The view of the WuhanKeting in Wuhan, central China’s Hubei Province. Wuhan in central China’s Hubei Province started converting three existing venues, including a gymnasium and an exhibition center, into hospitals to receive patients infected with the novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV), the headquarters for the epidemic control said late Monday.
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All times below are in Beijing time.
7:33 am: China reports 563 total deaths, and 28,018 confirmed cases
China’s National Health Commission said that as of Wednesday night, a total of 28,018 cases have been confirmed and 563 people have died in the country. There were 3,694 new confirmed cases.
There were 73 additional deaths, with most of them in Hubei province.
7:04 am: Hubei reports an additional 70 deaths
China’s Hubei province reported an additional 70 deaths and 2,987 new confirmed cases related to the fast-spreading coronavirus as of the end of Wednesday.
The Hubei Provincial Health Committee said that 549 people have died in the region and a total of 19,665 cases have been confirmed thus far. The province, where the pneumonia-like virus was first detected, has accounted for most of the deaths related to the new coronavirus.
All times below are in Eastern time.
5:10 pm: Yum China temporarily closes 30% of China stores, could see losses
Yum China Holdings, which operates Pizza Hut and KFC in China, has temporarily closed more than 30% of its stores there. Same-store sales for the locations that stayed open plunged by up to 50% since the Chinese New Year holiday, the company said, adding that it can’t say when its locations may reopen or whether it will need to close more. “Looking into 2020, the coronavirus outbreak is a major public health situation in China,” CEO Joey Wat said in a statement, adding that the safety of employees and customers was a priority. The outbreak will have a “material impact” on its 2020 sales and profit — possibly even see a quarterly or annual loss, depending on the course of the outbreak, the company said. — Rogers
4:07 pm: New York City tests 5 people for potential coronavirus
The New York City Department of Health said it now has five “patients under investigation” for the virus and is awaiting test results on four of them from the CDC. “This means they had recently been in China and presented with fever and cough or shortness of breath without another common cause, like influenza and other respiratory viruses, identified through testing,” the agency said in a statement. The two new potential patients are both under 40. One has been hospitalized and the other is under isolation with daily monitoring by the health department. The specimen from the first suspected case sent to the CDC was negative, the department previously said.
Read CNBC’s coverage from the U.S. overnight: US can’t keep virus ‘out of our border,’ NYC has 2 new ‘patients under investigation’
— CNBC’s Kate Rogers, Berkeley Lovelace Jr. and William Feuer contributed to this report.