Coronavirus — February 17th, 2020 Facts

▶️ China says 80 percent of coronavirus cases have been mild, as death toll rises again.

▶️ As of Feb. 17, the Chinese government said a total of 72,436 people are confirmed to have had the disease while 1,868 people have died.

▶️ Senator Tom Cotton, Republican of Arkansas, has repeated an unsubstantiated conspiracy theory that has spread from small-town China to the right-wing news media in the United States: The new coronavirus originated in a high-security biochemical lab in Wuhan.

▶️ Volkswagen delays re-opening some China factories.

▶️ Singapore Airlines temporarily ceased some service on major flight routes around the world, including New York and London, citing weak demand.

▶️ The time needed for nucleic acid testing for the new coronavirus has been cut down drastically — from two days to just four to six hours, according to a press release from the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

▶️ Japan’s health ministry said 454 people on board the quarantined Diamond Princess cruise ship, off the coast of Yokohama, have tested positive.

▶️ Apple said Monday that it would not meet its quarterly revenue forecast because of constrained worldwide supply of its iPhones and lower Chinese demand resulting from the virus outbreak.

▶️ Isolating China has hit the tourism business in other countries.

▶️ China signaled on Monday that it would postpone the annual session of its Communist Party-dominated legislature because of the epidemic.

▶️ A Russian court ordered a quarantine escapee to return to the hospital.

▶️ Chinese lawmakers consider controlling the trade in wildlife.

▶️ Australia will evacuate more than 200 of its citizens who have been trapped on the cruise ship in Japan, and quarantine them for two more weeks at a mining camp in the northern city of Darwin.

Photo by Paula Bronstein / Getty Images

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