Meanwhile those clever Chinese have got some reasonably good news ...

BEIJING (Reuters) - The Chinese city of Wuhan, ground zero of the coronavirus outbreak, reported just five new cases on Friday, the second day in a row the tally has been less than 10, while no locally transmitted infections were reported in the rest of the country.

Wuhan, capital of central Hubei province, registered the five new cases on Thursday, the National Health Commission said, down from eight cases the previous day. The commission routinely reports new cases the day after the data is collected.

Excluding Wuhan, Hubei had reported no new infections for eight consecutive days.

The commission said on Thursday China’s coronavirus epidemic had passed its peak, even as alarm over the virus intensified elsewhere with global markets suffering record falls and governments unveiling measures to try to slow the spread of a disease that has infected more than 127,000 people worldwide.

The financial hub of Shanghai reported two new cases, while Beijing saw one, all imported by people traveling to China from affected areas abroad, the health authority said.

Those cases brought the total number of new infections in mainland China to eight on Thursday, down from 15 the previous day, and the lowest since the healthy authority started publishing nationwide figures in January.

To date, the total accumulated number of cases in mainland China is 80,813.

The coronavirus has killed more than 3,000 people in mainland China.

It had also stalled the world’s second-largest economy as, beginning in January, authorities ordered work stoppages, travel restrictions and home quarantines.

As the measures start to pay off, local governments have been ordered to revive their economies, especially those in areas that have not had to deal with extensive outbreaks.

Hubei province has started to loosen the strict controls that kept up to 60 million people under a virtual lockdown for weeks.

Wuhan has seen some restrictions relaxed this week and the nearby city of Huanggang, which also had numerous coronavirus cases, on Friday begun relaxing its lockdown, saying that residents could start traveling within the city.

Outside Hubei, about 60% of small- and medium-sized firms and 95% of large ones have gone back to work, vice industry minister Xin Guobin said on Friday.

The death toll in mainland China reached 3,176 as of the end of Thursday, up by seven from the previous day.

In Hubei, there were six new deaths, with Wuhan accounting for all of them.


https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-china/chinas-coronavirus-e...

its only just begun...

https://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/sport/olympics/why-the-tokyo-olympics-should-b...
It’s already too late to save the Tokyo Olympics this year.

Even if they go ahead — and that’s a very big if right now — the biggest multi-sports event on the planet has been compromised.

The only course of action for the International Olympic Committee and the Japanese organisers now is to postpone the Games for at least another year and hope the COVID-19 crisis is resolved by then.

It’s understandable why Olympic officials are dragging their heels on making the hard call because no-one, at least in sport, truly understood the full gravity of the unfolding catastrophe until the last few days





no good worrying about figures that change by the hour..

this will effect each and everyone of us.....we have to get on with it and be more grateful for what we have instead of whingeing about what we havent got...

maybe when this passes  it will make us all wise up to how much we freaking do have  which has not made us happy at all..   we are gluttonous insatiable  greedy...

as the panic buying has shown us to be..

greggerypeccary wrote on Mar 15^th, 2020 at 7:53am:


I think we need to let go of those old "cold war style" beliefs that China routinely hides the truth about things.

They should be given more credit than that.

Look at the amazing way they built those emergency clinics a few weeks back. 

The Chinese are not the "boogie-men" that the US in particular would have you believe they are. 

Yes, well Trump was stupidly in denial about the problem.

Didn't he say it was a hoax at some point? 

That man is an idiot.

Hopefully, the health officials in the US will be in charge of dealing with this pandemic. 

The virus is the earth telling us to slow economic growth to slow global warming.

https://v1019.com/2020/03/10/did-author-dean-koontz-predict-coronavirus-in-80s-s...

His book is flying off the shelves right now as people want to know if author Dean Koontz had an inside scoop on the dreaded ‘coronavirus’ that’s plaguing the country right now. Koontz book, “The Eyes of Darkness” mentions a deadly virus that Koontz called “Wuhan 400”. In his book published in 1981, he describes it as a “severe pneumonia-like illness” that spreads attacking “the lungs and bronchial tubes” and “resisting all known treatments.”

His description of the illness is eerily close to what we know now as ‘coronavirus.’ In his book, Koontz also goes on to say a Chinese scientist came to the U.S. with a disk that had China’s “most important and dangerous new biological weapon.” That weapon was called “Wuhan 400” — because it was developed in labs outside the city of Wuhan.

he predicted 2020 as the year..


I cant believe bobby has missed this one..