© EPA-EFEPeople wearing face masks in Beijing as China battles to control the coronavirus outbreak.
China has blamed the United States for spreading fears about the coronavirus, while also accusing Washington of doing nothing to help contain the outbreak.
The Chinese foreign ministry made the accusation on Monday, as the number of deaths in mainland China attributed to the
coronavirus overtook the Sars epidemic of 2003.
Mainland health officials also called on people to pay extra attention to personal hygiene after
traces of the coronavirus were found on surfaces, including a door handle.
Chinese health authorities announced 361 fatalities and 17,205 cases attributable to the rapidly spreading illness, as of Sunday, with 2,829 new cases and 57 deaths. That compares with 2,590 new cases and 45 deaths, nationwide, on Saturday.
Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said in a written statement that many countries appreciated China's efforts to contain the spread of the coronavirus, with the exception of the US.
"But in the meantime, some countries, the US in particular, have inappropriately overreacted, which certainly runs counter to WHO advice," she said.
"The US government has not provided any substantial assistance to us, but it was the first to evacuate personnel from its consulate in Wuhan, the first to suggest partial withdrawal of its embassy staff, and the first to impose a travel ban on Chinese travellers. All it has done could only create and spread fear, which is a bad example."
Comment: The London Gatwick shutdown in Dec 2018 was on and off for days, and it wasn't caused by 'drones'... Now, with today's incident at Madrid Barajas Airport, the shutdown could well have simply been caused by the innocuous intrusion of a small civilian-operated drone. After all, the incident lasted just two hours and didn't cause much disruption.
However, when flights recommenced mid-afternoon, this happened: Scrambling a fighter jet to escort a civilian aircraft as it 'burns off fuel for hours by flying super low over a city'? All because 'an engine ate a wheel'?
Is it standard operating procedure to escort civilian aircraft in cases other than possible terror threats?
Something seems off there.
UPDATE 22:00 CET
Correction: a Spanish military jet was apparently scrambled just to "evaluate the damage done to the landing gear of the aircraft," not to escort the Air Canada plane the whole time it was flying over and around Madrid. Here's Flight AC837's wacky holding pattern, per flightradar24.com: