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When the World Health Organization declared a global public-health emergency at the end of last month, it praised China’s “extraordinary” efforts to combat the coronavirus epidemic and urged other countries not to restrict travel. “China is actually setting a new standard for outbreak response,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said. Many governments ignored the travel advice. Other public-health experts criticized his unqualified praise for China. (Page and McKay, 2/12)

The coronavirus epidemic may be peaking in China where it was first detected in the central city of Wuhan but it is just beginning in the rest of the world and likely to spread, a global expert on infectious diseases said on Wednesday. The Chinese government's senior medical adviser has said the disease is hitting a peak in China and may be over by April. He said he was basing the forecast on mathematical modelling, recent events and government action. (Geddie, 2/12)

Fear. Surprising moments of levity. Soul-crushing boredom. Life on the Diamond Princess, the cruise ship quarantined in a Japanese port with scores of cases of a new virus, means experiencing all these things, according to interviews by The Associated Press with passengers and a growing stream of tweets and YouTube videos. (2/13)

Christina Kerby was corralled aboard a massive luxury cruise ship, charting a meandering course somewhere in the South China Sea, when she began thinking about the apocalypse. Luckily, the WiFi on Holland America’s MS Westerdam was plentiful. She tapped out a tweet. (Thebault and Shammas, 2/12)

For the cruise industry, the coronavirus is a public-relations nightmare. For more than a week, the world has watched as the Diamond Princess ship has been quarantined in the Japanese port of Yokohama, its 3,600 passengers and crew stuck and the number of people infected by the coronavirus climbing to at least 175. (Mzezewa, 2/12)

The Red Cross called for an urgent exemption from sanctions on North Korea on Thursday to help prevent an outbreak of the coronavirus, following an epidemic in neighbouring China. "We know that there is urgent need of personal protective gear and testing kits, items which will be vital to prepare for a possible outbreak," Xavier Castellanos, Asia Pacific director for the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent National Societies (IFRC) said in a statement. (2/13)

On Friday evening, supermarkets in Taipei put out their usual stocks of toilet paper, stacked floor-to-ceiling in brick-sized packets stuffed into bags decorated with colorful cartoon characters. By Monday, just barren racks — and bewildered shoppers — were left. In Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore, shoppers are stockpiling toilet paper, hand sanitizers, rice, instant noodles, cured meats, sanitary napkins and other products as fears over the new strain of coronavirus from China continue to ripple across Asia. (Bengali and Jennings, 2/12)