Coronavirus Live Updates: Director of Wuhan Hospital Dies From Virus

The director of a hospital at the heart of the outbreak has died from the virus.

The director of a hospital in Wuhan, the Chinese city at the center of the epidemic, died on Tuesday after contracting the new coronavirus, the latest in a series of medical professionals to be killed in the outbreak.

Liu Zhiming, a neurosurgeon and the director of the Wuchang Hospital in Wuhan, died shortly before 11 a.m. on Tuesday, the Wuhan health commission said.

“From the start of the outbreak, Comrade Liu Zhiming, without regard to his personal safety, led the medical staff of Wuchang Hospital at the front lines of the fight against the epidemic,” the commission said. Dr. Liu “made significant contributions to our city’s fight to prevent and control the novel coronavirus,” it added.

Last week the Chinese government said that more than 1,700 medical workers had contracted the virus, and six had died.

Chinese medical workers at the forefront of the fight against the coronavirus epidemic are often becoming its victims, partly because of government missteps and logistical hurdles. After the virus emerged in Wuhan late last year, city leaders played down its risks, and doctors did not take the strongest precautions.

The death nearly two weeks ago of Li Wenliang, an ophthalmologist who was initially reprimanded for warning medical school classmates about the virus, stirred an outpouring of grief and anger. Dr. Li, 34, has emerged as a symbol of how the authorities controlled information and have moved to stifle online criticism and aggressive reporting on the outbreak.

The new virus is deadlier than the one that causes the flu.

An analysis of 44,672 coronavirus patients in China whose diagnoses were confirmed by laboratory testing has found that 1,023 had died by Feb. 11. That’s a fatality rate of 2.3 percent. Figures released on a daily basis suggest the rate has further increased in recent days.

That is far higher than the mortality rate of the seasonal flu, with which the new coronavirus has sometimes been compared.

In the United States, flu fatality rates hover around 0.1 percent.

The new analysis was posted online by researchers at the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention.

Over all, about 81 percent of patients with confirmed diagnoses experienced mild illness, the researchers found. Nearly 14 percent had severe cases of COVID-19, the disease caused by the new coronavirus, and about 5 percent had critical illnesses.

Thirty percent of those who died were in their 60s, 30 percent were in their 70s and 20 percent were age 80 or older. Though men and women were roughly equally represented among the confirmed cases, men made up nearly 64 percent of the deaths. Patients with underlying medical conditions, such as cardiovascular disease or diabetes, died at higher rates.

The fatality rate among patients in Hubei Province, the center of China’s outbreak, was more than seven times higher than that of other provinces.

China on Tuesday announced new figures for the outbreak. The number of cases was put at 72,436 — up 1,888 from 70,548 the day before — and the death toll now stands at 1,868, up 98 from 1,770, the authorities said.

U.S. officials learned cruise ship evacuees were infected at the last minute.

A day before 328 Americans were to be whisked away from a contaminated cruise ship in Japan, the U.S. Embassy in Tokyo told passengers that no one infected with the new coronavirus would be allowed to board charter flights to the United States.

But those plans were hastily changed after the test results for 14 passengers came back positive — just as they were being loaded onto buses and dispatched to the airport, where two reconfigured cargo jets were waiting to fly them to military bases in California and Texas.

After consultations with health experts, the U.S. government decided to let the infected evacuees, who were not yet exhibiting symptoms, board the flights.

The reversal was the latest chaotic turn in a two-week quarantine of the ship, the Diamond Princess, that has become an epidemiological nightmare.

Airlines cut flights as ripples from coronavirus spread.

Weeks after airlines cut flights to China over the coronavirus outbreak, airlines in Asia are cutting flights elsewhere.

Singapore Airlines on Tuesday said it would temporarily cut flights between the city-state and major destinations like New York, Paris, London, Tokyo, Seoul and Sydney. It cited weak demand as fears over the outbreak keep more travelers at home.

The announcement follows a similar notice two weeks ago by Cathay Pacific, the Hong Kong carrier. In announcing the cancellation of nearly all its flights to mainland China, it also said it would reduce service elsewhere over the next two months depending on how the market fares. Over all, it said, the cuts represent nearly one-third of the airline’s capacity.

Containment efforts have sidelined Chinese tourists, a powerful economic force responsible for $277 billion in spending a year, according to the U.N. World Tourism Organization. But the spreading coronavirus has unnerved tourists from elsewhere, especially when it comes to flying back and forth from Asia. As of Tuesday, Japan had reported 66 cases, not counting 454 aboard the Diamond Princess cruise ship off Yokohama. Singapore reported 66 cases, Hong Kong had 60 cases and South Korea reported 31 cases.

Cambodia’s leader is famously complacent about the coronavirus. That may exact a global toll.

When Cambodia’s prime minister greeted passengers on a cruise ship amid a coronavirus scare on Valentine’s Day, embraces were the order of the day. Protective masks were not.

Not only did Prime Minister Hun Sen not wear one, assured that the ship was virus-free, his bodyguards ordered people who had donned masks to take them off. The next day, the American ambassador to Cambodia, W. Patrick Murphy, who brought his own family to greet the passengers streaming off the ship, also went without a mask.

“We are very, very grateful that Cambodia has opened literally its ports and doors to people in need,” Mr. Murphy said. Five other ports had said no.

But after hundreds of passengers had disembarked,