In Brief: Macau confirms first case of virus

HONG KONG • Macau's first confirmed case of the Wuhan virus involves a 52-year-old Wuhan businesswoman who reported to hospital on Tuesday, the Chinese territory's Secretary for Social Affairs and Culture Ao Leong Lu, vice-chairman of a committee set up to respond to the virus, said yesterday.

The woman took a high-speed train to the Chinese city of Zhuhai on Sunday, and then a shuttle bus to Macau. She had dinner with two friends, then went to a hotel and spent a long time in casinos.

She was in a stable condition in an isolation ward in hospital.

Meanwhile, the authorities announced that all staff in the city's bustling casinos had been ordered to wear face masks.

REUTERS

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Airline allows crew to wear masks

HONG KONG • Hong Kong's Cathay Pacific Airways will allow all crew members and front-line employees to wear surgical masks due to concerns over a new coronavirus, and said passengers to and from Wuhan could change or cancel flights for free through Feb 15.

The airline had said earlier that only cabin crew operating mainland China flights could wear masks, in response to the airline's flight attendants calling for permission to wear masks on all flights globally as cases have also been confirmed in the United States, Thailand, South Korea, Japan and Taiwan.

REUTERS

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Man cleared of virus in Australia

SYDNEY • Tests have found that a man suspected of contracting a Sars-like disease while visiting China does not have the new coronavirus, Australian health officials said yesterday.

The man was temporarily held in isolation at his Brisbane home after returning from the central Chinese city of Wuhan suffering a respiratory illness. A Queensland Health spokesman said laboratory tests showed the man had not been infected with the new virus.

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE

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Share correct info, Tsai urges China

TAIPEI • Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen called on China yesterday to share correct information about a new coronavirus and for the World Health Organisation (WHO) not to exclude Taiwan from collaboration on the outbreak for political reasons.

Taiwan is not a member of the WHO due to the objection of China, which considers the island a Chinese province with no right to participate in international organisations unless it accepts it is part of China.

The deputy head of China's National Health Commission, Mr Li Bin, told reporters in Beijing earlier that experts from Taiwan had been invited to visit Wuhan, and the island was being provided with information.

REUTERS

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N. Korea blocks foreign tourists

SEOUL • North Korea has temporarily closed its borders to foreign tourists, two major operators of tours to the isolated country said, in an apparent effort to seal itself off from the new virus.

The Beijing-based Koryo Tours said yesterday that it received word from its partners in North Korea that the country's borders were closed. Young Pioneer Tours, another group that organises trips to North Korea, had earlier said on Twitter that the temporary closures took effect yesterday.

BLOOMBERG

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Shop slammed over ban on Chinese

HAKONE • A Japanese confectionery shop in the popular hot spring town of Hakone has incurred the wrath of the Chinese for putting up a sign containing offensive content to ban Chinese tourists amid a global virus outbreak originating from China.

The owner of the shop in an onsen resort in the popular Yumoto district in Kanagawa prefecture told reporters he had put up the sign last Friday, one day after Japan announced its first case of infection of the novel coronavirus, called 2019-nCoV, the Asahi Shimbun news site reported.

On the Chinese Twitter-like platform Weibo, netizens are calling for a boycott of the store.