Tag Archives: coronavirus

MNA Editorial Desk: With his shaggy grey beard, rose-coloured robe and a prayer cap that extends his tall frame, shopkeeper Tariqul Islam is an imposing figure on the stall-lined street that serves up home comforts to Singapore’s Bangladeshi community. He stands out even more now many of his customers have left the country or been told to avoid crowds after a coronavirus outbreak infected some Bangladeshi construction workers, thinning out the normally bustling thoroughfare. Unease over the virus has gripped groups of migrant workers across Asia – who often live in crowded, cramped conditions – and their families thousands of ...

MNA Business Desk: German luxury carmaker Daimler on Friday warned of risks for the economy and its own business from the outbreak of coronavirus that is spreading in China and around the world. “Risks for the Daimler Group may not only affect the development of unit sales, but may also lead to significant adverse effects on production, the procurement market and the supply chain,” the Stuttgart-based company said in its annual report. It also noted that the epidemic posed a risk for economic growth in China, other Asian countries and worldwide. Daimler CEO Ola Kaellenius announced last week that its ...

MNA Editorial Desk: Around 2,500 people died worldwide and over 76,000 are infected from the deadly COVID-19, a form of commonly known coronavirus. It has been declared a world health emergency as the medical experts and the scientists are yet to find any viable cure of this dangerous disease. The doctors are depending on treatment of different symptoms of the disease till now but it is inadequate to save the infected certainly. Most importantly, there is no sign of slowing down of the spread of this virus. Every day we are getting news of new patients infected with coronavirus in ...

MNA International Desk: A viral outbreak that began in China has infected nearly 78,000 people globally. The World Health Organization has named the illness COVID-19, referring to its origin late last year and the coronavirus that causes it. The latest figures reported by each government’s health authority as of Saturday in Beijing: — Mainland China: 2,345 deaths among 76,288 cases, mostly in the central province of Hubei — Hong Kong: 69 cases, 2 deaths — Macao: 10 cases — Japan:754cases, including 634 from a cruise ship docked in Yokohama, 3 deaths — South Korea: 433 cases, 2 deaths — Singapore: ...

MNA International Desk: Hundreds of people began disembarking a quarantined cruise ship off Japan on Wednesday as the death toll from the new coronavirus in mainland China passed 2,000 and the number of new cases in the country fell for a second straight day. Around 500 passengers were due to disembark the virus-hit Diamond Princess docked at Yokohama near Tokyo, public broadcaster NHK said, ending an ordeal that began when the ship was quarantined on February 3 after a former passenger was diagnosed with the virus in Hong Kong. There were also more promising signs out of China, where the ...

MNA Sports Desk: Travel restrictions over a coronavirus outbreak in China have forced Bangladesh to postpone an international archery competition scheduled to be held in the last week of February. Kazi Rajib Uddin Ahmed Chapol, the general secretary of the Bangladesh Archery Federation, confirmed the information on Tuesday. “Many countries have refused to send their archers due to coronavirus scare. So, we are postponing the tournament for now,” he said. The federation will sit to fix a new schedule of the tournament, he added. The ISSF International Solidarity Championships was slated for Feb 23-28. Bangladesh was scheduled to hold the ...

MNA International Desk: The head of a leading hospital in China’s central city of Wuhan, the epicentre of a coronavirus outbreak, died of the disease on Tuesday, state television said, becoming the second prominent Chinese doctor to have succumbed to the pathogen. Liu Zhiming, the director of Wuhan Wuchang Hospital, died at 10:30am, it said. Earlier this month, millions in China mourned the death of Li Wenliang, a doctor who was previously reprimanded for issuing an early warning about the coronavirus. Tens of thousands of medical workers have been fighting to contain the spread of the coronavirus, believed to have ...

MNA Editorial Desk: Implementation of the ongoing solar power plant projects in Bangladesh that are somehow dependent on Chinese machinery and manpower is likely to be delayed by at least four months due to the coronavirus outbreak. “A huge number of Chinese workers who went back home to spend holidays are unable to return and join the works after the outbreak,” UNB reported quoting a top official at the Power Division who deals with renewable energy projects. Coronavirus, now known as COVID-19, has so far killed 1,355 people and infected nearly 60,000 others. Sources at the Power Division said most ...

MNA Editorial Desk: China on Wednesday reported its lowest number of new coronavirus cases since late January, lending credence to a prediction from the country’s senior medical adviser that the outbreak could be over by April. Global markets took heart from the outlook but international experts remain alarmed by the spread of the flu-like virus which has now killed more than 1,100 people, all but two in mainland China. China’s foremost medical adviser on the outbreak, Zhong Nanshan, said the numbers of new cases were falling in some provinces, and forecast the epidemic would peak this month. “I hope this ...

MNA Editorial Desk: Bangladesh’s healthcare system remains inadequately prepared to cope with the potential outbreak of fatal coronavirus, which has so far killed more than 600 people. While state-backed hospitals have taken precautionary measures to respond to the novel virus, no such steps are visible in their private peers who have received hardly any government advice. Visits to several city hospitals, the FE correspondents found the display of warning messages on their premises about the virus that broke out in China whose Wuhan City was the epicentre. Dhaka Medical College Hospital director A K M Nasir Uddin said the hospital ...

MNA National Desk: Temperature screening measures at airports and other ports of entry into Bangladesh have been extended to cover all inbound travellers in a bid to prevent a deadly coronavirus from spreading. The Institute of Epidemiology, Disease Control and Research (IEDCR), the government’s disease wing, announced the move at a media briefing on Saturday. Previously, only travellers arriving in the country from China were required to undergo screening tests. But the virus has killed over 700 people since its outbreak in China’s Wuhan late last year and cases have since been confirmed in 25 countries around the world, bdnews24.com ...

MNA International Desk: The death toll from a coronavirus outbreak in China passed 490 on Wednesday, as two US airlines suspended flights to Hong Kong following the first fatality there and 10 cases were confirmed on a quarantined Japanese cruise ship. China’s National Health Commission said another 65 deaths had been recorded on Tuesday, bringing the toll on the mainland to 490, mostly in and around the locked-down central city of Wuhan where the virus emerged late last year, reports Reuters. There have been two deaths outside mainland China. A 39-year-old man in Hong Kong with an underlying illness who ...

MNA Editorial Desk: Can individuals infected with the Wuhan coronavirus spread it to others even if they aren’t showing symptoms? It’s one of the most important questions confronting scientists. If even asymptomatic people can spread the virus, then it will be much, much harder to slow its spread. Doctors in China claimed asymptomatic transmission was possible, and a letter published Jan 30 in the New England Journal of Medicine appeared to back them up. In the letter, scientists described a cluster of infections in Germany that had started with a traveller from Shanghai. The traveller had seemed healthy during her ...

MNA Editorial Desk: Bangladesh has suspended on-arrival visas for Chinese nationals for one month as part of the government’s temporary policy following the outbreak of coronavirus, foreign minister Dr AK Abdul Momen said on Sunday. At the same time, he said, the government has advised the Chinese nationals living in Bangladesh to avoid visiting China during the same period. Deaths caused by the new virus rose to at least 304 globally. “Last night (Saturday), we took the decision to stop providing on-arrival visas for one month,” the foreign minister told reporters at a briefing at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. ...

MNA International Desk: India said on Thursday a patient in Kerala had tested positive for novel coronavirus, the first case in the country of the virus which originated in China and has so far killed 170. The patient was a student of Wuhan University in China, India’s government said in a statement. The patient is stable and in isolation at a hospital, the statement added. A senior Indian government official said bringing Indian nationals from Wuhan, the epicentre of the virus, was not the best option due to the risk of infection but increased pressure from the citizens, most of ...

MNA Business Desk: A new coronavirus that has killed 170 people in China and spread to over a dozen other countries has roiled global commodity markets, raising fears of weaker demand and disrupting raw material supply chains in the world’s most populous country. All but around 100 of the nearly 8,000 cases so far identified have been in mainland China, but the virus has caused global alarm because it is still too early to know how dangerous it is and how easily it spreads among people. The World Health Organisation will meet on Thursday to decide whether its rapid spread ...

MNA Editorial Desk: The Directorate General of Health Services has directed local authorities to draw up a list of all returnees from China in the last 14 days amid the outbreak of a fatal coronavirus. Deputy commissioners, police superintendents and civil surgeons have been asked to prepare the list in their respective districts, the Institute of Epidemiology, Disease Control and Research (IEDCR) said in a statement on Wednesday. The decision was taken at a meeting of the DGHS headed by its Director General Prof Abul Kalam Azad on Tuesday, the statement said. “Civil surgeons were informed about the overall situation ...

MNA National Desk: The government is considering a temporary ban on travel to and from China as a precautionary measure in the wake of coronavirus, Health and Family Welfare Minister Zahid Maleque said on Sunday. “The trade relations between Bangladesh and China are very deep and many people travel to China for business purposes. It might be the reason of a big loss if the deadly virus enters the country in any way,” he said while speaking at an emergency meeting at the ministry. The minister said an inter-ministerial meeting will be held on Tuesday (Jan 28) where the issue ...

MNA Editorial Desk: The death toll from a coronavirus outbreak in China rose to 81 on Monday, as the government extended the Lunar New Year holiday and more big businesses shut down or told staff to work from home in an effort to curb the spread. Chinese premier Li Keqiang visited the central city of Wuhan, the epicentre of the outbreak, as the government sought to signal it was responding seriously to the crisis. The total number of confirmed cases in China rose about 30 per cent to 2,744, about half of them in Hubei province, whose capital is Wuhan. ...