On the eve of an emergency meeting during which the World Health Organization could declare an international health emergency, a number of airlines announced plans to reduce or suspend service to China because of the fast-spreading coronavirus.
WHO’s Emergency Committee on the novel coronavirus is scheduled to meet Thursday afternoon in Geneva. To this point, the WHO has not declared the coronavirus outbreak a “public health emergency of international concern,” but the Emergency Committee and the organization’s director general could make that determination at the meeting. In so doing, the WHO would be saying that a coordinated and immediate international response is needed to protect public health. Such a declaration could result in more aggressive international measures to contain the disease.
Delta said Wednesday it is cutting its weekly service to China by half because of “significantly reduced customer demand.” Delta operates 42 flights a week to China and is reducing that to 21, effective Feb. 6 through April 30. The airline said it may make additional adjustments as the situation evolves.
Also Wednesday, Air Canada said it was suspending its flights to Beijing and Shanghai, effective Thursday through the end of February. The Canadian government is recommending that all nonessential travel to mainland China be avoided. Air Canada flies to China from Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver.
Lufthansa Group said its carriers — Lufthansa, Austrian and Swiss — were suspending flights to mainland China until Feb. 9 but that flights to and from Hong Kong would continue. In addition, Lufthansa said it would not accept bookings for flights to or from mainland China until the end of February.
Dutch carrier KLM is suspending flights to Chengdu and Hangzhou on Thursday and to Xiamen on Friday but said it does not see a need, based on current information, to suspend all of its China operation. Instead it will continue flying daily to Beijing and will reduce weekly Shanghai service to seven flights from 11. It is also providing face masks to crew on request.
British Airways said it has immediately suspended all flights to China until Friday, while it assesses the situation. Flights to Hong Kong remain unaffected.
Finnair is canceling its three weekly flights from Helsinki to Beijing and its twice weekly flights to Nanjing until the end of March.
United said Tuesday it would suspend some flights to China beginning Saturday.
The widebody jets used on long-haul flights carry a significant amount of freight below deck, and if passenger flights are indefinitely scratched a huge amount of capacity that shippers depend on goes away.
Nearly 6.100 cases of coronavirus have been confirmed globally, with all but 68 of them in China, where 132 people have died, according to WHO data. Cases have have confirmed in 15 other countries
Noble1= Shamash (Shemesh/Utu) the Babylonian God of the Sun(god of justice, morality, and truth-(enforcer of divine justice )
FYI This map tracks the coronavirus in real time
Quote :
“The number of novel coronavirus cases is changing quickly. A real-time tracking map shows us just how quickly.
The map from Johns Hopkins University’s Center for Systems Science and Engineering follows coronavirus cases across the world.
The dashboard collects data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the World Health Organization, the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention and the Chinese website DXY, which aggregates data from China’s National Health Commission and the CCDC. The results populate a worldwide view of coronavirus cases in real time.
The coronavirus case map updates in real time as global health agencies confirm more cases.
The clickable map pinpoints regions where patients have been diagnosed with coronavirus — the more cases in a region, the larger its dot on the map (right now, the largest dot belongs to the Hubei Province, where the outbreak originated).
The map tracks deaths, too, in total and by city.
Lauren Gardner, director of the Center for Systems Science and Engineering and a civil engineering professor at Johns Hopkins, said the map isn’t just a resource for the public — health officials can download the data, which will inform research on the coronavirus in the future.
“We built this dashboard because we think it is important for the public to have an understanding of the outbreak situation as it unfolds with transparent data sources,” she said. “For the research community, this data will become more valuable as we continue to collect it over time.”
The dashboard also puts the outbreak into perspective: There are already more than 6,000 confirmed cases in mainland China and fewer than 100 everywhere else in the world.
The CDC regularly updates its map of confirmed coronavirus cases, too, though it shows cases by country rather than by region or city.
End quote .