Mark Decambre in Market Watch:
Scientist and scholar Eric Toner, quoted above in an excerpt from a Friday interview with the business-news channel CNBC, explained that China’s efforts to contain the current outbreak of a fast-moving upper-respiratory illness are “unlikely to be effective.”
Cases of the illness, which is related to SARS, or severe acute respiratory syndrome, and MERS, Middle East respirator syndrome, have now turned up in a number of countries beyond China, where the illness originated in Wuhan City.
The number of infections of coronavirus, or CoV, in China has risen to nearly 4,500, according to the Wall Street Journal. On top of that, the official death toll has climbed to 106, from 56 as of Tuesday. The Journal reported that the outbreak was overwhelming Wuhan-area resources and hospitals.
Beijing has shut down parts of the Great Wall, as well as more than a dozen cities, restricting the movement of tens of millions of people, and canceling events related to the Lunar New Year, one of the busiest periods of travel and consumerism in the country.
More here.