China has expanded sweeping efforts to contain a viral disease by postponing the end of this week's Lunar New Year holiday to keep the public at home as the death toll rose to 80. The lockdown has grown to 17 cities with more than 50 million people.
Paramilitary police wear face masks as they stand guard at Tiananmen Gate adjacent to Tiananmen Square in Beijing, Monday, Jan. 27, 2020. China on Monday expanded sweeping efforts to contain a viral disease by postponing the end of this week's Lunar New Year holiday to keep the public at home and avoid spreading infection.
The end of the Lunar New Year holiday, China’s busiest travel season, was pushed back to Sunday from Thursday to “reduce mass gatherings” and “block the spread of the epidemic,” a Cabinet statement said. French automaker PSA Peugeot Citroen, which has a factory in Wuhan, said it was moving foreign employees and their families by bus to be quarantined in another city.
The outbreak is a “notable downside risk” to growth, though it “could potentially be a high impact but short-lived event,” said Tommy Wu and Priyanka Kishore of Oxford Economics in a report. The youngest patient is a 9-month-old girl in Beijing. China also reported five cases in Hong Kong and two in Macao.
Then, Chinese authorities were criticized for reacting slowly and failing to disclose information. The government has responded more aggressively to the latest outbreak.
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