Advertisement

We need your help now

Support from readers like you keeps The Journal open.

You are visiting us because we have something you value. Independent, unbiased news that tells the truth. Advertising revenue goes some way to support our mission, but this year it has not been enough.

If you've seen value in our reporting, please contribute what you can, so we can continue to produce accurate and meaningful journalism. For everyone who needs it.

A Chinese medical worker checking the temperature of a man.

Irish people now advised to avoid entire province of Hubei due to coronavirus

The Department of Foreign Affairs has advised people to avoid the province of Hubei.

THE AREA IRISH citizens are being advised to avoid in China has been expanded from one city to an entire province by the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) today. 

The department has extended its advice on visiting China today to avoid the entire province of Hubei, an area of around 185,000 kilometres squared. It has a population of nearly 60 million people. 

Previously, the department had advised people against visiting just Wuhan, a city of 11 million people in an area of around 8,500 kilometres squared. This is where the disease emerged in December.  

A spokesperson for the DFA said the department “continues to closely monitor the situation in China, and is in ongoing contact with the Chinese authorities and the World Health Organisation”. 

“The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade and our Embassy in Beijing is in ongoing contact with EU Member States and other relevant countries and is exploring options, including commercial options, for assisting Irish citizens to leave Hubei Province, if required.

“The embassy is in contact with Irish citizens in the Hubei province regarding their intentions,” the spokesperson said.

It is understood that there are not a significant amount of Irish people living in this province. 

hubei china Highlighted is the province of Hubei in China. Google Maps Google Maps

“We would encourage any other Irish citizens in Hubei Province, who require assistance, to contact Ireland’s Embassy in Beijing,” the spokesperson said. 

A high degree of caution was issued last week by the DFA for travelling to China. This remains in place. 

The department said that although the risk of travellers or foreign residents contracting the disease in China is low, there is a “strong likelihood” that travel could be disrupted” by government containment measures.

“In the circumstances travellers are advised against visiting the province of Hubei, if possible. Travel, within China, may be disrupted by increased containment measures employed by the Chinese government,” the DFA website says. 

More than 80 people have died so far from the coronavirus since December. Nearly 2,800 people have been infected and it has spread to a dozen or so countries. 

People in the Hubei region are warned to observe food safety and wear single-use masks. Regularly washing your hands with an alcohol-based soap is also strongly recommended by the World Health Organisation. 

China’s health minister Ma Xiaowei said travel restrictions and other strict measures should bring results “at the lowest cost and fastest speed”. Xiaowei warned today that the virus seemed to be spreading more easily. 

France is the only European country with confirmed cases of the virus. Three people are known to be affected by the outbreak. France will be flying home its citizens who wish to leave Wuhan later this week, the French government announced today. 

With reporting by AFP.  

Readers like you are keeping these stories free for everyone...
A mix of advertising and supporting contributions helps keep paywalls away from valuable information like this article. Over 5,000 readers like you have already stepped up and support us with a monthly payment or a once-off donation.

Close
41 Comments
This is YOUR comments community. Stay civil, stay constructive, stay on topic. Please familiarise yourself with our comments policy here before taking part.
Leave a Comment
    Install the app to use these features.
    Mute Marc Power
    Favourite Marc Power
    Report
    Jan 27th 2020, 2:58 PM

    Like closing the gate after the horse has bolted. In today’s interconnected world everywhere is a flight away from everywhere else. For viruses too

    148
    Install the app to use these features.
    Mute Sylvia O'Regan
    Favourite Sylvia O'Regan
    Report
    Jan 27th 2020, 6:15 PM

    @Marc Power:

    Have they also banned people travelling to Ireland from that province? Surely the government aren’t completely useless…

    32
    Install the app to use these features.
    Mute Caoimhín O Neill
    Favourite Caoimhín O Neill
    Report
    Jan 27th 2020, 9:11 PM

    @Sylvia O’Regan: they can’t ban. Sure a company operating in leixlip have an office out there, travel is a must unfortunately

    2
    See 1 more reply ▾
    Install the app to use these features.
    Mute Marc Power
    Favourite Marc Power
    Report
    Jan 27th 2020, 10:22 PM

    @Sylvia O’Regan: really not sure what your comment means?.

    1
    Install the app to use these features.
    Mute Paraic
    Favourite Paraic
    Report
    Jan 27th 2020, 3:32 PM

    Didn’t I just hear that a student has arrived into Ireland from Wuhan, but it’s okay because he’s isolated himself. Sure it’ll be grand.

    121
    Install the app to use these features.
    Mute David Stapleton
    Favourite David Stapleton
    Report
    Jan 27th 2020, 3:44 PM

    @Paraic: what else could they do? It’s a hell of a lot better than them walking around…

    24
    Install the app to use these features.
    Mute emer daly
    Favourite emer daly
    Report
    Jan 27th 2020, 3:48 PM

    @Paraic: sure why wasn’t he checked as a precaution

    53
    See 7 more replies ▾
    Install the app to use these features.
    Mute Paraic
    Favourite Paraic
    Report
    Jan 27th 2020, 3:52 PM

    @David Stapleton: So, let’s just trust this guy not to come out of his accommodation and all keep our fingers crossed? Sure what could possibly go wrong?

    39
    Install the app to use these features.
    Mute Paraic
    Favourite Paraic
    Report
    Jan 27th 2020, 3:58 PM
    11
    Install the app to use these features.
    Mute David Stapleton
    Favourite David Stapleton
    Report
    Jan 27th 2020, 4:22 PM

    @Paraic: in fairness, most countries are recommending that people do the same thing. Until an emergency is declared, I believe it would be illegal to detain people in quarantine unless they were exhibiting symptoms. As to what Ireland would or could do in the event of a pandemic, well in the immortal words of Stephen to William Wallace in Braveheart, you’re fu(ked.

    13
    Install the app to use these features.
    Mute Paraic
    Favourite Paraic
    Report
    Jan 27th 2020, 4:47 PM

    @David Stapleton: Eh, NO. Didn’t you read the article? “52 people across Northern Ireland, England, Wales and Scotland have already been tested for the deadly flu-like virus were negative, but there are fears the UK could have its first positive test “within days”. So in the UK there is a test and people in a similar situation are screened by medical personnel. Here in Ireland, we’re too busy on the campaign trail to organise anything meaningful.

    23
    Install the app to use these features.
    Mute David Stapleton
    Favourite David Stapleton
    Report
    Jan 27th 2020, 5:26 PM

    @Paraic: OK, if there’s a test, and Ireland doesn’t have it, then I see your point. But I presume that those people presented with symptoms and so were tested. If they had been positive then they would have been walking around spreading the virus, which has a R0 or contagion rate of over 3, i.e. 1 infected person will infect 3 people, 3 will infect 9, 9 will infect, while they presented with no symptoms. A sensible course of action, as an individual, is to self quarantine yourself for the duration of the incubation period because, if you end up being infected, then you will have been spreading it while you were asymptomatic… That is all I was commenting on, not the tests for the virus itself.

    3
    Install the app to use these features.
    Mute Paraic
    Favourite Paraic
    Report
    Jan 27th 2020, 6:08 PM

    @David Stapleton: And what if in 2 or 3 days time, this guy comes down with symptoms? He didn’t just teleport into his accommodation. How many people could he have had contact with on the way? Did he take a bus from the airport, visit a restaurant etc? Let’s keep those fingers crossed.

    11
    Install the app to use these features.
    Mute David Stapleton
    Favourite David Stapleton
    Report
    Jan 27th 2020, 10:20 PM

    @Paraic: I agree with you 100%. But the only answer is to quarantine people straight off the plane, and or stop flights. As there are no direct flights, passengers would have to tell the authorities where they were. But what if you were flying in from Spain to Heathrow and someone who came in from China infected you? You wouldn’t know or have reason to believe you had been exposed. What’s the solution, quarantine everybody coming into the country for 14 days or literally stop everybody from coming into the country? There’s no easy solution.

    1
    Install the app to use these features.
    Mute David Jordan
    Favourite David Jordan
    Report
    Jan 27th 2020, 4:08 PM

    This conference is well worth watching, it is Dr. Gabriel Leung, one of the world’s foremost experts on Coronavirus. He was at the forefront of commanding the battle against SARS in 2003. About 1/2 the conference in in English (the rest is repeated in Chinese):

    https://youtu.be/aYyH4N8VXvA?t=3536

    Here’s a summary:

    GL: The report I am about to share with you (PDF) is also being immediately sent to the authorities in Beijing and to the WHO.

    GL: The epidemic is growing at an exponentially, at an accelerating rate. The real question is given the lag between infection, incubation, symptom onset, hospital admission, treatment, and then recovering or perishing, given that lag, we used our mathematical model to try and infer how many cases there actually are/were (as of two days ago [Jan 25th]) in Wuhan and other places in mainland China.

    GL: the basic reproductive number we measure as 2.13 – this is the best estimate we have at the moment. A doubling time of six days in the absence of any public health interventions is expected.

    GL: (explaining a graph presentation) The number of clinically apparent cases we model to be 25 to 26 thousand as of Chinese New Year Day [ Jan 25th]. The number of total infections when including presymptomatic cases “approaches 44 thousand.” [70,000 cases]

    GL: Wuhan is extensively connected to the North, South, East and West of China. The number of cases exported from Wuhan to the rest of mainland China, in our model as of Jan 25, range from 18 in Qingdao to a high of 318 in Chongqing. The numbers will be higher by now. But that’s not the most important point. There have been megalopolis quarantines since Jan 23. We ran the model with and without the quarantines accounted for, and the forecasts are very similar. The quarantines may not be able to substantially change the course of the epidemic curves in other major Chinese city clusters.

    GL: We modelled epidemic curves out to August 2020 for all the major city clusters in China: Chongqing, Shanghai-Guangzhou, Shenzhen and Beijing. Chongqing is predicted to have the largest epidemic due to large population and most intense traffic volume coupled to Wuhan. The timing of the peak is sometime in April to May 2020, one to two weeks in Chonqing before the other major city clusters (except Wuhan which will peak even earlier).

    GL: a special note on HK and Macao. They are also linked to G’zhou and Shenzhen by rail which may (be more important than?) the links direct from HK/Macao to Wuhan. (His speech is not clear here).

    GL: We are expecting to see Self sustaining epidemic clusters – not just repeated exports from Wuhan but actually a local self sustaining epidemic – within all five?/four? of the major city clusters of China.

    GL: The question is now whether those predicted self sustaining epidemics will in turn seed such local epidemics overseas. The four Bj/Sh/Gz/Shz account for 53% of all international travel in the country and 70% of all international air travel out of Asia originating from mainland China. These four are highly likely to seed local epidemics in connected ports overseas.

    GL: The conclusion that we draw from this analysis – why it’s important to submit it publicly immediately after sending to WHO – The epidemic in Wuhan, as a precautionary principle, we must be prepared for it to become a global epidemic. This is not a certainty but there is a “not weak,” “not insubstantial,” “not trivial” chance that this will happen.

    GL: There is already self sustaining chains of transmission modelled in the major Chinese cities. (Because the four mega city clusters have such high population?), if these cities were in turn to become significant exporters of virus (due to the acceleration of their epidemic curves?), they would have a “NOT TRIVIAL” chance of kickstarting local epidemics in connected overseas cities.

    GL: Again let me emphasize, this is not a prediction but these findings make us concerned enough to alert the authorities and the public to keep everyone informed. It is incumbent on us to prepare for this non trivial possibility.

    GL: If we want to change the course of these epidemic curves, then we are looking at “SUBSTANTIAL, DRACONION MEASURES LIMITING POPULATION MOBILITY” which should be taken sooner rather than later: school closures, ban mass gatherings, work from home, but also between population clusters, we must reduce population mobility. Should containment fail and local transmission is established, mitigation measures from previous pandemics could “come off the shelf” as templates for action. The major Chinese cities would be “well advised” to review these mitigation plans and prepare to act. (Prof. Leung did not specify in English what those measures would be).

    48
    Install the app to use these features.
    Mute DazLock
    Favourite DazLock
    Report
    Jan 27th 2020, 4:18 PM

    @David Jordan: FairPlay David

    25
    Install the app to use these features.
    Mute David Jordan
    Favourite David Jordan
    Report
    Jan 27th 2020, 5:02 PM

    @DazLock: To the right of Dr. Gabriel Leung is Prof. Jospeph Wu, at the time of the conference Prof. Wu and his team had not slept in 4 days. Prof. Wu and his team just submitted to the WHO a paper about the outbreak at 7am that morning.

    19
    See 6 more replies ▾
    Install the app to use these features.
    Mute Paraic
    Favourite Paraic
    Report
    Jan 27th 2020, 6:52 PM

    @David Jordan: How do you get around the 800 character comment limit? Not criticising, just curious.

    4
    Install the app to use these features.
    Mute Paraic
    Favourite Paraic
    Report
    Jan 27th 2020, 7:03 PM

    @David Jordan: This may interest you, from Nature in 2017: “A laboratory in Wuhan is on the cusp of being cleared to work with the world’s most dangerous pathogens.”…”Many staff from the Wuhan lab have been training at a BSL-4 lab in Lyon, which some scientists find reassuring. And the facility has already carried out a test-run using a low-risk virus…But worries surround the Chinese lab, too. The SARS virus has escaped from high-level containment facilities in Beijing multiple times”. https://www.nature.com/news/inside-the-chinese-lab-poised-to-study-world-s-most-dangerous-pathogens-1.21487

    9
    Install the app to use these features.
    Mute David Jordan
    Favourite David Jordan
    Report
    Jan 27th 2020, 10:10 PM

    @Paraic: The virus began in the Wuhan Sea Food Market (Wet Market), not the lab 20 miles south of Wuhan. They tested the stalls at the market and they are close to finding which animal was the source, it likely came from a Rhinolophus genus of bats. All 33 Stalls they tested were positive for the virus.

    Additionally, phylogenetic and genetic drift analysis indicates that the virus jumped from animals (bats) to humans last November, just before the first human case was identified on Dec 8th (the up to 14 day incubation first neatly with this).

    Also, 66% of the first 44 people diagnosed with the illness bought food from the market, they remainder were family members who caught the virus from those who visited the market.

    So stop spreading unfounded rumours.

    9
    Install the app to use these features.
    Mute David Jordan
    Favourite David Jordan
    Report
    Jan 27th 2020, 10:47 PM

    @Paraic: “How do you get around the 800 character comment limit? ”

    It might be because I posted from my PC not phone, I didn’t use the Journal app.

    1
    Install the app to use these features.
    Mute Paraic
    Favourite Paraic
    Report
    Jan 27th 2020, 11:20 PM

    @David Jordan: I didn’t spread “unfounded rumours”. I posted an article from Nature magazine from 2017 with facts from said article. If the article highlighted the fact that Wuhan was then opening a virus research facility and that China has been generally sloppy with respect to the SARS viruses under their watch, then given the reputation of Nature magazine, I tend to take it as fact. You are free to draw your own conclusion. I was just providing the information.

    4
    Install the app to use these features.
    Mute Paraic
    Favourite Paraic
    Report
    Jan 28th 2020, 12:00 AM
    1
    Install the app to use these features.
    Mute TechProducts
    Favourite TechProducts
    Report
    Jan 27th 2020, 3:55 PM

    Bat soup anyone?

    33
    Install the app to use these features.
    Mute Richard Cronin
    Favourite Richard Cronin
    Report
    Jan 27th 2020, 4:09 PM

    @TechProducts: they are the chicken of the cave

    25
    Install the app to use these features.
    Mute John Horan
    Favourite John Horan
    Report
    Jan 27th 2020, 3:27 PM

    How many people have died from ordinary flu in the same area and same time frame?

    23
    Install the app to use these features.
    Mute Arch Angel
    Favourite Arch Angel
    Report
    Jan 27th 2020, 3:35 PM

    @John Horan: Funny you should ask that, in 2016 and 2017, China reported only 56 and 41 deaths from flu, respectively, according to NHC data. Bearing in mind the size of the country do think there’s the slightest possibility they may be fudging the figures? And if they did it then, could there also be the possibility they’re doing it now?

    61
    Install the app to use these features.
    Mute David Stapleton
    Favourite David Stapleton
    Report
    Jan 27th 2020, 3:43 PM

    @John Horan: I looked this up and apparently the flu mortality rate is 0.1%. Given the figures we have for this, the mortality rate for the coronavirus is 2.9%. Basically, if more people have died from the flu it’s because significantly more people have caught the flu. Let’s hope it stays that way…

    21
    See 11 more replies ▾
    Install the app to use these features.
    Mute Connoroconner
    Favourite Connoroconner
    Report
    Jan 27th 2020, 3:48 PM

    @John Horan: are you implying that this is scaremongering and we should just ignore the Corona virus and hope it goes away? Quite possibly the threat is overstated but we can’t take that chance, I dont think.

    9
    Install the app to use these features.
    Mute Arch Angel
    Favourite Arch Angel
    Report
    Jan 27th 2020, 3:49 PM

    @David Stapleton: In a country with a population in excess of 1.386 billion people, I don’t think that’s going to be a problem.

    2
    Install the app to use these features.
    Mute emer daly
    Favourite emer daly
    Report
    Jan 27th 2020, 3:49 PM

    then why they building two hospitals?

    10
    Install the app to use these features.
    Mute Arch Angel
    Favourite Arch Angel
    Report
    Jan 27th 2020, 4:04 PM

    @emer daly: Because they anticipate having a lot of patients and have to be seen to be doing something. What better to convince the gullible?

    3
    Install the app to use these features.
    Mute Connoroconner
    Favourite Connoroconner
    Report
    Jan 27th 2020, 4:05 PM

    @emer daly: I agree emer, they are not building 2 hospitals and enforcing virtually Marshall law for something with the same death rate as the flu. Is there is something they’re not telling us, do you think? That wouldn’t be like the Chinese, would it?

    16
    Install the app to use these features.
    Mute David Stapleton
    Favourite David Stapleton
    Report
    Jan 27th 2020, 4:17 PM

    @Arch Angel: that’s not the point I was making. I was merely saying that the mortality rate of the flue is 0.1%, whereas with the coronavirus it appears to be 2.9%, so let us hope that the transmission rate of the coronavirus does not match the transmission rate (RO) , of the flu. Or, put another way, that it never becomes as contagious as the flu.

    4
    Install the app to use these features.
    Mute David Stapleton
    Favourite David Stapleton
    Report
    Jan 27th 2020, 4:25 PM

    @David Stapleton: and I was, of course, not talking about smoke extraction, I obviously meant, “the flu”…

    2
    Install the app to use these features.
    Mute Arch Angel
    Favourite Arch Angel
    Report
    Jan 27th 2020, 4:41 PM

    @David Stapleton: I appreciate what you’re saying, however it’s been established by epidemiologists like Dr Eric Feigl-Ding, an expert advisor to the World Health Organization that the R0 value of the coronavirus is 3.8. In this regard it’s substantially worse than the flu.

    6
    Install the app to use these features.
    Mute David Stapleton
    Favourite David Stapleton
    Report
    Jan 27th 2020, 4:56 PM

    @Connoroconner: no, the mortality rate, or “death rate” of the flu is 0.1%. The coronavirus seems to be near 3% so far, from the figures for the number of infected and the number who have died. Mortality rate alone does not determine the total number of dead. The transmission (R0 or R-zero) rate along with the mortality rate does. If the R0 is 18, it means that one infected person will infect 18 people, so the higher the R0, the higher the rate of infection. If 1 million people catch coronavirus, then expect approximately 30,000 to die. If the coronavirus mutates to a higher mortality rate, then more will die. I do not believe they know the R0 for the coronavirus yet…

    4
    Install the app to use these features.
    Mute David Stapleton
    Favourite David Stapleton
    Report
    Jan 27th 2020, 5:13 PM

    @Arch Angel: of course it is. THAT was my point. It has a mortality rate of 3%”versus 0.1% for the flu. The latest I have found gave the coronavirus a R0 of 2 to 3, but said “perhaps more”. This being true, then we may be in some serious trouble, as the R0 for H1N1, for example, is between 1.4 and 1.6. So the coronavirus not only has a higher R0 but also a higher, much higher mortality rate. At the time I posted my comment above, I did not think that they had worked out a possible R0 for the coronavirus yet. I was basically pointing out that the coronavirus was much deadlier than the flu. That is much more serious news now that they have worked out that the R0 is also a lot higher. There is no disagreement between us.

    3
    Install the app to use these features.
    Mute Darren Byrne
    Favourite Darren Byrne
    Report
    Jan 27th 2020, 5:16 PM

    @Arch Angel: China have been criticized by WHO for their reporting of deaths related to flu. They only report flu as being the cause of death if the patient had no other underlying condition. If a patient with heart disease gets the flu in china and their heart gives out they record it as a death due to heart disease where as standard medical procedure would be to count it as a flu death. it is estimated that their are 100000 deaths due to flu in China every year they are just not reported as such. So far every death due to this coronavirus the patient has had an underlying condition but they are following standard procedure and reporting them as deaths related to the virus.

    1
    Install the app to use these features.
    Mute Joan Doyle
    Favourite Joan Doyle
    Report
    Jan 27th 2020, 5:27 PM

    What about all the goods coming out of wuhan and hubei any risk there ?

    14
    Install the app to use these features.
    Mute Tommy Roche
    Favourite Tommy Roche
    Report
    Jan 27th 2020, 4:24 PM

    This article was published in the Jounal 2yrs ago tomorrow. https://www.thejournal.ie/global-pandemic-3818811-Jan2018/

    8
Submit a report
Please help us understand how this comment violates our community guidelines.
Thank you for the feedback
Your feedback has been sent to our team for review.

Leave a commentcancel

 
JournalTv
News in 60 seconds