries continued evacuating citizens from hardest-hit Hubei province and restricted the entry of Chinese or people who recently travelled to the country. The World Health Organisation said the number of cases will keep growing because tests are pending on thousands of suspected cases.

Chinese President Xi Jinping, presiding over a special meeting of the country’s top Communist Party body for the second time since the crisis started, said “we have launched a people’s war of prevention of the epidemic.”

He told the Politburo standing committee that the country must race against time to curb the spread of the virus and that those who neglect their duties will be punished, state broadcaster CCTV reported.

Medical teams from the People’s Liberation Army were arriving in Wuhan, the capital of Hubei province, to relieve overwhelmed health workers and to staff the new 1,000-bed hospital, located in the countryside far from the city centre.

Its prefabricated wards are equipped with state-of-the-art medical equipment and ventilation systems. A second hospital with 1,500 beds is due to open within days.

China’s Shanghai Composite stock index plunged nearly 8% on the first day of trading after the Lunar New Year holiday, despite a central bank announcement that it was putting 1.2 trillion yuan ($173 billion) into the markets.

“We are fully confident in and capable of minimizing the epidemic’s impact on the economy,” Lian Weiliang, deputy chief of the National Development and Reform Commission, said at a news conference in Beijing.

International airlines are also suspending flights to China in the wake of the new coronavirus outbreak. The rapidly spreading coronavirus may also have a new victim: the US-China trade agreement.

On the market front, Chinese stocks tanked the most in years on Monday after a multi-day trading halt. That prompted the People's Bank of China to step in with 1.2 trillion yen ($174 billion) worth of money-market injections.

From an economic basis, government officials are now reportedly considering a cut to the country's growth estimates as key industries face unexpected slowdown.

But the economic worries don't end there. Experts said the increasingly widespread virus may also harm the newly improved trade relationship between the US and China.

The two economic superpowers signed a phase-one trade deal on January 15, ushering in the first major de-escalation in the global trade war. China pledged to purchase $200 billion worth of US goods beyond what it bought in 2017, with $76.7 billion in purchases set to arrive within the first year of the deal.

The latest coronavirus development adds to existing doubts from economists around China's ability to fulfill the purchase obligations before coronavirus began spreading. The import commitment is "unrealistic" and may lead the deal to "be doomed from the start," Chad Bown, a trade policy expert at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, wrote in a client note on January 21.

Crude oil also crashed into yet another bear market on fears that the coronavirus outbreak will destroy demand in China, the world's largest crude importer.

US oil tumbled another 2.8% on Monday and briefly broke below $50 a barrel for the first time since January 2019. Crude finished at $50.11 a barrel, leaving it down nearly 21% from the recent closing high of $63.27 a barrel on January 6. A bear market is frequently defined as a drop of more than 20% from previous highs.