An official at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Tuesday said Americans should prepare for the coronavirus causing the disease COVID-19 to spread in their communities and cause disruption after Iran, Italy and South Korea reported a rapid uptick in the number of people who have been sickened.
“We really want to prepare the American public for the possibility that their lives will be disrupted because of this pandemic,” Dr. Nancy Messonnier, director of the CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, told reporters.
However, later on Tuesday, health officials said that Messonnier’s comments were meant to prepare Americans and were not immediate directions. “We hope those steps aren’t necessary,” Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said during a news conference held Tuesday afternoon. “We hope that we don’t face those kinds of eventualities, but transparency is being candid with people.”
Separately, officials with the World Health Organization have said this week that the outbreak is not yet a pandemic. “We are not witnessing the uncontained global spread of this virus,” Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO’s director-general,
said during a news conference. “What we are seeing are epidemics in different parts of the world, affecting countries in different ways.”
That uptick in cases of the novel coronavirus over the weekend in Iran, Italy and South Korea sent markets into a tailspin on Monday over concerns that the virus, which until now has been largely contained to China, would turn into a pandemic. (As of Tuesday, the outbreak has still primarily impacted China, which has reported nearly 99% of the deaths and 97% of all COVID-19 cases.)
Messonnier said that Americans should talk to their children’s schools about contingency education and child-care plans and teleworking options if community spread is reported in the U.S. When asked by a reporter on a conference call whether it was accurate to say her tone had changed compared with previous calls, Messonnier said: “The data over the last week and the spread in other countries has certainly raised our level of concern and raised our level of expectation that we are going to have community spread here. ... That’s why we are asking folks in every sector as well as within their families to start planning for this.”
The number of worldwide cases of COVID-19
continues to rise; there are now 80,238 cases in 34 countries and at least 2,700 deaths, according to WHO.
While the number of new daily cases in China has appeared to wane, the number of new countries reporting cases is rising as are the total cases in South Korea, which have soared, with 977 sickened and 10 dead. The government there on Tuesday announced a series of initiatives aimed at stemming the outbreak, including raising its infectious-disease alert to the highest level and forbidding entry into the country from Hubei Province and Wuhan, the city in Hubei
where the virus was first detected in December.
The South Korea outbreak is largely linked to a religious gathering in Daegu. Since then, all residents in that city have been asked not to leave their homes for two weeks.
The U,S. State Department on Saturday raised the travel warning levels for Japan and South Korea to Level 2, which means people are urged to exercise caution before traveling to those countries. It had raised Hong Kong to a Level 2 warning on Feb. 20. China has a Level 4 warning; the State Department is telling Americans not to travel to China right now.
Italy is now reporting a number of infection clusters, primarily in northern regions, with 227 sickened and six dead. Cases there are largely mild; however, WHO officials said Monday that the “rapid increase in reported cases in Italy over the past two days is of concern,” particularly given the likely instances of human-to-human transmission of the virus. Italy has closed schools and bars and canceled mass gatherings such as sporting events in the regions where cases have been reported.
Iran is home to 61 cases and 12 deaths.
In the U.S., there are now 57 cases, driven by an uptick in positive tests among those individuals who were repatriated from the Diamond Princess cruise ship in Yokohama, Japan.
Kuwait is one of the newest countries to report a case; it has a total of eight cases.
According to Reuters, Austria, Spain and Switzerland have also confirmed their first cases, as has Croatia’s health ministry.
President Donald Trump had tweeted Monday that the virus is “very much under control” in the U.S.:
The Trump administration on Monday requested about $2.5 billion in funding for the outbreak, and Azar, the HHS secretary, is expected to face questions about the outbreak and the U.S. response in his four scheduled appearances on Capitol Hill this week, Raymond James’s Chris Meekins said in a note on Tuesday. “We continue to believe the virus is likely to get worse before it gets better, and that this issue will stretch at least into [the year’s second quarter],” Meekins added.
Here’s what companies are saying about the impact of COVID-19:
• Wolverine World Wide Inc.
WWW, -1.76% provided a downbeat full-year outlook, citing the negative impact of the coronavirus outbreak on its shoe brands, which include Hush Puppies, Sperry, and Stride Rite. The company reported a net loss of $900,000, or 1 cent a share, in the latest quarter, after earnings of $39.3 million, or 39 cents a share, in the year-ago period.
• United Airlines Holdings Inc.
UAL, -5.16% on Monday
rescinded its annual revenue guidance for 2020, saying the outbreak is too unpredictable to ensure that the forecast it issued two months ago will hold up. The airline has suspended flights to and from the Chinese cities of Beijing, Chengdu and Shanghai as well as Hong Kong through April 24. Those flights were expected to make up 5% of United’s 2020 planning capacity. As such, United “is experiencing an approximately 100% decline in near-term demand to China and an approximately 75% decline in near-term demand on the rest of the Company’s trans-Pacific routes.”
• Mastercard Inc.
MA, +1.55% said Monday it expects to shave two to three percentage points from its first-quarter revenue guidance because of the impact of COVID-19 on “cross-border travel and, to a lesser extent, cross-border e-commerce growth.”
• HP Inc.
HPQ, -4.98% said it expects a “negative impact to our top line, bottom line and [free cash flow],” citing delayed production and manufacturing timelines. The technology giant said that, when taking into account the outbreak, it now anticipates earnings per share of 46 cents to 50 cents and adjusted EPS of 49 cents to 53 cents.
• The Coca-Cola Co.
KO, -2.62% said the outbreak “will negatively impact our unit case volume and financial results for the first quarter of 2020” because the drinks maker has seen delays in the production and export of ingredients used in nonnutritive sweeteners. It doesn’t expect a hit to its full-year results for now.
Read more of MarketWatch’s COVID-19 coverage:
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