Coronavirus: China reveals more than 1,700 health workers infected

Toll on medics comes as number of cases and deaths continues to rise

Community workers and medical staff visit a woman at her home as they conduct door-to-door search to inspect residents in Tianjin, China. Reuters

A man wears a gas mask as he holds a bouquet of flowers on Valentine’s Day in Hong Kong. Reuters

Workers produce medical supplies at a factory in Binzhou in China's eastern Shandong province. AFP

A woman wearing a face mask crosses a street in Beijing, China. AFP

A woman wearing a protective facemask offers prayers outside the closed Jade Buddha Temple in Shanghai, China. AFP

Passengers react after they disembark from the MS Westerdam at the port of Sihanoukville, Cambodia. AP Photo

A young passenger from Westerdam cruise ship holds up a sign on a bus after disembarking in Sihanoukville. AFP

A passengers is seen on a balcony of the Diamond Princess cruise ship at the Daikoku Pier Cruise Terminal in Yokohama, Japan. AFP

A bus with a driver wearing full protective gear departs from the dockside next to the Diamond Princess cruise ship in Yokohama. AFP

Tourists take photos at the Overseas Passenger Terminal as the Norwegian Jewel cruise ship is in lock-down while health authorities test a man for Coronavirus in Sydney, Australia. Getty Images

A medical worker in protective suit gets onto an ambulance at a hospital in Xuanhua district of Zhangjiakou, Hebei province, China. Reuters

A train attendant gestures to medical staff leaving for Wuhan in Nanchang, China's central Jiangxi province. AFP

Thai students form a heart shape on Valentine's Day to show their support for China on their fight against coronavirus, in a school in Ayutthaya, outside Bangkok, Thailand. Reuters

The Covid-2019 coronavirus has taken a growing toll of Chinese health workers on the front line of the fight to stop its spread, a top official said on Friday as authorities reported more than 5,000 new cases, including more than 120 deaths.

China's National Health Commission said it had recorded 121 new deaths and 5,090 new coronavirus cases on the mainland on Thursday, taking the total number of infected to 63,851.

Some 55,748 people are being treated, while 1,380 people have died of the virus that emerged in December in Wuhan, capital of the central province of Hubei.

The latest toll takes account of some deaths that had been double counted in Hubei, the commission said.

The Chinese health commission vice minister, Zeng Yixin, said 1,716 health workers had been infected and six had died as of Tuesday, with the number of infected staff rising.

"The duties of medical workers at the front are indeed extremely heavy; their working and resting circumstances are limited, the psychological pressures are great, and the risk of infection is high," Mr Zeng told a news conference.

Chinese officials and hospitals have repeatedly spoken of a shortage of protective equipment, including face masks.

The new figures for total infections gave no sign the outbreak was nearing a peak, said Adam Kamradt-Scott, an infectious diseases expert at the Centre for International Security Studies at the University of Sydney.

"While the Chinese authorities are doing their best to prevent the spread of the coronavirus, the fairly drastic measures they have implemented to date would appear to have been too little, too late," he said.

Chinese scientists are testing two antiviral drugs and preliminary results are due in weeks, while the head of a Wuhan hospital said plasma infusions from recovered patients had shown some encouraging preliminary results.

While the vast majority of infections and deaths have been in China, in particular Hubei, there have been nearly 450 cases in 24 countries and territories outside mainland China, and three deaths.

Japan confirmed its first coronavirus death on Thursday – a woman in her 80s living in Kanagawa, near Tokyo. One person has died in Hong Kong and one in the Philippines.

The biggest cluster of infections outside China has been on a cruise liner quarantined in a Japanese port, with 218 people on board confirmed as infected and taken to hospital.

On Friday, some of the ship's passengers were allowed to disembark – with priority for older passengers confined to windowless cabins – and complete their quarantine on shore.

There was good news for passengers on another cruise ship that was finally allowed to dock in Cambodia after being rejected by five countries over fears of the virus, even though no cases were reported on board.

The MS Westerdam, carrying 1,455 passengers and 802 crew, docked in Sihanoukville port late on Thursday. It had anchored offshore earlier to allow Cambodian officials to board and collect samples from passengers with any signs of illness.

Prime Minister Hun Sen greeted the passengers with handshakes and bouquets as they stepped off the ship and boarded a bus.

"My wife and I gave him some chocolates as a show of our appreciation," said Lou Poandel, a tourist from New Jersey, after meeting the Cambodian leader.

Separately, Royal Caribbean Cruises said it had cancelled 18 cruises in South-East Asia and joined larger rival Carnival in warning that its full-year earnings would be hit by the coronavirus outbreak.

In Singapore, which reported its biggest jump in cases to date on Thursday – up eight to 58 – authorities were scrambling to find "patient zero", the person who carried the disease into a company meeting last month, setting off a chain of infections linked to five other countries.

The surge in China's reported cases on Thursday reflected a decision by authorities to reclassify suspected cases as confirmed by using patients' chest scans, and did not indicate a wider epidemic, the World Health Organisation said.

"This is not a sign that the outbreak is suddenly exploding," said WHO official Simeon Bennett. "We see no significant change in the trajectory of the outbreak."

Economists are scaling back growth expectations for the world's second-largest economy as they assess the impact of the outbreak.

China will grow at its slowest rate since the global financial crisis this quarter, according to a Reuters poll of economists who said the downturn would be short-lived if the outbreak was contained.

The UN's International Civil Aviation Organisation forecast global airline revenue could fall by $4 billion to $5 billion in the first quarter due to cancellations linked to the outbreak.