New cases of coronavirus detected in Pakistan

Pakistan said Saturday it has detected two new cases of coronavirus, bringing the total number of patients with the infection in the country to four.

Confirmation of the cases has set off alarm bells as authorities scramble to screen hundreds of people who recently arrived from Iran, a major new hotspot for the virus.
“One of the two patients has tested positive in the capital Islamabad and the other one in Karachi,” the prime minister‘s advisor on health Zafar Mirza told a press conference.
The earlier two cases were also detected in the same cities. Mirza said they were “fast recovering” and one would be discharged from hospital soon.
He said the government would further reinforce surveillance measures at border crossings with Iran and other neighbouring countries.
A senior official at the health department for Sindh province said “the patient undergoing treatment in Karachi has a recent history of travel to Iran from where he acquired the virus”.
But no information was immediately available about the patient being treated in Islamabad.
There are growing fears in Pakistan, sandwiched between China and Iran, which are both fighting major outbreaks, about the country’s ability to deal with the illness.
Islamabad has a history of failing to contain infectious diseases such as polio, tuberculosis and hepatitis.
The virus has now killed more than 2,900 people and infected over 83,000 worldwide, with an increasing number of new cases being reported each day.
Mirza said top government officials have decided “a national campaign will be launched to create greater awareness among the people about coronavirus and precautions”.
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2020-02-cases-coronavirus-pakistan.html

France cancels mass gatherings over virus fears

France on Saturday cancelled all gatherings of 5,000 people or more in a bid to contain the coronavirus outbreak that is rapidly spreading across the world, as the World Health Organization raised its risk alert to its highest level.

The virus has now hit 59 countries across the globe, with more than 2,900 people killed and over 85,000 infected since it was first detected in the central Chinese city of Wuhan late last year.
Its rapid spread beyond China’s borders in the past week has caused stock markets to sink to their lowest levels since the 2008 global financial crisis over fears that the disease could wreak havoc on the world economy.
The vast majority of infections have been in China but more daily cases are now logged outside the country, with South Korea, Italy and Iran emerging as major hotspots.
South Korea, which has the most infected people outside China, reported its biggest surge in new cases on Saturday with 813 more patients confirmed, bringing its total to 3,150.
The virus has also spread to previously untouched areas in recent days, reaching nine new countries including Azerbaijan, Mexico and New Zealand, as well as the first case in sub-Saharan Africa with Nigeria reporting a case.
Qatar and Ecuador both confirmed their first cases on Saturday.
“We have now increased our assessment of the risk of spread and the risk of impact of COVID-19 to very high at global level,” WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told reporters on Friday.
European nations are scrambling to contain the outbreak—with many cases been linked to virus hotspot northern Italy—including in France where a surge of new cases was confirmed Saturday.
The country cancelled all gatherings of more than 5,000 people in close quarters after 16 new cases were confirmed Saturday, bringing the country’s total to 73.
The Paris half-marathon scheduled for Sunday and an agricultural symposium were axed in line with the new guidelines, though football matches will not be cancelled.
“These measures are provisional and they will no doubt evolve. We want them to last a little, because it will allow us to contain the spread of the virus,” health minister Olivier Veran said.
Economy, events hit
In the US, health officials reported three more cases of the new coronavirus transmitted to people who did not travel overseas or come in contact with anyone known to be ill, indicating the disease was spreading in the country.
There are now four such cases in the United States, all on the Pacific seaboard, in addition to some 60 other infections in the country.
“The virus is here, present at some level, but we still don’t know to what degree,” said Sara Cody, director of public health for California’s Santa Clara County, the heart of Silicon Valley where tech giants like Apple and Google are based.
US Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell said the central bank was ready to intervene if needed, given the “evolving” risks to the world’s largest economy posed by the outbreak.
Official data released in China on Saturday showed the extent of the damage caused to the world’s second-largest economy, with manufacturing activity falling to its lowest level on record as key industries ground to a standstill under drastic containment measures.
More global events were disrupted due to the epidemic, with the United States delaying a regional summit of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations due in Las Vegas next month.
“This is not a time for panic. It is time to be prepared—fully prepared,” UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said.
South Korean cases
South Korea’s epidemic is centred in its fourth-largest city, Daegu, whose streets have been largely deserted for days, apart from long queues at the few shops with masks for sale.
Three women in the Daegu area died of the illness, taking the national toll to 17, authorities said Saturday.
South Korea’s total is expected to rise further with screening of more than 210,000 members of the Shincheonji Church of Jesus, a secretive entity often accused of being a cult that is linked to around half of the country’s cases.
While China reported 47 more deaths on Saturday, it recorded 427 infections—fewer new cases than South Korea—following unprecedented quarantine efforts locking down tens of millions of people in the worst-hit cities.
In Iran, unnamed health sources told the BBC that at least 210 people had died of the coronavirus—far beyond the official death toll, but Tehran angrily denied that figure.
The death toll in Iran jumped to 43 on Saturday.
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2020-02-france-cancels-mass-virus.html

Stock rout may deepen this week as virus impact starts to show in economic data

• Stocks might still be searching for its bottom next week when investors grapple with a slew of economic data potentially being dragged down by the coronavirus.
• “Look out for ISM surveys and Beige Book for early signs of COVID-19 impact,” said Michelle Meyer, Bank of America’s head of U.S. economics. “We are already seeing evidence in early economic indicators.”
• The Institute for Supply Management will release its manufacturing gauge on Monday. The Fed will publish its latest Beige Book Wednesday, which details anecdotal information on current economic conditions.

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/02/28/stock-rout-to-deepen-as-coronavirus-impact-starts-to-show-up-in-data.html

Iranian Coronavirus Cases Jump as More Officials Infected

Iran’s coronavirus cases continue to spike, with more cases confirmed among government officials days before a high-ranking delegation is poised to attend a critical OPEC meeting in Austria.
There were 205 new coronavirus cases in the country, bringing the total count to 593 with 43 fatalities, Health Ministry spokesman Kianush Jahanpour said. That’s the highest number of deaths from the virus outside of China.
The number of lawmakers infected rose to six on Saturday, after Masoumeh Aghapour said she had tested positive for the virus, the semi-official Tasnim news reported. So far 100 MPs have been tested and a growing number of current and former officials are being diagnosed. Previously, one of Iran’s vice presidents, Masoumeh Ebtekar, and deputy health minister Iraj Harirchi were confirmed to have the virus. Tasnim news agency reported that a lawmaker died of the flu, but said he had not contracted the coronavirus.
Mostafa Pourmohammadi, a senior cleric and former interior minister, has been hospitalised for the past several days on suspicion he may have the virus, the semi-official Young Journalist’s Club reported.
Iran is set to send a delegation to a critical March 5 meeting of OPEC ministers as the cartel looks for ways to respond to the potential slump in oil demand triggered by the coronavirus outbreak. Saudi Arabia has pushed for a further cut in production quotas. Austrian authorities Friday ordered that flights from infected areas provide passenger lists to health authorities, but so far travel from Iran is still permitted.
Iran’s oil minister Bijan Namdar Zanganeh is scheduled to travel to Vienna for the meeting. His plans remain in place, according to an official at the ministry in Tehran, who could not be named because they are not authorized to speak to the media.

Jahanpour said the death toll had increased by nine since Friday, with 52 new cases identified in the capital Tehran and 21 in Qom, the original center of the outbreak in Iran. He added that the number of suspected cases was higher than what laboratory results have shown. Jahanpour also said that 123 people who had been hospitalized with symptoms had been released over recent days, but he didn’t specify whether they had tested positive and when they had been admitted.

BBC Persian on Friday said that at least 210 people had died from coronavirus in Iran, a figure that the government rejected.
There is concern that the virus will spread further within the government. A day before confirming she had tested positive for the virus, Ebtekar attended a cabinet meeting with President Hassan Rouhani and other cabinet ministers. Harirchi was shown coughing and sweating in a televised press conference with government spokesman Ali Rabiei a day before announcing his diagnosis.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-02-29/iranian-coronavirus-cases-jump-as-more-officials-infected

Coronavirus: Italian economy takes a body blow

Italy was the first European country to report a major surge in cases of the coronavirus, with numbers quickly climbing into the hundreds.

The authorities have responded with travel restrictions in the north of the country that are bound to hit the economy.
So far, a number of towns in Lombardy in northern Italy have been locked down, with very limited numbers of people being allowed in or out.
That matters, because northern Italy is the country’s industrial powerhouse. Lombardy alone accounts for 40% of Italian industrial output. Milan is Italy’s key centre for finance and a range of other services.
Milan is not one of the areas covered by the shutdown. But even so, major tourist and cultural sites such as the cathedral (the Duomo) and the opera house La Scala have been closed.
Milan is also one of the world’s major fashion centres. Fashion Week in late February did survive – after a fashion, as it were – but it was affected. For instance, Giorgio Armani’s collection was shown without an audience.
Had the coronavirus arrived a few weeks earlier, it seems likely there would have been much more disruption to this major event in Milan’s calendar.
There is some debate about whether the response in Lombardy has been too aggressive. But it is certainly true that public perceptions, well founded or not, translate into decisions about whether to travel or go out that have a real impact on businesses.

Persistent problem

Italy has struggled with persistently slow growth for many years. So could this health crisis be the factor that tips the country into another recession?
By any measure, the Italian economy is in a bad way.
In 2019, total production of goods and services was approximately the same as it was 15 years earlier. What’s more, it was still 4% below the level it reached in 2007, just before the financial crisis.
Unemployment is also a persistent problem, especially among young people. The unemployment rate among under-25s is 28.9%, with only Spain and Greece having higher figures in the EU.
In the last two years, Italy has also had to contend with weaker global growth and a slowdown in international trade. In the final quarter of last year, GDP fell by 0.3%.
Prof Roberto Perotti of Bocconi University in Milan says more of the same is now in prospect:
“GDP will almost certainly shrink this quarter as well, so Italy will technically be in a recession [often defined as two consecutive quarters of declining GDP]. It will probably shrink for the whole year,” he says.

Tourism woes

It is true that even without the virus, another contraction in the current quarter would have been a distinct possibility. But the odds have strengthened now that economic activity will be hit by the health crisis.
How severe it will be for Italy obviously depends on the unknowable (at this stage) course of the disease.

How it affects tourism will be an important factor. This is not the main season, apart from skiing in the mountains. The areas affected so far are not the main tourist areas. But as the summer approaches and if the virus spreads to other areas of Italy, that could change.
Already some flights to northern Italy have been cancelled. EasyJet, for example, said it was a response to “softening demand” – in other words, people choosing not to go there.
Prof Perotti thinks that tourist numbers will go to almost zero in the near future. And even if the virus problem goes away by the summer, the industry won’t quickly get back to normal. “Tourism,” he says, “has a long memory.”
He thinks the overall impact on Italy will depend to a large extent on how the big economies react, notably the US and Germany.
The message from Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte is: “It’s time to stop the panic.” He has called on the national broadcaster to tone down its coverage.

Financial squeeze

One consequence of Italy’s protracted sluggishness has been stretched government finances. Its government debt is equivalent to 133% of GDP.
In the EU, only Greece exceeds that figure. EU rules for the government finances set a target of 60% or less. Several other countries are above that threshold, but Greece and Italy stand out. So Italy could really do without additional stress on its government finances.
Prof Perotti thinks the virus could aggravate that problem: “The direct cost of the health intervention, I don’t think is huge. Now if there is a big recession, the lost revenue from that will be a big issue.”
Weaker economic activity will mean less tax revenue. Prof Perotti thinks the government will use it as an excuse to get more leeway in the continuing discussions that Italy is having with the European Commission about getting its finances into line with the rules.
But Italy probably can’t expect very much help from monetary policy, which is in the hands of the European Central Bank. Interest rates are already very low: one of the ECB’s main rates is below zero. In any event, Prof Perotti thinks it will only act if “things get very ugly for the whole of the eurozone”.
At the moment, Italy looks like the economy most exposed to the consequences of the new coronavirus and one with many other pre-existing challenges. But if the spread continues, then Italy might not look like such a special case for long.
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-51650974

3M bolsters N95 face mask production

In Aberdeen, South Dakota, more than 650 employees at one of 3M’s (NYSE:MMM) largest manufacturing plants are working overtime to increase face mask output.

“We immediately ramped up production in this facility,” said facility manager Andy Rehder. “We have capacity to do that and we did that immediately… really from a more standard five-day to a seven-day week.”

The Department of Health and Human Services said earlier this week the U.S. currently has a stockpile of roughly 30M N95 masks, but needs nearly 300M amid rising risks from the U.S. coronavirus outbreak.

https://seekingalpha.com/news/3547245-3m-bolsters-n95-face-mask-production

Trump calls for Fed move amid coronavirus fallout

“Our Fed should start being a leader,” President Trump said on Saturday at a White House news conference. “We should have the lowest interest rates. We don’t have the lowest interest rates. Our Fed rate is higher. You look at Germany, you look at Japan, you look at other countries: many of them have negative rates and we are not put in that position because of our Fed.”

“And now we have this problem,” he declared, referring to the coronavirus. “You saw where Germany is lowering and also infusing a lot of money into their economy. I haven’t heard our Fed say they should do this.”

“We could refinance our debt at even lower rates. Our Fed is making us pay more than we should and that’s ridiculous.”

Trump will hold another press conference today on the latest coronavirus developments at 1:30 pm ET.

https://seekingalpha.com/news/3547243-trump-calls-for-fed-move-amid-coronavirus-fallout