Officials in Hubei province, the centre of the coronavirus outbreak, will adopt more thorough and forceful measures to find patients with fever, state media reported today.

Records of all fever patients who have visited a doctor since 20 January will be checked, as well as the records of those who have bought over-the-counter cough and fever medications in shops and online, Xinhua reported.

People will get health check-ups and, if necessary, be placed in quarantine or taken to hospital, the report added, citing a notice from the province’s epidemic control headquarters.

China reported on Tuesday the smallest number of new coronavirus infections since January and its lowest daily death toll for a week, but the World Health Organization said the data should still be viewed with caution.

Dozens more countries across Africa and the Americas will be able to test citizens for coronavirus by the end of the week, the World Health Organization said today.

Over the coming days, 40 countries in Africa and 29 in the Americas are expected to have the ability to detect the Covid-19 virus.

Previously, many countries sent samples to other nations for testing in a process which can take days. Now they will be able to generate results in 24-48 hours.

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the WHO chief, said personal protective equipment has been sent to 21 countries and more will be sent to another 106 in the coming weeks.

Chinese medical workers who die fighting the coronavirus outbreak will be designated as martyrs, CNN reports.

Over 1,700 healthcare workers have become infected during the battle to contain the virus and several have died, with Chinese authorities coming under criticism for the pressure it is putting on staff.

The deaths have included Li Wenliang, the whistleblower doctor who tried to warn of the virus in December, and Liu Zhiming, director of Wuchang hospital in Wuhan, the city at the centre of the outbreak.

Kristie Lu Stout, a CNN correspondent in Hong Kong, reported:

China says it will designate all of them — the frontline doctors, nurses and medics who died while fighting the virus — as martyrs of the epicenter of the outbreak.

Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) has flown Chinese parts in suitcases to Britain to maintain production and could run out after two weeks, as the impact of the coronavirus outbreak hits firms across countries and industries.

Britain’s biggest carmaker joined major global companies such as Apple in warning of the impact of the virus on supply chains, Reuters reports.

Fiat Chrysler said last week it had temporarily halted output at its Serbian plant, the first such suspension by an automaker in Europe in response to the coronavirus crisis.

Components made in China are used in millions of vehicles assembled around the world and Hubei province – the centre of the virus outbreak – is a major hub for vehicle parts production and shipments.

The JLR chief executive, Ralf Speth, said:

We are safe for this week and we are safe for next week and in the third week we have ... parts missing.

We have flown parts in suitcases from China to the UK.

Production at the firm’s Chinese factory would recommence on 24 February and was “safe for the very first week”, he added.

The new coronavirus has killed over 1,900 people in China and infected around 72,000, confining millions to their homes, disrupting businesses and delaying reopening of factories after the extended Lunar New Year holiday break.

Speth said sales in China, the world’s biggest auto market, had been hit. The knockback comes after JLR had enjoyed a recovery in sales there, helping it to return to profitability in recent quarters.

“That’s completely stopped. It’s zero,” he said. “You don’t know whether the economy will catch up or whether this kind of loss is just a loss.”

A British man who was diagnosed with coronavirus on the Diamond Princess cruise ship in Japan will be discharged from hospital tomorrow.

Alan Steele, who announced the news on Facebook, said he will wait in the country until he can be reunited with his wife, Wendy, and they can travel home together.

The couple, who were celebrating their honeymoon on the ship, were separated on 7 February when Alan was diagnosed with the virus and taken to a nearby hospital.

Although the ship’s quarantine officially ends on Wednesday, new guidelines mean anyone who shared a cabin with a person who has tested negative for the virus will face another two weeks on board.

Alan has now tested negative for the virus, and says he is looking forward to eating at the McDonald’s near the cruise terminal.

Two Irish citizens have tested positive for coronavirus onboard the Diamond Princess cruise ship, Independent.ie has reported.

More than 100 people have been tested in Ireland for the disease, but none have tested positive.

There are six Irish nationals on the coronavirus-hit cruise ship. The two who have tested positive share dual citizenship with another EU member state and are not normally resident in Ireland. They are being treated at a hospital in Japan.

The Irish deputy prime minister, Simon Coveney, said:

We are also in close contact with those who remain in quarantine on the ship.

We are working with our EU partners and other like-minded countries regarding options for their return.

French fashion company Chanel has postponed a show in Beijing, following on from Prada’s decision to delay a show due to be held in Japan in May.

Chanel said in a statement that following the guidance of Chinese authorities it had decided to postpone its Beijing replica of a catwalk display held in Paris last December “to a later and more appropriate moment”.

The company is monitoring the situation closely, the statement said, adding: “At the foremost are the health and wellbeing of its teams and clients.”

No new date was given for the event.

As the UK government makes plans to bring home the British nationals trapped on board the Diamond Princess cruise ship in Japan, here’s a quick summary of some the other countries which have taken similar measure, compiled by Reuters.

• Australia will evacuate more than 200 of its citizens and an unspecified number of New Zealand citizens onboard the Diamond Princess cruise ship in Japan. The passengers will depart on Wednesday and will be required to be quarantined for another 14 days.
• Taiwan said today it would charter a plane to evacuate its citizens from the Diamond Princess. It evacuated 247 of the estimated 500 Taiwanese stranded in Wuhan on 3 February.
• A plane chartered by Canada has left for Japan to evacuate its nationals aboard the virus-hit cruise ship off Yokohama. After arriving in Canada, the passengers will undergo a 14-day period of quarantine. After evacuating 215 people earlier, the country flew back 185 Canadians from Wuhan on 11 February. All evacuees are quarantined on the Trenton, Ontario, base for two weeks.
• The United States flew back over 300 Americans who had been stuck on the Diamond Princess. They will face two more weeks of quarantine, after spending the previous 14 days docked in Japan. The US also authorised the voluntary departure of its government employees and their family members from Hong Kong on 11 February. On 6 February, two planes with about 300 passengers, mostly US citizens, took off from Wuhan for the United States.
• Hong Kong said it would send an aircraft to Japan to bring back passengers from the Diamond Princess, which has seen the most coronavirus infections outside of China.

Repatriating passengers from the coronavirus-stricken cruise ship in Japan is not without risks, a medical expert has said.

Paul Hunter, professor in Medicine at the University of East Anglia, said:

Considerable care needs to be made to ensure that the passengers do not transmit infection between themselves or to cabin crew during the flight home and once back on home soil they do not act as a focus for the spread of the disease into their home countries – any returning passengers may be put in quarantine on their return.

He noted that while the quarantine seems to have been effective at stopping the spread of infection around the world as passengers return home or continue their travels, it hasn’t stopped the coronavirus passing between passengers and crew.

It is well known that certain infections such as influenza and norovirus can spread rapidly on board cruise ships. Cruise ships take passengers and crew from all over the world, often passengers are relatively elderly, they spend most of their time on board indoors mixing with others.

The most likely [infection] route is direct person-to-person transmission when people are close to an infected person, but with currently publicly available information it is not possible to rule out other issues at this stage.

Many countries, including the US, Canada and Australia have either evacuated their citizens or are in the process of doing so.

The UK government has said it is in the process of organising a flight to bring back British nationals as soon as possible.

A social media campaign in Australia is urging people eat at Chinese restaurants, to combat disinformation and racialised stigma surrounding the coronavirus outbreak.

The #IWillEatWithYou campaign hopes to boost struggling Chinese businesses in the country, with many owners reporting a drop in sales caused by coronavirus fears.

On the campaign page, set up by Australian political activist group GetUp!, a call to action reads:

As misinformation about coronavirus spreads across social media, local Chinese restaurants and stores are paying the price - with some losing up to 50% of their revenue.

While other restaurants and public spaces are still buzzing, it is the Chinatown restaurants and Asian grocers that stand empty. Panic around the virus is unfairly impacting Chinese and Asian communities.

If we don’t take action – people will lose their jobs, and their livelihoods.

Can you take the pledge to defeat baseless fears and support these businesses in their time of need?

The Foreign Office has the “utmost concern” for the British people on the Diamond Princess cruise ship in Japan, two of whom may have tested positive for the virus.

In an updated statement, a spokesman for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office said:

We have the utmost concern for the British people currently on the cruise ship.

We are ensuring those who have been diagnosed with coronavirus receive the best possible care in Japan and are organising a flight back to the UK for other British nationals on the Diamond Princess as soon as possible.

The UK accounting watchdog has called on all British businesses to flag up the full extent of the risks posed by the coronavirus outbreak to their companies, PA Media reports.

The Financial Reporting Council (FRC) said companies had a duty to make “up-to-date and meaningful” disclosures to investors on the potential impact of the disease.

PA Media also reported that the FRC is in talks with accountancy firms over the potential effect that coronavirus could have on their ability to sign off accounts, given travel restrictions in China.

UK firms with Chinese subsidiaries can only review audit files within the country, as Chinese data protection laws prevent this being done remotely.

An FRC spokesman said:

Given the potential for rapid spreading of the virus, required disclosures will likely change over time as more information about the epidemic emerges.

Companies will need to monitor developments and ensure they are providing up-to-date and meaningful disclosures to their shareholders when preparing their year-end reports.

Thirty doctors in Brighton are currently in isolation after coming into contact with a GP who tested positive for coronavirus, the Argus reported.

A frontline clinician told the local paper: “There are 30 doctors in isolation after coming into contact with a GP who tested positive for coronavirus at the CCG meeting. Public Health England told them to self-isolate. This is a risk.

“There would have been a day or two in between them coming into contact with the GP with coronavirus and being traced and told to self-isolate.”

A spokesman for Brighton and Hove CCG said there have been no new cases in the city for more than a week. He added: “All doctors and other primary care health workers in Brighton and Hove who were advised to ‘self-isolate’ as a precaution are expected to be returning to work this week.”

The two-week quarantine of the Diamond Princess cruise ship ends on Wednesday, with thousands of passengers and crew set to disembark over the next several days in the port of Yokohama, near Tokyo.

But a number of scientists told the Associated Press that the ship could have served as an incubator for Covid-19 instead of a quarantine facility that was meant to prevent the worsening of the outbreak.

“I suspect people were not as isolated from other people as we would have thought,” said Dr Paul Hunter, a professor of medicine at the University of East Anglia, in England.

“Obviously the quarantine hasn’t worked, and this ship has now become a source of infection,” said Dr Nathalie MacDermott, an outbreak expert at King’s College London.
She said the exact mechanism of the virus’s spread was unknown.

“We need to understand how the quarantine measures onboard were implemented, what the air filtration onboard is like, how the cabins are connected and how waste products are disposed of,” MacDermott added.

A small number of Irish people are onboard two cruise ships where coronavirus has been detected, the Irish government has said, according to a report by PA Media.

Simon Coveney said his foreign affairs department was in contact with citizens on the Diamond Princess in Japan and the Westerdam off Cambodia.

He told RTÉ’s Morning Ireland:

It’s a small number though, and we’re dealing with each individual case.

There is a second cruise ship off Cambodia, we’re working with Irish nationals on both of those ships to make sure they’re safe.

And if they’re in quarantine, to make sure those conditions are safe.

The department said in a statement:

We are closely following the events concerning the Diamond Princess and we are in contact with the Irish citizens concerned.

We are continuing to liaise closely with like-minded countries, EU partners, and the health authorities in Japan and here in Ireland concerning the best course of action.

Hundreds of people have tested positive for the virus onboard the quarantined Diamond Princess.

The Associated Press has reported the latest breakdown of the number of cases and deaths from the coronavirus outbreak.

The viral outbreak that began in China has infected more than 73,000 people worldwide.

Here are the latest figures reported by each government’s health authority as of Tuesday morning (UK time):

• Mainland China: 1,868 deaths among 72,436 cases, mostly in the central province of Hubei
• Hong Kong: 58 cases, 1 death
• Macao: 10
• Japan: 607 cases, including 542 from a cruise ship docked in Yokohama, 1 death
• Singapore: 77 cases
• Thailand: 35
• South Korea: 31
• Malaysia: 22
• Taiwan: 22 cases, 1 death
• Vietnam: 16 cases
• Germany: 16
• United States: 15 cases; separately, 1 US citizen died in China
• Australia: 14 cases
• France: 12 cases, 1 death
• United Kingdom: 9 cases
• United Arab Emirates: 9
• Canada: 8
• Philippines: 3 cases, 1 death
• India: 3 cases
• Italy: 3
• Russia: 2
• Spain: 2
• Belgium: 1
• Nepal: 1
• Sri Lanka: 1
• Sweden: 1
• Cambodia: 1
• Finland: 1
• Egypt: 1

Another 88 passengers onboard the Diamond Princess have tested positive for the new coronavirus, ABC News reports.

The son of the British couple who tested positive for the coronavirus while on board the Diamond Princess described the government’s response as “appalling”.

David and Sally Abel, who published video diaries from a cruise ship quarantined off the coast of Japan, said they have tested positive for the new coronavirus.

Their son, Steve, told BBC Breakfast: “My assessment of the government treatment to them … appalling.

“They haven’t done anything. They probably are behind the scenes, which is great if they are, but no one is communicating with us. The FCO have got my number, my wife’s number, my brother’s number, my sister’s number and they haven’t got back to us on anything. We’ve been calling them every day for about four or five days.”

David Abel, from Oxfordshire, announced on Facebook that he and Sally had tested positive for the new virus. In a later post, however, he said he doubted his diagnosis.

“Frankly I think this is a setup! We are NOT being taken to a hospital but a hostel. That’s where partners are sent waiting out their quarantine,” he wrote. “No phone, no wifi and no medical facilities. I really am smelling a very big rat here! Waiting for the transfer now.”

Asked in the comments below one of his posts whether he was sure the test was positive, he replied: “I doubt it was positive. If it was, we would be in hospital.”

Philippines’ tourism and travel industry is projected to lose billions of peso with the temporary travel ban imposed on travellers from China, in the aftermath of the novel coronavirus outbreak.

Apple has announced it could miss its revenues target in the first quarter of 2020 because of the coronavirus outbreak.

European shares dropped as a revenue warning from the iPhone maker sent “shockwaves through the tech sector”.

Reuters reports:

The pan-European STOXX 600 index fell 0.8% by 0803 GMT, having ended at a record high on Monday after China outlined fresh stimulus measures to mitigate the virus’ economic impact.

However, Apple’s warning that it would miss its March quarter sales outlook due to the outbreak, along with news of a slower-than-expected recovery in the firm’s Chinese factories swiftly culled any optimism.

Apple’s Frankfurt-listed shares dropped more than 6%, while those of STMicroelectronics NV and Dialog Semiconductor PLC, which supply components to Apple, fell 4% and 4.9%, respectively.

The technology-heavy German stock index plunged 0.9%, while the European tech subindex fell 1.5%.

David and Sally Abel, a British couple onboard the Diamond Princess cruise liner in Japan, have tested positive for coronavirus, a day before passengers who tested negative were due to start leaving the ship after spending two weeks in quarantine.

Abel, who has uploaded daily videos from the couple’s cabin on social media, said in a Facebook post on Tuesday afternoon (local time): “There is going to be a time of quiet. We have been proved positive and leaving for hospital soon. Blessings all xxx.”

The Abels’ diagnosis came as the British government said it was preparing to send a plane to Japan to repatriate about 70 British nationals from the ship, which has been moored off Yokohama, near Tokyo, since 3 February. The vessel, originally carrying 3,700 passengers and crew, was quarantined after a previous passenger tested positive for Covid-19 at the end of last month.

Abel has used his video posts to apply pressure on Britain to evacuate its citizens. The US has evacuated more than 300 citizens, while Australia, Hong Kong, South Korea and Canada have said they will follow suit.

The Foreign Office said: “Given the conditions onboard, we are working to organise a flight back to the UK for British nationals on the Diamond Princess as soon as possible. Our staff are contacting British nationals on board to make the necessary arrangements. We urge all those who have not yet responded to get in touch immediately.”

Japanese health authorities said on Tuesday they had collected samples from everyone on the ship and that the planned evacuation of passengers who tested negative would begin as scheduled on Wednesday and be completed by the end of the week.

By Monday, 454 people on the ship had tested positive, but the final number of infections onboard has not been announced. Four Britons with confirmed coronavirus are currently in hospital in Japan, according to the latest official figures.

Among the remaining passengers and crew, those whose tests come back negative will be allowed to leave, while those found to be infected will be treated at hospitals in Japan. However, people who had close contact with those who have tested positive will have their quarantine reset to the date of their last contact with an infected person.

The large number of cases onboard the Diamond Princess has prompted criticism of Japan’s decision to keep everyone on the ship throughout the two-week quarantine. But the government’s top spokesman, Yoshihide Suga, told reporters on Tuesday the measure had been “appropriate”.

The French health minister, Olivier Veran, said on Tuesday there was a “credible risk” the coronavirus outbreak could turn into a pandemic, Reuters reports.

“This is both a working assumption and a credible risk,” Veran told France Info radio, when asked about the possibility of the coronavirus spreading globally.

He said France was ready to deal with all the possibilities and its health system was sufficiently robust and well-equipped.

I want to hear your news, experiences and questions about the coronavirus outbreak. You can email me at aamna.mohdin@theguardian.com or tweet me at @aamnamohdin

I’m particularly interested in hearing from travellers who have booked flights to China and are currently in limbo.

Taiwan has urged the World Health Organization not to be “kidnapped” by China, as the self-ruled island fights its label as an infected area.

Taiwan has reported 22 cases, compared with China’s figure of more than 72,400, but the island shares the agency’s classification of China as “very high risk” since the WHO considers Taiwan as part of China.

“Taiwan is not ruled by China and certainly should not be labelled as an infected area,” the foreign ministry spokeswoman Joanne Ou told a news conference, according to a report by Reuters. “We urge the WHO to be professional and neutral: break away from China’s unreasonable claim. Don’t be kidnapped by China.”

Taipei is already in dispute with Beijing over its exclusion from the WHO because of objections by China, which considers Taiwan its own territory and has blocked the island’s membership of many international bodies.

Countries including El Salvador, Mongolia, Solomon Islands and Vanuatu have adopted travel curbs for people who have visited Taiwan, while the island’s largest airline is included in an Italian ban on flights from China.

Ou said the WHO should immediately correct its “inappropriate label” for the island, which was continuing to press Italy to resume flights.

Shanghai’s government says the city’s schools, which have been closed for three weeks, will remain closed and will begin teaching primary and secondary school students online from 2 March.

Lu Jing, head of the Shanghai education committee, revealed the decision at a briefing on Tuesday, according to reports.

No date has been given for the proper reopening of schools.

Apple’s announcement on Monday night that the Covid-19 outbreak was causing a shortage of iPhones has hit tech stocks in Asia.

The Nikkei in Tokyo closed 1.4% for the day on Tuesday and Seoul finished down by a chunky 1.5%. The South Korean president Moon Jae-in said earlier that the economy faced an “emergency” situation because of the virus and the government would be making an all-out effort to boost growth.

They’re still trading in China where the Shanghai Composite is off 0.14% while the Hang Seng has fallen 1.35%.

The FTSE100 is expected to shed 0.6% at the opening this morning and on Wall Street the Dow Jones is looking at a similar fall after having Monday off for President’s Day.

“Apple is saying its recovery could be delayed, which could mean the impact of the virus may go beyond the current quarter,” Norihiro Fujito, chief investment strategist at Mitsubishi UFJ Morgan Stanley Securities in Tokyo, told Reuters.

“If Apple shares were traded cheaply, that might not matter much. But when they are trading at a record high, investors will be surely tempted to sell.”

Earlier I posted on the development of what appears to be an app-based health checking system in China.

A reader has been in touch to tell me that such a system has been in place in the southern city of Shenzhen for a couple of weeks.

It has worked like this.

QR codes were put up on the bulletin boards of residential communities with people advised to scan the codes and then visit a website and enter their phone numbers, after which they would receive a text message confirming their movements. Once they’d done this, residents could then register with the local administration and be allowed a transit pass to get back into their own communities.

Since 1 February, movement has been greatly restricted in Guangdong. On Saturday the province introduced “real name” verification just to ride the metro.

More from the Australian minister’s press call.

He was asked if those passengers on the ship were angry at having to be placed in quarantine despite already having been isolated on the ship for two weeks.

Health minister Greg Hunt says he understands their frustration and a mental health hotline and counselling service has been set up for them. But because of ongoing infections on the ship where 454 people have been infected, “there was no choice”.

Hunt says:

The medical advice from theAustralian Health Protection Principals Committee was clear and categorical, that an additional period of 14 days would be required. They have our deep sympathy. It must have been a very, very difficult time. And for many it would be frustrating. But we need to protect and support those Australians who have been on the ship, whilst protecting and supporting the entire containment arrangement in Australia.

Australia’s chief medical officer, Prof Brendan Murphy, is also at the briefing and he’s asked if it’s possible that the passengers – because of the growing number of cases on the ship – are more contagious than the Wuhan evacuees.

Prof Murphy says it’s “possible” but adds that all the evacuees have tested negative and have also had a “proper throat swab sent to the lab and they’ll all have a health screen.

We suspect that the risk for most of them is very low. But because some of them may have been exposed, we’re doing this quarantine. So, potentially there might be a slightly higher risk, but if that’s the case, we’re absolutely well-prepared for it.

South Korea is sending the presidential jet to evacuate its citizens from the Diamond Princess cruise ship in Japan, according to the Yonhap news agency.

Speaking in Seoul on Tuesday, president Moon Jae-in said the economy faced an “emergency” situation because of the virus and the government would be making an all-out effort to boost growth.

“(The government) shouldn’t quibble over whether anything is unprecedented or not, rather, we should take every possible measure we can think of on the table to deploy them,” Moon said in a cabinet meeting, Reuters reports.

Last week, the governor of the Bank of Korea said the central bank was working on financial aid packages for those sectors directly affected by the spreading coronavirus. The carmakers Hyundai and Kia were forced to suspend production at their plants because of a lack of components from China although output has been resumed after parts were sourced from elsewhere in Asia and some Chinese factories reopened.

The local Kospi stock market index has taken a decent hit today. It is down 1.35%.

In Japan, our correspondent Justin McCurry reports on how the outbreak has disrupted the planned celebrations of the emperor’s 60th birthday.

Justin writes:

Birthday celebrations for Japan’s new emperor have become the latest victim of the coronavirus outbreak. The imperial household agency said Emperor Naruhito and Empress Masako would not appear in public to mark his 60th birthday on Sunday due to concerns over the possible spread of the virus among large groups of people. The event regularly attracts tens of thousands of people to the inner grounds of the imperial palace in Tokyo.

Naruhito’s birthday address would have been his first since he ascended the Chrysanthemum throne on 1 May after his father, Akihito, became the first Japanese emperor to abdicate in more than 200 years.

The emperor’s birthday is a rare opportunity for the public to see senior members of the imperial family at the palace. Naruhito and Masako were due to greet well-wishers from a palace balcony three times on Sunday, along with the crown prince and his family.

“We made the decision to cancel the public event at the palace, which is attended every year by many people in close proximity, after considering the risk of the virus spreading,” Kenji Ikeda, the vice grand steward of the agency, said at a press conference, according to the Kyodo news agency. The last time the emperor’s birthday celebration was cancelled was 1996, amid a hostage crisis at the Japanese embassy in Peru.

The agency’s decision to scrap the celebrations comes after Japan’s health minister, Katsunobu Kato, said people should avoid crowds and non-essential gatherings. “We want to ask the public to avoid non-urgent, non-essential gatherings,” Kato said. “We want elderly and those with pre-existing conditions to avoid crowded places.”

After a very strong day yesterday when they were buoyed by more central bank stimulus, China’s stock markets have dipped a bit today.

The Shanghai Composite is off 0.2% although the Shenzhen Composite, which is more tech heavy, has just gone back into positive territory.

In Hong Kong, the Hang Seng is down 1%.

Elsewhere in Asia Pacific, losses have widened from the last time I updated the scoreboard. The Nikkei is down 1% now and the Kospi in Seoul is off 1.3%.

Sydney is still down 0.2%, but no doubt saved from further falls by publication of minutes from the Reserve Bank of Australia today which painted a gloomy picture of the economy, especially on consumer demand. Policymakers are ready with more stimulus, which investors just love. Bad news is good news, folks.

The bank also warned about downside cornavirus risks.

It is not all gloom and doom in the economics department. It seems that in Hong Kong, where toilet paper is running short, some manufacturers are doing quite well. The Hong Kong-listed paper maker Vinda has seen its shares rise 41% this year.

This follows an armed raid on a truck load of toilet rolls in Hong Kong amid panic-buying of necessities.

Asian stock markets have seen a dip this morning after Apple’s announcement that the outbreak was causing shortages of the iPhone and that it would fail to meet its revenue target for this quarter.

The Nikkei in Tokyo fell 0.6% this morning and the ASX200 was down 0.2% in Sydney. Seoul was down 0.56%. Chinese and Hong Kong markets open shortly.

Apple’s announcement follows a profit waring from Cathay Pacific on Monday. The Hong Kong-based airline, already hit hard by the city’s protest movement, has cancelled 40% of its flights this month and next because of the virus.

BHP, the world’s biggest mining company, said that it might have to cut its growth forecasts for the year if the outbreak is not contained in the March quarter.

But ... stock markets have weathered the coronavirus outbreak without too much alarm because investors have bet that central banks, led by China, will pump enough stimulus back into their economies to make sure things stay on an even keel.

The US Federal Reserve cut interest rates last year and that has helped fuel a boom in the US economy which is also helping to shrug off fears about a China slowdown.

There are rumbling concerns that passengers who were allowed to leave the cruise ship MV Westerdam in Cambodia may yet be infected with the virus.

UK officials are trying to contact Britons who disembarked after experts said the checking process may not have been handled properly. One person tested positive after leaving the vessel, which was refused by five countries due to concerns that passengers were infected.

Mark Harris, a professor of virology at the University of Leeds, said: “If you have got people who are infected at an early stage they might not test positive, they might not show any symptoms but they could go on to develop full-blown disease.”

Check out our full story here:

The latest figures show that more than 12,000 people have recovered from the infection out of a total of more than 73,000 who have contracted it.

We have to assume that many more will recover if we factor in the latest comments by the head of the World Health Organization.

Speaking in Geneva, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said data from China had helped form a “a clearer picture of the outbreak” and that it appeared that four out of five people infected would recover. It was not as deadly as Sars or Mers, he said, adding:

More than 80% of patients have mild disease and will recover, 14% have severe disease including pneumonia and shortness of breath, 5% have critical disease including respiratory failure, septic shock and multi-organ failure, and 2% of cases are fatal,. The risk of death increases the older you are.

Our health editor, Sarah Boseley, has the full story here:

Welcome to our rolling coverage of the Covid-19 outbreak, which we can start by relaying the latest figures from the health commission in Hubei.

It said on Tuesday morning that 93 more deaths were recorded on Monday, taking the total in the stricken province to 1,789. Another 1,807 cases were added as well for a total in the province of 59,989.

Those numbers are lower than the figures from Sunday (100 deaths and 1,933 new cases) so will give some encouragement to China’s efforts to lockdown its citizens and contain the spread. But these are, of course, only the figures from the health commission and must be treated with some caution.

We haven’t got the national figures from China yet but we expect them to be out soon.

The other key developements are

• The WHO says the virus causes only mild disease in 80% of people and has a markedly greater imnpact on older people.
• WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said data from China had helped form a “a clearer picture of the outbreak”.
• UK officials are trying to track Britons who left the MV Westerdam cruise ship in Cambodia amid fears the virus could have spread more widely than thought.
• Another 99 people have tested positive on board the cruise ship Diamond Princess
• Apple has warned of a shortage of iPhones due to factory closures in China.
  
• Germany’s central bank has warned about the risk to the country’s economy amid already slowing orders from China.
• China is considering delaying its annual people’s congress, set for 5 March in Beijing.
• The Tokyo Marathon has been scaled down to just elite runners.