Month: February 2020

A Chinese girl has recovered from the new coronavirus infection in Malaysia and is allowed to return home, a Malaysian health official said in a statement late on Tuesday.The four-year-old became the first of 10 patients in Malaysia, including nine visiting Chinese, to have recovered after contracting the virus.Health Ministry director general Noor Hisham Abdullah said detection tests were repeated twice and the results came back negative.“She is now is good health and has been allowed to…

Manufacturing and logistics players reliant on China’s giant economy are braced for an incoming shock wave from the spread of the novel coronavirus, which is set to test “just how reliant we have grown on Chinese manufacturers”.The world’s second largest economy remains on lockdown, with factories in 14 provinces covering 70 per cent of China’s gross domestic product and 80 per cent of its exports ordered not to open until Monday at the earliest.The virus has claimed over 420 lives, the vast…

Japan quarantined a cruise ship that arrived at a port in Yokohama on Monday evening after an elderly male passenger on the vessel was found infected with a new coronavirus when he disembarked in Hong Kong late last month, the health ministry said.Several dozen quarantine officers are checking the health of all 2,500 passengers and 1,000 crew members, the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare said.At least seven people on the ship said they felt ill, and the results of their tests will be…

Singapore on Monday announced it would put together an assistance package for China, which is battling to stem the coronavirus outbreak, with the island nation’s leaders stressing they had the utmost confidence in Beijing to weather the crisis.The coronavirus, which was first detected in the Chinese city of Wuhan, has infected more than 17,000 people around the world, killing more than 360.Singapore’s health minister Gan Kim Yong on Monday told parliament that the coronavirus had become “not…

A Chinese woman infected with the new coronavirus showed a dramatic improvement after she was treated with a cocktail of antivirals used to treat flu and HIV, Thailand’s health ministry said on Sunday.The 71-year-old patient tested negative for the virus 48 hours after Thai doctors administered the combination, doctor Kriengsak Attipornwanich during the ministry’s daily press briefing.“The lab result of positive on the coronavirus turned negative in 48 hours,” Kriengsak said.“From being…

A racist undercurrent of anti-Chinese attitudes has been exposed in the Philippines by the ongoing coronavirus outbreak that has claimed more than 300 lives worldwide. On Sunday, Manila confirmed that a 44-year-old Chinese man from Wuhan had died of the virus – the first fatality outside China – prompting tighter travel restrictions on both foreigners and Filipinos, as well as a torrent of negative backlash against President Rodrigo Duterte. Philippines reports first coronavirus death outside…

Malaysia’s anti-graft agency is investigating allegations by Britain’s Serious Fraud Office (SFO) that Airbus paid a bribe of US$50 million to win plane orders from AirAsia, it said on Saturday.The SFO said on Friday that Airbus had failed to prevent individuals associated with it bribing executives linked to AirAsia Group and its long-haul arm, AirAsia X.AirAsia said it had never made any purchase decisions that were premised on an Airbus sponsorship, and that it would fully cooperate with…

Singapore reported two more cases of the novel coronavirus on Saturday, bringing the total number of confirmed cases in the city state to 18, while the new strain has sickened three more people in Japan.One of the latest cases is a 47-year-old Singaporean woman who travelled to Wuhan, the centre of the outbreak, and is among the republic’s residents evacuated from the central Chinese city on January 30. She is the second Singaporean to be infected with the virus.The other patient is a 31-year…