Cruise ship off US confirms 21 cases

CORONAVIRUS OUTBREAK
Thousands of passengers, crew in quarantine; more than half of the 50 US states now have virus; Florida confirms two deaths taking the country’s death toll to 17

Agencies
Italy calls in retired doctors to help fight virus
Iran's death toll jumps to 145
China reports lowest number of new cases in weeks


Twenty-one people aboard a cruise ship that was barred from docking in San Francisco have tested positive for coronavirus, US officials said on Friday, as eight more states reported their first cases of the fast-spreading respiratory disease.

Vice President Mike Pence, who is running the White House's response to the outbreak, said at a news conference that 19 crew members and two passengers out of 46 people tested so far on the Grand Princess ship had the virus.

He said the vessel with about 3,500 passengers and crew would be taken to a non-commercial port where everyone on board would be tested.

US President Donald Trump said he would rather have passengers remain on board the vessel, but that he would let others decide if they can disembark.

"I'd rather have them stay on, personally, but I fully understand if they want to take them off," Trump told reporters after touring the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta.

Allowing passengers onto US soil who might be infected would push up the number of coronavirus cases in the country, he said.

"I don't need to have the numbers double because of one ship that wasn't our fault," Trump said.

Keeping passengers quarantined aboard a coronavirus-hit ship proved to be a disastrous strategy in Japan, leading to one of the world's biggest outbreaks, reports Reuters.

On Friday, eight states - Pennsylvania, Indiana, Minnesota, Kentucky, Oklahoma, Nebraska, South Carolina and Hawaii - reported their first cases, meaning more than half of the 50 US states now have the virus.

Florida confirmed Friday two deaths from the virus -- the first US fatalities outside the west coast states of Washington and California -- taking the country's death toll to 17, reports AFP.

In Seattle, the epicenter of the nation's outbreak, there were school closures and orders to work from home. In areas less affected by the outbreak, music festivals and sports events were cancelled or curtailed as a precaution.

Dollar bills from China are going into quarantine due to the epidemic, as the Federal Reserve is putting extra precautions on money coming into the US.

Italy yesterday began recruiting retired doctors as part of urgent efforts to bolster the healthcare system with 20,000 additional staff and fight the escalating viral epidemic as death toll rises to 197.

Colombia declared its first case on Friday after a 19-year-old woman arriving from Italy tested positive for the virus, the health ministry said.

The United Nations on Friday asked nine countries, including China, South Korea and France, to delay by three months the rotations of their UN peacekeeping forces due to the coronavirus outbreak.

Iran yesterday reported 21 new deaths and 1,076 fresh cases in the past 24 hours, bringing the overall tolls to 145 dead and 5,823 infected.

An Iranian lawmaker died from coronavirus, state news agency IRNA reported, one of several officials to succumb to the illness in the epidemic-hit country.

Saudi Arabia yesterday reopened the area around the sacred Kaaba in Makkah's Grand Mosque, reversing one of a series of measures introduced to combat the outbreak.

In China, the number of new cases reported yesterday nationwide was the lowest in weeks.

The Chinese government has hinted it may soon lift the quarantine imposed on Hubei province -- the locked-down epicentre where some 56 million people have been effectively housebound since late January.