Public Health & Safety

WHO again weighs declaring coronavirus global public health emergency

January 29, 2020, 6:16 PM

8 min read

Patients from Germany, Japan, Taiwan and Vietnam have been diagnosed with the new coronavirus without having visited China, health officials said during a World Health Organization news conference Wednesday.

Human-to-human transmission outside of China "worries us," said Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director general at WHO.

Partly because of human-to-human transmission outside of China and partly because of a continued increase in cases, the WHO said it will reconvene on Thursday to determine whether to declare coronavirus a public health emergency of international concern.

The committee deliberated for two days last week but ultimately decided against it.

Still, Tedros stressed, the vast majority of reported coronavirus cases, roughly 99% of the more than 6,600, have been in China.

Among those, 20% have been severe and 2% have been fatal. All 132 deaths have been in China.

WHO will send a group of international experts to work with the Chinese experts on the ground to develop a better understanding of the new coronavirus' severity and infectiousness.

While there is no treatment or vaccine so far, scientists in Australia became the first outside of China to grow the new coronavirus in a laboratory. Sharing that data should make it easier for researchers around the world to develop diagnostic tests, drugs and vaccines.

Confirmed Coronavirus cases

Confirmed Coronavirus casesABC News, CDC

Countries with Confirmed Coronavirus Cases

Countries with Confirmed Coronavirus CasesABC News, WHO, CDC, NHC, Dingxiangyuan, Local Governments

In the meantime, airlines around the world have suspended routes to China.

American Airlines announced that it would suspend two such routes on Wednesday, citing "significant decline in demand for travel to and from China."

Flights from Los Angeles International Airport to Shanghai Pudong Airport and to Beijing Capital International Airport will not run from Feb. 9 through March 27, the company said in a statement.

Meanwhile, British Airways announced Wednesday that it has suspended all flights to and from mainland China "with immediate effect" as the country struggles to contain the outbreak of the new coronavirus.

The United Kingdom's national airline, which operates daily flights from London to Shanghai and Beijing, said it made the decision "following advice from the Foreign Office against all but essential travel."

"We apologize to customers for the inconvenience, but the safety of our customers and crew is always our priority," British Airways said in a statement Wednesday. "Customers due to travel to or from China in the coming days can find more information on ba.com."

South Korean low-cost carrier Air Seoul and Indonesian budget airline Lion Air have also suspended flights to mainland China, while several other airlines have reduced the number of flights to the country.

Other airlines suspending flights include Lufthansa Group, Cathay Pacific, Finnair, Air Asia, Air India, Air Canada, All Nippon Airways, Asiana Airlines and Korean Air.

Passengers from China wearing masks to prevent a new coronavirus get checked for fever upon their arrival at Incheon International Airport in Incheon, South Korea, Jan. 29, 2020.

Passengers from China wearing masks to prevent a new coronavirus get checked for fever upon their arrival at Incheon International Airport in Incheon, South Korea, Jan. 29, 2020.Yonhap via Reuters

The epicenter of the deadly outbreak is in Hubei province's sprawling capital, Wuhan, which authorities have placed on lockdown in an effort to stop the spread of infection.

Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam announced at a press conference Tuesday that train service to mainland China will be halted, starting at midnight Thursday. Lam said two train stations connecting the semi-autonomous Chinese city to the mainland also would be closed and some flights would be canceled.

The new coronovirus causes symptoms similar to pneumonia that can range from mild, such as a slight cough, to more severe, including fever and difficulty breathing, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The disease has already spread overseas with cases confirmed in over a dozen other countries, including five in the United States.

Medical staff in protective suits treat a patient with pneumonia caused by the new coronavirus at the Zhongnan Hospital of Wuhan University, in Wuhan, Hubei province, China, Jan. 28, 2020.

Medical staff in protective suits treat a patient with pneumonia caused by the new coronavirus at the Zhongnan Hospital of Wuhan University, in Wuhan, Hubei province, China, Jan. 28, 2020.China Daily/Reuters

A growing number of companies, including American firms, are evacuating staff from China or restricting travel there amid the health crisis.

The U.S. Consulate in Wuhan will evacuate its staff along with their families and some other Americans on Wednesday morning, a spokesperson for the U.S. Department of State told ABC News. That chartered flight will travel to California's Ontario International Airport, where everyone on board will be screened for symptoms at the airport prior to leaving. They'll also be subject to additional screening, observation and monitoring requirements by the CDC.

The U.S. Department of State issued a new travel advisory on Monday urging Americans to reconsider traveling to any part of China due to the disease, rather than just to Wuhan and other affected areas. U.S. citizens are advised not to travel to Hubei province.

ABC News' Joseph Simonetti and Mina Kaji contributed to this report.

Public Health Efforts Step Up Around The World As Coronavirus Cases Rise

Enlarge this image

As the death toll from the new coronavirus tops 100, hospitals in Wuhan, China, are attending to many patients with confirmed or suspected cases of the illness. Public health officials are working to prevent further spread of the outbreak in China and globally. Xiong Qi/AP hide caption

toggle caption Xiong Qi/AP 

As the death toll from the new coronavirus tops 100, hospitals in Wuhan, China, are attending to many patients with confirmed or suspected cases of the illness. Public health officials are working to prevent further spread of the outbreak in China and globally.

Xiong Qi/AP

Updated at 8:20 p.m. ET

Public health officials around the world were responding to the fast-growing outbreak of the new coronavirus, as officials in China, at the epidemic's epicenter, announced that the number of cases there had reached nearly 6,000.

The World Health Organization announced that it would send international health experts to China to help understand the outbreak and guide the response.

In Beijing, the WHO's director-general, Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, met with Chinese President Xi Jinping. "Stopping the spread of this virus both in China and globally is WHO's highest priority," said Tedros. "We appreciate the seriousness with which China is taking this outbreak," he added, praising Chinese officials for sharing data and information about the virus.

The death toll from the illness has now topped 130, up from six a week ago. Total confirmed cases have more than doubled in the past few days — from 2,835 on Monday to 5,974 on Wednesday local time. The largest portion of the confirmed cases are in Hubei, the central Chinese province where the outbreak originated in early December in Wuhan, a city of 11 million.

But new cases continue to emerge around the world. Germany was the latest of more than a dozen countries to confirm cases of the coronavirus within their borders — it has found four cases. German health officials say they have evidence of human-to-human transmission.

This week, the U.S., along with Japan, South Korea and the European Union, will start evacuating residents from Wuhan.

The U.S. State Department, citing "restricted transportation and overwhelmed hospitals in Wuhan" in a statement to NPR, chartered a flight to bring consulate employees and some residents back to the United States. The flight, planned for Wednesday, is expected to carry around 240 people and refuel in Alaska before arriving in California.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention also expanded airport screenings for the coronavirus from five to 20 airports and intensified its travel guidance, advising Americans to avoid all nonessential travel to China.

Health officials in mainland China are urgently trying to halt the spread of the virus. The Chinese government added three days to the Lunar New Year holiday — now ending Feb. 2 — delaying travel and the return to daily life.

"What they're trying to do is to slow down person-to-person transmission," says Dr. Louise-Marie Dembry, an epidemiologist at Yale University who worked on infection prevention in China after SARS.

Some 50 million people remain quarantined within Wuhan and other nearby cities. But in a news conference Sunday, Wuhan Mayor Zhou Xianwang said that some 5 million people left the city before the quarantine was implemented on Jan. 23, reports the South China Morning Post.

In addition, neighboring countries are restricting travel from China, adding to China's internal efforts to quarantine potentially exposed citizens. Mongolia tightened restrictions at its border crossings, and Malaysia has stopped issuing visas to visitors from Hubei province.

Hong Kong's government announced that it has taken steps to reduce the flow of mainland visitors to Hong Kong by halting permits, canceling group tours and banning anyone who recently visited Hubei. The efforts, while extensive, leave borders with China porous.

At a news conference, Hong Kong's leader, Carrie Lam, said it was necessary to allow Hong Kong residents abroad to return home. "I don't think it is very meaningful to talk about a complete closure of the boundary control points," she said.

Hong Kong also announced Tuesday that it is closing museums, libraries and sports centers until further notice to prevent the coronavirus from spreading. The government is encouraging people to work from home. As of Wednesday local time, eight cases of coronavirus were confirmed in Hong Kong.

Trump’s new public charge rule may have already scared thousands of Texas families off public health insurance

When a controversial immigration proposal to tighten who gets permanent residency was unveiled two years ago, experts predicted a drop in children using public health insurance.

Now, state statistics show that 234,000 fewer children over the past two years enrolled in public health care programs.

On Monday, justices ruled 5 to 4 to lift a nationwide injunction that had prevented the Trump administration from denying legal permanent residency to immigrants who had used or could be deemed likely to use public benefits like Medicaid and another children’s health insurance program. Justices gave no reasons for lifting the injunction. Litigation on the merits of the new public charge rule are ongoing in the lower courts.

Since news of the proposed rule on who might become a “public charge” leaked almost two years ago, experts and immigrants themselves said they were pulling out of government health insurance for fear that noncitizen parents and other family members could be denied the more secure status of legal permanent residency.

Though there isn’t a start-day for the changes to roll out, advocates are urging immigrant families to remain calm.

“Talk to an organization like ours before stopping benefits," said Nubia Torres, director of the immigration legal services unit at Catholic Charities of Dallas. "We want people to have accurate information, especially if they have a pending petition [for legal residency], or are waiting to file. They need to file as soon as possible.”

12-year-old Roberto Rosales, left and 6-year-old Victor Rosales get their teeth checked by Marcus Ruis DDS and Alina Garciamendez DDS during a free health fair coordinated by the Mexican Consulate at Mountain View College in Dallas Saturday October 21, 2019.(Brian Elledge / Staff Photographer)

Torres said her organization will wait for guidance from national legal nonprofits to get the most accurate information. “This is not the decision we wanted,” the Catholic Charities leader said.

Texas has shown an enrollment drop of 170,000 children on Medicaid from December 2017 through November 2019. Over the same period, Texas children enrolled in the Children’s Health Insurance Program, or CHIP, fell by about 64,000, according to the latest state data. The drop represents 7% of the original number of insured children.

The federal government has said declines in Medicaid and CHIP are the result of a robust economy. In Texas, the unemployment rate stood at a low 3.5 percent in December.

But some believe those new jobs don’t include health insurance, or that parents are choosing not to pay premiums. Already, Texas leads the nation with the highest number of uninsured, according to census data from last year.

While it’s unclear what caused the enrollment drop in Texas Medicaid and CHIP, 34% of Texas children had at least one foreign-born parent in 2017, according to Kids Count, an initiative of the Annie Casey Foundation that analyzes census data.

Second year medical student Hector Filizola, left and Dermatologist Paras Vakharia MD both from UT Southwestern Medical Center check moles on the skin of Norma Taboada's arm during a free health fair coordinated by the Mexican consulate at Mountain View College in Dallas, on Saturday October 21, 2019.(Brian Elledge / Staff Photographer)

“Our hypothesis is what changed in 2017 is the addition of this chilling effect from the Trump administration proposal,” said Anne Dunkelberg, an associate director at the Austin-based Center for Public Policy Priorities.

But Ken Cuccinelli, a top official with the Department of Homeland Security, praised the Supreme Court ruling. In a prepared statement, he said it reinforces “self-sufficiency and self-reliance.”

Cuccinelli didn’t indicate when that rule might take effect across the nation. A start date will be announced soon, according to a spokeswoman for U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, which will enforce a major portion of the public charge rule.

Public Education

Across North Texas, nonprofits and community groups had already begun preparing last year for the possible roll-out of the public charge rule. They said they had no choice: Families were removing children who are U.S. citizens from public health programs for which they were legally eligible.

In Dallas, Josephine Lopez-Paul, the lead organizer of Dallas Area Interfaith, was blunt in her criticism. The group is planning a free health care fair on March 28 in Arlington at St. Joseph’s Catholic Church. Some immigrants have said they are fearful of going to any location connected to the government. Church complexes are viewed as safe places.

“We are creating a permanent underclass that doesn't care for one another,” Lopez-Paul said.

“The damage has already been done, whether the rule went into effect. Just imagine if they don’t have access to health care. … They don’t have access to immunizations.”

Catholic Charities, along with other groups, are planning their next workshop at 6:30 p.m. Feb. 26 at North Lake College in Irving.

Reshaping immigration admissions

Monday’s Supreme Court decision allows the executive branch to use the vague public charge definitions that currently exist in U.S. law to redefine admission standards, said Julia Gelatt, a senior policy analyst with the Migration Policy Institute, a research group that analyzes immigration policy.

Samuel Bonilla has his vitals checked during a visit on Oct. 22, 2019 at Agape Clinic, a private health center where no one is turned away because of tight finances.(Ben Torres / Special Contributor)

“This reshapes our immigration system through executive authority rather than through conversations in Congress,” Gelatt said. “Usually when we revamp the law that says who gets to come here or not, it happens through congressional debate.”

The new public charge rule will take into account factors like an applicant’s income, age, ability to work and past use of certain public benefits. Use of benefits by a noncitizen’s U.S.-born children, however, would not count against someone applying for legal residency, commonly referred to as a green card.

A June 2018 Migration Policy Institute’s report used data from 2014 to 2016 to look at the potential impact nationwide:

About 10.3 million noncitizens had family receiving aid through programs included under the new public charge rule.

And children of immigrants made up about 31% of those under 18 in households getting public aid.

A separate analysis by the same researchers at the D.C.-based think tank concluded only about 39% of green card holders who received their status between 2012 to 2016 meet the income standards set by the new guidelines.

Gelatt added that officials will also likely have wide discretion to say whether they deem an immigrant more likely to become a public charge through use of government benefits.

At the American Immigration Lawyers Association, Jesse Bless, the director of federal litigation, said the group was disappointed that the public charge rule could go into effect temporarily while a legal battle is ongoing.

“As soon as the rule is implemented, AILA expects a rapid and glaring increase in the number of immigrants deemed inadmissible, and thus ineligible, for various immigration benefits,” Bless said.

Read more on public charge here: