March 3 coronavirus news

Hong Kong will send the first two of the four planned chartered flights to China's Hubei province tomorrow to bring back its residents, the government said in a news release.

Earlier today, the city's Chief Executive Carrie Lam announced the plan to send four flights to Hubei province to repatriate stranded Hong Kong residents.

She said the flights will evacuate a total of 533 Hong Kong residents.

These include 440 Hong Kong residents currently stranded in Wuhan and 93 in other parts of Hubei province.

The evacuees will be denied boarding if they show symptoms of fever or cough. Those that do not show any symptoms of the novel coronavirus will still be required to stay at quarantine centers for 14 days upon their return to Hong Kong.

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A man who lives in Westchester County, New York, and works in Manhattan tested positive for coronavirus, the Gov. Andrew Cuomo said on a local radio program this morning.

The patient, who has an underlying respiratory illness, is hospitalized, Cuomo said on Long Island News Radio.

This is the second patient to test positive for the virus. A healthcare worker with travel history to Iran tested positive as well.

Initial review of the man's travel does not suggest any direct connection to China or countries on the watch list, however he did go to Miami, Cuomo said. “It would be what we call a community spread case,” he said.

Authorities are “tracing all that back” now, he said.  

Twenty-three members of Iran’s 290-member “Majlis” or parliament have tested positive for the novel coronavirus, according to Iran’s Deputy Parliament Speaker Abdul Reza Misri.

That's about about 8% of all members of parliament.

Misri made the announcement while speaking to reporters in Tehran today, citing an open letter to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei from Iran’s Parliament Speaker Ali Larijani. 

In the letter, MPs were also called on to halt contact with the public to avoid further spread of the disease.

Larijani also advocated for a continuance of the suspension of open sessions in parliament in his open letter to Khamenei, which was enacted last week amid Iran’s growing outbreak.

The Archdiocese of Miami issued a press release yesterday outlining some “suggested practices” following two confirmed cases of coronavirus.

Here are some of the changes:

The Archdiocese of Miami is home to over half a million Catholics in Miami-Dade, Broward and Monroe counties.

Japan’s minister for the Tokyo Olympic and Paralympic Games, Seiko Hashimoto, said the Tokyo 2020 “games could be postponed until later this year”.

She added that the city's government is working under the assumption the games will go on as planned.

“The organizing committee, the IOC, and the Tokyo government are working hard on the assumption of opening the games on July 24 as scheduled. The government will put all its effort into supporting this," she added.

Jailed British-Iranian woman Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe is “in good health," Iran’s Judiciary spokesman Gholamhossein Esmaili said at a press conference on state TV on Tuesday.

Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s family released a statement at the weekend saying she believes she contracted coronavirus in Evin prison. Zaghari-Ratcliffe, now 42, was arrested in Iran in 2016 then jailed on espionage charges.

Although authorities have not tested Zaghari-Ratcliffe for the virus, she said in the statement that she has been sick “all week” and described her symptoms as those reported of the coronavirus. 

Esmaili said Zaghari-Ratcliffe called her family yesterday and said she was alright, but that the media “are not reporting her healthy condition and do not take corrective action in their previous news.”

When contacted by CNN on Tuesday, Nazanin’s husband Richard Ratcliffe said Iranian authorities have still not tested her for coronavirus. He said they did have Nazanin call her parents last night and tell them she was okay. He did not receive a call.

The UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) said Saturday the British government is “urgently seeking information” from the Iranian authorities. CNN has reached out to the FCO for an update Tuesday.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said it is "highly likely" that the UK will see a growing number of coronavirus cases, but added that it will be a "mild disease" for the "overwhelming majority" of patients.

His statement on Tuesday comes as the UK unveiled its action plan for a coronavirus outbreak, after confirmed cases in the country rose to 40 on Tuesday.

So far there are 91,940 confirmed cases worldwide and 3,129 deaths -- many of which are in mainland China. In recent weeks, however, regions such as the Middle East and Europe have seen a dramatic jump in confirmed cases and deaths.

The bulk of Google's staff at its European headquarters in Dublin have been told to work from home after a worker reported flu-like symptoms, Irish public broadcaster RTE reports. 

That person has not tested positive for coronavirus. 

There are over 8,000 employees at the Dublin office according to Google.