At La Paz University Hospital in Madrid, nurse Guillen del Barrio sounded bereft as he related what happened overnight. "It is really hard, we had feverish people for many hours in the waiting room," the 30-year-old told AFP. "Many of my colleagues were crying because there were people who are dying alone, without seeing their family for the last time." (Picture/AFP)
Spanish soldiers deployed to help fight the new Coronavirus outbreak have found elderly patients abandoned, and sometimes dead, at retirement homes. The army has been charged with helping to disinfect retirement homes in Spain, one of the countries worst hit by the pandemic. Dozens of deaths from COVID-19 have been recorded at facilities across the country. An investigation has been launched, the general prosecutor announced.(Picture/AP-PTI)
Italy's Costa Cruises said it was isolating more than 700 guests on board its Victoria ship after one of them tested positive for the novel coronavirus. Costa said the Victoria had "726 guests of various nationalities and 776 crew members". (Picture/AFP)
Italy, once the epicentre of the pandemic after China and now seeing a drop in the number of cases, is still on the frontline of a war against a disease being fought by means that currently restrict freedom. Some are starting to openly ask if this price is too high -- even as the global death toll soars. (Picture/AFP)
Officials pleaded with the nation of 60 million -- people accustomed to celebrating life outdoors deep into the night -- to sacrifice individual liberties for the common good for two weeks. (Picture/AFP)
As the pandemic overwhelms hospitals in Belgium, doctors are having to prioritise patients based on their chances of survival. "We go into medicine to heal people. Not to make choices about who can live," said Philippe Devos, an anesthesiologist. (Picture/PTI)
In France, the town of Mulhouse has drawn the focus of French President Emmanuel Macron, who ordered a field hospital to be built to help tend to the sick. Around 50 soldiers have been putting up the structure that will have equipment usually used to make surgery possible in combat zones retrofitted to treat patients with the coronavirus. Authorities hope the five tents, each with six beds, could receive patients from March 30. About 100 military health personnel, anesthetists, nurses and nursing assistants, will be available to operate the field hospital. (Picture/AFP)
In an unprecedented move during peacetime, the French army has also started evacuating critical coronavirus patients from the east of France. On March 21, there was a new military airlift of patients hospitalized in Mulhouse. The first one took place the previous week.(Picture/AFP)
Meanwhile, countries have started looking for a cure to this pandemic by running clinical trials. China has started the first phase of a clinical trial for a novel coronavirus vaccine. Russia has started to test a vaccine on animals. (Picture/AFP)
A group of European countries launch clinical trials to test four experimental treatments, while Canadian researchers start to study the use of a powerful anti-inflammatory drug to reduce the risks of COVID-19 pulmonary complications and death. (Picture/AFP)
As many as 649 positive cases of COVID-19 have been reported in India, including 47 foreign nationals. Prime Minister Narendra Modi has imposed a lockdown in the country till April 15. Maharashtra has the highest number of cases in India with its commercial capital Mumbai topping the national list with 56 infected, followed by Pune at 31, Sangli 9, Thane 6, Nagpur 5, Yavatmal 4, Ahmednagar 3, Satara 2, and one each in Raigad, Aurangabad and Ratnagiri.
The Diamond Princess cruise ship was quarantined since arriving off the Japanese coast in February after the virus was detected in a former passenger who got off the ship last month in Hong Kong. "Test results from 103 people have now come out and 65 of them are confirmed positive for the new coronavirus," the Japanese health ministry said in a statement.
An unspecified number of Indians were among the nearly 3,000 passengers and crew members onboard a cruise ship quarantined off Japan due to diagnosis of coronavirus cases, the Indian Embassy here said.
A 33-year-old Chinese woman infected with the deadly coronavirus pneumonia has given birth to a healthy baby girl with no infection in northwest China's Shaanxi Province, state media reported on February 11. The Chinese woman was at the 37th week of pregnancy when she gave birth via caesarean to a baby with a weight of 2,730 grams at the Second Affiliated Hospital of Xi'an Jiaotong University in Xi'an, capital of Shaanxi on February 10, Xinhua news agency reported. The infant, whose first nucleic acid test associated with the novel coronavirus was negative, is receiving intensive care and will be tested again in the next few days to confirm the absence of the virus, according to the provincial centre for disease control and prevention. (Picture used for representational purposes)
A 30-hour-old infant born in a Wuhan hospital became the youngest person to catch the virus. CCTV reported the infected baby may be a case of "vertical transmission," referring to infections passed from mother to child during pregnancy, childbirth or right after.
An Indian national was diagnosed with the novel coronavirus in the UAE, bringing the total number of confirmed infection cases to eight, the country's health ministry said.
The UAE Ministry of Health and Prevention (MoHAP) said on February 10 that the Indian national was infected after he interacted with a person diagnosed with the Coronavirus.
The UAE ministry also said that a Chinese national and a Filipino were diagnosed with the disease and were receiving medical care as per the highest health standards available in the country.
A family of four who arrived from Wuhan for a holiday in Dubai were diagnosed with coronavirus, the UAE health ministry informed.
A British man passed on the coronavirus to at least 11 other people without ever setting foot in the epicentre of the outbreak in China, in an infectious journey that shows how the deadly virus can spread rapidly around a globalised world. The adult British citizen, who has not been named publicly, caught the virus while attending a conference in Singapore and then passed it on to several compatriots while on holiday in the French Alps, before finally being diagnosed back in the UK.
Health Minister of France, Agnes Buzyn said on February 8 that five British nationals, including a child, who stayed at the chalet with the man had tested positive. Six other Britons staying in the same chalet were also hospitalised for observation.
One member of the group the British man stayed with in France then sought medical help after returning to his home in Mallorca. The contamination took place between January 25 and January 29, according to the Spanish authorities. The man in Mallorca is "currently in good health. He shows practically no symptom. His wife and two daughters aged 10 and 7, who were also hospitalised for tests, have shown no sign of infection," said Fernando Simon, an official from Spain's health ministry.
More than 100 people were evacuated from a 35-storey Hong Kong housing block on Tuesday after two residents in different apartments tested positive for the new coronavirus. Residents were forced to leave in the early hours as health officials in masks and white overalls scrambled to work out whether the virus had spread through the complex of some 3,000 people.
Five persons with symptoms of coronavirus were rushed to hospital after they arrived in Pakistan from a flight from China, according to a media report. The suspected patients were on the Air China flight carrying 177 passengers, which landed in Islamabad in February, The Express Tribune reported quoting airport officials. The five passengers were segregated as their body temperatures registered above normal during thermal scanning at the airport, the paper said. The suspected cases include four local people and a Chinese national. They were shifted to the Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences for tests.
The World Dream cruise that carried three Chinese passengers to Vietnam between January 19 and 24, were later found to be infected with Coronavirus. The government grounded the ship on its arrival in Hong Kong in February while tests were carried out on the crew, but said the passengers need not undergo examination as they had no contact with the three sick holidaymakers on the January trip.
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