at 20:00 (JST), February 04

China says the new strain of coronavirus has infected more than 20,000 people and claimed the lives of over 400.

China's Communist Party leaders say they aimed to improve the country's crisis management system.

Researchers have found the new coronavirus uses a cell entry receptor identical to that used by the virus that caused SARS.

https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/upld/medias/en/radio/news/20200204200000_english_1.mp3


Key words : 20,000 people
https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/news/20200204_24/

China says the new coronavirus has infected more than 20,000 people and claimed the lives of over 400.

China's National Health Commission reported 3,235 new patients on Tuesday, bringing the total number to 20,438.

It says the death toll has risen to 425, after 64 patients died in the worst-hit province of Hubei. Officials say 576 patients in the province are in critical condition.

A hastily-built hospital in Hubei began treating patients on Monday.

The facility has the capacity to house roughly 1,000 beds, but the number of patients grew by more than 2,000 on Monday alone.

China's medical system is seriously overstretched as the outbreak expands.

The number of suspected patients is said to have reached more than 23,000 across the country, mainly in Hubei province.

Key words : Hong Kong first death
https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/news/20200204_35/

The Hong Kong government has reported its first death from the coronavirus outbreak.

The government says a 39-year-old man infected with the new virus died on Tuesday morning in the territory.

This is the second death from the virus outside mainland China, following a case in the Philippines.

Key words : chief of health organization
https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/news/20200204_02/

The chief of the World Health Organization has expressed concerns about countries denying entry to visitors from China amid the coronavirus outbreak.

WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus spoke at a meeting of the organization's executive board in Geneva on Monday.

He said there is no reason for measures that unnecessarily interfere with international travel and trade.

Tedros said his organization is calling on all countries to implement measures that are evidence-based and consistent.

The WHO declared the outbreak "a public health emergency of international concern" last Thursday. It expressed fears about the possible spread of the virus to nations with vulnerable medical systems.

But the organization has stressed that it would not recommend any travel or trade restrictions.

WHO executive board members will discuss responses to the outbreak on Thursday. The meeting will run through Saturday.

Key words : outside mainland 20 confirmed
https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/news/20200204_29/

Outside mainland China, 185 infections of the new coronavirus have been confirmed in 26 countries and territories.

There are 20 confirmed cases in Japan, 19 in Thailand, 18 in Singapore, 15 each in South Korea and Hong Kong, 12 in Australia and 11 in the United States.

Taiwan and Germany have 10 each, Macao has nine, Malaysia and Vietnam have eight each, France has six, the United Arab Emirates has five and India has three.

Canada, Italy, Britain, Russia and the Philippines each have two cases and Nepal, Cambodia, Sri Lanka, Finland, Sweden and Spain have one case each.

Key words : party leader to improve
https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/news/20200204_06/

China's Communist Party leaders say they need to improve the country's crisis management system, learning lessons from the government's initial mishandling of the coronavirus outbreak.

State-run Xinhua News Agency reports that President Xi Jinping held a meeting of the Politburo Standing Committee on Monday.

Xi expressed respect for medical workers and others who are fighting on the frontline of the battle against the virus. He also expressed sympathy for patients and their families.

Xi said party committees and governments at all levels should spare no effort to prevent the spread of the contagion.

The party leaders said they will bolster health care systems in Hubei Province, where the situation is most serious.

The news agency says the meeting stressed the need to improve the nation's crisis management system and bolster its ability to tackle emergencies, learning lessons from the inadequate response to the outbreak.

There was no specific mention about what was inadequate in the government's initial approach.

Key words : top government preparation
https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/news/20200204_27/

Japan's top government spokesperson says preparations are continuing as planned for a visit by Chinese President Xi Jinping.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga told reporters on Tuesday that he was not informed of any possible influence from the coronavirus outbreak in China, on Xi's planned visit to Japan later this year.

Suga declined to comment on the Chinese government's response to the health emergency. China's Communist Party leaders admitted on Monday that the government had initially mishandled the outbreak in the city of Wuhan.

Suga said China is using every means at its disposal to prevent the epidemic from spreading further. He said Japan and China are closely cooperating in tackling the challenge as a top priority.

On the Japanese response to the problem, Suga said the government wasted no time in sending chartered flights to virus-hit Wuhan to evacuate Japanese nationals stranded there.

The chief cabinet secretary said his administration has been doing all it can in response to the outbreak.

Key words : Japanese airline
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Key words : researcher found
https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/news/20200204_33/

Researchers in China have found the new-type coronavirus infects human cells through a cell entry receptor identical to those used by the coronavirus that caused SARS in the country 17 years ago.

Researchers at the Chinese Academy of Sciences infected bats and other animals with the new type of coronavirus from seven patients in Wuhan, Hubei Province. They announced their findings on Monday in the British science magazine Nature.

The team found that receptors for the new coronavirus on the surface of human cells are the same as those used by the coronavirus that causes Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome.

The researchers say the discovery suggests drugs and vaccines developed for SARS could be used to treat coronavirus patients and to control the outbreak.

The team also found that the genome sequence of the new-type coronavirus is 96 percent identical to a coronavirus previously found in bats, and 79.5 percent identical to the SARS virus.

The researchers say they will continue to try to understand the cycle of infection and find out whether the infectiousness of the virus changes as it's transmitted from human to human.

Key words : UN secretary urged
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Key words : nuclear regulator
https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/news/20200204_41/

Japan's nuclear regulators say high-level radiation was detected last month in the No.2 reactor building of the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant.

The Nuclear Regulation Authority last October resumed its probe into what caused the accident at the plant following the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami.

The results of a survey carried out last Thursday on the top floor of the building were disclosed at a meeting of commissioners and experts on Tuesday.

A meltdown took place at the reactor after the 2011 accident.

A robot on the floor directly above the reactor detected 683 millisieverts of radiation per hour.

The plant's operator, Tokyo Electric Power Company, had also detected high levels of radiation there after the accident.

The site remains inaccessible to humans nine years later.

Commissioners and experts were also shown video of the No.4 reactor, which avoided a meltdown but experienced a hydrogen explosion. The video shows a steel frame believed to have been exposed by the blast.

The regulation authority plans to compile the data into a report this year, not only to determine the cause of the accident but also for work to decommission the reactors.

Key words : number of foreign
https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/news/20200204_26/

The number of foreign workers in Japan hit a record high of more than 1.65 million last year, partly because more people came to the country as technical trainees.

Japan's labor ministry compiled the statistics based on data from employers.

The ministry says that the number of foreigners working in Japan stood at 1,658,804 as of the end of last October. That's up about 190,000, or 13 percent, from a year earlier.

By nationality, Chinese workers topped the list at about 418,000. Vietnamese people came second at 401,000, followed by Philippine nationals at 179,000.

Of the foreign workers, 531,000 people were of Japanese descent or spouses of Japanese nationals. About 383,000 workers were technical trainees, and 329,000 were people with specialized knowledge and skills such as engineers and researchers.

Out of these categories, the number of foreign technical trainees showed the largest increase, up 24 percent from a year earlier.

Japan created a new residency status called "specified skilled workers" in April last year. During the seven months through October, 520 foreign workers came to the country under the new status.

Key words : group of survivor
https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/news/20200204_10/

A group of survivors of the 1945 atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki plan to send a delegation to a review conference of a global nuclear non-proliferation treaty.

The review conference of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, or NPT, is held every five years.

This year marks 75 years since the atomic bombings in Japan. The conference will be held from April through May at the UN headquarters in New York.

Nihon Hidankyo, or the Japan Confederation of A- and H-Bomb Sufferers Organizations, announced on Monday that it will send a delegation of about 50 people, including around 30 atomic bomb survivors, to the conference.

Hidankyo also plans to hold an exhibition of pictures and other items at the UN headquarters. Some survivors will speak about their experiences to convey the horrors of the bombings.

The organization also plans to submit signatures to the UN calling for the abolition of nuclear weapons and urging all countries to sign the nuclear weapons prohibition treaty.

Hidankyo delegates plan to directly call on government representatives to work towards nuclear abolition.

The group's secretary-general, Sueichi Kido, said that nuclear arms and human beings cannot coexist.

He said the will and effort of each individual person can help prevent nuclear weapons from being used.