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Large-scale events worldwide canceled due to corona virus

2020-02-29T09:00:20.990Z


Asean Summit, Wada Annual Symposium, ITB - events around the world are being canceled due to the spread of the corona virus. The number of infected people continues to rise in Germany. Now the Chancellor has spoken in the crisis.


Asean Summit, Wada Annual Symposium, ITB - events around the world are being canceled due to the spread of the corona virus. The number of infected people continues to rise in Germany. Now the Chancellor has spoken in the crisis.

Berlin (dpa) - More and more events are being canceled worldwide due to the spread of the new corona virus.

The U.S. government canceled a summit scheduled for March 14 with the states of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) in Las Vegas on Friday evening (local time).

The World Anti-Doping Agency (Wada) canceled its annual symposium in Switzerland from March 17th to 19th. The large US airline United Airlines postponed its investor day planned for Thursday. Shortly before, the world's largest travel trade fair ITB Berlin had been canceled from March 4th to 8th.

It could not be the last of its kind. The Federal Government's crisis team recommended late in the evening that the principles of the Robert Koch Institute be taken into account when assessing the risk of major events. From the perspective of the crisis team, "imminent major international events" should be canceled when applying these principles.

Chancellor Angela Merkel nevertheless advocated "moderation" when dealing with the new corona virus. Not all events should therefore be canceled, she said on Friday evening at her annual reception in her West Pomeranian parliamentary constituency in Stralsund. Germany is one of the countries that have the best conditions to deal with the virus.

In Germany, the number of people infected with the novel coronavirus rose to over 50 on Friday. The federal states of North Rhine-Westphalia, Baden-Württemberg are affected. Bavaria, Rhineland-Palatinate, Hesse and Hamburg or Schleswig-Holstein. The district of Heinsberg in North Rhine-Westphalia is currently particularly badly affected. There the number of infected had risen to 37 by Friday evening.

The crisis ministry of the Federal Ministry of the Interior and the Federal Ministry of Health announced on Friday evening that the federal government would in future ask travel companies to provide information on the health of passengers coming to Germany from a total of five countries. In addition to China, the health status of passengers should be reported for travelers from South Korea, Japan, Italy and Iran before entering the country.

China and South Korea also reported increasing numbers of infected and dead people on Saturday: The Beijing Health Commission announced that 47 more people in China had died of Covid-19 lung disease. According to official information, 427 new diseases were registered nationwide. The total number of confirmed infections in mainland China rose to 79 251. So far, 2835 deaths have been confirmed in China.

In South Korea, the number of infections rose by almost 600 within 24 hours. According to the health authorities, 2931 people have been infected with the Covid-19 pathogen so far - more than anywhere else in China. The number of deaths associated with the virus has increased by three to 16 so far.

The government in Rome, meanwhile, launched a bundle of emergency relief for people in areas severely affected by the coronavirus on Friday evening. The cabinet wants to give citizens the opportunity to temporarily suspend payments to utilities and insurance companies. The outbreak of coronavirus, which started about a week ago in Lombardy, increased the number of infected people across Italy to around 900. Of these, 21 died by Friday evening from or related to the new lung disease. Eleven municipalities in the north are closed and tourism has shrunk considerably in large parts of the country.

The US health agency CDC advised against unnecessary trips to the country because of the coronavirus outbreak in Italy. The U.S. Department of State upgraded the travel advice for Italy on Friday night (local time) from level two ("exercise caution") to level three ("rethink travel") - one level before the highest level four ("not travel") ,

The US broadcaster NBC had reported on the cancellation of the Asean summit, citing unnamed US government officials. It was also said that a meeting scheduled for next Tuesday between US President Donald Trump and Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz had been postponed indefinitely.

Wada announced that the decision to cancel the symposium was based on the decision of the Swiss authorities. Due to the outbreak of Sars-CoV-2, the Federal Council banned all major events with more than 1,000 spectators until March 15. All of the weekend's first division football matches were also postponed to an indefinite date.

United Airlines justified the postponement of its investor day to probably September because the market reaction had worsened, investors are currently only concerned with the short-term effects. It is therefore not to be expected that productive talks about the long-term strategy could be held in the coming week.

The organizers ITB Berlin had said that more and more exhibitors had withdrawn in the days and weeks before, not only from China. According to the trade fair company, the responsible health office in Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf has increased requirements significantly. Overall, these are not feasible by Messe Berlin.

In North Rhine-Westphalia too, the spread of the corona virus has an impact on the extensive trade fair activities and thus also on numerous hotels and restaurants. After the Cologne hardware fair, the international trade fair for metalworking technologies in Düsseldorf and the Cologne fitness fair Fibo have been postponed to a later date, as the organizers announced.

According to the RKI, the number of cases worldwide has increased to more than 83,000 infected in 52 countries. More than 20 countries are affected in Europe, according to statistics from the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC). In view of the growing number of Sars-CoV-2 infections, the World Health Organization (WHO) set the risk of the virus spreading worldwide from "high" to "very high".

Most people infected with Sars-CoV-2 have only mild cold symptoms with chills and sore throats or no symptoms at all. 15 out of 100 infected people fell seriously ill, according to the RKI. You get breathing problems or pneumonia. According to previous figures, one to two percent of those infected die, far more than with the flu.

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Source: merkur

All news articles on 2020-02-29

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