Coronavirus pushes beyond Asia as it takes aim at Europe and Middle East

The coronavirus took aim at a broadening swath of the globe on Monday, with officials in Europe and the Middle East scrambling to limit the spread of an outbreak that showed signs of stabilising at its Chinese epicentre but posed new threats far beyond. In Italy, authorities set up roadblocks, called off football matches and closed sites including the famed La Scala opera house.

In Iran, a report of dozens of deaths in a single city emerged as infections were reported to have spread for the first time to Iraq, Kuwait, Bahrain, Oman and Afghanistan.

Across the world, stock markets and futures dipped, with the Dow down more than 800 points in the opening minutes of trading.

Worldwide, the number of people made ill by the coronavirus topped 79,000, and wherever it sprung up, officials rushed to try to contain it.

"The past few weeks has demonstrated just how quickly a new virus can spread around the world and cause widespread fear and disruption," said the head of the World Health Organisation, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.

"Does this virus have pandemic potential? Absolutely, yes," Mr Tedros said, but "for the moment we're not witnessing the uncontained global spread of this virus."

Clusters of the virus continued to emerge, including a possible one in Qom, an Iranian city where the country's semi-official ILNA news agency cited a politician in reporting a staggering 50 people had died of Covid-19, the disease caused by the virus.

The country's Health Ministry rejected that, insisting the death toll remained at 12.

Authorities in Iran closed schools across much of the country for a second day. Cinemas and other venues were shuttered until at least Friday and daily sanitising of the metro in Tehran, which is used by some three million people, was begun.

China still has the vast majority of cases, but as it records lower levels of new infections, attention has shifted to new fronts in the outbreak.

Chief among them is South Korea, where President Moon Jae-in placed the country under a red alert, the highest level, allowing for "unprecedented, powerful steps" to stem the crisis.

Beyond expanding a delay to the start of the school year from the hardest-hit area of Daegu nationwide, though, it remains to be seen how far the government will go.

A Chinese-style lockdown of Daegu - a city of 2.5 million people that is the country's fourth largest - appeared unlikely, even as signs of the response to a broadening problem could be seen nearly everywhere in the nation.

More than 600 police officers in Daegu fanned out in search of hundreds of members of a church that has been identified as a source for hundreds of infections.

The country's National Assembly was temporarily closed on Monday as workers sterilised its halls. At shops and food stalls in the capital of Seoul, a misty fog surrounded crews in protective suits who sprayed disinfectants.

"The changes have been dramatic," said Daegu resident Nah Young-jo, who described an increasingly empty city of few passersby and closed restaurants.

South Korean officials recommended that courts consider postponing trials of cases not deemed urgent, while Mayor Park Won-soon of Seoul threatened tough penalties for those who defy a ban on rallies in major downtown areas.

"If we fail to effectively prevent the spread of the virus into the local communities, there would be a large possibility (that the illness) spreads nationwide," warned Kim Gang-lip, South Korea's vice health minister.

Health workers said they planned to test every citizen in Daegu who showed cold-like symptoms for the coronavirus, estimating around 28,000 people would be targeted.

In Italy, where 229 people have tested positive for the virus and seven have died, police manned checkpoints around a dozen quarantined northern towns as worries grew across the continent.

Top-flight football team Inter Milan announced that its Europa League match against Ludogorets will be played behind closed doors on Thursday.

The Italian government is moving toward having other games played without fans in attendance in affected areas but the Inter match was the first to be confirmed as going ahead in an empty stadium.

Paramount Pictures halted production on the seventh Mission: Impossible film due to the virus. It had been scheduled to shoot for three weeks in Venice.

Austria temporarily halted rail traffic across its border with Italy.

Slovenia and Croatia, popular getaways for Italians, were holding crisis meetings on the outbreak. Schools were closed, theatre performances were cancelled and even Carnival celebrations in Venice were called off.

It was a sign of how quickly circumstances could change in the widening Covid-19 scare.

Italy had imposed more stringent measures than other European countries after the outbreak began, barring flights beginning January 31 to and from China, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau.

Until last week, Italy had reported just three cases of infection.

"These rapid developments over the weekend have shown how quickly this situation can change," the health commissioner for the European Union, Stella Kyriakides, said in Brussels.

"We need to take this situation of course very seriously, but we must not give in to panic, and, even more importantly, to disinformation."

China reported 409 new cases of the illness on Monday, raising the mainland's total to 77,150. It also announced 150 new deaths for a 2,592 total.

Dr Liang Wannian, the leader of a team of Chinese experts working with WHO to study the outbreak, said more than 3,000 medical workers had been infected in the country, the majority of them in Wuhan.

Dr Liang said while the origins of the virus were still being studied, research suggested that bats may have been one of the hosts and that pangolins, a type of anteater, may have been an intermediate host.

Meantime, China announced it would postpone the annual meetings of the National People's Congress, among the most important political gatherings of the year, citing the virus outbreak.

Published: 25/02/2020 by Radio NewsHub