The Boston Globe - 11.03.2020

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 11, 2020 The Boston Globe Nation/World A

A SPREADING THREAT

ROME — Italy on Tuesday
was a country in quiet emer-
gency: little chatter, few hugs,
few cars, no
sports, empty
piazzas, vacat-
ed restaurants,
and a deepening sense that a
prolonged period of social iso-
lation was the only way to slow
the coronavirus.
Infections in Italy topped
the 10,000 mark with 10,
cases — more than anywhere
else but China — and the num-
ber of deaths from the virus
rose to 631, from 463 a day ear-
lier, Italian Civil Protection au-
thorities said. There were fewer
new cases reported than in pre-
vious days, but the new figures
show the largest single daily
jump in deaths.
The government’s historic
ordering of a nationwide lock-
down — limiting the movement
of 60 million people — has
transformed Italy into a testing
ground for not only what it
might take to control the virus,
but how much a democracy is
willing to upend life’s most ba-
sic routines and joys.
In Rome on Tuesday, the city
was moving at a crawl. People
telecommuted or didn’t work at
all; they wore masks or
wrapped scarves around their
mouths; they kept a suspicious
distance from others. They
tried to drop the habits that
seemed suddenly dangerous —
the kiss greeting; the chat at
the cafe counter — even as de-
pression and deep financial
pain seemed like unavoidable
side-effects of the lockdown.
‘‘I’m mostly sealed indoors,’’
said Ivano Canni, 49, a news-
stand owner, describing his
sense, building for many other
Italians as well, that any social
contact carries a risk. ‘‘I’m try-
ing to stand two meters apart
from others. I open my door to
let fresh air in for half an hour
or so, then close it back.’’
Italy’s initial response to the
coronavirus outbreak had been
to try to preserve normalcy and
limit the economic sacrifices.
But as active cases have acceler-
ated, the approach has changed
dramatically, leading to restric-
tions on movement unprece-
dented by a democracy.
On the first day of the na-
tionwide lockdown, Italians ap-
peared to be largely heeding or-
ders, following the pleas of
Prime Minister Giuseppe Con-
te, who said Italy’s health sys-
tem was at risk of being over-
whelmed if people continued to
move freely and spread the vi-
rus.
Italy’s strategy against the
virus has moved quickly only
because the disease has grown
exponentially. Sixteen days ago,
it had some 100 total cases. Ten
days ago it had 1,000. On Tues-
day, it had more than 8,500 ac-
tive cases; another 1,000 peo-
ple had recovered, and 631 had
died. The country, with the
world’s second-highest propor-
tion of seniors, is particularly
vulnerable to a disease that has
proven deadliest for the elderly.
Most who have died from the
coronavirus were in their 70s
or older.
WASHINGTON POST

InIran,healthsystemwages
waragainstthevirus
TEHRAN — Iran will recog-
nize doctors and nurses who
die combating the new corona-
virus as “martyrs” like slain sol-
diers, the country’s supreme
leader announced Tuesday as
the outbreak killed 54 more
people and pushed the nation’s
death toll to 291.
The decision by Supreme

Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei

comes amid a propaganda

campaign already trying to link

the fight against the virus to

Iran’s long, bloody 1980s war

with Iraq. The rising casualty

figures each day in Iran suggest

the fight against the new coro-

navirus is far from over, even as

more people die from drinking

methanol in the false belief it

kills the virus.

Across the Mideast, over

8,600 people have contracted

the virus and the Covid-19 ill-

ness it causes. The majority

come from hard-hit Iran, which

has one of the world’s worst

death tolls outside of China.

On Tuesday, Iranian Health

Ministry spokesman Kianoush

Jahanpour offered new casual-

ty figures for the virus, which

represented an 18 percent in-

crease in deaths from the day

before and 12 percent more

confirmed cases.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

Islandvacationersallowed

toleavequarantine

CANARY ISLANDS, Spain —

Two hundred guests who had

been detained under quaran-

tine for two weeks in a hotel on

Spain’s Canary Islands have

been allowed to leave.

On Tuesday they completed

the 14-day quarantine ordered

by authorities after an Italian

guest tested positive for the

coronavirus on Feb 24.

Authorities for the Canary

Islands say that seven guests

were eventually found to be in-

fected, six Italians and one Brit-

ish citizen. Four of them re-

main in the hospital but with-

out symptoms. The other three

have been released.

Health authorities applied

the quarantine to over 600

guests staying at the H10 Costa

Adeje Palace on the island of

Tenerife. After passing medical

screenings, small groups had

been allowed to depart before

the final guests left on Tuesday.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

Sportingeventstakeahit

intheEuropeanUnion

MADRID — All upcoming

professional soccer games in

Spain, France, and Portugal, as

well as some in Germany and a

European Championship quali-

fying match in Slovakia, will be

played in empty stadiums be-

cause of the coronavirus out-

break.

The Spanish league said

Tuesday that matches in the

first and second divisions will

be played without fans for at

least two weeks. The announce-

ment came after the govern-

ment outlined a series of pre-

ventative measures being im-

plemented to help contain the

spread of the virus, including

ordering all sporting events

with a significant number of

fans to be played in empty ven-

ues.

Portugal announced similar

measures for the professional

league and said youth soccer

competitions would be sus-

pended between Saturday and

March 28. It also said non-pro-

fessional soccer matches can’t

be played with crowds bigger

than 5,000 people.

Later Tuesday, the French

soccer league announced that

all soccer matches in its top two

divisions will be played without

fans until April 15.

The moves came a day after

Italy said all sports events in

the country, including Serie A

soccer games and preparatory

events for the Tokyo Olympics,

would be suspended until April

3.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

By Steven Lee Myers

NEW YORK TIMES

BEIJING — China’s top lead-

er, Xi Jinping, toured Wuhan,

the city at the center of a now

global epidemic, for the first

time since the coronavirus out-

break began, hoping to demon-

strate that his government was

containing a crisis that has tar-

nished his image at home and

abroad.

Wearing a blue mask, Xi

stopped short of declaring vic-

tory, but his visit to Wuhan was

clearly intended to send a pow-

erful signal that the govern-

ment believes the worst of the

national emergency could soon

be over in China — just as oth-

ers are being struck by their

own outbreaks. As if to echo the

message, some cities, even in

surrounding province of Hubei,

announced plans to loosen

some of the most onerous limits

imposed on millions of people.

“Hubei and Wuhan have

been the very most decisive bat-

tleground in this struggle to

contain the epidemic,” Xi said

in remarks reported by state

media late Tuesday. “Through

arduous efforts, there has been

a promising turn in epidemic

containment in Hubei and Wu-

han, and we’ve achieved impor-

tant interim results.”

Xi and other Communist

Party officials have faced a tor-

rent of criticism at home and

abroad for the initial delays and

obfuscation that hastened the

virus’s spread. Now that the

rate of infections is slowing,

they have responded by por-

traying China as a trailblazer in

the global effort to contain the

coronavirus.

China’s counterattack in

what Xi has called a “people’s

war” has included harsh re-

strictions on travel and person-

al liberties that were widely

questioned in the beginning

but that other nations like Italy

are now, reluctantly, choosing

as well.

Xi warned against any pre-

mature inclination to ease the

restrictions, saying that the

tasks ahead remained “arduous

and heavy.”

“Show no slackening at all,”

he said. “Take a tight, solid, de-

tailed grasp of every part of pre-

vention and control efforts.”

Xi flew into Wuhan in the

morning and raced through

several sites in the deeply trau-

matized city of 11 million peo-

ple who have remained largely

under lockdown for nearly sev-

en weeks. The city and sur-

rounding province of Hubei

have accounted for all but 112

of the 3,136 deaths in mainland

China.

Xi stopped at a community

center, where he met with party

volunteers on the sidewalk, and

a hospital specially built in a

matter of days in February to

treat thousands of the epidem-

ic’s victims, an achievement the

government has repeatedly

touted as evidence of its ability

to marshal resources in a crisis.

As he passed an apartment

complex, Xi and other officials

looked up to wave at residents

who were still required, for the

most part, to remain in their

homes.

“He has to go,” Rong Jian, a

writer about politics in Beijing,

said of the visit, noting that Xi

has said he was personally di-

recting the government’s re-

sponse. “If he does not go, what

he calls personal command and

personal leadership is of no

practical significance.”

Xi’s tour dominated state

media throughout the day, as it

was surely intended to do, but it

will take more than a propagan-

da campaign to ease the an-

guish and grief the epidemic

has already caused and to re-

pair the damage to the econo-

my, which could take months to

get back to normal.

Hundreds of millions of Chi-

nese still live under quarantine-

like restrictions, with travel

limited between cities. Big fac-

tories are barely up and run-

ning, if at all, and millions of

small businesses face uncer-

tainty, if not ruin.

In recent days, the official

numbers have offered some

hope that the virtual siege

could be easing.

The National Health Com-

mission of China on Tuesday re-

ported only 19 new coronavirus

infections in the previous 24

hours, and 17 deaths. All but

two of the new infections oc-

curred in Wuhan; the other two

involved people who contracted

the virus abroad.

That meant that for a third

day in a row, the virus has not

spread outside of the outbreak’s

source, according to the official

accounting.

Even in Wuhan, the govern-

ment has declared some neigh-

borhoods free of new infec-

tions. The city has also closed

the last of 14 temporary shel-

ters it had opened in exhibition

centers and sports stadiums to

isolate thousands of those who

had been infected, according to

state media reports.

The Paper, a news site con-

trolled by the Communist Party,

published photographs of cav-

ernous arenas filled with beds

now empty of patients. The last

two centers — holding patients

with mild cases — could also

close soon.

Qianjiang, a city in Hubei

that is about 90 miles west of

Wuhan, announced on Tuesday

it would begin lifting restric-

tionsonitsresidents“inthe

very near future.” Residents in

two other cities in the province,

Huanggang and Yichang, post-

ed photos and videos on social

media showing open barber-

shops, springtime blossoms,

and workers taking down road-

blocks, suggesting that life

might return to normal.

Some complained, though,

that they had encountered diffi-

culties leaving their apartment

complexes, despite assurances

they could. Others still under

lockdown angrily wondered

when they too would be freed.

“It’s been so many days with

no new infections here, do we

healthy people not deserve to

live too?” wrote one resident of

a smaller city near Yichang.

“Those who don’t die from get-

ting infected by the virus will

die from being trapped.”

Despite its aggressive efforts

to censor public displays of dis-

content, the government has

not been able to stifle the sim-

mering anger that the epidemic

has caused at home.

Only days before Xi’s visit,

the senior-most government of-

ficial on the ground in Wuhan

was heckled as she led a delega-

tion on a tour of a residential

complex. “Fake! Everything is

fake!” a resident shouted at the

delegation, led by Sun Chunlan,

a vice premier, who has spear-

headed the national govern-

ment’s response in Wuhan.

By Katie Rogers

NEW YORK TIMES

WASHINGTON — The name

Covid-19 was clinical and non-

descript, and that was exactly

the point when the World

Health Organization revealed it

to guard against stigmatization

of the place from which it origi-

nated. But a month later, the

recommended terminology for

the coronavirus has not extend-

ed to every corner of politics.

Some conservative politi-

cians and officials, including

Secretary of State Mike

Pompeo, are using “Wuhan vi-

rus,” a term that proliferated on

news sites and in political com-

mentary, mostly before the vi-

rus received an official name.

Senator Tom Cotton, Republi-

can from Arkansas, has fre-

quently used the term on the

Senate floor, and on Monday

evening, Representative Kevin

McCarthy of California, the

House minority leader, drew

criticism for calling the disease

“the Chinese coronavirus” in a

tweet. Representative Paul Gos-

ar, Republican from Arizona,

used it when announcing that

he and several staff members

had come into contact with a

person who attended the Con-

servative Political Action Con-

ference and tested positive for

the virus.

“I am announcing that I,

along with 3 of my senior staff,

are officially under self-quaran-

tine after sustained contact at

CPAC with a person who has

since been hospitalized with

the Wuhan Virus,” Gosar wrote

on Twitter. “My office will be

closed for the week.”

What followed was a torrent

of online criticism that his com-

ment was xenophobic and rac-

ist, and that attaching geogra-

phy to a virus that was first de-

tected in Wuhan, China, will

lead to continued stigmatiza-

tion of the Chinese. Among the

critics was Representative Ted

Lieu, Democrat from Califor-

nia, who tweeted Monday that

the term was “an example of

the myopia that allowed” the vi-

rus to spread in the United

States.

The debate over racism, the

coronavirus, and partisan poli-

tics has grown uglier by the

hour, and it is precisely the type

of geopolitical back-and-forth

that health officials have tried

to avoid since releasing more

stringent guidelines for naming

viruses in 2015.

“This is the consequence

they didn’t want by calling it

the ‘Wuhan Virus,’ ” Frank

Snowden, the Andrew Downey

Orrick professor emeritus of

history and history of medicine

at Yale University, said in an in-

terview.

Of the politicians who are

using the term, he added: “I

think that’s actually quite an

aggressive thing and politically

charged, and I imagine that

people that are still calling it

that are using it in a very load-

ed, ethnic way, and I believe it’s

mainly associated with people

on the political right. That

shows exactly the wisdom of

trying to refer to something sci-

entific and factual.”

Attempts to assign blame to

a certain place or people in the

face of a global health scare

have occurred throughout mod-

ern history, and it is a phenom-

enon that public health officials

have tried to guard against in

recent years.

In this outbreak, Gosar and

members of his congressional

staff have been aggressive in

pushing back against criticism

of their use of “Wuhan virus.”

They have also shared screen-

shots of news articles that used

the term in headlines, many

from the weeks before the virus

received an official name.

“The only people who seem

outraged by the term ‘Wuhan

Virus’ are those whose primary

goal is to continue” politicizing

the outbreak, Ben Goldey, the

congressman’s press secretary,

wrote in an e-mail Monday.

“Our priority is ensuring the

health and safety of the Ameri-

can people, not debating the

use of the term ‘Wuhan virus.’ ”

For Pompeo’s part, a State

Department official said Mon-

day that the secretary was using

this language to counter Chi-

nese Communist Party disinfor-

mation. This echoes public re-

marks made by Pompeo, when

he rejected a suggestion made

last week by Zhao Lijian, a Chi-

nese Foreign Ministry spokes-

man, that the coronavirus may

not have originated in China,

and that it was “highly irre-

sponsible” to connect the two.

In a slate of interviews,

Pompeo did just that. He also

accused the Chinese of with-

holding information as the vi-

rus spread and conspiracy theo-

ries proliferated, some claiming

the virus had actually come

from the United States.

“As a first matter, the Chi-

nese Communist Party has said

that this is where the virus

started,” Pompeo said in an in-

terview on “Fox & Friends” on

Friday. “So don’t take my word

for it, take theirs.”

By Monday, the Chinese

were targeting Pompeo directly.

“We condemn the despica-

ble practice of individual US

politicians eagerly stigmatizing

China and Wuhan by associa-

tion with the novel coronavirus,

disrespecting science and

WHO,” Geng Shuang, another

Foreign Ministry spokesman,

said at a news conference.

“The international society

has a fair judgment, and

Pompeo’s attempts of slander-

ing China’s efforts in combating

the epidemic is doomed to fail,”

he added.

ALBERTO PIZZOLI/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES

Soldiers patrolled past an empty restaurant in the
Trastevere district of Rome on Tuesday.

InItaly,aneeriemix

ofsilenceanddread

President of China visits Wuhan

Furysimmering

beyondphoto-ops

XIE HUANCHI/XINHUA VIA ASSOCIATED PRESS

Chinese President Xi Jinping was briefed on the Huoshenshan Hospital in Wuhan, China,

while visiting the city at the center of the global Covid-19 outbreak.

Virus’s naming stirs a political firestorm

PADMANANDA RAMA/ASSOCIATED PRESS

A sign indicated the temporary closure of Representative

Paul A. Gosar’s office in Washington on Monday.

VIRUS

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