An announcement that the Chinese city at the centre of the coronavirus outbreak would relax some of its travel restrictions and allow some people to leave was made without authorisation and has been revoked, the local government said on Monday.
Authorities in Wuhan had said healthy residents could begin to leave the city, which has been under strict quarantine measures since 23 January. But later on Monday afternoon, a new statement declared the previous notice “invalid” and said all relevant personnel had been “severely criticised and dealt with”.
The contradictory statements will cast doubt on attempts by officials at the national level to assure the public that the virus is being contained. The later notice called on Wuhan to “firmly implement” Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s “important instructions” on preventing the export of the virus to other parts of the country.
Wuhan’s government said it would continue to impose strict controls over its borders in order to prevent the virus from spreading further.
At the national level, China’s National Health Commission reported its highest number of deaths in 11 days on Monday, with another 150 dead and 409 new cases, bringing the total number of confirmed cases of Covid-19 in China to 77,150. All but one of the fatalities and 11 of the new infections were in Hubei province, the centre of the outbreak.
Elsewhere, South Korea reported 70 more cases of the virus, bringing its total to 833, and Afghanistan identified its first case, as reported cases outside China jumped.
In Italy, authorities have implemented draconian measures to try to halt an outbreak in the north of the country, including imposing fines on anyone caught entering or leaving outbreak areas, as a fourth person was confirmed to have died there. And Iranian state TV said the death toll in the country has risen to 12, after four more people died.
Chinese officials had delayed the daily announcement of the data, a day after a major speech and meeting held by Xi, who warned the Covid-19 crisis was “both a crisis and a big test” for the country, according to Xinhua News agency.
Xi said the virus was a major public health emergency, which had spread quickly, causing the most extensive and difficult-to-contain infection since the founding of the People’s Republic of China.
“The outbreak of novel coronavirus pneumonia will inevitably have a relatively big impact on the economy and society,” Xi said, but added that the impact would be temporary and generally manageable.
Some observers greeted Monday’s figures with scepticism and as part of efforts to project a sense of control over the crisis. Chinese officials have twice changed the criteria for confirmed infections, making the data harder to parse.
Carl Minzner
(@CarlMinzner)China reports only 11 new coronavirus cases outside of Hubei. Either Chinese officials:
a) Have pioneered nearly universally-successful model to control virus (outside Hubei)
b) Face major pressure to report low growth in virus case # given pressing need to restart economy. https://t.co/f2a6MVuVhX
An announcement on whether the party will delay next month’s annual parliamentary session as a result of the crisis was expected on Monday. If it is moved, it would be the first time the meeting has been postponed since the Cultural Revolution.
On Monday, the provinces of Yunnan, Guizhou, Guangdong and Shanxi lowered their alert levels , following Gansu and Liaoning over the weekend.
China has allocated 99.5bn yuan ($14.16bn) to curb the outbreak, China’s assistant finance minister Ou Wenhan said in a Beijing press briefing on Monday.
Officials from the World Health Organization visited Wuhan on the weekend for the first time since the outbreak, inspecting two hospitals and meeting officials at the centre for disease control in the province.
There is growing alarm among economists and investors that the impact on global growth is going to be much worse than has previously been estimated.
Shane Oliver, chief economist of AMP wealth management in Sydney, said it was likely the Chinese economy will have contracted in the March quarter.
There is no official data about how the Chinese economy has fared in the past three weeks, but trackers of coal consumption and traffic congestion show that the world’s second-biggest economy is still paralysed despite claims that many manufacturing areas are back to work.
“The presumption was that we would see intermediate supply chains quickly reconnected and I think the market’s had to go through a period of questioning that logic” said Ray Attrill, head of FX strategy at National Australia Bank.
The new spike in cases in South Korea on Monday, which brought the national total to 763, prompted shares to fall in Australia and Hong Kong.
One of the nation’s largest cities, Daegu, has been placed under semi-lockdown, its national assembly session has been cancelled, and the start of school postponed. Other nations have also begun to suspend flights into the country. South Korea’s K-league postponed the start of the new football season in the face of the growing outbreak.
