BREAKING: British Airways suspends all flights to China

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• david says:

  29 Jan29 January 13:40

  So say I am in Wuhan and I have the virus i then get a flight from China, then Tokyo, then to BKK, then direct to LHR. How could UK authorities know that I am contagious. Stopping flights just from Wuhan is like using a straw to stop a sinking ship.

  • Rich says:

    29 Jan29 January 13:50

    Given Wuhan is pretty much closed off you’re going to struggle even leaving the city.

  • Mark says:

    29 Jan29 January 13:50

    Except that Wuhan is locked down, so other than through the government organised evacuation flights you probably can’t get out anyway.

    If you’re elsewhere in China and have picked up the virus that’s a different matter of course, but clearly there’s a much greater risk you have it if you’re in Wuhan.

    • marcw says:

      29 Jan29 January 14:15

      Do you know the risk? Hubei province has 60 mill citizens… and there are just 3.600 confirmed cases. Incidence is pretty low, looking at the numbers. Obviously the main interest now is to limit virus geographical expansion.

• marcw says:

  29 Jan29 January 15:07

  Thanks for sharing. highly interesting. Promising, not alarming.

• TGLoyalty says:

  29 Jan29 January 15:55

  Just to add some context Wuhan has a population of over 11m and Hubei of around 60m.

  To be clear I think the Chinese government are doing the right thing trying to contain the virus, weather they are taking the correct approach I’ll let other commentate.

  • maccymac says:

    29 Jan29 January 16:12

    Yes absolutely thank you for pointing that out. I should have put the context of the large population in my post. I also agree that containment is the right approach but understand that others may have other views on that strategy.

    Note that Australia and the UK are using the same principle for specific repatriated citizens by isolating them for 14 days.

• Shoestring says:

  29 Jan29 January 16:25

  Scientists in Hong Kong have developed a vaccine that they think might work against the Chinese coronavirus as the global research community stepped up its efforts to halt the epidemic.

  Although it would still be at least a year before any vaccine candidate could be tested and proven to be safe, the development highlighted the unprecedented speed with which virologists were responding to the outbreak.

  The announcement came as researchers in Australia also revealed that they had successfully synthesised the virus in the laboratory, using a sample from an infected patient. Their success in fabricating the virus is a crucial step in allowing laboratories to create their own treatments and to uncover its secrets.

  • Shoestring says:

    29 Jan29 January 16:33

    The sequencing and publication by Chinese scientists of the viral genome in only a few days, compared to the five months it took during the 2002 Sars outbreak, is considered to be a game changer. It has allowed research to begin almost immediately, and also revealed that the virus’s similarities to Sars may allow existing research to be repurposed.

  • SimonW says:

    29 Jan29 January 16:35

    I’ve heard the vaccine is 2 paracetamols and a large whisky (NOT scotch).

    • Shoestring says:

      29 Jan29 January 16:43

      that’s what most of the people clogging up the wards in China should have got and been sent home, they probably got something worse while they were waiting to be seen

      • Russ says:

        29 Jan29 January 17:21

        You going to have to come up with some citations Shoe or linkepoos…. 🙂

        • Shoestring says:

          29 Jan29 January 17:46

          it’s from tomorrow’s The Times

• Phillip says:

  29 Jan29 January 17:54

  LH group has also cancelled flights to mainland China!

• Shoestring says:

  29 Jan29 January 18:27

  Virus prevention
  Sir – The masks being worn to protect against coronavirus (Letters, January 28) will do little, if anything, to arrest the spread. A virus is roughly 100 times smaller than a bacterium. It is too late.
  D J Thomson
  Sittingbourne, Kent

  • Shoestring says:

    29 Jan29 January 20:55

    Once Hubei deaths get up to 300 that big red circle’s going to be same size as Germany.

    They should add the rider: ‘not to scale’ – or all the panickers will start hyperventilating.

    • Russ says:

      29 Jan29 January 21:59

      🙂

    • Cat says:

      30 Jan30 January 10:53

      Definitely not to scale – they seem to be grouping the data and assigning different sized dots to each group, rather than making area proportional to confirmed cases (which is what they should be doing).
      Anhui’s 200 cases are shown by a dot that appears to be exactly the same size as Shanghai’s 101 cases’ dot, yet Hunan’s 277 cases are represented by a significantly larger dot.
      The masks will help with liquid-borne viruses only, and may help you avoid transferring from your fingers to your nose or mouth if you have an itch to scratch in that vicinity, but only if you’re strict with yourself – those masks can actually make you itchy, so if you’re prone to scratching absent-mindedly, they might actually increase the risk. Anything airborne can get through.

  • Delbert says:

    29 Jan29 January 21:04

    D J Thomson didn’t mention industrial water bottles being ineffective though. Every cloud.

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