Salim Kumar, only Malayalam comedian to win National Award for Best Actor, dead at 56
He learned to perform on a mimicry stage in Cochin. He finished on a national podium. The house in North Paravur was named Laughing Villa. It is quiet now.
The death toll from the novel Coronavirus (2019-nCoV) outbreak in China has risen to 490 with 65 new fatalities being reported from Hubei province and its capital Wuhan. With 2 more cases of deaths reported from Hong Kong and Philippines each, making the overall toll to 492. The global health experts, the World Health Organisation (WHO) said that the world has a “window of opportunity” to halt the spread of a deadly new virus.
The dramatic measures taken by China to rein in the deadly new coronavirus outbreak have prevented significant spread abroad, providing a “window of opportunity” to halt transmission, the World Health Organization said on Tuesday.
Advertisement
But the UN health agency’s chief also called for greater solidarity, accusing some governments of wealthy countries of being “well behind” in sharing data on virus cases. “While 99 percent of cases are in China, in the rest of the world we only have 176 cases,”WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in a technical briefing to the WHO’s Executive Board in Geneva.
Advertisement
The number of confirmed cases in the Asian giant has risen to 24,324 in 31 provincial-level regions, Chinese health commission announced on Wednesday.
3,887 new confirmed cases of novel Coronavirus infection were reported on Tuesday. Also 431 patients became seriously ill, while 262 were discharged from hospital after recovery.
The commission further said that 3,219 patients remained in severe condition and 23,260 people were suspected of being infected with the virus. Overall, a total of 892 people had been discharged from hospital after recovery, it said.
Over 2.52 lakh who were in close contacts with patients had been traced with over 1.85 lakh others still under medical observation, it added.
Meanwhile, at least 10 passengers on a cruise ship that Japan quarantined tested positive for the new Coronavirus, according to the Japanese health ministry. Japan has quarantined the ship carrying 3,711 people and was testing those onboard for the virus after a former passenger was diagnosed with the illness in Hong Kong.
By the end of Tuesday, 18 confirmed cases had been reported in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (SAR), including one death, 10 in the Macao SAR and 11 in Taiwan.
The Hong Kong victim, a 39-year-old man, died on Tuesday morning the Princess Margaret Hospital where he was in isolation after he was confirmed as the city’s 13th Coronavirus case on January 31.
The victim had travelled from Hong Kong to the Chinese city of Wuhan, the epicentre of the outbreak which has killed 425 in China, on January 21 and returned home on January 23.
He sought treatment on January 31 after having myalgia (muscle pain) and fever.
His 72-year-old mother was confirmed on Sunday as Hong Kong’s 15th case of novel Coronavirus infection and has been transferred to Princess Margaret Hospital for treatment.
Hong Kong has been particularly on edge over the virus as it has revived memories of the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) outbreak of 2002-03, which killed nearly 300 people in the financial hub and 349 people in the mainland.
On Sunday the Philippines reported the death of a Chinese man who had come from Wuhan, the central city at the epicentre of China’s health emergency.
Tedros said the WHO was sending masks, gloves, respirators and 18,000 protective isolation gowns to 24 countries, as well as 250,000 test kits to speed up the process of diagnose carriers of the virus.
He also reiterated his call for countries not to impose travel and trade restrictions because of the virus.
In the wake of rapidly increasing cases of the deadly virus across the world, the World Health Organisation last month declared the novel Coronavirus outbreak as a global health emergency.
This is the sixth time the WHO has declared a public health emergency of international concern after it did so during the outbreaks of H1N1 in 2009; the Ebola virus in West Africa in 2014 and in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in 2019; polio in 2014; and the Zika virus in 2016.
The Coronavirus has caused alarm because of its similarity to SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome), which killed nearly 650 people across mainland China and Hong Kong in 2002-2003. Like SARS, it can be passed among people through the respiratory tract. The symptoms of infection include fever, cough and breathing problems.
The Coronavirus is a large family of viruses that causes illnesses ranging from the common cold to acute respiratory syndromes, but the virus in China is a novel strain and not seen before.
Advertisement
