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LAST UPDATE | 26 Feb 2020
GREECE IS THE latest country to record a case of Covid-19, with the person in question a 38-year-old woman who had returned from northern Italy.
The news comes as Italy confirmed its 12th death from outbreak from a total of 374 cases, the most of anywhere outside of China.
Significantly, the World Health Organisation (WHO) today confirmed that there were now more new daily cases of the coronavirus outside China than inside the hard-hit country, marking a shift in the outbreak.
“Yesterday, the number of new cases reported outside China exceeded the number of new cases in China for the first time,” WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told diplomats in Geneva.
The UN health agency put the number of new cases in China yesterday at 411 while those registered outside the country stood at 427.
The new coronavirus epidemic has swelled in recent days, with cases in South Korea surging past 1,000. Deaths also soared in Iran and infections appeared in previously untouched countries, prompting dire warnings that the world was not ready to contain it.
The virus has rapidly spread in parts of Asia, Europe and the Middle East, even as the number of fresh cases and deaths decline at the disease epicentre in China.
Towns and cities have been sealed off in an attempt to stop the contagion, while hotels in the Canary Islands and Austria were locked down because of suspected cases.
A number of Irish nationals staying in Tenerife have made contact with the Department of Foreign Affairs.
In Iran, which has reported 15 deaths out of nearly 100 infections, even the country’s deputy health minister Iraj Harirchi said he had contracted the virus.
At the World Health Organisation headquarters in Geneva, Bruce Aylward, who headed an international expert mission to China, hailed the drastic quarantine and containment measures taken by the country.
But he told reporters that other nations were “simply not ready” to contain the outbreak.
“You have to be ready to manage this at a larger scale… and it has to be done fast,” Aylward said.
The virus has killed 2,715 people and infected over 78,000 in China. The number of fatalities is the lowest in three weeks and none were outside the epicentre in central Hubei province.
The National Health Commission also reported a drop in new infections to 406, with only five outside Hubei — a figure that will boost confidence that the rest of the country is containing the epidemic.
In the rest of the world, there have been more than 40 deaths and 2,700 cases.
The disease has now reached dozens of countries, with Greece, Austria, Croatia and Switzerland the latest to declare cases.
Ireland has not yet had any confirmed cases of Covid-19 but has had 90 suspected cases, with that number expected to increase significantly in the coming weeks.
The epidemic’s disruption has also grown, with stock markets tumbling around the world, restrictions imposed on travellers and sporting events cancelled.
The WHO has called for countries to “prepare for a potential pandemic” — a term used to describe an epidemic that spreads throughout the world.
Poor countries are particularly at risk, the WHO has warned.
Fallout
Scientists are racing to find a treatment, health crews are scrubbing everything from money to buses, and quarantines are being enforced in places from a beachfront resort in the Atlantic to an uninhabited island in the Pacific as the world battles the spread of a new virus.
Concern is also growing over the economic fallout of the coronavirus outbreak, with work at many factories halted, trade routes frozen and tourism crippled, while a growing list of countries brace for the illness to claim new territory.
Even the Tokyo Olympics, five months away, are not far enough off to keep people from wondering if they will go ahead as planned.
About 81,000 people around the globe have now been infected with Covid-19, and that number continues to increase as it spreads.
In Europe, Germany, France and Spain are among the places with a growing caseload – with an expanding cluster of more than 200 cases in northern Italy eyed as a source for those transmissions.
In Asia, where the crisis originated late last year in China, threats continue to emerge around the region, with South Korea battling a mass outbreak centred in the 2.5 million-person city of Daegu.
Though the virus has pushed into countries both rich and poor, its arrival in places with little ability to detect, respond and contain it has brought concern it could run rampant there and spread easily elsewhere.
Iran, Italy hotspots
In the Middle East, where cases have increased in Bahrain, Kuwait and Iraq, blame is being directed towards Iran amid fears the extent of the outbreak there has been underestimated.
Three more people died from the Covid-19 disease yesterday and the country has been scrambling to contain the epidemic since last week.
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, whose country came to the brink of war with Iran earlier this year, said Washington is deeply concerned Tehran “may have suppressed vital details” about the outbreak there.
Gulf countries announced new measures to cut links with Iran in an attempt to stop the spread.
In Italy — which has reported 12 deaths and 374 cases — has locked down 11 towns and ordered Serie A football games to be played to empty stadiums.
Around the world, as Christians marked the start of the holy season of Lent with Ash Wednesday, worshippers found churches closed and rituals changed by virus fears.
Even in St Peter’s Square, many of those gathered for Pope Francis’s weekly audience wore face masks and clergy appeared to refrain from embracing the pontiff or kissing his ring.
A young man who returned to Croatia from Italy became the first case in the Balkans region.
In the United States, which has a few dozen cases, health authorities urged local governments, businesses and schools to develop plans such as cancelling mass gatherings or switching to teleworking as the country braces for the virus to spread further.
Major gatherings were eyed warily, with organisers scrambling to respond in the face of the epidemic.
Looming largest of all are the Olympic Games, with the opening ceremony scheduled for 24 July in Tokyo.
A member of the International Olympic Committee, Richard Pound, has sounded alarm this week by saying the virus could force the cancellation of the Games.
The Japanese government, in turn, gave mixed signals, insisting Olympics preparations will continue while other forthcoming sports and cultural events are curtailed.
© – AFP 2020 - with reporting by Press Association and Rónán Duffy
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Craig Doyle is the most annoying man on Irish television. Less of him can only be a good thing.
Never seen Brendan Kilkenny then
Or Tubridy? Still, he’s very annoying and doesn’t seem like there anything he won’t hawk.
That man makes me cringe! As for UPC, they’re nothing more than a crowd of gangsters! Have you ever tried to decipher a UPC bill? They’re like something you’d find on the wall of an Egyptian Pyramid!!
Channel 100 on UPC should be banned forever.. That annoying voice constantly pontificating about UPCs services !
Couldn’t agree more. I actually complained to UPC. Drives me crazy.
who gives a fek, upc and magnet do not offer services in Donegal, pandering to the city slickers. Internet In Ireland offers bad service for rip off prices.
“City slickers”??? Sweet jesus…..
U can sing dat…no broadband in ireland is that fast….
I’m with Magnet and received a consistent 50mbs download speed
Magnet is not in any way widely available
No maybe not, but Dublin is part if Ireland, and the post I commented on stated that no Internet speeds were that fast in Ireland.
craig doyle is a self obsessed twat he wont be missed.
UPC should be banned from advertising altogether.
Agree with that wholeheartedly. Not just banned from advertising, but from marketing too.
I’d love to have UPC or magnet fibre in my area because the local eircom offerings are brutal
poor chap:(
I know the feeling, my parents have dial-up in co.limk. Lets hope the rural broadband scheme will have it sorted in next few months.
I had UPC broadband for all of three days. It was useless, by which I mean it was slower than dial up. When I contacted their technical support people they conceded that it wasn’t working. But they also said that if I wanted to get it corrected I would have to call a premium rate helpline. They said that in ‘certain circumstances’ they ‘may’ refund the cost to me. I told them that I wasn’t interested in the service anymore, that I was exercising my rights under the cooling off period and that they could come and take their equipment away.
At that point they told me they would assume the cost of getting the system up and running and that they would have someone from the premium rate helpline call me. I told that if they could get the service up and running I would re-consider but that I wasn’t paying anything until such time as they delivered. I said that in the meantime I was staying with my existing broadband provider who were, and still are Magnet.
Upshot of the story is that the call never came, UPC never fixed the service but they did manage to debit my bank account for something in the region of €100. When I told them to give that money back they refused. When I complained to my bank about an unauthorised direct debit they refused to do anything about it either. I was given to understand that because UPC operate a ‘Direct Debit Plus’ type mandate, normal safeguards do not apply. They can debit your account for whatever they like, even if it’s unauthorised, and they can’t be made to give it back. The only way I did get my money back was by refusing to pay for the Cable TV service they were also supplying to my home at the time (but not anymore, now I’m with Sky).
WARNING to anyone considering getting involved with UPC. Do not under any circumstances agree to set up a direct debit over the phone. Don’t even give them your bank account details. Ask them to post you out a proper mandate which contains all the standard terms and conditions, including the Direct Debit Guarantee. Information about how direct debit originators are supposed to operate, and your rights as a payer are available from http://www.ipso.ie/section/DirectDebitScheme
Had a UPC sales rep at the door last week. Told her, I wouldn’t take it for free!! Worst customer service on the planet.
@Dave
I fully support your comment.
When I WAS with UPC I use to tine how long it took to get to talk to someone.
It averaged 14 mins.
Their phone service is a disgrace and their field support is as bad.
I have banned them from coming onto my property altogether now
No 3 win that award by far, I waited one day for 30-45 minutes to be connected to a guy who didn’t speak much English and didn’t know the alphabet, needless to say it wasn’t the quickest conversation ever.
Whilst the UPC packages may have a contention ratio of 8:1 I have subscribed to the service in a variety of addresses over the past five years and I have never once experienced slowness due to contention ratio.
I constantly max out my connection in the address that I’m in at the moment. I have also been a Magnet networks customer in the past and I also experienced no lag due to contention (which can still occur on the exchange level, their claim of no contention is a bit of a misnomer).
This just smacks of desperation on Magnet’s part.
“We’re not going to try to improve our services to double the speed… we’ll just try and rubbish the claims of others instead.”
UPC is only available to a certain minority… and Magnet’s availability is even smaller than this. I would say that UPC *do* have the fastest consumer speeds in Ireland.
Whilst their support may not be great I don’t see any problem with them claiming that they have the fastest consumer broadband in the country because this *is* true.
Do NOT do business with UPC.
Worst customer service ever!
Just finished with them this week.
Lucky me!!
If the alternative is eircom UPC is heaven in comparision
In fairness, their broadband is faster than the speed it takes to switch stations on their tv boxes. Bad bad company, terrible service.
The service that UPC tried to sell me was a package that comprised TV, broadband and telephone. What I noticed was that if someone was on the phone, you might as well give up watching TV because the signal became patchy. The broadband connection was non-existent but I wonder what it would be like in a household where people are simultaneously on the phone, watching TV and surfing the web.
IPC is the best in the country and most wildly available.
UPC, damn phone
Magnet shite ,had 24mb internet for a year,did a speed test instead of 20mb I was getting max 8-11mb (I know It’s impossible to get all 24mb,u need to live under antenna if u want to get all speed) now with upc 50mb ,doing test every week ,getting 42-45mb ,happy!!:)
upc 50mb rocks compared with eircom. that is all.
So nothing has changed at UPC-dropped their services a fe years ago – never looked back–the orst customer service EVER.
For 50eur a month, I get phone with free evening/weekend calls and 100Mb broadband from UPC. Speed checks consistently show 104Mbps coming in and 8Mbps out, which is unbelievable. No other company can beat that. I can download a 1.5GB HD movie in 2 to 3 minutes and I’ve had NO problems or slowdowns. Why isn’t everybody in Dublin on this plan?
Robert Mayberry (see above) would call you a city slicker!
Just thought I’d add if you can’t find his comment ctrl and f on Windows or cmd and f on mac and type in the name, speed things up a bit.
Can’t get Magnet, UPC or eircom! So I can’t get any of the wonderful package deals that are constantly advertised on the TV. Instead I pay E38 per month for broadband only! The joys of living in the countryside :)
It’s not.
have your say