Facebook cancels event in California amid coronavirus fears

Social media giant Facebook announced on Friday it decided to cancel a global marketing summit scheduled to take place next month in San Francisco over coronavirus concerns.

With more than 120 new deaths reported in China, the virus death toll mounted to nearly 1,400 on Friday. Over 64,000 cases have been diagnosed worldwide.

This weekend, a World Health Organization (WHO)-led joint mission will start investigating the spread and severity of the outbreak in China, its chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said.

The mission will focus particularly on understanding how more than 1,700 healthcare workers became infected in China.

Elsewhere, health authorities in the United States will begin testing patients with flu-like symptoms for coronavirus, the Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) officials announced on Friday.

The move significantly expands the U.S. government’s response to the outbreak and comes as a particularly harsh wave of influenza is hitting the country. Testing will commence in five states before expanding.

The American health authorities said it could be uneasy to distinguish between the two illnesses.

Currently, there are 15 confirmed cases of the coronavirus infection in the U.S. Around 600 people are currently under quarantine.

Source: AFP, dpa & Reuters